Extracted

Nicholas

I stare at the back of Nicholas's head. What if I'm wrong? I based him being Tyler on a little tick of his knee during that first group therapy. Tyler does that too, but so do a lot of other guys. I guess. He stands at the knife throwing range, waiting his turn to get at one of the targets.

We narrowed Tyler down to five guys who had been extracted around the same time Jeremy and I were. And they are about the right age. I wish they'd all been in the same therapy group so I could have studied them. Mitchell had sent me their pictures on my tablet early this morning. Their faces flashed by quickly before the file disappeared. Couldn't be caught with that on my tablet, nor were students supposed to be able to contact each other on the devices. Instructional purposes only. No wi-fi, no email, no uncensored media, no socialization.

Fortunately with my new and improved expanded brain size, I had the faces committed to memory as fast as the screen went dark again. Three I already knew: Nicholas, Benjamin, Douglas, and two others, a short guy named Daniel and a Hispanic guy, Nathaniel.

I move from station to station where any of these guys are, watching, looking for any similarities that might indicate one of them is for sure Tyler.

I can't find anything, which leaves me wondering if Tyler's extraction had gone well. The procedure of jamming a dead kid's soul into a test-tube body could very well have complications and not take. Tyler may not be here at all, but dead-dead. Dead for good, his soul never extracted on that bumpy dirt road back in Wyoming.

I bury that thought. No, he's here. I just have to find him. I watch Nicholas throw knives, studying every nuance—how he stands, rotates his left shoulder and loosens his fingers. Tyler used to bring his hands together and stretch his interlocked fingers before each wrestling match so I watch for that, maybe too hard, willing Nicholas to be Tyler.

There are two more boys that my gaze strays toward.

Mitchell is on the mat, sparring with Fletcher. It's rare to find him there. Usually Mitchell's up high on one of the rope courses, keeping a casual eye on everything from above. The director has no idea about Mitchell or what he's able to do or how much he sees. I smile.

Mitchell slides beneath the younger boy's reach in a beautiful twist of his lanky body and comes up around Fletcher's back, scooping the kid's legs out from under and taking him to the floor. At the last moment he slams the mat with his palms under Fletcher, making it sound like he hit harder than he did.

I look at the trainer, watching to see if he noticed the sly trick, but from his angle I don't think he did. Their body positions were planned, I realize, to make the take-down appear worse than it was, and it dawns on me that everything Mitchell does is a calculated risk to circumvent his way through the school with minimal damage to anyone else or to himself.

He could easily graduate from this place in time, if it weren't for me making a muck of his plans.

The other boy I keep an eye on is Jeremy. He's on a rope course consisting of hanging loops and climbing nets. He shouldn't be up there at all with a broken arm, but my brother is stubborn. He swings from loop to loop like a monkey, even with the heavy cast, and leaps over onto the wide net to climb higher to the next set of loops.

He's slower on the next set of ropes, the cast hindering him as it keeps catching on the rough knots and coarse strands. A girl and another boy climb up past him, bouncing the net, and Jeremy's foot slips between a hole, followed by his entire leg, and he slips hard, tangling his cast in the nets.

I start forward immediately. No one else has noticed Jeremy's dilemma except for the trainer, whose head is craned upward.

I stop, heart in my throat, willing Jeremy to get his foot back onto a rope. His arm is stretched to the limit, forcing all his weight to drag at his broken arm.