Friesta Bauer led them into a cavernous building and called, “Listen up. There are four more tests this afternoon. You’ll move through them as fast as you can. You start by running across this rope net,” she said, gesturing behind her. The thing was immense. “When you reach the other side, there’s a card game.”
They shifted at that. Seriously? Cards?
“The instructions are on the sign at the table as you sit down. Read them, and play the game until the dealer tells you you’re done. Then follow the arrows to the glass elevators and get in. When you exit the elevator, there will be one more test. That’ll be it for the day.”
Eddie didn’t like the mention of the elevator—Ms. Bauer made it sound like one of the tests. And the only thing you can do with an elevator is stop the stupid thing and make people sweat it out—see how they interact in close quarters, and if they’re claustrophobic. This could go badly for him.
“First twenty!” They shuffled into position. “Go!”
He ran forward and jumped onto the rope net so that he landed about three feet in from the edge. It creaked and dipped beneath him, coarse under his fingers as he pulled himself forward. The net stretched horizontally maybe fifty yards. The open spaces were large—plenty of opportunity for a leg to fall through. He crawled forward. Eddie was pretty sure he was in better shape than most of these kids, and his size gave him a reach advantage, but a smaller guy scrambled past, the ropes barely sagging beneath him.
Eddie had to win.
He grabbed for the ropes, imagining his basketball coach in his face, blowing his whistle, pushing, pushing. He passed the skinny kid, leaving the ropes swaying in his wake. He reached the far side of the net and swung to the ground in first place, which meant he had his pick of the twenty card tables. Eddie ran for the one closest to the sign to the elevators. It would save him a step running to his claustrophobic doom.
His dealer was an older guy with a ponytail and one earring. He stared impassively as Eddie picked up the white sign that was lying facedown on the table.
You have responded to a hostage situation. Twenty civilians are trapped in a diner. You have no backup, no weapons, and no way to change this situation. However, the perpetrator will let you play a game of 21 for each hostage’s life. If you get a score of eighteen to twenty-one, he releases the hostage. If you go over twenty-one, he shoots him/her on the spot. You have five minutes.
What even the heck? A timer dinged. Eddie looked up to see the dealer holding up a photo of a young woman in a blue shirt. She was smiling at the camera like she was in love with whoever was holding it. The dealer slipped him two cards off the top of the deck: a ten and a five. Eddie needed at least an eighteen or the bad guy would shoot her. He tapped the table. It was kind of a stupid scenario, really. You had to play for everybody, and if you went over you went over—he was going to kill them, anyway, so you really didn’t have anything to lose.
The dealer slid him a third card facedown. Eddie flipped it over—an eight. Well, he lost that one. Sorry, pretty lady in blue. The dealer flipped up another photo—not the next hostage, but a photo of the woman crumpled on the floor, a bullet hole in the soft hair that framed her face. One hand was splayed across the floor as though she’d died reaching for the chair leg before her. Son of a bitch. She was a real person, a real hostage. Somebody really shot her.
Son of a bitch.
Eddie stared up at the dealer, hating him. The dealer looked at him blankly and raised an eyebrow. Ready for the next? his expression said.
They were using photos of a real shooting at a real diner. Real people. Which meant he had to have a photo like that to show for all twenty. Because Eddie could go over twenty-one on any hand. Which meant the earnest young man whose picture he flipped up was already dead. Eddie stared at him for a moment, and suddenly, desperately, wanted to hit twenty-one, even though he knew he couldn’t save him. The guy could have been him.
The cards were a three and a four. Eddie tapped the table, and the dealer slipped him another card. A five. Twelve. Eddie tapped again—a ten. Son of a bitch. The dealer pulled a photo out and there was the guy on his back, his legs tucked under him, a giant red rip through the front of his white shirt, blood pooled below him and onto a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He never got to finish it.
The dealer flipped out a photo of an old woman standing outside holding a basket of tulip bulbs in one hand, a trowel in the other. Beaming. Eddie looked up at the dealer.
“Stop this,” he hissed.
“No talking,” he said. “If you speak again, you’re disqualified.”
Eddie rethought his strategy, but there was no getting around it. He had to play for every hostage, and just hope he would win a few—for his own sake. There was no helping them.
The dealer slipped him two nines and Eddie stopped—an eighteen. He’d saved the old woman. The dealer didn’t show him the second photo, but he knew it was there. Next up was a little girl standing in front of a Christmas tree. All Eddie could do was spare himself seeing the next photo.
But he didn’t.
In all, he saved the old woman and two more hostages—three of twenty. When the dealer flipped up the last photo of a man crumpled inside a door, Eddie stood, unsure if there was more, but the dealer jutted his chin toward the sign to the elevators and Eddie took off running, glad to get away from the photographs.
Creeps. Why had they done that to them? Eddie’s armpits were clammy by the time he raced around the corner and stumbled to a stop in front of a row of four glass elevators. A redheaded guy was already there, and a moment later Rosa and another guy ran over. Four people, four elevators. Go time?
Friesta Bauer pressed a button, and all four elevators opened. “Enter.” They stepped in, Eddie half a step behind the others because he took an extra lungful of air before crossing the threshold. They stood facing her, the glass doors open.
“This is a simple test. State your best observation of the physical laws in play around you while you’re in the elevator. When you’ve said something accurate and meaningful, the elevator stops.” She pushed a button, and the doors closed soundlessly. He couldn’t see through the top or bottom, but the rest was a seamless glass oval, unbroken save for the handrail that ran around the inside. There was nothing worse than being trapped in a glass elevator, he thought.
“By the way,” her voice sounded through a speaker on the ceiling, “try to stop the elevator quickly. There is a bottom.”
Then the elevators began to free-fall. Holy crap, there is something worse than being trapped in an elevator. Eddie threw his hands up against the doors, trying to pry them open. It’s glass. Break the glass and you free-fall through the shaft.
He had to say something about nature or some crap like that. Rosa’s elevator creaked to a halt. He shot past it. “The humidity in my pants has increased significantly,” he shouted. It didn’t stop. “Um, for a liquid in free fall, surface tension, viscosity, and inertia are the relevant forces!” His elevator plunged on, but the redheaded guy’s stopped. “The behavior of the liquid will depend on the contact angle with the container, which in this case is my pants,” Eddie shouted. The glass under his palms vibrated as the elevator shuddered to a stop.
The elevator descended at a normal pace for maybe a floor, then the doors opened. Had he been that close to the bottom? He stepped into a corridor. A young guy in an Interworlds Agency shirt motioned him into an empty room.
“The others will be here in a minute,” he said. They sat for a couple of minutes, the guy drumming his fingers on his thigh. “Did they tell you about the whiteboard?”
Eddie shook his head.
“They wrote down what you guys said in the elevator, so the judges can read it. There’s some kind of scoring system.” Eddie flushed. “Hey.” The guy stood. “Do you mind if I take you on out there? When everybody’s ready, they’ll take you to another room.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I’m kinda supposed to be somewhere else.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Okay.”
The guy led him out of the room and around the corner to a whiteboard. “They’ll come out down there. Just fall in with them when they come by, okay?”
Eddie nodded, distracted by what was on the board. Each of their names was on a sticky note, and below it what they’d said. They’d written it word for word. Some kid named Ellis said, “Holy shit! Gravity! Gravity! There’s no gravity in free fall! No gravity! Oh god I’m going to die no gravity.” Eddie smirked. That made him feel a little better.
Under the note that said “Paul,” someone had written, “Um um um. So in zero-g a free falling body can have tidal effects but possibly not in an elevator. Um, the inertial frame, um, shit, it takes two thousand three hundred newtons to crush the human skull. Let me out!” Eddie wanted to laugh, but the note with his name was over two references to humidity in his pants.
The last note said “Rosa”—Chopper Girl had a name. While plunging to her probable death she apparently had said, “Uh, uh, the geometry of space-time is Minkowskian—special relativity applies to free fall.” So yeah, she won their round.
Then Eddie realized something. The guy had pointed to where the others would come out, and it was farther down the hall. They weren’t going to pass the board. He scanned quickly for cameras—none. Some jerk could switch the sticky notes, and suddenly he would be the one who’d mentioned Minkowski. Why hadn’t they thought of this? Somebody could totally steal that girl’s thought.
He could.
She was one of the kids that Bauer pointed out—a science princess. She did it to tell them they already knew who was going to win. The pedigree kids. The ones who went to prep schools during the school year and expensive camps in the summer. She was saying that even though he had a chance, he didn’t have a chance.
He could give himself a shot, right here. But he was not a thief.
Eddie crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. He didn’t have to hope he looked tough—he knew he did. He’d guard the board until somebody came along, and then he was going to point out the problem to them. Because a place like this? He wasn’t going to be the only contestant desperate for a spot with the Interworlds Agency.
A couple of minutes later an IA official appeared at the end of the hall and motioned him over. He just nodded while Eddie pointed out their security flaw, and then led him into a room and left. Chopper Girl—Rosa—was the only other person in the room. She waved at the chairs.
“Figure it out yet?”
“What’s that?” Eddie said, sitting next to her.
“The final test. It was whether we’d cheat at the board.”
He stared at her. Oh, man. Of course they knew what they were doing. Of course they did. He sat down and laced his fingers behind his neck.
“You okay?” She hesitated. “You didn’t cheat, did you?”
“No, I didn’t cheat!” He barked it at her.
Her breath caught and the color rose in her cheeks.
Well, too bad. Why would she assume he’d cheat? Why did everyone?
“Um, sorry,” she said. “But maybe you’re a little oversensitive?”
He snorted. “There are two hundred applicants, and every one of you is the top of some fancy-ass science school. Except for me.”
“You’re salutatorian of a fancy-ass science school?” she asked, a faint smile on her lips.
“No. I’m from Oolitic, Indiana. I go to a public high school—and it’s not even in my town.”
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry.” She grimaced. “Sorry for how that sounded, too.”
“Don’t be.”
“So are you, like, self-taught?”
He hesitated. “I live with my grandmother. She was an engineer. Never got promoted the way she should have. Women back then, you know.” She nodded. “But the stuff she could tell you.” He shook his head. “She kept me home from second grade once because I asked her why when I rode my bike to the ice cream stand my legs were sore the next day, but my heart wasn’t. She explained that cardiac muscle can’t go into anaerobic respiration, but I wanted to know why.”
“So why is it?” Rosa asked.
“The percent of mitochondria in a skeletal muscle cell is one to three percent. In cardiac muscle, it’s thirty to thirty-five percent.”
“Wow. No wonder it doesn’t go into anaerobic.”
“I know, right?” He realized he was leaning toward her and shifted back in his seat. “Anyway, Grandma taught me most of what I know, or made me find it out myself. We built a rocket in the backyard once, and when we shot it off, it fell sideways and chased the neighbor’s cows around the field.”
She laughed.
“Then we had to climb in and get the rocket so the neighbor wouldn’t know why his cows were spooked.” He rubbed his thumbnail on his jeans, making a sawing sound. “Sorry I’m telling you all this.”
She looked startled. “Don’t be. Who knows, we might wind up working together.”
He shook his head. “No, I think I ruined my chances earlier, on the scorpion test.”
“That was just to see if we put in our dominant hand without thinking. It had to be, don’t you think? A lot of these are just to see what we do under pressure.”
“I didn’t put in either of my hands.”
“You froze?” she asked, frowning slightly.
“No. I put in the instructor’s hand.”
Her eyes popped comically wide. “You didn’t!”
He nodded, then laughed. “I’m screwed, but no way you are. The Minkowskian space-time answer—that was genius.” She flushed. “And you thought to work together on the chopper blocks. Cooperation would never have occurred to me.”
The door opened and a kid came in. Rosa twisted her legs away. Eddie wasn’t sure what was going on, but he scooted his chair out a little, just letting the guy know he was there.
“What do you think the last test will be?” he said.
“It’s whether you cheated at the board, Ellis,” Rosa said. “The guy who brought me in told me.”
He went white. “What do you mean?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Did you switch the sticky notes with our names?”
Ellis stared at her for a second, then dropped his head to his chest.