Back in the main lab, Mom introduced me to two of the guards who’d come along with Franklin from the detention center to watch over him. One man, one woman, both built like football players, they wore crisp gray shirts and walkie-talkies on their hips that let out occasional burps of static. They gave me a nod and headed out to get their prisoner.

“You’ll meet with him in here.” Mom unlocked a door with her badge and held it open for me.

“Good luck, Rem,” Gertie called from her desk.

Mom gave me another hard kiss on the cheek. “I love you,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

I nodded and stepped through the door. The room I entered, though about the same size as the one I’d just left, contained almost no furniture. A white table and two metal chairs stood near the window, and that was it. Like Mom’s office, this room looked out on the lake. Outside, the sky had darkened even more, the clouds turning purple and black. I sat down in the chair across from the window.

A door to my left swung open. Right away, my fingers clamped onto the armrests. My forehead and cheeks felt cold, like they did whenever I woke up from one of my nightmares. It took me by surprise how fast the feeling crashed over me. I tried to remember all the reasons I shouldn’t feel this way—Franklin would have chains on, he wouldn’t have a weapon, the guards would stay the whole time—but my nervous system wasn’t convinced. My heart seemed to bang at the same volume as that “music” Gertie had been playing out in the main lab.

Franklin Kettle slunk in, with the two guards close behind him. One of them, the lady, escorted him to the chair across from mine and sat him down. He looked pretty much the same as I remembered. He had on his bulky black glasses, and his hair fell down over his face in spikes. He hadn’t managed to keep it dyed, though. It had faded from that startling blue-black to regular dark brown. And he didn’t have on the old black denim jacket, tattered and held together with safety pins, that he’d worn all the time over a black T-shirt and a pair of narrow black jeans. Instead he wore a new but cheap-looking outfit I figured one of the lab techs must’ve bought for him at Target so he wouldn’t have to wear his detention center jumpsuit. This wasn’t much better, though: gray sweatpants and a hoodie the blinding orange shade of traffic cones.

He also had on his chains. They clanked with every tiny movement he made, as if they didn’t want you to forget they were there.

I willed my fingers to uncurl from the armrests. “Hi.” My voice sounded thin in my ears. “Um. My mom said you asked to talk to me?”

Franklin shot his eyes toward one of the cameras hanging from the ceiling. “I just didn’t feel like talking to them. I figured talking to you would at least be a slight improvement. And I figured your mom would jump at the chance to watch me interact with one of my peers.”

“I guess you figured right.”

The chains rattled as he shifted in his chair. “It’s kind of ironic, though, isn’t it? In real life, we wouldn’t be interacting at all. Sure, we know each other, but it’s not like we really know each other. Have we ever even had a conversation before?”

He didn’t say it with any apparent anger. As always, he spoke in a quiet, empty voice. Still, ten seconds in, the conversation already felt like it had left neutral territory. I glanced at the guards. They stood on either side of Franklin, several feet back, in front of the glass wall. Each of them wore a small earpiece, which Mom would use to tell them to call the meeting off if things went south. For now the guards didn’t move.

“Probably not,” I said.

“At least you were never an asshole to me, like everybody else at school.”

Behind his hair and his glasses, his eyes narrowed just the littlest bit. My chest tightened. I blinked and fumbled for something to say. “I don’t—”

“I guess we never had many interests in common. That might be the reason we didn’t socialize more.”

I was pretty sure he’d meant that sarcastically, but the tonelessness of his voice and the expressionlessness of his face made it hard to tell. “Maybe,” I said. “But my mom told me you’re into art. That’s cool. I actually do a lot of drawing my—”

The chains clattered some more while he settled into a deeper slouch. “Nope. Not really into art. There was just nothing else to do at the detention center. They didn’t let us near any computers. That’s what I’m really into. Computers. Video games.”

“Son of War.”

The second the words jumped out of my mouth, I wished I could stuff them back in. A tiny smile curled the corners of Franklin’s mouth. “You play? Because that would be something we have in common.”

Again I suspected sarcasm. I shook my head.

“I didn’t think so. Mr. Nice Guy—isn’t that what everybody calls you? Way too nice to play a game like Son of War.”

On the other side of the window snow had started to fall. The flakes made a whispering sound as they tumbled against the glass.

“You’re probably right,” I said. “I don’t know much about that game. Why don’t you tell me?”

“It’s not too complicated. You just kill stuff.”

“You’re a soldier or something?”

“Yep.”

“And you shoot at things?”

“Yep.”

He studied his fingernails as we spoke, as usual not so much avoiding eye contact as seeming indifferent to the whole concept. I glanced around, hunting for a clock. Our five minutes had to end soon, right? “But you must have a mission. I mean, there must be something you’re trying to accomplish other than just shooting things up.”

“Yeah, but mostly you’re just killing stuff.”

“And you get points? Like, for killing bad guys?”

“For killing anyone.”

My sneakers settled flat on the smooth concrete floor. I glanced down and realized I’d gone back to clutching the armrests again. My knuckles had turned white. “For killing anyone?”

His eyes stayed on his fingernails, but his grin widened. “Sure.”

“Even innocent people?”

“Depends on what you call innocent, I guess. Maybe there is no innocent, really.”

Tendrils of nausea snaked through my belly. I couldn’t look at him anymore. Outside, the snow had thickened. The huge window looked like a TV screen on static. “I think that’s disgusting.”

“It’s how war works. Kill or be killed. The game’s just teaching you how to be a real soldier. Did you know Son of War is used in military training programs all over the world to prepare soldiers for combat? And I still have one of the all-time high scores, which means—”

“Real soldiers don’t shoot civilians,” I said.

“Don’t they? Have you watched the news lately?”

“I mean good soldiers. They try not to.”

“You mean your brother. The one that got himself popped.”

One of the guards put his hand to his earpiece and listened. I pictured Mom watching us on the monitor back in the main lab, hearing Franklin bring up her oldest son. I waited for her to call the whole thing off.

The guard’s hand fell away from his ear. He didn’t make a move.

I closed my eyes and commanded myself to breathe. Don’t take the bait. Keep the conversation neutral. But that word he’d used—“popped”—had snagged in my brain. Like Ethan had been a balloon, or a grape. “Well, congratulations.” I could hear how brittle my voice sounded, like thin, fractured ice. “It must feel good to be such a master player.”

Franklin lifted his shoulders and dropped them. “It’s okay.” He sank even further down in his chair, looking bored, and threw his head back to peer at the lights hanging from the ceiling. They flashed in the lenses of his glasses. “Did your brother ever play?”

My fingers bit into the cold metal of the chair. “I don’t think so.”

“Maybe he should’ve. Maybe things would’ve played out differently if he had. He was probably like you, too nice for all that fighting.”

I shot another glance at the guard. Why hadn’t Mom intervened? Hadn’t this gone far enough? “I don’t think you should be talking about my brother.”

“I’m curious, though: did you ever find out if he pissed his pants just before it happened, like Pete Lund did?”

The next instant I was on my feet and slamming my hands on the table. Behind me, something banged: I’d knocked my metal chair to the floor. “Fuck you,” I said. “You’re disgusting.”

The guards had already landed on us. The lady had clapped her hands on Franklin’s shoulders, even though he was still just slouching in his chair, and the guy, big as he was, had managed to pelt all the way around the table and grab me from behind in less than a second.

“Okay, buddy,” he said. “I think we’re done for today.”

Franklin just smiled. When the female guard took him by the arm, he stood without resistance and walked with her to the door. “Bye, Rem,” he called over his shoulder, like we’d just finished a pleasant conversation. The guard pushed the door open, and Franklin’s chains jingled down the hall.