That shocked him. And there he was, in the back, Alfonso, the boy the ERD had tortured until he’d relented and purged Nexus from his own brain.

“Alfonso,” Rangan said. He reached out, with his hand, with his thoughts, gesturing to the boy, pulling him forward, until Alfonso came up to the front of the little crowd, sat on the stool where Melanie had sat, and held Rangan’s hand.

“How?” Rangan asked. Had his brain somehow recovered?

…gave him more Nexus…

…made him REAL again…

“Everyone’s real!”

It came out more sharply than he intended. And the boys fell silent.

He caught himself. These were just boys. Boys taken away from their parents.

He smiled. “I’m sorry.” He looked around at the boys, sent out love, his joy at seeing them, how much he’d missed them.

Then he gripped Alfonso tighter.

“Alfonso was real when he didn’t have Nexus. He just couldn’t talk to you. He was still a person. He was just more lonely.”

He tried to show them, the bits he’d seen out of Bobby’s eyes, out of Tim’s, of Alfonso crying huddled in the corner, of how that meant Alfonso was sad, just like they were sad sometimes.

He felt Alfonso’s memories seep into the room, felt the experience from Alfonso’s point of view, felt the boys make the connection, just a bit, just a tiny bit. It’d have to do.

Then Pedro broke the moment.

…Did you really have a POLICE CHASE and did they shoot at you and did you BLOW UP a van and ESCAPE LIKE A NINJA like in the NINJA MOVIES…

And then all the boys were pressing on him, excited, curious, and so much like he’d been as a boy.

Show us being a ninja!

Show us blowing up the van!

Show us the police chase!

Their eyes were full of adoration, their minds full of Rangan as some sort of heroic movie version of himself. And somehow, Rangan found himself swept up in their infectious enthusiasm, telling them a story, showing them snippets of the terrifying drive through the storm, of the police car flashing out of the rain, of the terrible spin and tumble of the van, of crawling into the mud and lighting the flare…

And then he realized that he was the adult here.

“Now you have to remember to never play with fire without a grownup! OK! Promise me!”

Did you blow up the BAD COP!

He winced at that. And then, thinking of Melanie’s words, Rangan heard his own voice explaining, patiently, that police were people too, real people, even if they didn’t have Nexus in their heads, and sometimes they were just confused, or someone had lied to them, or tricked them into doing something bad.

The boys went quiet, absorbing this. And for a while he thought he’d lost them all.