There was a flaw in the shielding. A loose wire, maybe, in the conductive mesh wall that separated his cell from Bobby’s bunk and the room beyond it. A place where radio waves could get through, where those radio waves could carry thoughts between them.

The first night, when their minds had first met, Rangan’s thoughts had been selfish. He wasn’t alone. There was someone else here.

Then he’d realized what was going on, and his mind had turned to anger.

Kids, he thought. They’ve got kids locked up here. Motherfuckers!

What kind of fucking monsters locked up kids? Locked them up just because they had something special in their heads that made them better? That helped them cope with what was wrong with them? That might just make them smarter than the rest of us?

Rangan spent hours communing with Bobby, learning more about the boy, about the other boys over there. The kids took turns sitting in Bobby’s bunk sometimes. He got to know Alfonso, Jose, Parker, half-a-dozen more. They relived their memories for him. Being torn from their families. Seeing relatives arrested, beaten. Being beaten themselves when they resisted. He relived Parker being torn from his mother’s arms, seeing her dragged off. He relived Bobby’s arrest, seeing his dad gunned down in front of his eyes, then being beaten silly by the men who’d torn him from his father.

His fists clenched and he wanted to hurt someone. Hurt them badly.

Fucking assholes.

The kids were scared, lonely. He did his best to hide his own anger, his own disappointment with himself, and be there for them. It was hard through the tiny link. But he did what he could, comforting them, trying to send hope, and humor.

In exchange they amazed him. They were smart, hungry to understand the Nexus in their brains, understand what was going on around them. And the way their minds connected…

Ilya had talked about group mind. The experiments she’d convinced them to try at parties and at each other’s apartments had been aimed at trying to create some of that. And sure, they’d had their trippy moments, those times when the barriers had seemed to drop and they’d felt like they were turning into one person.

But it had all been short-lasting stuff, sometimes with the aid of Empathek or a little weed or whatnot. It’d felt cool as hell, but he’d never seen much practical coming out of it.