Then they heard the door open and they all heard it and Bobby started to feel a little better and he could feel his friends all start to feel a little better because maybe this was Alfonso coming back and it was all going to be OK but it wasn’t at all. Bobby was in the room with the beds so he couldn’t see the door but Nick could see the door and Nick saw one of the bad men come into the room and there was Alfonso with him but it wasn’t Alfonso, wasn’t Alfonso, because there was nobody there at all, NOTHING IN ALFONSO’S HEAD AT ALL and the boy who looked like Alfonso but wasn’t real was crying he was crying and Nick screamed because it was Alfonso, it had been Alfonso but they had BROKEN him they’d STOLEN THE NEXUS FROM ALFONSO’S HEAD.

And then they were ALL SCREAMING, Nick and Tim and Tyrone and Pedro and Bobby and all of them, and Tim was running at the BAD MAN and trying to PUNCH him and KICK him and BITE him and Tyrone was running at him and Pedro was running at him, and Bobby ran from the room with the beds into the room with the toys and couches and he ran at the Bad Man and they KNOCKED HIM OVER and Bobby was BITING HIS FACE, and then something hit him hard in the head and knocked him back and everything was swimmy and when Bobby looked up there were MORE BAD MEN with sticks and they were hitting all the boys and the boys were trying to BITE them and KICK them and PUNCH them and SCRATCH them and Bobby got up and threw himself at the bad men again but something hit him in the belly and it HURT and the bad men were too strong and hit them too hard and then it was over.

The bad men left. The boys groaned and sobbed. The boy that had been Alfonso but was no one now didn’t say a word. He sat in the corner and covered his face and cried and cried and cried – and there was nobody there, nobody they could feel, nobody who existed at all.

And they all cried now, because they knew that if the bad men would do this to Alfonso, then the bad men would do it to all of the rest of them too.

They came for Rangan after three days. The door to his cell opened abruptly and two orderlies strode in, masks and cuffs in their hands, grim looks on their faces, armed guards behind them.

Rangan pushed himself up from the floor of his cell, his hands up towards them.

“Wait! Wait! What did I do?”

They grabbed his wrists, turned him around, slammed his face into the gray concrete wall of his cell, and pulled the mask down over him.