He huffed. “Just get through the night and bring it to school tomorrow without messing up, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Ilanka said, and did a fake salute.

“Oh, and it disappeared briefly the other day.”

“Disappeared?”

“Yeah, like it suddenly wasn’t where Eli and Eden had left it, and then it was back maybe five minutes later. So just … you know … keep an eye on it.”

Ilanka said, “I’m not an idiot,” and headed back toward the building. She turned slightly just to see that Marwan had gotten back on his bike and was leaving.

In the lobby, Svetlana was right there, on her phone; she had her bag with her. She looked up, then down at Ilanka’s hand and said, “What’s that?”

Maybe she wasn’t taking it seriously enough.

But for real. What could possibly be the harm?

If Svetlana wanted to get in on it, the whole thing would become at least mildly less boring.

Or maybe the whole thing would just shut down once a rule had been broken. The person who’d played this trick or test or whatever on them would reveal themselves and have a good laugh.

She felt a buzz spread all through her body now at the idea of telling Svetlana. Of breaking with these three weird people she really didn’t want anything to do with.

“It’s this device that appeared in Mr. M’s room the other day,” she said, voice shaking with strange emotions. “It hacked into the school app and sent messages to four of us, telling us to turn up in that room. So we did, and it’s been giving us rules to follow. Like some sort of game.”

“Like what kind of rules?” Svetlana asked.

“Like don’t leave the device unattended. Don’t tell anybody about the device.”

“But you just told me,” Svetlana said.

“Yeah … and it didn’t like blow up or anything, right? I mean, it’s some kind of game or gimmick. Clearly.”

“I guess,” Svetlana said. “So you were talking to Eli.”

Ilanka nodded. “Yeah, there’s four of us who have been taking care of it or whatever.”

Svetlana studied it. “What else does it do?”

“I don’t know, actually.” She didn’t feel like telling Svetlana about the wall of selfies. “I mean we have no idea what it even is, really. It had this countdown going for a while when it wanted me to take a shift watching it. So I guess it has a camera? And it’s probably got some kind of Wi-Fi? I don’t know.”

“Sounds dumb,” Svetlana said. “If I were you I’d just dump it somewhere.”

“Yeah, probably,” Ilanka said, feeling a smack of disappointment. “Anyway, we should go back upstairs. I just need to grab a bag to keep it in so my parents don’t see it.”

“Or just throw it out right there.” Svetlana pointed at a nearby trash can.