“Three hundred at most,” Liam said. “Are you sure? Three thousand?”

“Well, it’s not like they gave us an official number. There were thirty kids per cabin and about a hundred of those. There used to be more, but they sent the Reds, Oranges, and Yellows away.”

Apparently, I had blown his mind. Liam let out a strangled noise at the back of his throat. “Holy crap,” he finally managed to squeeze out. “What camp was it?”

“It’s none of your business,” I said. “I’m not asking you where you were.”

“We were in Caledonia, Ohio,” Chubs said, ignoring a sharp look from Liam. “They stuck us in an abandoned elementary school. We broke out. Your turn.”

“Why, so you can report me to the nearest PSF station?”

“Yeah, because, clearly, we’d be able to stroll up and lodge a sighting report.”

After a moment, I blew out a harsh breath. “Fine. I was in Thurmond.”

The silence that followed seemed to stretch on longer than the road beneath us.

“Are you serious?” Liam asked, finally. “Crazy Thurmond, with the FrankenKiddies?”

“They’ve stopped testing,” I said, feeling strangely defensive.

“No, I just—I just…” Liam raced through the words. “I thought it was all filled up, you know? That’s why they bused us to Ohio.”

“How old were you when you went into camp?” Chubs’s voice was measured, but I saw his face fall all the same. “You were young, right?”

The answer popped out before I could stop myself. “The day after my tenth birthday.”

Liam blew out a low whistle, and I wondered exactly how much of Thurmond’s reputation had leaked out in the time I had been there. Who were the ones talking about it—the former PSFs assigned there?

And, if people knew, why hadn’t anyone come to help us?

“How long were you guys in Caledonia?”

“Suzume was there for about two years. I was there for a year and a half, and Lee was there for a year or so.”

“That’s…” A small, ugly voice inside my head whispered, That’s it? even as the better part of me knew full well that it didn’t matter if they had been there for one year or one day—a minute in one of those camps was enough to smash you into pieces.

“And you’re what, sixteen? Seventeen?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and the thought nearly knocked me back against the van. I really wasn’t sure—Sam had claimed it was six years, but she could have been wrong. We didn’t keep track of time at Thurmond in the usual way; I recognized seasons passing, but somewhere along the line I had stopped trying to mark it. I grew bigger, I knew every winter that I must be another year older, but none of it…it just hadn’t seemed to matter until now. “What year is it?”

Chubs snorted, rolling his eyes heavenward. He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped once he got a good look at my face. I’m not sure what kind of expression I was wearing, but it erased his exasperation in two seconds flat. His narrowed eyes widened into something that looked very much like pity.