“Maybe,” she said. “They helicoptered Jordan’s family out of here because they were injured.”

“But we don’t know where they went,” Jordan said.

I turned to look back at him.

“We don’t,” he said. “We saw them being taken away in a helicopter, but that’s all we know. If I had to put money on it, they’re back in the sick camp, prisoners who can’t leave or communicate with anyone back in town, even the son and brother they left behind.”

“Why do you assume they’re prisoners?” my mom asked.

“We can’t contact anyone outside of town,” Jordan said. “Don’t you think there’s a reason for that? Ishango can’t let the world know how bad it is here. She would be shut down if the news reached anyone at the state or national level. So we’re quarantined, captive, whatever you want to call it.”

“There are still people working around here, and they’d help Maggie if she has cancer,” Mom insisted.

“No offense, but I don’t think so, and I’ve been working this through my head for the same reason you have,” Jordan said. “I doubt the sick camp has mammogram machines, and I really don’t believe they’d take her to an outside hospital. I just don’t.”

“You’re saying they’d leave her to die?” Mom said.

“Mom!” I said.

“Well, not die, sweetie,” she said, patting me on the thigh. “But, you know, going untreated if there actually were anything to treat. Which, the more I think about it, there probably isn’t.”

I’m not sure which was worse, the brutal truth or the blatant sugarcoating.

“This is a sick town,” Jordan said. “We’re probably all getting cancer.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Mom said. “We’ll be fine.”

We drove in silence, terror building in my chest at the sound of that lie. Things would get worse before they got better. Ishango had access to a huge military force. We could all be dead. If anything happened to Mom or Jordan, I didn’t know how I’d go on.

“Dr. Gooding, you can see what things really look like now,” Jordan said. “Look around. This forest is sick. The animals are raging. The paint is peeling, and buildings are crumbling. Mount Hope looks like a town that’s been abandoned after a disaster, except we all came back with rose-colored brain stems. The military and probably the town government are hiding what’s going on and have been doing so for decades. Plenty of people working at the plant had to know that the power supply was only fueling a single, massive supercomputer. And those in charge are shutting up everyone who questions it. They shut down the newspaper. They bought off the police. And they no longer will let anyone in or out of this town.”

Mom smiled and looked at me as she guided the car down a bumpy, rutted hunting road. “Funny, you were always the rational one, and I was the one with the conspiracy theories. You always talked me out of them.”