“Please,” the gold-ring guy directed, pointing to a chair on my side of the heavy steel table.

“I’m just here to see my dad,” I gasped, trying to avert my eyes from the nightmare scientist.

The door closed with a click, and my soldier escort was gone. I edged toward the exit, pondering whether I might make a break for it. Would that work? I had a hunch that … no.

“Aha,” the scientist finally said, his voice thin, reedy, and punctuated by wheezes, as if he were trying to catch his breath. “Rho. You—ah—you have come to us. This is good. We thought we would have to go and—ah, ah—fetch you.” With every “ah” he sounded like he was sucking air through a thin straw, and his pronunciation was off because he couldn’t use his lips.

“Fetch me?” I asked. “I wanted to see my dad. Is he coming?”

The scientist was wearing a white glove on his left hand, which made me think of Michael Jackson, which made me want to ask whether he’d had a really bad experience shooting a Pepsi commercial. Then I noticed that he had no right hand, and I thought maybe it wasn’t the best time for my pop-culture comedy act. What happened to this dude?

“We, well, Ishango is very interested in you—ah—Jordan Conners.”

I couldn’t hide my jolt of recognition upon hearing that name. “Ishango,” I said, my heart pounding. “Okay. But why is it interested in me?”

I turned toward the two suited guys.

“Why were you at my football practice?”

They stared back silently.

“You—ah—Jordan Conners. You, you were injured, am I, am I right?” the scientist asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Day of the evacuation. Car accident. That was a year ago. If my dad isn’t coming, I really need to go.”

The scientist shook his head, his grin looking all the more maniacal. “No, a new injury.”

“At football practice,” the man with the gold ring said. “You hurt your head.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Bad play. I might’ve gotten a concussion, which I wish I could say is unusual in the game of football, but, alas, it is not. Did you see that movie Concussion? Will Smith trying to pull off a Nigerian accent? It wasn’t great, wasn’t terrible—though the accent kind of was—but I learned some stuff, and you might, too. It makes you reconsider our whole societal attitude toward football, especially as it concerns our young people. Peewee football and all that. Anyway, I’m okay—some headaches but nothing too bad.”

The scientist nodded slowly. I didn’t know whether to look at his white eye or the dot. I went with the dot. “A concussion,” he said. “That was unfortunate. You are not to get injuries of that kind. It has compromised Ishango’s authority.”

“Wait, what?” I said, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice.

The scientist closed his eyes (thank you), then opened them again (oh, well). “You are special,” he murmured, the word coming out as “seshal.”