Her eyes tracked the noise past the other baby’s tube to the back of the room, where two men in white lab coats and a third man—the one who had peeked at her—bent over a long table, poking and prodding a fleshy mound. The third man stood up and said something to the other two, then picked up the mound. Silver wires dangled from the limp thing. Then a tiny arm.

It was a baby—just like her and the boy in the other tube. Except it wasn’t moving. The third man held the baby steady as he snapped off one of the wires and held it up to the light. He turned it over in his hands, studying it from every angle. He shook his head. The two men in lab coats stood motionless as the third man tossed the baby into a clear cylindrical tank filled with green fluid and the lifeless, floating bodies of a dozen other babies, their wires snaking around each other, buoyed by a slight current.

The baby displaced another with a wet thwack.

She transferred her helpless gaze to the boy across from her, who was staring back with his mouth hanging open and a thick string of drool dangling from his lower lip.

“Gahh,” he said.

She tried to point at the men, but she couldn’t move, and anyway he couldn’t turn around to see what was happening.

Instead, she screamed.

The scene retreated to the end of a long tunnel and dissolved. Then it rushed forward and became Professor Deirdre O’Hanlon’s high, pale forehead and wide green eyes, inches from her own.

Mistletoe tried to move. Her arms were still pinned. How was that possible? The white walls and red chairs of the spartan ESCU office appeared at the edge of her vision.

“Ambrose!” Mistletoe screamed, struggling against the leaden force pinning her wrists. “Don’t go down there!” The sides of her head felt hot and slick with sweat.

“Calm down,” Deirdre said. “He can’t hear you. You’re with me again.”

The professor tightened her grip, mashing Mistletoe’s palms against her temples until her head ached.

She’d been extracted.

Mistletoe wriggled away. “Put me back in.”

“Can’t do that. They’re here.” Deirdre flipped her palm. An externalized image of the ESCU building’s lobby appeared. UniCorp Security Associates lined the two walkways that crossed above the glass box, aiming their disruptors downward in quick, graceful sweeps. On the floor, a second team of Associates examined a row of students whose externalized ESCU ID spheres glittered above their upturned palms.

“Building security feed,” Deirdre said.