“There are no more, Evan,” the man said. “You’ve solved them all.”

Evan glanced out of the tube, but the white coats weren’t looking at him. They stared at their computer terminal.

The man with a tie was the first to look up from the glowing screen. He wore an expression Evan had never seen pointed at him before. Evan’s stomach turned to ice.

HOSPITALS ALWAYS stank. There was something strange and sickly about the air in the building, and the breeze coming through the screen window hardly improved it. Evan could smell the garbage that lay heaped in the alley several floors below. Still, he moved closer to the window, pretending interest in the view because looking out the window was easier than looking at his mother. She sat at the big, glossy table. She was crying, though she did it silently—one of the tricks she’d picked up during her time with her last boyfriend.

They’d been in this room for a while now, waiting.

When the door finally opened, Evan flinched. Three men walked in. He’d never seen any of them before, but their coats were dark, and all of them wore ties. It was bad. Men with ties always meant something bad. Evan’s mother sat up quickly and wiped the corners of her eyes with a napkin she kept in her purse.

The men smiled at Evan and shook his mother’s hand in turns, introducing themselves. The one who called himself Walden got right to the point. “Evan’s tests were abnormal,” he said.

He was a big man with a face like a square block, and he wore little wire glasses perched across his nose. Evan hadn’t seen anyone with glasses like that in a long time; he tried not to stare.

“Where’s the doctor?” Evan’s mother asked.

“Evan’s case has been transferred to me.”

“But they told me Dr. Martin was going to be Evan’s doctor. I thought that’s why they brought him in.”

“Dr. Martin himself felt that Evan’s case required special attention that he could not provide.”