It was their longest night yet. Sam kept his eyes closed throughout the night, but his eyelids tensed and squinted. Elena would have thought that sleeping would be hopeless in this level of pain—like trying to fall asleep with a dagger in the back of her head, with a thousand Volts coursing through her, with razor blades piercing her skin all over her body. On the contrary, it knocked her out. But she awoke, gasping, every few minutes, or the sound of Sam's whimpers roused her.

Every new sensation filled her with curiosity, but she was determined to keep her thoughts about it to the back of her mind, and she kept her questions to herself. For once in her life, she wasn't there to learn or to engineer or to control. Just this once, the less she knew, the better.

Instead, in the waking moments, she focused on the things she could control. Her affiliation with Camp Universe, for instance, assuming Michelle and the other coordinating directors could find new sponsors. She would have a lot of explaining to do to earn Michelle's trust again, but she was confident she could find the words. They probably wouldn't be able to keep camp running this summer, but if Elena helped to find new funding sources, they might be able to pick it back up next summer.

She closed her eyes and remembered Camp Universe—the crazy nights, the early mornings, the chaos of the kids, the order of the equipment. It had all been flipped on its head this summer, and it would never quite be the same as it was before, but at least she wouldn't have to go home . . .

No. If she got out of this, she wouldn't spend her time running away from home. Not anymore.

She could make things right with her mom. Not just a phone call to apologize and ask for forgiveness—that was the easy part. No, returning to spend the summer, to live in the same house and learn, again, to be respectful and civil, to rebuild a hopelessly mangled relationship, to be a family. It would be nearly impossible, but someone had to take the first step. She had to try.

But before she could get there, she had to make it out of here. And to do that, she had to survive.

If all went well, over the course of the night, Sam's anomalies would oscillate less wildly, and the shifts in Planck's Constant—and thus the color shifts—would become less pronounced. Maybe there was a way to mimic the effects so they didn't notice the shift.

When she'd first started seeing the effects of the anomalies, she'd tried to imagine what they would look like to an outsider, what they would assume was happening. If she didn't know what was going on, she thought she might have pictured that there was some kind of colored light source in the area. She would have started looking for the light source. Of course, these scientists wouldn't be looking for a light source—they knew the cause of the anomalies was Sam. So they'd be unlikely to suspect anything. And even if they did suspect something, they wouldn't come looking. She was willing to brave this pain for Sam's wellbeing, but she doubted anyone would do it just for their job.

The chamber was warm, and Sam's jacket laid strewn across the floor. Elena remembered the way he sometimes liked to keep things in his pockets—the day they'd first met, he had had a halfway-unwrapped tootsie roll—and she dug through the pockets of his jacket. She got lucky—he'd kept a couple of LED flashlights in different colors.

She turned on the first flashlight, and the room filled with bright green light before she switched it to blue, then red, then back to green. The speed at which the colors changed was close enough to the oscillation of Sam's anomalies. It was just dim enough that the light would be enough to spill through the little window on the door, without being clearly from a flashlight.

Let the scientists interpret that. It meant there might be multiple odd colors in the hallway, but they'd probably interpret it as Planck's constant being different in different areas within Sam's affected area. It would probably thrill them—more strangeness to play with.

Throughout the night, little by excruciating little, the pain dulled. At first, she believed she was just getting used to it, but over the past few days, the pain had only ever gotten worse with time, and it hadn't been something she could just grow accustomed to. Even Sam's eyelids began to relax, and she could feel herself drifting off into a deeper sleep.

A loud buzzing woke her up, followed by Patrick's voice: "Elena, are you awake?"

She jerked awake. The room still appeared redder than it actually was, but the effect wasn't nearly as intense as it had been the night before. Her head still hurt, but the pain was back to the way it had been a couple of days ago. Any minute, the cameras would begin to work again.

As gently as she could, she began to take the sensors off of herself and return them to Sam. "I am now."

"Oh, sorry. Are you okay?"

"Sam's not quite awake yet, but we're both fine. Wish we had brought in some painkillers, though."

A woman's voice, probably Dr. Brooke: "Elena, why don't you come on out of there?"

"Not until Sam can."

"Elena, please—"

"I'm going to stay with him until you all find a way to contain the anomalies. When it's safe for him to come out, I will, too."

A heavy sigh sounded from the other side. "We could use your help with data interpretation. We can't see anything that's going on in there, but you were able to see everything from last night."

She choked back a smile. "Why? Weird data?"

"We don't know what to make of it. It appears one of our theories was wrong, for instance."

"Which?"

"Well, the anomalies aren't uniform."

"What do you mean?"

"Based purely on visual data, Planck's constant is different in different areas within the radius Sam affects."

"What makes you say that?" She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing aloud.

"Multiple colors. Elena, from where you are, maybe you can see—is Sam emitting any sort of light on his own?"

She glanced down at the multicolored light source on the floor. "Um, it's hard to say. My eyes have been acting weird ever since I entered this area." That was somewhat true, but it would also lead them down the wrong path.

"Interesting. Elena, we would love to run some tests on you as well, as you're experiencing the anomalies. We have some extra probes—"

"I'm not coming out."

A long silence. Elena shifted her weight from one foot to the other, hoping they wouldn't decide to come in after her.

"Okay," Dr. Brooke finally said. "Well, you might be in there for a little while. We're having a hard time making sense of the data we have. We're not finding much in the way of correlations."

"What kind of correlations are you looking for?"

"Mainly between Sam's biological functions and the anomalies. There doesn't seem to be any tie-in."

"Well, that makes sense," she muttered. There wouldn't be any correlation between Sam's powers and my heartbeat, would there?

"What do you mean?"

Elena cleared her throat. "I mean, Sam's presence alters the manifestation of physical laws. I wouldn't think that would be tied to biological triggers. If anything—"

"When I say biological, I'm including biochemical and biophysical—"

"But still," Elena said, "what exactly were you expecting to find?"

"Anything to help us understand. We're no closer than we were."

She made a show of pausing as if in thought. "So what's next? Are you just going to give up?"

"Oh, no, of course not. If anything, we're more encouraged by these results."

"Why?"

"Because it means Sam's anomalies are even more unusual and enigmatic than we had anticipated."

Elena rephrased, in case Patrick was still standing by: "He's weirder than you thought."

"Got that," came Patrick's reply.

"We'll keep moving forward, of course," Dr. Brooke's voice said. "Don't worry, Elena. We'll figure out a way to control the anomalies."

She'd be terrified by this, if there was any chance of it now. Already, the pounding in her temples had diminished considerably.

They'd been right. Some kind of quantum effect governed Sam's anomalies—an uncertainty principle. The more people knew about how to control Sam's abilities, the more difficult they became to control, and the more powerful. But wrong information, and the lack of information, helped to soothe them back down.

"We're going to get back to the grind. If you notice anything strange—anything—please hit the call button."

"Will do." She glanced back at Sam, then back to the mic. "Hey, Patrick, are you still there?"

"Yeah." His voice sounded groggy.

"Have you been up all night in the facility?"

A slight pause. "Yes."

"Why don't you get some fresh air?"

He must have known what she was hinting at, because his reply sounded just a little too forced: "I'm not leaving you—"

She smiled. He'd know to meet her outside, but with his protests, the scientists wouldn't suspect a thing. "Patrick, I can't see or hear you for most of the time while I'm in here. Go take a walk. It'll help you think."

A sigh. "Okay, Elena. I'll be back in five minutes."

"Make it fifteen." The speaker clicked off, and Elena took a step back.

She didn't know how long it would take her to get out. But she knew they would get out.

And she knew how.