Masterminds

The team gets ready to crawl down the air vents, with Malik staying on the roof to hold the rope that sends them down and will bring them up. Hector goes inside first because he’s the smallest. The three kids eventually reach the factory floor but find no equipment, confirming that the traffic cone business is merely a ruse.

They then discover a concealed lab area containing 18 screens that monitor locations all over town. Next, they find a room where the local newspaper Pax is prepared. It extracts only the good news from the nation’s regular newspapers and edits out any incidents of crime and violence. Moving down to the bottom level of the complex, the trio finds a conference room with walls that are lined with whiteboards that contain photos and reports detailing the development of each of them from the day they were born: “Eleven Serenity kids are chronicled in vast collages of pictures, papers, and notes” (171).

Eli uses his iPad to take photos of everything on the walls about the test subjects who are part of Project Osiris. When the kids hear the sound of a guard approaching, they duck into an air vent and make the excruciating climb back to the roof by pressing themselves against the sides of each air duct and inching upward.