The Institute

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in
suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke
Ellis's parents and load him into a black SUV. The
operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up
at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own,
except there's no window. And outside his door are other
doors, behind which are other kids with special talents.
telekinesis and telepathy-who got to this place the
same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-
year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others,
Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, "lie the roach
motel," Kalisha says. "You check in, but you don't check
out." In this most sinister of institutions, the director,
Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to
extracting from these children the force of their
extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go
along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you
don't, punishment is brutal. As each new victim
disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more
desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever
escaped from the Institute