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  That girl was a rubber band being pulled back, alright.

  We all waited to see if the mutation caught—to see if she was a threat, an asset, or dead.

  I looked for any information I could pull out to prove the Change was coming, and I jotted down notes in the journal. I wrote down every thought, even the ones that seemed unimportant, and I wondered if I was finding anything Nobu wasn’t. Then I shook my head to get Nobu out of it. It was important that Condensing happened in solitude. It allowed us to draw our own conclusions before the Calibration, and I’d have to wait for this evening to find out what Nobu thought. Being a Watcher was all about the checks and balances to filter which data is important and which is not. After we Calibrated our conclusions, our Calibration Reports usually went up the Hierarchy of Watchers to a Level Two Watcher. They Collaborated our work with other Calibrations, and this process was repeated until it finally reached a Grande Master.

  The Grande Master was the most objective position in all the Multiverse and had the most comprehensive access to the bigger picture. One day… I was going to be a Grande Master.

  But for now? Condense. Calibrate. Collaborate.

  Texi was a strange case, though. Nobu and I were told we were the only two who saw these feeds in order to protect her. The more people who knew about her, the more danger she was in, and analyzing her data was terrifying because Nobu and I could only figure out so much with our limited perspectives. We both knew there was too much at stake, and whenever we got data on her, there was an intense amount of pressure to find everything we possibly could. Our chain of command stopped at an unnamed Level Two Watcher, and we suspected that there was no Collaboration going on beyond that. Whoever our Collaborator was simply double-checked our Calibrations and attempted to make them as useful as possible.

  So when a vid like this came in, it was extremely frustrating to discover it was useless. It appeared that there was nothing important going on, and it was the same thing we saw every day.

  I replayed the vid again, and groaned. Why was this sent to us? It wasn’t showing us anything special, and by now, something should be happening if the Change was coming. I stood up to try and readjust my perspective. “Expand images in the doors to her right,” I said, and the double doors next to her blew up so I could see a reflection of the bleachers and the cheerleaders tumbling through the air. One of girls was her friend, Lindsay, and I paused the screen just as she was about to be pulled back down by gravity. I penned in some more notes, but there was nothing extraordinary about the moment. Lindsay wore the same cheerleading outfit, with the same bright, white high-top sneakers, and the same array of beaded bracelets around her both of slender wrists. There was nothing special about Lindsay, but I wrote down what I saw anyways before I looked past her towards the football players. I scanned to the crowd to see if there were any new faces I should be worried about, but it was the same group of tired kids from the little tired town Texi grew up in.

  I sat down on the desk and pulled my legs up into a pretzel, and I hovered my fingers over the screen to pinch the image back into its original format. An hour went by with me changing where I sat or stood so I could watch the video at different angles. Corbin always told us, “A limited perspective is a surefire way to jumble up the truth. We have to remember that we are simultaneously infinite and insignificant, as well as simultaneously the most important and the least consequential component to the bigger picture. No matter where you stand, you can never see the picture from all angles, but Watchers must try to be all-seeing because we are the mergers of perspective. When you are stuck? Sit. Stand on your head. Run in place. Step away from the problem. Do whatever you can to change how you see things.”

  The video stilled when I pressed pause. I’d watched it too many times, and it made me more aware of the headache in the back of my head.

  The pain was expected, but it was still distracting.

  Maybe a run would clear the mind and distance would give me a new lens to see everything through. Sure, taking a break only gave Nobu time to figure it out first, but my brain was mushy and not much help to me at all. I’d have a better chance of finding whatever there was to find if I just came back to it.

  But as I got up, my perspective shifted slightly. Her face was magnified and morphed so that every pore and the beginning of a pimple on her chin took up the wall. I moved my fingers over the screen to zoom in and spread out the colors of her eyes.

  Something was there.

  In the eyes.

  It was there.

  I highlighted the screen, condensed the data into a few bulleted points on my personal log with a time stamp, and then typed a message to Nobu: I found it first.—L.M.

  I pressed send and left for my jog in higher spirits. We may not have found Arti today, but we were one step closer to finding what made Texi tick. Plus, I loved beating Nobu to the punch as much as I hated doing dishes.

  Chapter Eight

  When I came back from my run, there was a message ready for me.

  Dearest Home-slice… Old Proverb: Don’t count baby pterodactyls before all the eggs hatch. We’ll see who won when we Calibrate the data. Went to get groceries. Be back in an hour.—N.S. I laughed. Nobu was a hyperbolic dork with an annoying obsession with the pterodactyls from the 2040s. He kept visiting them on his Vacation Leave to track alterations in nesting patterns from Vein to Vein. In that way, we were the same. Even when we had time off, we couldn’t get data off the brain.

  But I got the message loud and clear. We still needed more information before we could draw a conclusion, and he suspected I thought I had more than I actually did. Boy was he wrong, and I considered sending him a message about upping the wager: dishes for a week and cleaning maintenance checks for the year.

  My mood was inflated, because I was the one who found what needed to be found this time. Not Nobu.

  I went to turn the projection off, but another update pinged across the screen: New Post to The Eightieth Generation.

  “What now?” I asked myself as my good mood flew out the door. We’d been tracking this forum since it began, and I opened up the page to see the newest entry. Not much pissed me off, but this forum did.

  I tried not to boil as I read the post:

  On the Art of Wounding, The Eightieth Generation.

  It is funny how insurmountable mountains are when you look up at them from the bottom because you eventually discover that once you reach the top, the next mountain dwarfs the one you just conquered. The Manifesto teaches us that everything is fleeting—that what concerns us now will not concern us later. Given time, the large becomes the small, and the insurmountable becomes mountable.

  Remember, fellow citizens: our worries are as shifting as loose sand under our feet.

  Take into consideration a pot of boiling water. It is agitated from the heat, and the only way to soothe it is to agitate it in another way, like taking a spoon to stir it.

  For the girl I’ve been talking about these past years? She’s about to be agitated in a new way. Those who carry secrets will be revealed to her, and everything that concerned her yesterday will become but mere ghosts to the tides of tomorrow.

  Today, she is boiling water.

  Tomorrow, she will feel the swirl of the spoon and learn to boil for different reasons.

  There is something pitiable in that.

  —Geronimo, -S-1, V-1.

  Nobu and I still hadn’t figured out who the author was, but the moron was basically putting a beacon out on Texi. His pen name and the detailed interactions with her gave away too many clues to her location.

  Geronimo.

  Damn idiot.

  Texi was stuck in that location, and our hands were tied until the Change came. Geronimo had to know this, yet he kept spouting off information about Texi. With every new message he sent out on the Planck Web, he put her life in danger. Was he a friend to the cause? Or was he purposefully trying to get her found under the guise of being an ally? Did he think that
by singing her praises, she’d trust him enough to seek him out and get caught?

  I reread it for clues, but in two years worth of feeds, he was always vague enough to conceal his identity. This entry was no different.

  Geronimo obviously believed the mutation caught and that Texi would find out what she is. I couldn’t figure out the faith he had in Texi. His belief lacked objectivity, and that was something dangerous to lose. It wasn’t as if Texi was some cute little kitten needing to be rescued from a tree. She was a potentially dangerous experiment, and this idiot treated her like she was a treasure. He tried to get the rest of the world to see through his eyes, but his eyes were hazy with a clouded judgment.

  Or, again, was it a ploy? Did he want us to trust him so he could betray her? But, then again, if he knew where she was and he wanted her dead, wouldn’t she be dead already?

  The whole conundrum was unnerving.

  I knew it was futile, but I filtered the encryption codes to figure out the source. Like always, it stopped at S-1, V-1, and there was no way Geronimo was writing from Gaia. Then I tried to override the web and delete it, but, like always, the password was encrypted. Geronimo was an expert hacker, even if he was making himself look like a nearsighted asshole. It didn’t stop me from trying to hack the hack every time. He was bound to make a mistake eventually.

  Today was not that day.

  I scratched my head and felt a headache coming on. I tried to rub my forefingers on my temple like Nobu showed me, but it didn’t help much.

  My Change?

  It couldn’t happen fast enough.

  Texi

  Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

  -Lao Tzu

  -S-342, V-1332123-L987623, Stag.

  Chapter Nine

  Gunner Proctor was leading the play in true Gunner fashion. You’d think he was Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, and every throw was one small step for Gunner, one giant leap for cheerleaders. The Bulldogs were supposed to be an easy win, but the yellow bulbs of the scoreboard were shockingly even and the stands were in the kind of awe that was never good. This, of course, only made pom-poms move quicker, people cheer louder, and feet stomp harder.

  I leaned against the fence that lined the track on the opposite side of the entrance. People didn’t normally stand there because it wasn’t a prime spot to be seen, and most of high school was all about being seen by someone somewhere. Tonight was especially rotten with the ribboned mums being paraded around. When I walked in with Sully, I overheard a few comments about how cheap my boyfriend was for not getting me one. I didn’t know if my blushing was about the rumor of my nonexistent relationship status or because I wasn’t sure if part of me wanted the boyfriend part of the rumor to be true.

  Sully ran off to take pictures for The Hornet’s Nest while I took my normal spot just outside of the chaos. Every week, Ringo met me there with greasy nachos and a snappy commentary, but by halftime he still hadn’t showed up. It wasn’t like him to be so late, and I couldn’t stop myself from worrying.

  I zipped the pendant back and forth on its chain, and the smoothness of it felt heavy in my fingers. Papa’s gift was too generous, and this was the first one that didn’t belong in the tiny box under my bed. Now that it was on me, I couldn’t see myself ever taking it off.

  Where was Ringo?

  “Texi, how you doing?” I turned to see Sheriff Garza and smiled when he gave me a cumbersome side hug. He held the hand of his six-year-old son, Ricardo. The boy bounced from his right foot to his left foot, and he ate cotton candy that was sure to turn his tongue blue while simultaneously introducing him to diabetes.

  “I’m doing great. Just pretending to be an ordinary teenager here.” I waved my arms over the scene and he laughed.

  “We both know why you show up every Friday, and it’s not because you love football.”

  “What can I say? That old man has me wrapped around his wrinkled finger. Rebecca reads him the stories from The Geronimo Picayune, but he likes to hear me describe it.” When Papa was sheriff, he never missed a single game. He said too many times to count, “I just love the energy, Texi. The way you can’t help but be a part of something bigger, even in a small town like this.” True, I didn’t like football, but I loved Papa and things that made him happy.

  Garza pointed to my dress. “And who made you wear this thing? Don’t tell me you’re going to the dance!”

  The mention of the green monstrosity Lindsay claimed was a dress reminded me of the goose bumps embellishing my legs, and I tightened my jean jacket as the cold air became even colder. Weather had a way of doing that. When I complained about it being too hot, the temperature moved a few degrees up towards broiling. When I complained about it being too cold, I instantly felt like I was trapped in a freezer. Ringo used to say, “In Texas, if you’re tired of the weather, wait five minutes and it’ll change.” And over the course of an hour a cold front blew in from the north, destroying the heatwave that had let Sully and me swim that afternoon.

  “I could give two rat’s tails about the dance, but Lindsay played the I-never-see-you-anymore card, as if it’s my fault she’s so busy these days. So the dance it is… I even put on a little bit of mascara so she has no room to complain about my lack of effort.” I pointed to my eyes, crossed them, and stuck out my tongue.

  “You look nice,” the sheriff said as a consolation while he bit back a laugh. I know that as a teenager, I should be weary of cops. Maybe I was even supposed to hate them, but Garza was cool. He and Ringo went way back. I was even a flower girl at his wedding, and although I was too young to remember it, there were pictures of me wearing a horrid princess dress as proof.

  “Did you see the ol’ man today?” Garza changed the subject.

  I frowned. “Am I evil if I admit it’s hard to watch him fall apart like this?”

  Garza patted my shoulder, but he had a look on his face that was everything but judgmental. “Alzheimer’s is tough on everyone, and we all deal with these type of things in our own way. He knows you love him. That’s what matters.”

  I sucked in a breath and tried to believe him.

  “You know, it’s a bit ironic. When I was a rookie and your Papa was trying to teach me things in that crotchety way of his, I used to call him a senile ol’ fart behind his back. Now that he actually is, I feel guilty for ever talking crap about him. That grandfather of yours is a good, solid man.” It was hard to imagine Garza acting in any way that wasn’t respectful towards Papa. He visited him nearly as much as I did.

  “It’s just that every time I go lately, he keeps asking me to get you.”

  “What is he saying?”

  “He wants me to tell you that I’m in danger. Something about a protocol?”

  He let out a nervous giggle. “The only thing he tells me when I show up is that I’m late, I got the coffee wrong, or I misplaced a file—”

  “I’m being serious. He’s starting to scare me. Last week, he was talking about finding me in a red orb?”

  “A red orb?” The question was meant to be a question, but his expression was asking so much more. His dark complexion paled, and he looked back out onto the game. The subtle change in his body language sent shivers throughout my body.

  “What is it?” I asked as the stands exploded as Gunner ran the ball for a touchdown.

  “Oh. Nothing,” he said, strapping on that easy grin he usually wore, but it was forced. “Look, Tex. Don’t let this get to you. This is just the way it goes with things like these.” It was one of those generic sayings you’re supposed to use to explain the unexplainable, but I wasn’t buying it. Garza knew something more and was keeping it to himself. I opened my mouth to ask another question as he adjusted his Stetson over his brow and patted his pocket as if he’d lost something.

  “Ricardo,” I reminded him and pointed to the bottom of the bleache
rs.

  Recognition hit the man’s face, then worry when he saw what his son was about to do. Ricardo’s little hands held firmly to the beams under the bleachers, and his arms strained under the weight of his little body. “No! Ricardo! Don’t climb that!” Garza ran off to stop his son from chipping his other front tooth.

  I hated that Ricardo pulled Garza away, but his six-year-old’s needs trumped my questions. It was just that the expression in his eyes when I mentioned the “protocol” unnerved me. The way he batted off Papa’s episodes as nothing suddenly made them feel like something, and I couldn’t exactly pinpoint why his reaction made me so uneasy. Was it a validation that Papa wasn’t being delusional or was I reading too much into it?

  “You’re being silly,” I whispered to myself. Thanks to Mrs. Ortiz, I had an extremely overactive imagination, and Papa’s outburst this morning suddenly fed into my eagerness to see things that did not exist. I gripped my fingers into the chain-linked diamonds and let the coolness of gray metal bring down the heat that started bubbling in my veins.

  Papa’s episode was just that: an episode.

  “Interception by Gonzalez! No surprise there!” The announcer cracked over the speakers, and the buzzing left remnants of static in my ears. It reminded me of Pop Rocks on the tongue, except this feeling was on my eardrums. A few minutes passed like this, but when the announcer screamed, “A solid pass by Proctor to Ortiz! Those boys are a well-oiled machine! First down!” it felt like someone was twisting screwdrivers into my ear canals. I tried to shove back the headache that hung in my peripherals, but it was no use as every brain cell caught on fire.

  I took a few deep breaths and counted to ten. Ringo always said, “Count to ten when the world feels like it’s about to explode.” The first time he taught me the trick was when he found me behind the barn sobbing on Mother’s Day. All the kids got to make cards at school, and I had no one to make one for. Even when I was little, I wasn’t much of a public crier because I was embarrassed by tears, and I always managed to hold them in until I got some place private. So when Ringo caught me crying behind the barn, I exploded into even a bigger soggy mess of awkward kid-boogers. He took my hand, kneeled so that we were eye-to-eye, and said, “Things will always be tough, but you have to be tougher. When things feel too hard, close your eyes and count to ten… slowly… evenly… A lot can change in ten seconds if you let it. It’s a number that borders on magic.”