I’m very, very good at telling when someone’s lying to me.
People have lied to me my whole life, so I’ve had some practice.
I’ve only forgiven one lie—the first one I remember. The sky glowed maroon, machine oil odor filled my nostrils, and I huddled below my blankets while Alice squeezed Miss Marvelous and screamed in the bottom bunk.
Mom told us it would be alright.
She lied.
My therapist spent two hours lying to me. He only told me three things that felt true—the Number of Power. When I clammed up, he shoved some chewable pills at me and left. Dad drove us to the hotel twenty minutes later, drinking from a silver bottle.
I’d hidden the pills in my slippers, between my toes. No one saw.
----------------------------------------
Outside Victoria, British Columbia - May 23, 2043, 12:22 PM
- - - - -
{Stability 6/10}
The dinging sound in my aural aug wakes me up. There’s another weird message, but also a call.
A call. That’s good. Maybe it’s over. I…killed…the thinling. But Alice and Sora wouldn’t call through my aug. They know it heats up during calls. And my phone’s still on mandatory airplane mode.
I pick up.
The man’s voice is almost monotone, perfectly calm, and disgustingly familiar. I’ve heard it before, but I can’t remember where. Was it the principal’s voice? The therapist’s? I know it’s not Dad’s; he’s never monotone and rarely calm. “We’re tracking and inbound on your position. Hold your pos—“
“I’m Claire,” I say suddenly. And the floodgates open. “Claire Pendleton. I’m at West End High, and there were thinnings, but they both merged, and the first one brought a world through and a thinling, but the second one gave me a gun and I hid in the bathroom and used the mirror to stop it and I shot it. I shot it and it’s dead! But I need help. Help, pleasepleaseplease!”
“Subject is verbal.” The voice isn’t speaking to me. He’s talking through my panic, my hysteria. Is he even listening to me? No. No, he’s not. “Subject is a female adolescent, fourteen to sixteen years old. Potentially violent. Description does not match the augs’ owner’s description. Transferring to James.”
“What do you mean? They’re my—“
The line goes dead.
“—augs…” And just like that, I’m alone again. Everything hurts, whether it’s my raw, tender palm, aching throat, or just the phantom pain from the fires that swept across me when I…bonded…with the revolver. But the thinling is dead. I killed it. And if I can kill it, I can get to the shelter. I can blend in with the other students and pretend this hasn’t happened.
I fiddle with my optical aug, trying to pull up the System’s messages again. After a minute of fruitless attempts, I start muttering to myself, and it almost immediately flickers open in my eye. I roll my eyes at how stupid that feels, then start fiddling with it, trying to get a sense of how it all works together. Without the Assistance Functions, though, it’s tough to tell. I know I’ve lost Stability from fighting thinlings and discovering the revolver, but I’m not sure how to get it back.
I’m halfway through trying an equation using Skills, Truths, and Inquiries as variables when my aural aug goes off again. If it’s the calm, monotone man, I’m going to scream. I answer the call. “Hello?”
“Hello, my name is James, and you’re Claire Pendleton, right?” This voice is younger; James can’t be more than my age—maybe a year older. And unlike the first voice’s calm monotone, James has life in his voice. Energy. Ups and downs. He’s a teenager, like Alice or Sora—I’m not sure why he’s on the phone and not an adult. But before he says another word, I know a truth about James. It’s in his tone.
He will lie to me. Maybe he already has.
I won’t forgive his lies, I decide. But I don’t have any choice but to tolerate them. I take a few breaths, cough, and try to close the floodgates this time. “Yes, Claire Pendleton. Don’t lie to me, James. I’m in trouble, and I need help. Everything’s not going to be alright, and telling me that won’t help.” It comes out angrier than I wanted, but I can’t take that back now.
He’s taken aback, though. I can tell from the silence in my aug for a minute. Then he clears his throat. “I’m building your profile now. Once we have it, my superiors will tell me exactly what I can and can’t tell you. You’re not who we expected from your augments. For now, here’s what you need to know. Your survival is important to us. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure you get to West End High’s safe room in one piece, and in return, you’re going to keep me on the line. Got it?”
“That’s not going to work,” I say. “My aug’s a piece of junk, and it’s already overheating. And I don’t even know who you are! I killed a thinling, and I’ve been through two merges today, and I don’t know anything about you or what you want.”
The panic’s hitting me again. I need to sit down. My feet don’t respond right away as I slowly struggle to stand and walk to the girls’ bathroom. I sit on the toilet in the limbo-dancer stall, the door held open with my foot, and clear my throat. “Who are you?”
“My name is James, and I’m cleared to tell you I’m an Operator for the Supernatural and Hidden Objects Control and Knowledge Service and that you’re currently a person of interest to us.”
I shiver despite my best efforts to keep it together. That’s not a lie—at least not all of it.
----------------------------------------
My aural aug beeps, letting me know it’s reaching critical heat levels. I already know that, obviously. It’s getting painful to listen to James at all. But I’ve been a person of interest to SHOCKS before.
Just after the burgundy skies, the machine oil and roses, and the metal tang I couldn’t spit out. And the missing wall that let in the warp and made Mom a liar. It wasn’t fun the first time, and it won’t be fun now.
[Patch Installation In Progress]
[Patch Installation Successful]
Before I can complain, James speaks in my ear. It sounds like he’s talking through a walkie-talkie now. “I’ve downloaded a speed limiter patch into your aural and optical augs. It’ll reduce my optics feed quality, and we’ll sound scratchy and staticky, but they should stop overheating. Twenty to thirty-percent drop in heat.”
Sure enough, the heat in my ear drops to a tolerable glow. “You’re in my optic aug, too?” I ask, concerned. SHOCKS hasn’t been my friend in the past; my therapist was SHOCKS, and the last thing I need is the boogeyman in my brain. The Halcyon System riding along is bad enough, but if James sees everything I do, too…
“Yes. I’m piggybacking through both of your augs right now. SHOCKS already has a profile for you, so expect some changes in our interactions over the next two or three minutes as I adjust. Please confirm the following questions: First, is your date of birth June 15, 2029?”
“Yes.” That’s pretty basic, and SHOCKS already knows the answer.
“You’re two months older than me. I won’t be fifteen until August 23,” James says. I’m still waiting for James’s next lie. “Now, I need to ask about something that happened on October 11, 2034. You were—“
“No.”
“I’m sorry, but I—“
“You already know exactly what happened. The truth, according to you guys. I don’t need to tell you anything.” He’s digging into places I won’t go with Sora. How dare he?
“I see.” James’s voice shifts slightly, his accent changing to Oxford English. “What do you know about SHOCKS?”
“You’re the boogeyman.”
“That’s not wrong,” James laughs. Even his laugh has picked up a British-sounding tone. I also feel myself relax as his tone shifts to a businesslike calm. Is the accent a lie? I can’t decide. “Claire, your augs show you in a relatively safe place, but that won’t last. The profile says you don’t trust people. I’m going to ask you to trust me.”
“No.” The word leaves my lips before I realize I’ve said it. “No, I can’t.”
“Claire, you’ve encountered a full-blown reality merge to R-389 and an instant-entry merge with an unknown reality. The rest of Victoria is experiencing merges, and no one else can help you. It’s unlikely you’ll survive the third merge without my help.”
I sit on the toilet seat, turning the revolver over and over in my hands. James still hasn’t lied. He doesn’t think I can handle it here by myself. And neither do I, to be honest. So why did I go from begging the adult to help me to being unsure about James? Because I know he’ll lie to me? Because I’m thinking now instead of panicking? Or is it just because I’m older than him? I narrow my eyes.
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He’s right. Unfortunately. I can’t find a way to the shelter. Not without help, and he’s who I’ve got. “I can’t trust you. You’ll lie. You all do. But the shelter’s on the wrong side of the school, and I can’t get there. Give me a way through.”
“Not through, out. You need to break out a window, move past the soccer field, and find the cafeteria. If you go in through those doors, it’s a straight shot to—“
“The office. Got it.” I don’t stand up, but I do let the stall door squeak shut. The bathroom’s perfume-and-cleaning supply smell feels overpowering and oppressive, but it also smells like safety. The thinling couldn’t get me here. I’m half-tempted to stay. But only half. The revolver sits in my lap; I pick it up and hold it in front of my optic aug. “I need to know more about thinlings and this thing.”
“Thinlings? We don’t have anything by that name from R-389. Did you make that up?”
“No. Your emergency system told me their name,” I say, rolling my eyes. I finally hoist myself out of the stall and walk gingerly back into the hallway. I look carefully at the thinling’s remains. “That’s a thinling,” I say.
James goes quiet for a minute. A full minute. While he waits, I fidget with my glasses and rub my thumb against the Revolver’s bullet holder. I’ve decided the Revolver is a thing of power, like the Truth or the number Three. It’s from a merge, yes, but all three let me solve equations I couldn’t before. They’re the best kinds of variables; I can put them anywhere and have a good chance of not screwing up the math. They almost seem bigger than the equations, in fact.
James clears his throat in my ear. “There are some things I can’t tell you, but we have a record of these. 389-T-13/2I.”
I blink. “Sorry, what?”
“That’s its designation. It’s a 389-T-13/2I. That means it’s from Reality 389, it’s the thirteenth type of anomaly we’ve encountered from there, and it’s a Type Two Incomprehensible. Incomprehensibles are weird, but incomprehensibility works both ways with Type Twos like the 389-T-13/2I. It’s a high Anquan-Danger anomaly. Trivial for a trained soldier. Dangerous to you. They don’t tend to have a sense of self, so exposing them to themselves causes problems in their behavior. I see you used a mirror. Good thinking.”
I reevaluate my partnership with James. Even if I can’t trust him, he knows his stuff, and he’s just a voice in my head. I’ll know what he knows—most of it, anyway. There’s no way that’s all the information on 389-T-13/whatevers. And I’m not sure what’s more incomprehensible, the monster I shot or that name. It’d take a computer to keep track of a bunch of codes like that.
“We’re calling it a thinling,” I say. I hear him start to protest and cut him off. “I’m older. What I say goes.”
“That’s incredibly stupid,” James complains in my ear, but I know I’ve got him, so I don’t say anything. After a moment, he relents. “Thinlings, or 389-T-13/2I, are usually the first anomalies through merges to R-389, and they’re easy to deal with. They usually come through in groups, so be ready for more. Now, show me that pistol again.”
“The Revolver,” I say under my breath as I hold it up.
James goes almost silent; a keyboard sound clicks rapidly in my ear, but he doesn’t say anything for a while again. I shift the Revolver in my hands, careful not to hit my cut palm, and wait. It takes almost three minutes. I know because I count the seconds after the silence gets awkward.
“Claire, that object isn’t in our database. We don’t have a single sample on file.” James’s voice has changed. The British accent wavers, and seriousness washes over him, almost identical to the monotone man’s cadence but higher-pitched. “We’re labeling the reality it came from R-573-T. It’s likely the first object we’ve found from it, so it’s important that you don’t use it anymore. We don’t know the possible effects it could have.”
I close my eyes, count to three, and open them again. The Revolver’s off-white barrel almost glows in the twilight hall, and the faint light glints off the brass bullet holder. I wrap my hand around the grip, resting my finger on the trigger guard. “I’m keeping it. What’s the bullet holder called?”
“The cylinder. You need to keep it. Don’t lose it, whatever you do. SHOCKS needs that object.”
I step over the smoldering, stinking remains of the thinling and walk down the hall, the Revolver’s barrel facing the floor. My gut tightens almost painfully as I turn my back to the monster—what if it’s not dead? What if I have to run? But there’s no way it’s getting up. I’m okay.
I return to Mrs. Helquist’s math room. Splinters and sawdust cover the hall’s tiles; I step over them and into the classroom. Shockingly, the door and a few drops of blood on her carpet are the only signs I’d run through here or that the thinling chased me.
Those and the smell rolling in through the shattered window. A warm ground beef and electrical scent that sticks in my nose and makes my stomach heave. I choke back bile and look out the window.
And I see the Truth—that, Revolver or not, James or not, I can’t go out there.
----------------------------------------
I’m back in the girls’ bathroom, sitting on the toilet seat again. James hasn’t said a word since I turned around. Looking at the soccer field, at what was…out there…I couldn’t. So I’m back here, where it’s safe. Or at least where it’s safer than that. My stomach is lighter now, but I can’t get the taste of used breakfast out of my mouth—or the smell of warm meat out of my nose.
James breaks the silence. “The merge is backward, Claire. We can’t get a recovery and stabilization team into any merged zones near Victoria. You’re effectively inside of R-389 right now, and you’re in possession of an unknown anomalous object. That’s the bad news. The good news is that since you have the object, I was able to negotiate Class Zero clearance for you. Welcome to SHOCKS.”
I ignore him. He’s still not lying, but nothing he’s saying is helpful right now. “We’ll loop around. It’s a long push through the gym, but the second floor doesn’t have fire doors. They never installed them.” I’m not looking forward to traveling through Mr. Roberts’s gym or the lockers, though—not after what happened to everyone left outside. PE was my biggest nightmare all last year, and it’ll probably be worse now.
“Are you sure? The longer it takes to get to the shelter, the worse the merge will get.”
“I’m sure. I can’t.” I push myself to my feet and hold the Revolver. “It’ll be safer inside.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” James says. “R-389’s unreality levels are much higher than R-0’s. The longer this takes, the less stable the world will get.”
“So the whole world’s turning into a thinling?” I ask.
“Can we meet in the middle? How about T-Thirteens?” James asks. “Not the whole world, but it’ll get worse here soon.”
I ponder as I stick my head out into the hall. I’m doubling back toward Mrs. Helquist’s room, but instead of going inside, I’m heading through the Social Studies hall to the gym. If I can get through the basketball court and past the ticket booth on the far side, I can get upstairs. If I can get upstairs, I can find the main stairwell, and if I can find that, I can get to the shelter’s door.
Simple and linear.
Nothing moves in the dim hall. Here and there, white light pours in through the windows; the white, almost fluorescent sun seems to have won its war against the sickly yellow clouds. I hadn’t noticed them from Mrs. Helquist’s window. “Move from classroom door to classroom door. Always check behind you before you move. Keep looking around, and look inside every room you pass. Don’t leave any T-Thirteens behind you. Make sure you have an escape route.”
He’s trying to give me weeks of training in one long, never-ending lecture, but almost everything bounces off my brain like a tennis ball. I move to the first classroom door, look around quickly, then hobble to the next. The whole time, I’m rerunning my equation. If my math is correct, I’ve balanced it—for the most part. But James’s constant talking is a new variable, and I haven’t figured out how to solve it yet.
It also changes the rest of the problem. James is a wealth of information, but I can’t trust him, and whatever Class Zero clearance is, it’s not high-ranking enough to get the truth out of him. He seems genuine in wanting to help me. I just can’t digest everything he’s still saying about tactics, clearing rooms by myself, self-covering, situational awareness, and a million other soldier-sounding sound bites. I give up and set James aside as a variable. I need to solve the gym first.
“Go right,” James says a second after I turn right into the Social Studies hall. I roll my eyes and hold my tongue, darting from door to door. The posters are different here: maps of Canada, a student-made British Columbia flag made from magazine clippings, and timelines. I ignore them, checking rooms, hurrying through the dark sections of the hall, and lingering in the pale lights as long as I can. It takes almost five uneventful, heart-pounding minutes to arrive at the gym’s doors.
Mr. Roberts is inside.
Or maybe it’s something that used to be Mr. Roberts. Or something lying about being Mr. Roberts. Much like the thinling—I refuse to call it a T-Thirteen—his appearance shimmers and changes, but whether his arms bulge like a bodybuilder’s, his legs split into four bone-white insect legs, or his fingers rattle and clatter like chains on the floor, it’s still him—just…different hims. Looking at him makes me feel like I’m spinning or falling—or both.
Either way, he stands under the basketball hoop in his usual place, overseeing an invisible PE class. That’s a problem. The stairs are on the far side. I can see them from here, but I don’t think I can get across the gym without Mr. Roberts seeing me.
My hand’s on the door when James interrupts. “This is a Type Three Incomprehensible, Claire.”
“He’s Mr. Roberts.” Even though it’s not quite my PE teacher, it’s almost right most of the time.
“No, it’s a Type Three Incomprehensible. I’m not sure which classification, but all Incomprehensibles are mind-affecting anomalies. What do you see?”
I describe it, and I can almost hear James shaking his head. He types for a moment. “It’ll get worse the closer you get. I’m overlaying an image over it. Use your aug, close your other eye, and pay attention to the overlay, not what’s behind it. And hurry. I had to disable my patch and overclock your aug.”
“Got it,” I whisper, my hand still on the door. Everything James has told me is the truth, but it’s not the capital-T truth. I won’t find that in what some boy miles away keeps saying in my ear.
I push the door open and run inside.
Mr. Roberts turns and screams/roars. This close, he’s not much different than the thinling. I squeeze my right eye closed, and he fades into the background, replaced by a jet-black cut-out exactly his shape. As the black cut-out starts running toward me, Mr. Roberts’s long fingernails and split legs occasionally weave out from behind the blackness. Those bits give me vertigo.
I level the Revolver and fire. The shot hits the shadowy overlay, which keeps coming. I pull the trigger again, but nothing happens.
“Run, Claire!” James all but screams in my ear. I sprint for the stairs, shoes sticking slightly to the wooden floor. What did I step in that makes them stick? It feels like I’m running through syrup.
I look at Mr. Roberts. He’s closing the gap quickly, and the black overlay seems to be breaking down. His four insect legs propel him toward me across the tar-like basketball court, and his fingernails whip back and forth like chains—chains with spikes on the ends. My aug’s already overheating, a roaring inferno in my skull that doesn’t stop.
The floor gets stickier and stickier until I’m all but swimming through the gym. Mr. Roberts reaches me. The overlay disappears, fading to reveal something that’s both perfectly my PE teacher and something completely alien.
{Skill Learned: Endurance 1}
{Stability 4/10}
My head swims, and my mouth fills with bile again. I throw myself toward the stairwell, and the sticky feeling disappears when I crash into the first step. I scramble up the stairs, away from the thing that isn’t quite Mr. Roberts. Three steps. Four. I trip, roll on the stairs, and look back, both eyes open.
The Mr. Roberts thing screams/roars from below the bottom step. The Revolver’s bullet, the one lined up with the barrel, glows and illuminates his face. And in that moment, just before I scream and turn and crawl up the remaining stairs, I see the Truth.
It’s not him.
But it was.