I’ve seen fifteen thinnings and two merges, so I know a few things.

First, most thinnings don’t merge.

Second, Universal Reality Anchors catch thinnings. (I shouldn’t know about URAs. My therapist messed up on that.)

Thinnings all have kaleidoscoping colors and make my ears ring. That’s the URAs. If you can hear it but not see it, don’t worry. If you hear it and then don’t, do worry. But that almost never happens.

Fourth, merges and thinnings almost always come in threes. The Truth Club thinks three is a Number of Power. They didn’t make that up. I did.

And last, every thinning I’ve seen happened after my first merge. And Alice and Dad both say I made them up.

They’re both liars. Make of that what you will.

----------------------------------------

Outside Victoria, British Columbia - May 23, 2043, 11:53 AM

- - - - -

My tinnitus gets louder and louder until, as I step through the L-shaped entrance to the girls’ bathroom, it’s all I can hear. The thinling’s screeches/roars/grinding fail to break through the ringing, and my whole head feels like it’s vibrating, even though it’s only my aural aug. I’ve only been this close to a thinning once, and that was three—no, four—minutes ago. This one feels worse.

I want to see the Truth in this thinning. But, I’ll be honest, I’m terrified. My throat burns, and my arms won’t stop bleeding. And I don’t know where the thinling is. It’s with me, on the right side of the fire door, away from other people. But I don’t know where.

I’m still in my lizard brain—fight, flight, freeze, fawn. Besides the water balloons, that’s one of the only true things my therapist told me. Everyone’s got two brains—the people brain that makes choices and the lizard brain that keeps you alive. My lizard brain is good at freeze, fight, and fawn. Freeze usually keeps me out of trouble, and fawn keeps Dad happy. Fight’s never gotten me much, though. Alice is a fawner, too, but she fights with Dad as much as she fawns. I’m in trouble now because I got curious and then froze instead of fleeing like I should have. I squeeze my eyes shut, count to three, and open them.

The graffiti in the girls’ bathroom never gets cleaned up—not before the girls draw more. Someone’s penned ‘beware of limbo dancers’ onto the bottom of a stall door along with a stick figure doodle of a man bending backward, and Candice has written her boyfriend’s name on the tile wall with a heart around it. A half-dozen other girls’ commentary about what a creep Derrick is adorns the rest of the chipped, off-white tiles. The thinning’s dancing lights reflect off the stained, pink floor tiles inside a stall, but not the one with the limbo man.

Some girl has kissed the mirror over the bathroom sink, leaving a blindingly crimson lip mark in the corner. It hasn’t been cleaned off yet, either. She’ll probably get sick from kissing it if a thinling doesn’t get her first. And the whole place stinks like only a girl’s bathroom can. Pee, lemon cleaning supplies, and perfume. Ugh.

Really, I decide, the whole thing is a math problem. The steps seem simple, but it has a lot of variables. I can’t let the thinling find me, and I have to stop bleeding. Once I solve those, I can work on the rest of the problem.

So, first, the thinling.

The thinning is in the stall. I ignore it for now.

The whining ring fades slightly as I creep into the bathroom’s entrance. This is not an improvement since now I can hear the monster’s screech/roar/grind. It sounds like it’s down the hall, tearing into something solid. I pop my head out for a moment.

Its claw/jaw/saw pulls away from the impossibly thick fire door, revealing a gash so wide I can see it from down the hall. Its eyes/sensors turn toward me, and I duck back inside the bathroom. That was stupid. There’s nowhere to go. But I can’t think—my head is light, and I wobble just standing. I stagger back to the wall, slide into a sitting position with my legs splayed and my baggy cargo pants hiked up around my calves, and wait.

I don’t have to wait long before it slithers/slides/clatters into the bathroom entrance. It roars again, rushing toward me, and then stops.

Not, like, of its own free will, but like it’s hit an invisible wall across the bathroom, right in front of the first sink. It strains and lashes its claws/jaws/saws against whatever’s stopped it, but it can’t pass. It doesn’t even make sparks.

I release a breath I hadn’t realized had caught in my throat. The thinling’s roars of protest/anger/frustration and my tinnitus drown out the raspberry sound between my numb lips. It can’t come in. It can’t come in.

Why can’t it come in?

That feels important, but it’s not something I can puzzle out right now. My brain feels fuzzy. The thinling’s not doing it, and the ringing in my ears—okay, it’s awful, but it’s not the problem. I slump down below a paper towel dispenser, reach up with a shaky hand, and grab the rough brown paper. Sheet after sheet rains down on me as I pull, tear, grab, and repeat. Once I have enough, I start the long, agonizing process of trying to find and cover dozens of cuts across my arms and face.

Most aren’t a problem. They’re shallow, and they’ve already slowed or stopped. But one on my right palm has cut deep. I wrap paper towels around it, but it keeps throbbing and pulsing. Blood drips from a long cut across my forehead, but head injuries bleed a lot, right? It’s probably not gonna kill me. My hand is more worrying. Did it catch a tendon? It hurts to move my fingers, but that might be the cut, not something deeper.

While I’m playing at medic, the thinling stalks back and forth just feet away. It roars and rips/tears/cuts futilely at the…barrier…keeping it from me. I still can’t see exactly what it is, and I can’t tell why it’s stuck. But I don’t care. Just this once, I don’t need to know the Truth. At least, not yet.

So, equation time. I know where the thinling is. Obviously. I tighten my makeshift paper towel bandage around my palm and start dabbing at my forehead, wincing every time the rough brown paper catches on the cut’s ragged edge. I’ve got most of the bleeding mostly taken care of, though my skin looks like it’s mostly paper towels. Which means I can work on the next step in balancing this.

This part goes fast. Dad? Shelter. Sora? Not sure. Ugh, Alice, who left me? Shelter. Teachers? Unknown. The police? Probably in shelters, but definitely not here. SHOCKS? Not here, but probably on their way. This seems right up the boogeyman’s alley. Superman? Yeah, right.

So, no one’s coming—no one I want to see. I’ve got me, Mom’s dress, as many paper towels as I can use, water, and…

…my phone.

I fish it out of my baggy cargo pants’ pocket, though I have to hike up Mom’s filthy dress a little to get to it. There aren’t any new messages, just a flashing SHOCKS warning to avoid the strange. I snort. Then I laugh. Then I can’t stop laughing, and it doesn’t feel like good laughter.

As I sit against the bathroom wall and laugh, I thumb through my contacts. Eventually, I land on the one person I can trust to text me back, even if I can’t trust her for anything else. I start typing, and the panic hits me again like a wave, crashing straight through the hysterical laughter.

Claire -

The ‘sending a message’ icon spins and spins, my throat tightening painfully again with each passing second. I count to almost forty in my head before a new message comes in, and my message’s text goes red.

Victoria Emergency Services -

I stop reading and shiver despite myself. SHOCKS. The boogeymen. They’re here. Or maybe not here, but on their way and aware. And I’m in the middle of their merge. Again. I don’t need a repeat of last time, because the Truth about last time is that I got lucky and my therapist wasn’t as clever as he thought.

There’s no way I can stop the shivering, and the room keeps swimming back and forth in the panic tsunami.

<…and Goldstream. Further messages with additional instructions will be set as needed.>

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

The message comes in twice more, identical word for word, before it stops. My phone doesn’t power off, but it’s like it’s stuck in airplane mode. I can’t connect to anything. Not to the internet, or text messages, or even to my augs—both of which are stuck in one-to-one mode with my unaugmented eye and ear. That’s not the end of the world, though. Even running hot enough to hurt, neither gets above three-to-one. What is the end of the world is that I can’t text or call anyone. Well, almost anyone.

I dial 911. It doesn’t disconnect me. Instead, an automated voice speaks in my aural aug. “All VES emergency lines are currently busy. Please hold. An operator will be with you as soon as possible. Your emergency is impor—“

I hang up and recalculate my equation since I can’t talk to anyone. SHOCKS: Definitely on their way. Superman? Even less likely, he won’t want to fight them. And no phone—or at least the only thing it’s good for is as a flashlight.

Pushing down another shudder, I light my last cigarette, push it into my mouth, and ready myself. The smoke fills my lungs, and I blow it out slowly—West End High’s in trouble already, so a fire alarm won’t make things worse.

It’s time to deal with the thinning.

I push myself up to my feet with a groan. The thinling scrabbles/scratches/slices at the invisible wall, making me jump, and I side-eye it the whole time I scooch toward the bathroom stall. My tinnitus ramps up until my entire head pounds and my aural aug burns inside my ear. “I want to know the Truth,” I whisper to myself. I repeat it like a mantra. Then I pull on the stall door’s handle.

It opens with a creak. The smell of cinnamon and tulips hits me.

I catch a split-second view of the new thinning before its rainbow colors flash and vanish, the ringing stops, and every lightbulb in the bathroom shatters in a loud, rippling series of pops.

----------------------------------------

I’m terrified, but also relieved.

Terrified because I’m in deep shit now.

I’ve been in the center of two merges in the last fifteen minutes. The animal/monster/machine paces ten feet away, back and forth. The darkness feels like it’s trying to drown me, and that’s worse than the thinling. And SHOCKS is on the way.

But relieved because, when I flip my phone’s flashlight on, I see what’s emerged from the second thinning.

It’s a gun. A revolver. Not the kind from Westerns with the long, gray-black barrel and worn wooden handle, but the kind a hard-boiled detective might carry. Or May Lay, one of the Knights from Knights of the Apocalypse. She has like twenty guns. It’s short, stubby, and shockingly white—almost porcelain, except for the part where you put bullets. That part shines like polished brass. It’s loaded, with shells made of different metals.

I should stop myself, a tiny voice in the back of my head says as I reach for the revolver. I’m already in deep shit, and I don’t need more. And the revolver’s a lie, anyway. It’s not real. It can’t be real. But the other voices—the ones that want to know the Truth or that know that if I want to deal with the trouble I’m going to be in, I need to solve the trouble I’m in now— shout it down. My fingers wrap around the carved, notched grip.

And I’m not drowning anymore. My whole body burns instead, and I scream. But when I move my arms, it just gets worse, not better, until I’m hugging myself and whimpering while trying not to so much as blink.

As quickly as it hits me, the sensation fades, and I examine the revolver more closely. It’s not heavy, and the grip is somehow perfectly sized for my not-quite-adult hand. I fiddle with the brass bullet holder—I’ve never paid attention to what you call a gun’s parts. The bullet holder should rotate out so I can load it again, but no matter what I do, I can’t get it to. It doesn’t even spin when I run my thumb against it. Instead, the bullet seems locked in line with the barrel.

Seven seems like a strange number of bullets for a six-shooter.

There’s also no safety. I know that part of a gun. My finger rests against the trigger guard—it is porcelain, but the kind you make armor out of, not the type that rich people use for dishes and everyone else shits in. This little pistol is ready to use; I can feel it more than I can see it. And I’m ready, too.

{Halcyon System Final Sync}

{Overriding Firewalls}

{Firewall Protocols Overridden: 2/3}

{System Access: 50%}

{Affected System Features}

►Skill Information

►Truth Information

►Archived Anomaly Information

►Assistance Functions

{Truth Learned: Anomalous Bond 2 (-2) - Information Unavailable}

{Stability 7/10}

{Skill Acquired: Revolver Mastery 1 - Information Unavailable}

{Claire Pendleton}

►Stability 7/10

►Skills - Revolver Mastery 1

►Truths - Anomalous Bond 2 (-2)

►Inquiries -

I blink back tears as my optic aug heats up and my aural one pops and hisses. The message reads a little like an error report on a crashing computer, a little like my augs when I reboot them in the morning, and a tiny bit like Knights of the Apocalypse’s character status screen. I glaze over most of it, but a few important parts stick out—like the Truths. I try to mentally tap the link to Anomalous Bond, but every time, I get a bonking, boinging error sound. There has to be a workaround to see what Revolver Mastery or Anomalous Bond are, but no matter what I try, the message screen won’t open them.

After almost three minutes of trial and error sounds, I decide three basic things.

First, I need to keep my Stability high. Without the Halcyon System’s Assistance Functions—whatever those are—I can’t say for sure what’ll happen if I lose all my Stability, but based on the fire I felt when I grabbed the revolver, and on the earlier message when I panicked after seeing the thinling, I don’t want it to dip much lower.

Second, I want to know what the firewalls are and how Inquiries work.

{Inquiry: What’s going on at West End High?}

Ah. That’s how. I’m not sure what’s going to happen if I answer it, but it helps me keep track of my variables better.

And third, I have a tool to access the Truth now. And not only that, but to do it in a way that lets me be sure, for the very first time, that it really is the Truth. That is, as long as I can trust the Halcyon System. And, unlike my English teacher and Mr. Roberts, it hasn’t lied to me yet. It also hasn’t told me anything yet, except that I’m in the process of…losing my mind? Falling apart? I wish I knew what Stability did if it fell, but I have bigger problems.

I push myself out of my squat and turn, pointing the revolver toward the sink, and the door, and the thinling. I’m not helpless. I don’t have to run, and that’s the Truth. I can—

It’s gone.

----------------------------------------

My first instinct is to chase after it.

Why is my first instinct to chase after it?

Without the tinnitus and the thinling’s impossible-to-describe form-changing, my migraine recedes slightly. I shouldn’t chase it. It’ll tear me apart. What I should do is try to find a way through the school, or out of the school and back inside somewhere else, to the shelter. That’s where safety is. That’s where Dad and Alice and, I hope, Sora all are.

But that thinling? It’s a mystery. And I swore an oath to the Truth Club and myself that I’d seek the Truth. Only they all thought that circle under the bleachers was a game, and I knew I meant every word. So I’m going to chase after it.

But I don’t have to be dumb about it. I mean, I’ve been pretty dumb so far, but I don’t have to be. Alice is a valedictorian, and while I don’t care enough about Language Arts or Social Studies to earn top grades like her, I’m not dumb. I just don’t pretend I’m interested in stuff I don’t care about.

On one side of the equation, I’ve got the thinling. And on the other, a variable. Something made it stop, and it didn’t do it because it felt merciful. It could be the mirror. Maybe it can’t understand its appearance either. Maybe there’s something else going on with it. Or maybe it’s the pipes. I’ve read plenty of myths that make running water a safe place. Maybe there’s truth to them.

I can’t steal a pipe, though.

My fingers scream in protest by the time I finally wrench the bathroom mirror free. It takes me almost ten minutes of pulling and wriggling my fingers between its steel backing and the cinderblock wall. When it finally does, I’ve twisted two nails back on my right hand, crushed my left thumb between the wall and the steel, and my head spins from standing for too long. But I have the bathroom mirror—intact, even the half-cleaned lipstick stain in the corner.

I lean against the wall, arms wrapped around the glass-and-steel mirror in a hug, and breathe. Then I carefully creep back to the door, revolver in one hand and mirror tucked under my arm, and stare into the twilit hallway.

It’s there. The thinling is back at the steel fire door, clawing/biting/sawing at the metal. It’s only a matter of time before it breaks through, which would be both good and bad. Good, because I need that door open. But bad, because there are people over there. Fakes and liars, yes, but still people.

They can’t handle the Truth.

I decide I can, and I flip the mirror around to face the thinling. I hope the reflection will act like a steel beam, flattening the monster against the wall or smashing it into the fire door. But it doesn’t. Instead, the thinling ignores it.

But for the first time, I can see its true form in the reflection. It’s alive. Not like a wolf, but similarly-sized; we have wolves nearby, where Vancouver Island goes wild. Where it should have four legs, it has six, and where a wolf would have jaws, its mouth is a circle of spinning, writhing teeth. It’s covered in white plates that make it look bug-like, but there’s never been a bug this size. Below the white, raw flesh pulses and twitches; I can’t tell if it’s black or dark red, but that’s a lighting problem, not because I can’t see the Truth.

It’s still ignoring me and the mirror. I decide to take a gamble. The mirror—hopefully—stopped the thinling once. It can probably do it again. I set it against the wall under a poster about the quadratic formula, level the revolver in my hands, facing the thinling even though it hurts my palm and my smashed thumb to aim, and pull the trigger.

It cracks, a purplish beam of light cuts through the air, sizzling, and the shell's brightness fades. The sound echoes in the hall, and I realize I’ve imagined the beam’s sound. The ray leaving the gun’s barrel reaches twenty—no, fifty—feet, touches the wall above the thinling, and vanishes except for heat ripples in the air. I’ve missed. The revolver’s bullet-holder clicks as it slowly spins.

I stare at the mirror, not at the thinling, because the mirror tells me the Truth. It’ll stop the thinling. It has to.

But as the monster slithers/slides/clatters across the ground toward me, I lose my nerve and run. The mirror sits against the wall outside the bathroom while I hide inside, the revolver pointed shakily at the doorway.

A moment passes. Two. Three. I allow myself to breathe. To stand up and take one hesitant step toward the entrance, then another. When I gather the courage to look outside, I almost break right back into hysterics again.

The mirror worked. And the revolver’s shell glows a bright orange against the hall’s twilight.

I hobble toward the thinling. It roars in protest/anger/despair as I grit my teeth, hold the revolver six inches from its scrabbling jaws/claws/saws, and brace myself.

I pull the trigger.

Then the thinling screams—the most concrete sound it’s made since I first saw it—and falls to the tile floor. Its scream hammers my mind, and I try to fight it, but can’t. The revolver slips from my grasp and joins it. And a moment later, so do I.