So, the bus stop incidents in seventh and eighth grade.
I’d get that itch on the back of my neck twice a month, always on the fourth and twentieth. Like I was being watched.
It happened in other places, too. But the bus stop was the most consistent.
I figured it was just my imagination the first time, but when it happened again, I asked Alice if she felt it. She looked at me like I was crazy, so I stopped asking. Instead, I started staring at everyone at the stop. If they looked away, they were a boogeyman.
I’d get on the bus, and a few blocks later, the feeling disappeared. It lasted all through middle school, but none of the people ever talked to me.
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Landsdowne Middle School, Victoria, British Columbia - May 31, 2043, 6:13 AM
- - - - -
The cot’s a fold-up job, with a thin pad between the metal mesh and my back. Normally, that would have been a problem, but when I wake up, James informs me, [You’ve been out for almost 14 hours.]
That’s enough to wake me up; I’d been expecting a four to five-hour nap, then trying to move on from here somehow. I check my aug to see if anyone’s gotten coverage to text me back, but there’s just the familiar ‘No New Messages’ message. That’s disappointing but not surprising. I close my eyes to avoid staring at the drop-panel ceiling and unpowered tube lights.
Instead, I fiddle with the Halcyon System.
[System Access: 98%]
[Affected System Features]
►Archived Anomaly Information
[Recalculating Skills, Knowledges, Bonds, and Inquiries. Adjusting Stability]
[Claire Pendleton]
►Stability 6/10
►Skills - Endurance 4, Urban Combat 1, Anomalous Computing Systems 2, Physical Anomaly Resistance 4, Open Mind 1, Revolver Mastery 10, Compulsion Resistance 2, SHOCKS Database 1, Infohazard Resistance 1, Memetic Resistance 2, Gravity Shells, Reality Anchoring 1, First Aid 1, Toxin Resistance 1, Bullet Time, Slither, Smoke Form, Analyze, Mergewalk
►Truths - Anomalous Bond, West End High, SHOCKS Research Facility, JAMES, Stag Lord, Halcyon Bond, Li Mei and Infovampires, Dr. Dwyer
►Inquiries (3/5)
►What is Merge Prime?
►Are Sora and my family okay?
►What’s going on at Albert Head and West End High?
►
►
I’ve learned a lot, but I haven’t managed to solve any more Inquiries. I’m on the right path, but I should have gotten to my family yesterday. Instead, I’m stuck here at Landsdowne.
[Now that you’re up, we have a problem,] James says. I glare—not that he cares—and roll over, shutting down the system menu. Clearly, he doesn’t appreciate my good night’s sleep. [They’re going to ask you to go into another potential merge.]
“You think so?” I ask. It’s hard to keep the biting tone out of my voice, and when James lets the silence linger an uncomfortably long time, I clear my throat. “Sorry. I know they’re going to. What do we do about it?”
[My first instinct is to tell you to run. Based on what I know about them, they probably won’t stop you. If they do, you can avoid them without hurting anyone too badly. We can be on the road and trying to get around the potential merge in our path in five minutes.]
I’m already reaching toward my backpack. His advice makes sense; I need to take care of myself, Sora, and maybe Dad and Alice if they’ll listen to me for once. My fingers brush something.
It’s not my backpack.
After a moment of feeling the soft, cottony fabric, I stand up and pad to the light switch. When I flip it on, I can’t help but smile. Even though the T-shirt and leggings aren’t quite the right size, they’re clean, and they don’t look like they went through a cheese grater. I get changed quickly, then head for the door. “Come on, James,” I say, even though it’s not like he has a choice. “We’re not leaving without at least seeing if what they want is possible.”
----------------------------------------
Breakfast is slightly stale apple pastries in plastic wrap, chocolate milk, and slightly brown bananas. They taste better than dried prunes, and there’s something familiar about them in a way that SHOCKS food wasn’t. I’ve had cafeteria breakfasts a lot before; they’re so bad they’re good. I’m finishing my second apple pastry when Mrs. Nazaire and Mr. Williams track me down. “Clarice, we need to finish our conversation,” Mr. Williams rattles.
I always hated my full name, especially when the teachers use it, so I fix a glare on him. The principal clears her throat. “Erik, Claire, the thing in the music room grew last night. We don’t have time for this. Erik, continue.”
Just like her to take the teacher’s side. I nod, glowering into my empty chocolate milk carton.
“It’s like a portal from a video game.” Mr. Williams doesn’t sound like he believes himself. That’s not surprising. If I were him, I wouldn’t believe any of this, either. Not just the end of the world, or the shimmering wall that’s almost completely surrounding Landsdowne Middle with a little gap to escape through. That’s unbelievable enough. But on my last day in his class, I called him a liar and a failed teacher and said I’d never be back here again. I was ready to fight him, Mrs. Nazaire, and anyone else who wanted to fight.
So, me being here has to be unbelievable. And me listening to him, even more so.
“That’s not exactly what it’s like,” Mrs. Nazaire interrupts.
“No, that makes sense to me,” I interrupt her.
He stares at me like I’m an alien as I pay attention to him—and not only that, but back him up on something. “It’s a lot like what’s outside, but it’s smaller. Shimmering wall, halfway between the lockers and the chairs. It looks like it’s eating stuff and slowly growing bigger. Chairs, trombones. Whatever it can find. Stuff goes in, and it doesn’t come out. But we couldn’t see inside of it. I poked it with a color guard flag, and it ate the cloth right off it.”
“Okay. That’s all you know about it?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Nazaire says. “We locked the music room’s door and made sure our kids stay in the shelter unless they have to leave—for meals in the cafeteria, or until today, recess.”
I laugh at that.
She ignores me and presses on. “We…I don’t like asking a kid for help, but you went into the wall outside—“
“I call it a thinning,” I say. “The boogeymen call it a potential merge. It’s another reality coming into ours.”
“Okay.” Mrs. Nazaire rubs her eyes and stands up. “Okay, that’s not weirder than any of the other stuff we’ve been dealing with.”
For the first time, I see her not as an authority figure or principal but as an exhausted woman. She’s got to be at least as old as Dad, and if she’s been trying to hold things together for seven days, she can’t have much energy. I stand up, too. I even start to raise my hand, but stop. This isn’t school. And even if it’s a school building, it’s not my school. “I have a question.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Let’s walk and talk. I’ll show you the…thinning…and you can decide whether to help us.” Mrs. Nazaire’s already on the move, and she’s so tall I can barely keep up while jogging. Mr. Williams doesn’t come with us; he’s already in line for more apple pastries.
“Why aren’t you all quarantining? There’s supposed to be a plague or something over in Sooke.”
“This isn’t the first plague I’ve been through. Twenty-three years ago, they locked everything down like this, but there were a lot more doctors and nurses on TV, not black suits and talking heads. If I thought it was an outbreak, I’d be the first to hole up, but I don’t trust a word they’re saying. I follow BC’s politics, and I didn’t recognize anyone telling us to shelter in place.”
[Ah, that’s a weak point I hadn’t predicted,] James says in my ear. [Most of the weak points I found in SHOCKS’s plan were individuals, not community leaders. People other people wouldn’t listen to.]
“Like me,” I say. Mrs. Nazaire’s eyebrow raises, and I cough once and fire another question at her. “So you got in touch with your whole staff?”
“Yes. I didn’t trust the talking heads. They were lying about something, and then footage got out about the monster across the strait in Vancouver. Ten minutes after that, the TV and internet both cut out. They only had emergency information anymore. I had to go door to door to gather what staff I could, but Landsdowne had an emergency shelter and lots of food. It seemed better than joining everyone trying to get off Vancouver Island.”
“Yeah.” I’m quiet for a while, reevaluating the Landsdowne equation. I want to leave and get moving toward Ten Mile Point, but something Mrs. Nazaire said is stuck in my teeth. I chew on it for a while because it’s a variable I haven’t considered. We walk down the hall, and my tinnitus picks up as we close in on the music room.
I’m not even paying attention to where we’re going; it’s the same posters and fliers as last year, with different dates and slogans. I’m more concerned with Mrs. Nazaire not trusting the talking heads. That’s a common point between the two of us, but I’ll be honest, my hand hasn’t left the Revolver since we left the cafeteria. I don’t trust her. And I’ve made that fact abundantly clear.
So why does she trust me?
As far as James and SHOCKS is concerned, I'm a monster—or at least something they haven’t explained. And I’m sure that, since she saw me going through the merge wall, Mrs. Nazaire knows that. So, if I’m not exactly human anymore, why’d she try to get me off the street and into the shelter? She could have left me there; I’d never have tried to get into Landsdowne. I’ve got nothing but bad memories of this place—except for Sora.
“You know what? I’ll ask. Why do you care what happens to me? You could have left me out there,” I say, giving voice to all the thoughts in my head.
Shockingly, Mrs. Nazaire laughs. It’s a strange combination of bitter, hopeful, and the condescending tone every adult uses with kids. But she takes a deep breath, centers herself, and keeps walking and talking. “You and the Ito girl put me through hell, you know that? I called her parents four or five times last year, and your father a dozen. He never picked up. It would have been easy to give up on you, but you’re a Landsdowne Lamprey, and that means something to me, even if it doesn’t to you.
“I don’t bail out on my students.” Mrs. Nazaire stops in front of a thick wooden door. She fiddles with her key ring and comes up with the master key. “Okay, this is the music room. It’s inside here. I’ll give you a look. Then, we can better explain what we know. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say, even though my tinnitus is really acting up.
Mrs. Nazaire opens the door, and I look at the new thinning.
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The thinning’s an angry red color—a lot like the one outside, but this one pulses and swirls almost like it’s alive. I stare as it eats an instrument case—a flute, I think. I never did band. It was too expensive.
Then I look away.
I know three things. And they’re the truth, or as close as I can get to it.
First, the whole school’s sitting on a time bomb. I don’t need James to tell me that, even though he’s rattling off information about the most likely merge realities for this thinning. If it goes, the only safe place will be in the shelter, and they won’t last forever in there.
Second, Mrs. Nazaire might have lied to me. It’s hard to tell if she believes what she just said about not giving up on her students, but she’s between a rock without a paddle here, and if she thinks I have the skills to fix this…could she put it all on a fifteen-year-old girl? She doesn’t know exactly what I can do, and it seems like a big gamble.
And third, it is all on me. Time bomb or not, adults or not, none of them can do what needs to be done. And I’m not happy about it. Just once, I want someone else to solve my problems.
But before I can say anything, Mrs. Nazaire’s tone shifts. “Let’s get back to my office. We’ll talk business there, away from this thing. It’s giving me a headache.”
Yeah. Yeah, that sounds more like Mrs. Nazaire. She was a stickler for paying attention and respecting the teachers, but she also gave each student a pair of ‘nap passes’ every semester. Cash them in and get an uninterrupted period of sleep in the office. I used mine in Mr. Williams’s class.
I nod, grateful. The last week’s also starting to weigh on me, and I need time to think through this.
She leads me to the office—to her office—and points at the chair. “Have a seat.”
I flop into the chair, already feeling surly.
“If you think you can do something about it, that’s great. If not, I won’t ask a student to do anything impossible.”
I snort incredulously, but she stares me down. “Everything I asked you to do in the three years you attended Landsdowne was within your capabilities. You chose how much you wanted to care, just like every other student. But I never stopped believing you could do great things.”
My eyes roll before I can stop them. “Just like Alice?”
“No. Not like your sister.” Mrs. Nazaire sighs and rubs her temples. “You’re your own person, and you’re capable of great things—but not like Alice. You’re you, and she’s her, and I’m sorry you’ve been compared to her by every teacher you’ve shared. It’s not fair.”
This time, I stare at her. She meets my gaze, and eventually, I look away. My old principal’s not lying to me. She really believes that crap, and she really is sorry. I stare at her messy desk, trying to calculate this shit, but it’s not working. James isn’t helping either; he’s distracted, or he’s asleep. Something like that. Does James sleep?
Eventually, I give up. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to go into the music room and figure out how to stop that thing from growing.” Her face looks like she’s in agony, and she says the words through gritted teeth. I wince, both from her expression and from what her words mean. But she hasn’t been lying to me at all, not so far. And I don’t think she’d ask me to do this if she didn’t think I could.
More importantly, I think I can. I nod slowly, even as I remember how much coughing up those spores hurt. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
I hesitate, because her whole body looks like it’s melting into her chair. But she’s been truthful to me, and I can, at the very least, return the favor. “I’ll do it, but I need to know some things. James, what have you got for me?”
“James? Who’s James?”
[Uh, one second. I’m a little busy with some processes that are taking most of my—oh, here we are!] James pops into focus. [So, your trip into that potential merge back there forced me to recalculate all my analysis of your powers, and I’ve been updating your database entry. I’ve also been—“
“You’re still keeping a database entry on me?” I ask, anger building up. One breath. Two. Three. I breathe through it until the feeling passes.
“Claire, who’s James?” Mrs. Nazaire asks again. Now she just looks confused—and a little nervous. She brushes her curly black hair away from her eyes.
[Ask her for a computer]
“Can I see your computer? I think he wants to introduce himself.”
She nods and stands up. I slide into her seat. “Okay, James, what do I do?”
[Nothing.] A message appears on the previously blank screen when I touch the keyboard.
Hello. I’m James. I currently exist both in Claire’s augments and in a cloud storage system.
“Oh, you weren’t…you weren’t lying,” Mrs. Nazaire says, staring at me. “About the…the boy living in your head." She looks faint, and I’m not surprised when she collapses into the student seat on the far side of the desk.
[Turn the computer. I’m not done talking with her.]
I do it.
You’re asking Claire to do something my organization would usually use four trained soldiers with full support to hope to accomplish. We’ve only had a handful of successful counter-merges, and they haven’t been for very long. If you want her to do that, she needs your support. It’s possible that she’ll be gone for a couple of days, and she’ll need food, water, and a safe place to retreat to. So, if you want her to do this, I need a guarantee.
1. You’ll provide her with three days worth of food and water.
2. Your staff will give her any support she wants.
3. You won’t leave this school until she makes it out, even if a better solution presents itself, and you won’t hide in the shelter unless the merge starts.
If you can do those things, I agree with letting her try to go inside and disable this merge before it happens. I’m not sure how she thinks she’ll do it, but I think she can.
I wait while Mrs. Nazaire reads the text. Then she takes a deep breath. Another. I recognize the technique; it’s what the counselors always say to do when you’re overwhelmed. I just used it myself, so part of me gets it. That same part of me’s worried about her. She’s been trying to hold the fort for a week, and now this? Now me? That part of me gets it. I’m a lot. James is a lot.
But when the silence stretches, I clear my throat. “Can you do that?”
She nods slowly, then with more confidence. “Yes.”
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And that’s how, an hour later, I’m standing outside of what’s left of the music room’s door.
Most of it’s shredded waferboard hanging from the hinges or long gone. Mrs. Nazaire won’t get any closer to the swirling vortex of angry color. She’s standing a few dozen yards away, down the hall. “You’re sure you want to do this?” She asks.
Like I have a choice.
“Yes.” I square my shoulders as best I can. She needs a rock, like my dad was. Instead, she’s got me. “I’ll be back soon.”
The ringing in my ears reaches a fever pitch, and I can’t hear what she says. Instead, I throw myself into the thinning before my tinnitus can drive me crazier.