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  ******

  Vincent blinked several times in quick succession as he dropped the second Lens onto his free eye. He squinted at himself in the restroom mirror. The new Lenses felt a bit thicker than before. The distortion, though undetectable, felt heavier now, like he had traded in a cotton blindfold for a leaden one.

  For proper adjustment, please do not remove your new Lenses for the first three days.

  The words scrolled across the bottom rim twice before Vincent could read them fully. Afterward, he tried to shift the glass with his index finger – he didn’t like the idea of sleeping in Lenses – but it felt already fixed in place, held there as if by suction. He breathed out, heavily, and then yawned in the same breath. He had lain in bed last night with his mind spinning like a top, turning over and over again his father’s troubled expression during dinner. Now, the Lenses would make sleep even more elusive.

  Three small white numbers at the bottom of his vision began to blink: 8:00. He was about to be late.

  Turning from the mirror, Vincent left the restroom. Moments later, just as Mrs. Farring was stepping through the door at the front of the class, Vincent lowered himself into the nook of his desk.

  “Good morning, everyone.”

  The class responded in kind. Vincent called out habitually with them.

  “We were cut short yesterday,” continued Mrs. Farring, “so we won’t waste any time this morning. You should receive my invitation shortly.”

  As the words left her mouth, a message began scrolling across Vincent’s Lenses. Another sim. A second yawn rose up in Vincent at the thought, but he caught it halfway through when he noticed Mrs. Farring’s eyes on him. The rest of the class, however, seemed all too eager to test out their upgraded devices. Expressions went blank faster than usual, and heads began to drift. Still under the careful inspection of Mrs. Farring, Vincent glanced down twice, and the classroom rematerialized in almost the exact fashion as he had just seen it. Admittedly, far closer to exact than had been managed by the previous Lenses.

  The video screen was already hanging in midair at the front of the room, its picture frozen at some long-winded title, the first words of which made Vincent slouch in his seat.

  “We’ll pick up the Order simulation where we left off,” said Mrs. Farring. “Today, we’ll be covering the Order’s presence in the cities.” Vincent straightened slightly at this. He had never seen the cities before. Perhaps he would stay in the sim today after all.

  But when the video began, with footage of a politician giving a particularly dry speech in the Senate, Vincent knew he would see nothing of the cities. It had been a fanciful hope to begin with.

  Sighing, he leaned back and disengaged his right Lens. His head had been left facing forward and, for a second, the room was split seamlessly in two between the simulation and the real thing. Though now, seeing the two side by side, Vincent could easily have forgotten which was which; so closely had the sim recreated its mark. He chanced a look at Brian, half expecting, half hoping to see the larger boy disengaged as well, but Brian was looking in the opposite direction, his eyes glazed over with the telltale vacancy of the sim – the same as everyone else. Vincent turned to the girl to his left; she too was fully engaged.

  Surely, Vincent thought, the cities had to be different than this. They had to be better. Even if they were completely empty, they had to feel fuller than the room of cold, blank-faces in which Vincent now sat. They had to be more exciting, too, though school didn’t set the bar particularly high in that regard.

  Vincent yawned once again, not bothering to hide it this time. Mrs. Farring always ended up watching the sim the same as the students. She wouldn’t notice him. Taking care to position himself out of view behind the girl in front of him as a precaution, Vincent settled his face into his hands. He closed his eyes and began to listen.

  “…only when the Order began dropping their warnings did Newsight take action. Stating it as their civic duty to protect the threatened, Newsight now provides defense networks to several major cities. These cities have consequently seen a drastic decrease in Order attacks, leading to a great migration to these cities by those seeking refuge from the Order. However, the Order’s insatiable appetite for destruction leads them again and again to the unprotected outskirts. Where once families and children lived, there now are only ruins. The Order has…”

  Vincent was starting to slip away, but his mind continued to linger on the narrator’s last few words. Where once families and children lived… Vincent’s memories from pre-Seclusion began to pry their way out of the dark once again. He remembered short square buildings with pointed roofs and none of the gentle curves of the Seclusion domes. He remembered the pungent smell of air not quite clean, of a thick black fog that clung to the clouds like a sticky film. He remembered the paths, the roads, and people walking down them, none of them dressed in white, and some shouting, some even smiling. And then he remembered the towers, slender and dark as they rose up from the stone paths that encircled them, reflecting rays of light with their story height windows…

  The narrator continued to talk, but Vincent was no longer listening.

  He was standing on the street, in front of a small brown house with a slanted roof. Behind the house were the towers, shadowed in gray light and fogged by the clouds that clung jealously to their edges. Vincent ignored the towers and started for the house instead. He pushed through the front door – it didn’t slide open for him like it may have in the Seclusion – and stepped over the threshold. The entryway was floored not with tile, but with wood (the word, foreign to Vincent, sprang into his head of its own accord). The air in the house was warm but not stifling, cooled by a slight breeze through windows that had been left open.

  Vincent closed the door behind him and stepped deeper inside. The space opened up into a joint kitchen and dining room, then into a larger area with comfortable-looking chairs around a flat black rectangle with a smooth, unmoving screen.

  “Vincent?”

  Vincent turned to his right, where the room with the chairs was linked to a hallway. A woman with a sharply sloped nose and wide, bright eyes was standing with her hands on her hips. It took Vincent a moment to recognize the woman out of her usual, collared white uniform.

  “Mother?” he heard himself say.

  “Will you set the table for us please?” she said. “For four. Grandpa is coming.”

  Vincent felt his head nod up and down. Mother smiled at him.

  The next moment, Vincent was laying the last of the silverware on the table, a napkin under each set. There was movement behind him in the hall.

  “Is it ready?”

  Father – equally unrecognizable as his wife – walked up behind Vincent and clapped him on the back. He sat down in the chair closest to the kitchen.

  “Coming,” said Mother. She was pulling something from the oven. “I’m trying to find more dishes for you to do.”

  Father threw up his hands in mock despair. He rolled his eyes, and as they moved, Vincent could see no outline against their surface, no miniscule rim of glass to skirt the iris. Father wasn’t wearing Lenses.

  “Vincent?”

  A third voice was calling for him from down the hall. It was kind, like his mother’s, but male, and old.

  “Vincent?”

  Vincent stood from his seat.

  “Vincent!”

  Vincent’s eyes snapped open and he was back in the classroom. Everyone was looking at him. Some even looked concerned.

  He turned self-consciously in his seat. He caught Brian’s eyes and was met only with a vague, unreadable look of curiosity. He turned to the girl. She was among those who had concern in her gaze. There was something else there too, something that made Vincent feel as transparent as glass.

  “Vincent.”

  Vincent whipped around to face the front of the room where Mrs. Farring stood, simmering.

  “You will stay after school to finish your simulation,” she said. “Is that
understood?”

  Vincent blinked several times to clear the sleep from his eyes. He shrank into himself as the looks of concern on those around him turned to something closer to amusement. “Yes, ma’am.” He said it in a small, defeated voice, and Mrs. Farring seemed satisfied by it.

  “Good. Now, everyone else, we’ll take our break a few minutes early.” Without another word, she turned from them and disappeared through what seemed to be her own personal door. The rest of the class stood as well, starting for the door in the wall opposite. Vincent rose more slowly.

  “You should be more careful, you know.”

  Brian had crossed over to him through the crowd. Vincent didn’t meet his eyes.

  “If you’re going to fall asleep,” said Brian, “do it in the sim. That’s what my brother always told me.”

  Vincent looked up at this. He glanced around the class.

  “He doesn’t go to school here anymore,” said Brian, noticing Vincent’s searching look. “He’s older, anyway.” He glanced down at the desk where Vincent had just been sitting. “You were talking, you know.”

  Vincent wasn’t surprised. He already had a feeling the looks he received had not been unprompted. “What was I saying?” he asked.

  “Nothing really,” said Brian. “Just telling someone you were on your way.” Brian glanced around them. He lowered his voice. “You should be careful, though,” he repeated. “Dreams are hard to hide.”

  In Brian’s expression on these last words, Vincent could see the same shadow of a look he had seen during the sim the day prior, and something beyond it that seemed to leave words unsaid.

  Brian turned away. Vincent stayed where he was, and as he watched the larger boy file out of the class with the few of their peers who remained, his breaths began to grow shorter. His Lenses felt suddenly tighter against his pupils. He started for the restroom.

  The door was locked when he tried it. He knocked impatiently, and kept knocking until the boy inside stepped out.

  “Just wait your–”

  Vincent pushed past him and pulled the door shut as he went. He threw the bolt into place and leaned back. His eyes felt more constricted than usual, as if the stranglehold his Lenses had on them had finally been pulled all the way taut.

  Trying to compose himself, he crossed over to the sink and leaned forward so his right eye, with its lid pulled all the way up, was within centimeters of the mirror. He dragged his index finger across the surface of the Lens, as he had done so many times before, but nothing happened. He tried again, pressing a little harder so his eye sank back a millimeter into his head, but the Lens remained. He leaned back so he was standing straight again, his eyes locked on his reflection. He blinked several times, then tried his left eye – still, nothing. Frowning, and sweating now, even under his thin, breathable overalls, he resumed his position up close to the mirror. He opened his eyes wide and inspected the white area just beyond the grayish green of his irises. He saw the rims of his Lenses the same as usual, but, amidst the irritated, spindly lines of blood next to them, he saw something else. Another set of lines, ones not his own, and nearly undetectable, stretched out from the edge of his Lenses and curled back under his eyelids.

  The stranglehold felt by his eyes was nearing a breaking point.

  Before he could go back to work on removing them, his Lenses started to flash white along the bottom rim.

  11:28. It was time go back.

  Vincent let his eyelids droop closed for a moment, though this didn’t get rid of the numbers, and he massaged the area of his forehead just outside the tips of his brow. He stayed like that for a few seconds as he regained control of his breathing, then he left.

  He pushed through the door back out into the hall and started for the classroom, but as he did, he saw movement behind him. All the way at the end of the passage, in the direction opposite the rest of the class, was Brian. The larger boy was walking rather quickly, hunched over at the waist as if hiding – as if bracing himself, too. He was probably feigning nausea to get out of the sim. It wasn’t a bad idea.

  The blinking numbers turned to 11:29. Sighing, and more out of habit than duty, Vincent turned toward the classroom, but only to come to a stop so quickly he nearly fell backward. The girl with the pony tail had just exited the girl’s restroom, and he had nearly run into her.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, looking down automatically. “Wasn’t looking.”

  He stayed where he was, his eyes downcast, expecting her to twist around in her normal whipping motion, but she didn’t. She stayed where she was, inspecting him with keen, wide eyes.

  “I tried to take mine out too,” she said, her gaze trained on Vincent’s irritated right eye. “I couldn’t get them out either.”

  Vincent started to raise a hand to his face, then caught himself. He glanced at the girl, then looked away again; her eyes seemed to stare straight through him. “I guess we’re not supposed to be able to,” he said. He forced himself to look up at her. It was an effort to hold her gaze. “They said we’re not supposed to take them out for a few days.”

  “We’re also not supposed to tune out of our sims,” she countered. “But you do that anyway.”

  Vincent felt a familiar heat beginning to kindle under the skin of his cheeks. He glanced over the girl’s shoulder at the open door of the classroom, longing, even, for the discomfort of his desk.

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  “I can tell,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I tune out too. When I do it, though, I try not to make it too obvious in case Mrs. Farring is watching. You, on the other hand, never hide it at all.” She paused. Her inspection of him continued. “You watch me sometimes. A lot of times, actually.” She said the last part without much expression, as if stating the obvious. Vincent barely noticed his lips part in shock. He tried to stammer some excuse, but nothing seemed to come. The girl grinned.

  “Come on,” she said, flicking her head back toward the classroom. “We’ve still got all afternoon.” Unhesitating, and with far more confidence than Vincent could have mustered, she grabbed his hand and pulled him along behind her, back toward the classroom. With his full attention on the girl in front of him, Vincent almost failed to notice the whistling sound coming from above. Within seconds, though, the sound was undeniably loud. No rumbling to precede it this time, the whistle was growing to a bloodcurdling shriek. The girl looked up.

  “What is tha–”

  Her words were cut off as the whistle crescendoed in a deep, earsplitting boom. The ceiling above them cracked down the middle, leaking dust from above.

  There was silence then. They were still, the girl’s eyes fixed on the ceiling, Vincent’s fixed on her.

  Then they were flying backward. Vincent could hardly make sense of the colors spinning through his line of sight. There was a cloud of orange, hot with streaks of red, then plumes of black and gray, sprinkled with flecks of white that flew through the air in all directions.

  He hit the ground in sync with the girl and skidded a meter longer from the momentum. When they came to a stop, the girl was dazed, and her arm was draped over Vincent’s waist.

  Vincent pulled himself into a sitting position – coughing up dust as he did so – and stared down the hall. Or, at least, he tried to. It was thick with a brown cloud of smoke and debris. The usually spotless white walls had been coated with grime, and the paint that covered them dripped from the heat of the flames that licked their perfect surface.

  There started a second whistle. It seemed to snap the girl from her stupor.

  “Come on!” she said, and she was on her feet, pulling Vincent up with her. “We need to get back!”

  Vincent had barely gotten to his feet when there was another explosion and the ground lurched under them, sending them hurtling into the wall to their right. Vincent felt the heat much closer behind them now. Getting back to the classroom would be impossible.

  “This way!” The girl dragged him in the opposite direction, her
right hand still curled tightly around his, and her face dipped low beneath the smoke.

  As they ran, the ground shook from yet another explosion. This one was followed by screams.

  Doors up ahead were flying open on either side of the hall. Teachers poked their heads out, their eyes wide with terror.

  “You two!” one of the teachers shouted from his room. “Get in!”

  They started for him but were thrown back yet again when the ceiling caved in between them. Vincent tried to come to a stop, his free hand covering his mouth from the debris, but the girl continued to drag him forward. Just when Vincent thought they would collide with the crumbled ceiling ahead, they dodged right. They had come to the high ceilinged room that led to the main entrance. The opening in the wall from which they had received their Lenses earlier that morning was now gone. It had collapsed, trapping the man inside so only his crimson-streaked torso was visible under the rock. The girl didn’t seem to notice him. She had dropped Vincent’s hand and her eyes were drawn close, as Mrs. Farring’s had been when reading yesterday’s message on the Lenses.

  “We need to get out of the school,” the girl said, still seeming to stare at the bridge of her nose.

  Vincent looked through the glass of the main doors where the outside seemed tinted with a grim-looking red. “Out?” he said. “Are you sure we shouldn’t stay here?”

  She shook her head. “My dad just told me to get home as fast as possible.”

  Vincent turned around, staring at the ruined hall they had just been blocked from entering, then in the opposite direction where the blaze had grown even closer, and then out through the main doors.

  “Vincent,” the girl said, firmly, but composed. Vincent turned to her, and with her in front of him, his periphery seemed suddenly blurred, the smoke and dust and flames blissfully out of focus. The screams, too, sounded muffled and distant. When the girl held out her hand, Vincent hardly heard the explosion that sounded somewhere behind them. He looked down at the girl’s fingers, steady, as they stretched out to him. “Trust me,” she said.

  And without really knowing why, he did.