Mind clear.

Nothing.

All Winnie knew of was what her natural senses told her. The air was cool and dry. Wind whispered from the car's air conditioning vents. Children shrieked and giggled in the park outside. The leather seats crinkled beneath her with every shift she made. She was sitting in a rental car that Victoria had picked up after they got off the repulse grid, and they'd stopped at a market in Mexico. Victoria was picking up supplies while Winnie was supposed to be practicing.

First, her warmup exercise. Winnie visualized the kitchenette where Alex had kept her and Winnie. No trouble. She didn't even know whether the citadel had moved or not; her mind went straight there.

Next, she visualized the moon landing. There were the footprints and the bleached American flag. Everything looked the same, except for being dark. The earth glowed high above in the moon's sky. Asia was facing the moon right now.

Next, she visualized a hopper that had been traveling ahead of her and Victoria during the South American leg of their trip. It had originally contained a young couple who'd argued in Portugese. It seemed like they were on a vacation. When Winnie visualized that hopper, she didn't look at it as a whole, but rather she looked inside of it to see if the couple were still there. They weren't. When Winnie pulled her focus away, she saw the the hopper was parked in a lot in Honduras. That was progress. Yesterday, she would not have been able to pull that hopper into mind without first knowing where it was, but this was progress she'd made hours ago.

Her next goal was to visualize Victoria's tattoo. She was somewhere in the market across the street from where they'd landed, but where she was exactly didn't matter. Her current teenage body had a tattoo around her belly button. Winnie visualized her mind right against Victoria's belly, staring down at her naval ash though it were a crater upon a landscape. It worked. Winnie saw it, which of course she did, Winnie thought. Winnie knew exactly where Victoria's naval was relative to her body, just as she knew where the moon landing was relative to the moon. Only now she needed to expand her view and see the world outside this torso landscape.

She saw Victoria's baggy T-shirt. Other tattoos lined her arms. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail. Then Winnie looked into the "sky". Victoria was looking over dried and withered mangos. She was picking from a selection, watched over by a merchant who ignored her upturned disgust to favor other customers. More details washed in. Around her were other bins of equally frail fruits. It was the southeast corner of the market, where naturally grown foods were sold at astronomical prices.

Winnie checked that she wasn't imagining any of this. She wasn't. Victoria was in the same place when Winnie visualized the market separately.

That technically meant Winnie had just made a breakthrough. Victoria's idea had been to imagine people more like astral bodies, and to instead locate something on them instead of them themselves. And it had worked.

She located Victoria. It had been that simple—underwhelming given the months of practice leading up to this. Victoria had said that when it finally happened, it would be as simple as something clicking into place—just a subtle change that made it right.

She tried it again on her mother by focusing upon her mother's nose. Upon seeing it, she pulled away with much less careful mental preparation. Her mother was sitting on the couch at home. It didn't seem like she was doing anything at all—another space out. Winnie had written her a message, but it looked like her mother hadn't read it yet. She was notoriously slow about that. It was frustrating that she could have proof that her daughter was alive if she'd just grab the tablet on the side table right there. What mattered was that Winnie had succeeded once again in locating someone.

She tried yet again. This time, she focused on the naval of her original body, the one Alex had stolen from her. She hardly had to focus on it at all before taking all of the surrounding scene into mind. Alex was seated on a bed with legs curled beneath him as though fitting into the preteen girl persona.

But the bed he was on was... her bed?

Details flooded in quickly. Alex was in her dorm room on the Lakiran campus, looking through her tablet. Why? The campus was still evacuated. He shouldn't be there. No one should. He was alone apart from the security team and the shuttle that brought him here.

He was paging through her contact list. With each entry, he opened the page and studied their info. One was Ray Mackerson, a boy she knew from Seattle. Alex paged down to look at what screen names, email addresses, and personal info was available. Every person Winnie knew would be on that list. Page after page of hostages.

Winnie snatched up Victoria's tablet. She browsed to the same website. Her frantic hands failed the login password twice before she got in. Alex meanwhile had moved onto the next contact—a girl Winnie hardly knew from highschool. Alex only had to check her comment history to see who she was closest with. He'd know every person she even remotely cared about.

A message popped up warning her that this device had never been used with this account before. She had to type in more information before getting in. Her hands raced over the touch pad.

The next contact: Nava. She'd been on the cheerleading team with Winnie. With interest, Alex studied a picture containing both Nava and Winnie.

Winnie got in. She scanned for a "Change Password" page, filled out the form, and submitted.

When Alex tabbed back to the contact list, he was greeted by a new page.

Your session has expired.

A smile crept onto Alex's face. "Someone's watching, aren't they? Thought you might."

He minimized the browser. On the tablet's desktop were many social media apps, all connected with friends or family in some way. Winnie would have to change the passwords on all of them. No. She'd have to delete them.

Alex clicked on her phone app, and Winnie immediately browsed for that app's website. As she was logging on, Alex perused through her call history. Page after page of calls to the same number: her mother. She was the only person Winnie used this app for. All of her friends used something more modern, but her mother was slow to adopt. Alex pressed redial.

Winnie's mind was already there when her mother's tablet jingled. Her mother glanced at the caller ID, then explosively snatched the tablet up.

"Eun-Yeon?"

"Hi, Mom," said Alex.