The taxi smelled like coffee and cigarettes and something else—cheap perfume mixing with sweat and old upholstery. Yorik's neck glistened above his taxi uniform collar, and he kept rubbing it with one thick hand while the other stayed on the wheel. His eyes kept finding Yosuke in the rearview mirror, then darting away.

Yosuke pressed his face against the window, watching his breath fog the glass. Three circles. Five. Seven. Prime numbers felt safe, indivisible.

"First time in the city?" Yorik's voice floated from the front seat.

"First time anywhere."

Seattle rose around them in towers of glass and steel. The neon made his eyes water. Too bright. Too much. He cataloged details he couldn't stop noticing—the precise angle of traffic lights swaying in wind, windshield wipers that didn't quite match the turn signal's rhythm.

The black slacks felt wrong against his skin. Tailored. Belted. Everything crisp and tight and cold even though it was summer. He tugged at the stiff collar, missing his soft hospital joggers and warm bed so intensely it hurt. Out here, everything felt sharp and exposed.

Three weeks ago, he'd woken to white walls and pain.

A nurse's face swimming into view—mismatched eyes, one blue, one with a splash of yellow like a sun breaking through clouds. He'd stared at that yellow dot for hours, trying to understand why her eyes didn't match, why his own body felt like borrowed clothes.

"Easy now," she'd said. "You've been asleep a long time."

But it wasn't sleep. This had been different. Like being erased and badly redrawn.

She'd asked his name. He'd grasped at fragments—desert, darkness, a cave where someone called out—

"Yosuke." The word tasted like truth, even though he didn't know why.

Later came the tubes. God, the tubes. One in his arm, another disappearing under the sheets. The shame when he realized what it was for.

"Wilkes?" His voice small. "The tube... I don't want..."

She'd understood immediately. Had helped him to the bathroom on shaking legs. Simple dignity, freely given.

Yosuke pulled the manila envelope from his pocket, needing something to do with his hands. The cash felt crisp and new. He counted it again. One thousand dollars. Exactly one thousand.

His mind raced with possibilities. Those fast track cars he'd seen on TV commercials—the boys' amazed faces when the tiny vehicles zoomed around loops. He wanted one. Pizza too. He could buy so much pizza! Mountains of it, cheese stretching forever—

He picked up the ID card, tracing the name with his thumb. The letters looked strange together. Foreign.

"Yo-soo-kay Shee-rai," he said, the syllables jumbling in his mouth.

Yorik coughed, rubbing his sweaty neck again. His eyes met Yosuke's in the rearview mirror.

"Yo-su-ke," he corrected slowly. "Shi-ra-i. It's Japanese." A pause. "You don't know Japanese?"

Yosuke shook his head.

Yorik's eyes lingered on him in the mirror. "Strange," he muttered. "Very strange."

The city released them gradually. Glass towers surrendered to evergreen sentinels marching alongside the highway. Something in Yosuke's chest unknotted with each mile of forest.

"Better?" Yorik asked, lighting a cigarette. The smoke mixed with his perfume-sweat smell.

"Yeah." Yosuke breathed deep. Much better.

He'd spent so much time reading at the hospital. Books were safe. Predictable.

Wilkes had brought him everything she could find. A worn copy about penguins he'd read seven times—something about their determined waddling made sense to him. Awkward on land, graceful in water. Maybe he'd find his water eventually.

Then one morning: a magazine. TIME, July 1996.

He'd torn through it. "The Rise and Fall of Human Enhancement" in red block letters. A face not quite his but close enough—blue eyes burning through stage makeup. Ratio. Green fur and leather pants. The prototype. The first one.

Something about the image had spiked his fever. Wilkes rushing in with cold compresses.

But there'd been others too. A Nike ad. A young woman running, those same familiar blue eyes. And there—visible on her extended hand: a small dark mark on her thumb.

Yosuke had stared at his own unmarked thumb for a long time after that.

Two hundred thousand Enhanced, the article said. All relocated to Mortercreek now. All marked.

But not him. Never him. Why?

The highway narrowed. Rain started, drumming against the roof. Gray clouds pressed down on gray water. Everything turning the color of wet concrete and moss.

"Greenwode's not much to look at," Yorik said. "Used to be a logging town. Now it's just... quiet."

Quiet sounded good. Quiet sounded safe.

But there'd been visitors. Men in black suits carrying folders stamped with red seals.

Bouchard hustling him into empty rooms, baseball cap pulled low. Wilkes pressing something into his hands—cold, gray, rectangular. "You're my nephew from Portland. Just play and don't look up."

The GameBoy. He'd been terrible at it. The pink blob—Kirby—kept falling into pits. But when he figured out the jump button, when Kirby puffed up and floated, Yosuke had giggled.

He'd been so absorbed making the little creature dance that he'd completely missed the agents searching the hospital. Just Kirby bouncing, cheerful beeps filling his ears.

Searching for Enhanced patients. For people like him. People who should have marks on their thumbs.

"Deception Pass coming up," Yorik announced.

Steel bones suspended over churning water. Islands floating in mist like sleeping giants. A snow-crowned mountain piercing clouds.

Yosuke's breath caught. His shoulder blades itched.

Two nights ago. The worst memory.

The doctor's office, cleared except for one chair. Outside the window, that girl in the building across the way, writing in her diary. He'd watched her for weeks—dancing, studying, making faces when she thought no one could see.

Then she'd looked up. Their eyes met.

He'd ducked behind the curtain, face burning.

"There you are." The old man's voice. A small black case. "One last thing before tomorrow..."

A glass of water. A small red pill. "Lysergic acid diethylamide."

"Will it kill me?"

"Definitely not."

So he'd swallowed it.

The lights began to pulse. The doctor's face melted. Pain exploded through his chest. Something vast and furious clawed up from depths he didn't know existed. His skin too tight. He was larger than this fragile shell.

A predator.

Dark shapes poured through the window—birds with knife-edge wings. The doctor grabbed his shoulder.

Something snapped.

"SHUT UP!" The voice wasn't his—deeper, ancient with rage. He'd snatched the doctor's cane—

Then nothing.

He'd blinked and found himself on the window ledge. Six floors up. The girl screaming.

"YOSUKE!" The doctor's voice, tight with fear. Blood running down his face. "Step back!"

They'd yanked him back inside. The broken cane on the floor. The doctor's bleeding head.

"Was I trying to kill myself? That makes no sense! I've barely lived!"

"You're safe. We learned your old self is in there, behind some kind of barrier."

Bouchard: "We can't send him to Greenwode if he's this unstable."

"He's going. He'll do better with normal children his age."

Yosuke shook his head, banishing the memory. The taxi swallowed more miles.

That last morning, the elevator had terrified him. The metal box descending, his stomach lurching with each floor.

He'd yelped—actually yelped like a scared animal. Wilkes had laughed, but there were tears in her eyes. She'd fussed with his collar again even though it was already perfect.

"Look at you," she'd said, voice catching. "So eager to leave us."

But she'd understood. He needed to go. Needed to try.

She'd pressed a folded paper into his palm. "My home number. Be careful out there, John Smith."

Her fingers had brushed the silver fish pendant at his throat. "Better tuck this away. Keep it safe."

Then she'd touched his face, gentle. "The glasses too. Remember what the doctor said—put them on before you arrive. To hide your special eyes." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "They could get you in trouble if the wrong people saw them."

"Well, here we are."

Yorik's voice snapped him back. They'd stopped in front of red brick trying to imitate grander schools, cobbled together from forgotten pieces. Rain streaked the windows.

Greenwode.

Yosuke reached for the small box on the seat beside him. The thick-rimmed glasses felt heavy in his hands. He slipped them on.

Everything went blurry. Obstructed. The world softened at the edges, details bleeding together. He blinked, disoriented, but the blur remained.

"Just try to be normal. Good luck, kid."

The taxi disappeared into rain and mist.

Yosuke stood alone, getting soaked. The rain smelled like pine and salt and wet earth through the blur of his false glasses. His eyes watered behind the unnecessary lenses. A foghorn moaned in the distance.

Normal. Just be normal.

Movement caught his eye—or tried to. Through the blur, he could just make out a shape in the wind-twisted madrone. A peregrine falcon, perched high, methodically cleaning its feathers.Yosuke stared, amazed. He'd read that birds of prey rarely showed themselves near buildings, preferring remote cliffs and wild places.

"Did you follow me here?" he whispered. The rain stopped abruptly, rays of pale sunlight pierced through the gray clouds.

The falcon paused its grooming, head tilting sharply. Its amber eyes met his for a brief moment before it spread its wings and launched toward Mount Baker's distant peak. Yosuke lifted his glasses and watched it disappear, his shoulder blades itching something fierce.