Silas woke up at 6:14 AM hoping it had been a dream.
It had not been a dream.
The device was still there, green faceplate catching the early light coming through his window blinds, warm against his wrist like it had spent the night getting comfortable. He held it up and stared at it from the ceiling-facing position of someone who had not yet decided to fully commit to being awake. The ten silhouettes on the dial hadn't changed. The band was still sealed. Nothing about it had shifted in the night to make it more explainable.
'Right. Okay. Still happening.'
He sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and spent three minutes just rotating the dial back and forth with his thumb. Click. Click. Click. Ten positions. He'd counted twice last night and once again now just to be sure. Ten alien creatures locked behind a green faceplate on a sixteen-year-old's wrist in a Metropolis apartment. If he told anyone at school today they would either think he was lying, think he was losing it, or worst case think it was cool and tell everyone.
'Devon would definitely tell everyone.'
He got up, pulled on his school uniform Metropolis Preparatory Academy, navy and grey, blazer with the gold crest that his mom ironed every Sunday and stood in front of the bathroom mirror trying different sleeve positions. The blazer's left sleeve sat just low enough to cover the device completely if he kept his arm relaxed. The moment he reached for anything it would ride up and show the green edge of the faceplate.
'Long sleeve under the blazer. Tuck it down. Don't reach for anything with the left hand. Don't bump it on anything. Don't let anyone grab your arm. Simple.'
He put on a grey thermal undershirt, pulled the sleeve tight over the device, and added the blazer on top. Checked the mirror. Checked it again.
Passable. Barely.
....
His mother was already in the kitchen when he came out, still in her scrubs from a double shift, standing at the counter with coffee and the expression of someone who had been up thinking for several hours. She looked at his left arm first. He'd expected that.
"Still on."
"Still on."
She poured him a glass of orange juice and slid it across the counter without being asked. He caught it with his right hand, deliberately.
"I called in a favour this morning,"
she said, wrapping both hands around her mug.
"There's a woman I know from the hospital. Patricia Vasquez she used to work materials analysis at S.T.A.R. Labs before she went into medical research. I didn't tell her what it was. I just asked if she knew anyone who was discreet. Someone outside the official reporting chain."
'She was up all night working the problem. Of course she was.'
"Did she know anyone?"
"She gave me a name. I'm looking into him before I make contact. Until then"
"Sleeve down, don't tell anyone, don't touch the dial."
"Don't touch the dial."
"Mom. I'm not going to"
"Silas."
"I'm not going to touch the dial at school."
She looked at him for a long moment with the measuring look, the one that was taking stock of exactly how much she believed that. Then she nodded, once, and turned back to her coffee.
"Eat something before you go."
He grabbed a granola bar from the cabinet, kissed her on the cheek, and headed for the door. He was halfway into the hallway when she called after him.
"And Silas?"
"Yeah?"
"If anything and I mean anything feels wrong today. Any pain, any heat, any tingling in your arm you call me immediately. I don't care if you're in the middle of class."
'She's scared. She's hiding it well but she's scared.'
"I will. I promise."
He meant it.
....
The 7:40 bus to Metropolis Prep ran along Shuster Avenue, past the Daily Planet building with its spinning golden globe, past the fountain where Superman had once stopped a runaway tanker truck with his bare hands the bronze plaque confirmed this and through Suicide Slum, which everyone called the Suicide Slum except on official city documents where it was the Southside Revitalization District, a name that had fooled exactly nobody.
Silas sat with his bag on his lap and his left arm pressed against his side. He'd grown up in this city. He knew its rhythms the way the news cycle exploded every time a cape was spotted, the way people instinctively looked up at a sonic boom, the way cab drivers argued about whether Superman or Green Lantern had done more for east side property values.
'This city has Superman. It has the Justice League on speed dial. It has S.T.A.R. Labs and the GCPD Special Crimes Unit and about a dozen other things designed specifically to deal with extraterrestrial situations. Whatever this is it's not like there's a gap I need to fill. There are professionals.'
The bus lurched to a stop at a red light. Outside the window, a newspaper stand displayed the morning edition of the Daily Planet. The headline was something about a Intergang weapons bust in the harbour. Below it, a smaller headline: SUPERMAN RESPONDS TO REACTOR INCIDENT IN COAST CITY.
'Right. Professionals who are currently very busy.'
Devon dropped into the seat beside him two stops later, backpack half-open, tie already crooked at 7:43 in the morning, which was impressive dedication to entropy.
"You got home okay last night? Your mom text me asking if you'd left."
"She texted you?"
"At like twelve-fifteen. I was already asleep so I didn't see it until this morning."
'Of course she did. Nuclear option.'
"I got home fine. Lost track of time in the park."
"The park? It was midnight."
"I was cutting through. Taking the long way."
Devon gave him the particular look that sixteen years of friendship produced the one that said he didn't fully believe that but had already calculated that pushing wouldn't get him further. He fixed his tie in the window's reflection, gave up after two attempts, and pulled out his phone.
"We've got the history presentation today. You finish your slides?"
'The history presentation. Right. Normal Wednesday. Slides. School. Normal.'
"Finished them last week."
"Of course you did."
"You didn't finish yours."
"I finished three of the five slides. That's sixty percent. That's a D-plus and I will take it."
Silas almost laughed. Almost felt normal. Then the bus hit a pothole and his left arm knocked against the window frame and the device pulsed one firm, warm beat against his wrist, like a reminder and normal evaporated completely.
'Two more slides, Devon. Please have two more slides. I need something ordinary to think about.'
....
Metropolis Preparatory Academy had roughly eight hundred students, a trophy case devoted largely to academic decathlon victories, and the specific institutional energy of a place that took itself very seriously. The hallways smelled like floor polish and dry-erase markers. The teachers called you by your last name. There was a portrait of Lex Luthor in the main hall from the brief period when he'd been a school benefactor, before the school board had quietly rotated it to storage during the second Luthor trial.
Silas moved through the morning crowd with his left arm tucked close and his right hand doing all the work locker combination, notebook, the three-step handshake with Marcus from chemistry. He was adapting to it naturally, compensating without thinking, and that ease worried him slightly.
'You're already hiding it without trying. That's either smart or the beginning of a problem.'
First period AP Chemistry and second period English both passed without incident. In English they were three weeks into Invisible Man, and Ms. Reyes called on him twice for the discussion about visibility and identity and the performance of self in a world that had already decided who you were.
'Okay, that's a little on the nose today.'
He was walking between second and third period when it happened.
A hand came from his left a passing student cutting through the crowd carelessly, backpack swinging wide and caught his left arm just below the elbow. The contact was brief, thoughtless, the kind of collision that happened forty times a day in a hallway with eight hundred people. But the blazer sleeve rode up an inch and a half.
The green faceplate caught the overhead lights.
The student a junior Silas vaguely recognized, tall, football team, name starting with a B slowed mid-step and looked down. Looked at Silas's wrist. Looked up at Silas.
"Yo, what is that?"
"Watch."
"That's not a watch, that's is that glowing? That thing is glowing green."
"It's a fitness tracker. Limited edition. Japanese import."
The junior stared at it for another two seconds. Silas kept his expression completely neutral, the way his mother kept hers when a patient said something alarming steady, unhurried, giving nothing away.
"That's wild. Where'd you get it?"
"Online. They sold out pretty fast."
The junior nodded, already losing interest the crowd moving around them, someone calling his name from down the hall. He drifted away. Silas pulled his sleeve back down, turned, and walked in the opposite direction toward third period.
'Japanese import. That was the best you could do. Japanese import.'
'It worked though.'
....
Lunch was the cafeteria's version of rice and chicken, which was fine, and Devon's extended analysis of why their history teacher Mr. Garfield held a personal grudge against him specifically, which was detailed and largely unconvincing. Silas ate with his right hand and nodded at the appropriate moments and was doing extremely well at being a normal person having a normal lunch until the television mounted on the cafeteria wall cut to a breaking news alert.
The chyron read: ARMED ROBBERY IN PROGRESS METROPOLIS CENTRAL BANK MULTIPLE HOSTAGES REPORTED.
The cafeteria noise dipped slightly that particular collective reflex Metropolis residents had developed, the brief pause when the city's frequency changed. Half the students glanced at the screen. A few pulled out phones. Someone at the far table said, "Superman' ll handle it," with the bored confidence of someone who had lived here long enough to treat superheroes as civic infrastructure.
The device pulsed.
Not its usual slow heartbeat rhythm. Three short pulses, quick and deliberate, like someone knocking on a door. Silas's left hand went to his right wrist instinctively covering the device under the table and he sat very still.
'What was that? That was different. That was definitely different from the regular pulse.'
The device pulsed again. Three times. Then the faceplate warmed noticeably, not painful, but distinct a heat with direction to it, almost like a compass needle swinging toward something.
'Are you reacting to the news? Can you even hear the news? You don't have ears. You don't how are you doing that?'
"Silas."
Devon was looking at him. Silas realized he'd stopped eating mid-bite.
"You good?"
"Yeah. Fine. Just tired."
"You look like you're trying to hear something."
"I'm fine, Dev. What were you saying about Garfield?"
Devon, bless him, pivoted immediately back to the Garfield grievance without further inquiry. Silas tucked his left hand under the table and pressed his thumb lightly against the faceplate.
The warmth pulsed back at him. Steady. Patient. Waiting.
'No. Absolutely not. I am at school. I have a history presentation in forty minutes. I am not no.'
On the cafeteria TV, a news helicopter was showing aerial footage of the bank. Police cruisers ringed the building. No cape in the sky yet.
'Someone will handle it. Someone always handles it in this city. That is not my problem.'
The device pulsed three times again.
'Stop that.'
It did not stop.
....
The robbery was resolved by 1:30 PM. The cafeteria TV caught the tail end of it during the lunch period's final minutes a brief, spectacular clip of a red and blue figure moving through the upper floor of the bank at a speed that the news camera could barely track, and then four men in tactical gear being set outside on the pavement with their wrists zip-tied together, and then Superman standing on the bank steps saying something to the officer in charge that was calm and efficient and took under twenty seconds.
The device went quiet the moment it was over.
Just like that. The three-pulse rhythm stopped, the directional heat faded, and it went back to its ordinary slow heartbeat as if it had simply been monitoring the situation and, satisfied that it was resolved, had stood down.
'You were tracking that. You were actually tracking that.'
Silas sat through his history presentation he got a ninety-three, Devon got a sixty-eight, the D-plus prediction had been optimistic and the rest of his afternoon classes with a new and specific awareness of the device that hadn't been there this morning. It wasn't just warm and sealed and mysterious. It was paying attention. It was responsive. It had some kind of sensor or awareness or intelligence that was monitoring the world around it and reacting to what it found.
'Which means it's not just a piece of equipment someone lost. It's active. It's running. Whatever it is it's been running this whole time.'
He was last off the bus at his stop, waiting until the other kids had gone before stepping down onto the pavement. The afternoon light was low and orange, lengthening the shadows of the apartment buildings along his street. He stood on the corner for a moment, alone, and looked down at his wrist.
He pushed his sleeve up.
The device sat there on his brown skin, green faceplate catching the late light, the dial resting on position one. The silhouetted figure inside it was broad and vaguely humanoid with what looked like two sets of arms. He turned the dial slowly. Position two: thinner, taller, insectoid. Position three: massive, blocky, rocky. Position four: small, crystalline, delicate-looking. He clicked through all ten slowly, studying each shape, trying to understand what he was looking at.
'Ten species. Ten different kinds of life somewhere out there. And one of you decided my wrist was the right address.'
His phone buzzed. His mom.
*How was school? Anything feel wrong?*
He typed back: *School was fine. Presentation went well. Nothing felt wrong. It did something weird at lunch tell you when I'm home.*
Three dots appeared immediately. Then: *On my way home now. We'll talk. Don't touch the dial.*
'I know, Mom.'
He pulled his sleeve back down. Started walking toward home. Above him, a news drone circled slowly over the city, its camera eye sweeping the skyline for the next thing, always the next thing because in Metropolis there was always a next thing, always something crackling at the edges of ordinary life, always the sky about to do something unexpected.
Silas Foster walked home under that sky with ten alien lives locked on his wrist and the growing, reluctant understanding that the device pulsing quietly against his arm had not ended up there by accident.
'Someone sent you here. And sooner or later I'm going to have to figure out who and why me.'
He turned the corner onto his street.
Above the rooftops, something red and blue caught the last of the afternoon sun and was gone before he could blink.
'Yeah. This city.'