Page 67 of Shaped to Be Yours

“Thank you.”

“You will have to do so along the way!” Beck called. He was sitting at the results monitors, one of which fed in data collected from the portal in the woods. “We need to get to the research site immediately.”

“Is it showing signs of activity?” I went to him.

“Mildly for now, but yes.” Beck showed me a steady change in stability in nearly every reading. “Similar readings occurred not last night but the night before, late in the evening, and minimal enough that the guards reported only a flicker of light. We cannot be sure if it will remain minimal today.”

Then he tapped his phone beside him on the desk, where I could see a string of incoming messages.

“More importantly,” Beck continued, “the guards in the woods are requesting backup. Like the protest here, people are gathering near the DO NOT ENTER signs outside the trees.”

“What?” Jason exclaimed. “By my house?”

“Oh whoa,” Bina said, looking at her phone. “I think it’s getting kind of, like, worse everywhere.” She propped her phone on the nearest table in view of everyone and started playing a live streaming newscast.

“Is that the school?” Jason rushed over.

“This footage from only a few minutes ago proves the stress the new tester town of Elder Ridge is under, as citizens gather to express their dissatisfaction with the town opening itself to monster immigration. Here at the elementary school, one parent had this to say.”

The footage switched from the newscaster to a recording of a fairly average looking man, maybe early to mid-30s, in a business suit and no tie.

“McDickhole again?” Jason growled.

“Who now?” Bina laughed.

“Think of the turmoil this decision has already caused because of deceit, on both sides. We do not condone what those arrested yesterday partook in, but we understand their fear. We feel it too. We want to know our children are safe.”

The man lifted a maybe ten-year-old girl to rest on his hip.

“He’s the asshole who started shit outside the coffee house the other day,” Jason said, “and who’s been harassing my mom. Now he’s using his daughter like a prop?”

The camera panned to a middle-aged woman with text beneath her listing her as Principal Greystone.

“Mr. McPherson, please, there is nothing we can do for you if the board—”

“You are our last line of defense!”

The camera panned back to McPherson, who’d interrupted her.

“You are the ones protecting our children when we can’t. If we can’t trust that they’ll be safe in your care, what can we trust?Whocan we trust? What aren’t we being told about these monsters and the experiments happening right inside the woods behind your secretary’s house?”

“Fuck. I’m going.”

“Jason, wait.” I intercepted him. The report had returned to live footage as the newscaster recapped events. “It’s dispersing, see? And you can see Whitmore and your mom heading to their cars. He was there. She’s okay.”

That seemed to calm Jason though not by much. “They must be sending everyone home and closing the school for the rest of the day.” His phone buzzed before he could say more, and when he checked it, he looked even more calmed. “It’s Whitmore. He says he’s glad his spy app wasn’t wrong that I wasn’t at the school, because he’d half expected to find me in the middle of it.”

Jason probably would have been if we’d known about this sooner.

“Mom’s headed home, and he’s headed into the woods to be part of the backup. But if they need backup,” he spoke as he typed back to Whitmore, “how bad is it?” Jason stared with a pinched brow until an answer came. “He can’t say until he’s there, but he wants us to stay here. Yeah, fuck that!” He clearly sent that line to Whitmore too, and also, “Meet you there!” before he shoved his phone away and looked at me. “We need to go. Right now.”

“I’m with you,” I said.

Zinnia and Beck were already gathering equipment to head to the research site.

“Except for you two,” Jason said to Kai and Bina. “Stay inside the facility.”

“But Jason,” Kai argued, “I cannot stay if you and our parents are going into the fray. I want to help too.”

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