Somehow, Irene got through her classes. She had no idea what she said in any of them, much less if anyone had shown up to listen. The time elided the way space used to, and suddenly she was standing outside the school's main doors, messenger bag being crushed against her under the force of Charlotte's hug.

"I missed you!" Charlotte proclaimed. She squeezed harder and Irene felt her ribs bend. Irene couldn't remember being this affectionate when she was twelve, especially not with an adult and in public. Charlotte was special, though. Having been raised as a captive in the Citadel, Ultra's combination prison and research facility, she lagged behind her peers in every metric, from height to basic knowledge about the world to emotional maturity. She'd catch up; Irene had no doubt about that. What Charlotte needed was all the stability and trust she could gather around her, and though the Tomorrow People had never been able to promise stability, they always came through on the trust.

That was one of the realities of living with and amongst telepaths-you always knew where you stood, and you always knew that everyone could see the world the way you did if they wanted to. Charlotte had had enough people taken away from her: her parents, Errol, John. It was no wonder that she clung to the ones who remained, and now Irene understood why Stephen was so protective of her. Though releasing her into the social services system was the obvious solution for what to do with an orphaned tweenager, Charlotte was a Tomorrow Person, and that meant she belonged somewhere.

Irene wrapped her arms Charlotte and rested her chin, just barely, on the top of her head. Charlotte's long blonde hair smelled like flowers, the scent that Cara had always picked out when she did the shopping. The scent brought on an unexpected wave of homesickness. "I missed you, too. Are you ready to spend a few days with me? And please let go of me because I really need to breathe."

Charlotte stepped back, a guilty expression on her face. "I'm sorry. I promise I won't hurt you again," she uttered with the sincerity of a person taking a legal oath. She bit her lip, her pointed chin quivering for a long second, and then she threw herself at Irene again.

Breathlessness issues aside, Charlotte's exuberance was nice. Irene hadn't realized how much anyone had missed her.

The happiness of their reunion couldn't disguise the other problems. With Charlotte in tow, Irene attracted more attention on the bus than ever before. The scowling, hate-filled stares took on a new menace, and Irene pulled the younger girl closer and wrapped her arm around her, as if the physical contact would protect them both. When they got off, they hurried down the sidewalk, covering the two blocks from the bus stop to Irene's tenancy with the fastest strides their legs could produce.

Because of the speed with which the arrangement had been made, Irene hadn't had a chance to clear the new addition with her landlord. Surprisingly, Mrs. O'Connell took one look at Charlotte, disappeared into the kitchen, and came back with an open bag of Oreos. "Family is the most important thing we have," she said, waving both the girls to the kitchen table. She cast a lingering glance at the hallway wall and the display of pictures that crammed its surface. The people in them who still lived had all moved far away and didn't come back to visit very often. With a start, Irene recalled that one of those people was a granddaughter about Charlotte's age. She had another about Irene's age. Was that why she'd been so willing to rent her extra bedroom to her?

"It'll only be for a couple weeks," Irene offered after Charlotte turned her attention to the cookies.

Mrs. O'Connell patted her arm. Her touch felt warm and dry, and amazingly reassuring after everything else that was going wrong. The expression that warmed her dark brown eyes held not the slightest hint of malice. Only on noting its absence did Irene realize how ordinary the look had become from those around her.

In juggling her classes and her new responsibilities toward Charlotte, Irene felt the days begin to slip away. The semester progressed; the first test passed. Getting through the day without some kind of altercation became increasingly difficult. And not just for her, either. Stephen reported more attacks: fist-fights, strangers stalking him or the others, people they'd been having ordinary conversations with about holding doors or paying for purchases suddenly turning mean. The tension was building toward an explosion. Irene didn't know what was going on-no one did-but she knew it had to be stopped.

Her first breakthrough into how came the next day, though she didn't see it for what it was immediately. Because Irene had no on-campus obligations, she and Charlotte holed up in their room with cups of hot chocolate and spent the day hanging out. Eventually, though, Irene had to get some work done, so, because Charlotte had nothing else to do, Irene gave her her iPhone.

Charlotte took it and cradled the iPhone in her hands like it was an injured bird, gently and as if afraid that it was going to flutter out of her grip. The screen's white light shone pale onto her face. "You're really going to let me play with your phone?" she asked. The wonder in her tone made Irene push aside the notes she was trying to compile and stare at the younger girl.

"Sure. Why wouldn't I?"

Charlotte shrugged. "I don't know. Most of the others don't have a phone and I guess the newer people don't know me well enough. I think they were afraid I was going to break it. Are they easy to break?" She had on a t-shirt that Irene had stopped wearing when she got the job at the college; it draped over her tiny frame, making her look like a waif. One foot was bare, the other had a red sock hanging half off it. This was the girl who had the potential to be one of the strongest TP they'd ever seen, especially if she could harness her telepathic scream. None of the others had an offensive weapon like that. And, yet, she had never held an iPhone or had the chance to play with technology that most American kids treated as a basic fact of existence.

"They can be. I have a case on mine. I've dropped it a couple of times and nothing's happened. I think you just need to be careful." She moved to squat on the floor next to Charlotte and watched as the wonders of a touch-screen device revealed themselves to the curious child.

Charlotte's fingers swept across the screen, opening and closing apps with a facility that belied her ignorance of iTechnology. She examined Irene's music collection, listened to parts of a half dozen different songs, then closed the app and moved on to the photos. Irene didn't take a lot of pictures, so there wasn't much to see there. She opened the camera app and zoomed it around the room. Irene showed her how to switch the camera view, then leaned in to pose in a series of selfies with Charlotte. This close together, they almost looked like they could be sisters. At last Charlotte made it to the last page of apps; with a disappointed frown she looked up at Irene. "Do you have Balloon Busters on yours? I've heard so much about it."

"I don't," she answered. Charlotte's face fell and Irene gestured for her to hand the phone over. "I'll get it. We can learn how to play it together. I understand that it's kind of addictive."

Charlotte smiled. "I think we can handle it."

Irene started the download and glanced over the directions for how to play while she waited. It seemed simple enough. Burst the balloons in the right order to solve the puzzle on each level. Certain sequences of balloon popping would release bonus balloons that could be needed on other levels, so it wasn't just a matter of getting through any one level, but of figuring out which balloons to use and when while working toward all the others. With all of this to remember, she could see why her students were unable to put the game down. It would be too easy to forget what you had saved up and the order you needed to release them if you kept having to put the game down to go do other things.

She explained the rules to Charlotte, who seemed to understand them as intuitively as she had the rest of the technology. As soon as the app was finished downloading, she handed the phone back over. "You go first," she said. "I'm counting on you to teach me how the game works. I want all the secrets." She eyed the notes spread out on her desk and decided to give them a little more of her attention before she got distracted with the game. It was one thing for her students to come to class unprepared, and another for her.

Charlotte crossed her legs and leaned back against the wall, getting comfortable. She looked so happy. What had she been doing at the Lair and the Refuge that the chance to play an iPhone game was bringing this much joy to her life? Had anyone realized how abnormal her life had been, or had they all been so caught up in their own survival that they'd forgotten to pay attention to the child in their midst? Irene made a mental note to talk to Stephen about that. While Charlotte was the youngest Tomorrow Person who had ever come to them, she wouldn't be the last one. The others were going to have to figure out a way to deal with the children, the runaways, the abused—all the ones who had escaped from bad homes or had been kicked out, the ones who'd had their homes taken away or the ones who didn't feel safe going back until they got their powers under control.

The textbook she'd inherited with her class was one of the worst ones she'd ever seen. Why the school thought it was worth using, and assigning to all its new instructors, was beyond her. The explanations of what terms meant were muddled, the drawings confusing. She'd caught four major factual errors in this chapter alone, which made it even more difficult to figure out how to teach the material. She could correct those errors in class, or she could teach past them under the assumption that the students hadn't read the chapter anyway. Behind her, she heard the little "bloop" sounds the balloons made as Charlotte popped them and the gasps of breath and swish of Charlotte's fingers across the screen. Irene was just puzzling over a graphic used to illustrate the main points of the next chapter—a graphic that happened to be printed in such a way that its information made no sense—when Charlotte cried out. The iPhone thudded to the carpeted floor.

Irene spun around to see the girl bent in half, her head cradled in her hands.

"What happened? Are you OK?" Irene fell across the room, unable to get to Charlotte fast enough.

Charlotte pulled her hands away and looked up through her curtain of hair. Her face had gone white, though her lips were red from having been bitten. Tooth marks still dented her bottom lips. "That hurt," she answered, her voice as pale as her skin. "What was that?"

Irene picked up the phone. Balloons still bounced across the screen with the cheerful, fast-paced music that accompanied them tinkling out of the speakers. Level 10, she saw. That hadn't taken very long at all. She thought, for sure, that Charlotte would get stuck on the first few levels. Vaguely, she recalled that the game had a social component where players had to ask their friends to send them specific kinds of balloons or popping devices. When was that supposed to kick in? Had Charlotte gotten to level 10 on her own because she was playing in single-player mode or because the social part didn't start until you were too addicted to realize how much it annoyed everyone? She examined the phone for any trace of what had made Charlotte cry out, and found nothing. "Was the light too bright?" she asked, reaching for any possibility. She knew the sounds hadn't been too loud.

Charlotte shook her head. "I don't know. I was just playing and then all of a sudden my head hurt like something was stomping all over me."

"Just your head?"

"Uh-huh," she confirmed, rubbing at her temples.

Irene studied her, searching for more signs of what had gone wrong. It was a computer game, so it had no sharp edges and moving pieces for a finger to jamb in. Could Charlotte have been hit with eye-strain? Irene sometimes got headaches after reading too long, but that took hours and Charlotte had only been playing for minutes. Well, if she knew anything, it was about the need for data collection. "Do me a favor and try to keep playing," Irene suggested, handing the phone back to the younger girl once more.

"It's a fun game," Charlotte answered, not seeming aware of Irene's concern over the game. "Level 8 was really hard, but I figured out that it's all about saving the yellow balloon for last." She started poking at the screen again, manipulating the little graphics. The bright colors and vividly rendered graphics could cause eye-strain, Irene decided, if a person stared at the screen too long in the dark. A flick of her finger, and a whole series of balloons suddenly lined up and began popping—and Charlotte cried out again, once more dropping the phone to the carpet. At least the floor was carpeted, or that case might not be enough to protect the fragile device.

Charlotte was gasping for air, fingers curled hard into her scalp. This was not normal pain.

Tucking a finger under Charlotte's chin, Irene lifted her head. Charlotte's pupils were contracted to small dots, which they shouldn't be given the lighting level of the room. Her young face was creased with pain. The symptoms weren't much to go on—and Irene was hardly an expert—but it sounded an awful lot like the effects of a Tomorrow Person trying to kill. What would have triggered that? There was no one else in the room, nothing that could be the target of a death threat.

This was interesting. And a little scary. Why would the game be triggering the part of the Tomorrow Person's mind that prevented them from killing? Irene picked up the iPhone and watched the little balloons jiggle around. They looked so innocent. "Why don't we forget the game and go do something else?"

"Like what?"

"What do you want to do?" At that age, Irene would have been thrilled with a trip to the library or a visit to the zoo. She checked the time; the zoo would be closing soon and she doubted that Charlotte knew how to get there, which meant they'd have to take the subway. The library had later hours, though she sensed that Charlotte could use some activity. Even teleporters needed exercise.

Charlotte's eyes widened as she picked up on Irene's willingness to do what she wanted. "Could we go to ice-skating?" she asked. "I've never been ice-skating."

"Never?"

Charlotte shook her head, her long hair flying. "My parents didn't like to do outside things. We had a snowball fight once when I was very young—maybe three? I remember it because I didn't know how to make snowballs, so I kept trying to throw fistfuls of snow, and they'd fall apart before they left my hand." Her brows creased as she relived the memory, her gaze turned inward. "I remember my parents laughing at me. My dad had the greatest laugh." She stopped then, like she had forgotten that she was speaking.

Irene's father hadn't had a good laugh; it had been nasally and was often too loud. He also didn't share it very much. His approval came in the form of slow nods and increased responsibility. Though, like Charlotte's, her family hadn't been much of one for outdoor activities, they had been big believers in lessons. Irene recalled lessons in ballet, swimming, surfing, tennis, basketball, and soccer. And ice-skating. None of the lessons had lasted longer than a season or two, just enough time for the Quinns to confirm that this activity, too, was not one their daughter had any natural talent in. Grace and coordination did not come naturally to her.

Then they had discovered her interest in science, and without a word, all the athletics lessons stopped so that she could attend Harry Potter summer camp, Sea World camp, and, eventually, college. She hadn't seen her father since the summer before her last semester of her PhD. They had talked a lot about advances in cloning and genetic engineering and how the very basis of humanity would be coming into question. Ironic, as it turned out, because just a few months later, she telekinetically threw her PhD adviser across the room and discovered that she was a different kind of human than anyone knew existed.

And then she was running for her life from an organization that viewed her abilities as a threat and thought that the best way to deal with people who had them was to pick them off one at a time, arbitrarily letting some of them live with their powers stripped away, killing others, and recruiting yet others to turn them against their own kind. She hadn't returned to her home or to her parents, hadn't called them, texted them, or notified them. She'd shoved what belongings she could into her backpack and disappeared. Later, she had searched for them just to make sure they hadn't been targeted too. She'd made sure her search was careful, done through as many back-channels and IP anonymizers as she could find, yet she'd spent the next week waking up with nightmares that her search had led Ultra straight to her parents. The last she knew, they were alive and doing well, and she hadn't been able to bring herself to check ever again, just in case that her checking was what put them in danger.

"Can we go ice-skating?" Charlotte asked, her fingers touching Irene's arm. "I mean, it's OK if you don't want to. We can do something else…." The speed at which she was backpedaling told Irene that she'd taken too long to answer.

"Yeah, I think we can." Trust the kid to introduce Irene to an activity that she had within her repertoire, yet never would have thought to do on her own. Irene couldn't remember the last time she'd done anything so simply touristy. She'd found her way to New York City like all the other Tomorrow People who'd been called in, which mean she'd arrived scared, hungry, and short of cash. Then John had found her and brought her into the Lair and the opportunity to go hang out in the city she now lived in never manifested. "My lesson plans can wait until we get back tonight. I think you and I could both use a little fun." A few seconds of searching turned up a place not too far away. She googled the address, studied the map, then tried to work out the best way to get there. Charlotte leaned over her shoulder to look at the map too, a studious scowl on her face.

"I know how to find that. Do you want me to teleport us?" Charlotte asked, at last. Though the question appeared innocent, a tenor to it gave away that she was worried about Irene's response. Had she been warned not to use her powers around Irene?

It was tempting to turn down the offer, to suggest that they walk or figure out the bus route. Charlotte could use some instruction in how to get herself around the city in situations when her powers wouldn't or couldn't be used. But Irene thought about the people on the bus on the way home, the ones who had looked at them with such malice. Until she figured out what was causing it, and how to protect themselves from the increasingly frequent attacks, perhaps it was best to limit how much time they spent in transition.

"Sure," Irene answered. She hadn't teleported in so long. Would it feel different now that she couldn't do it herself? She was surprised at how nervous she felt. What if the teleport didn't work? What if Charlotte wasn't any good at it and ended up dumping both of them into the street? What if she let go or slipped out of Charlotte's grasp and ended up getting caught somewhere that was neither here nor there. She had no idea how teleporting worked—none of them did—and the physics was too advanced for her to give more than a passing nod to, yet there had to be an in-between because, well, she didn't really know why. There just had to be. And she didn't want to get stuck in it. And what if teleporting as a non-teleporter hurt?

Before she could talk herself into risking the bus, she grabbed her coat, found an extra sweatshirt for Charlotte to wear, and held out her hand for the girl to take. "Let's go. One ice-skating trip, coming up."

Charlotte's fingers closed tight around hers and they disappeared.

They arrived in the parking lot outside the ice-skating rink, appearing between two cars with only the smallest puff of air. The breeze of an autumn day cooling into night brushed over their faces, bringing with it the faintest hint of snow in the near future. Irene let out her pent up breath, relieved that she'd both arrived safely and without any pain. Next to her, Charlotte was peering around the front of the cars, presumably scanning for people who might question where these two girls had come from.

"The coast is clear," she finally decreed. Then, with a tilt of her head, "What does that even mean? What coast? And how can a coast be clear? Aren't they usually dirt colored?"

Unable to help it, Irene dropped her head back and laughed. "It's a nautical idiom," she said, around chortles that sounded an awful lot like her father's.

"What does that mean?" Charlotte demanded, at the same time pulling her toward the arena that she had now spotted at the far end of the parking lot that was about half-full, mostly with compact cars of the kind favored by people who were very concerned about their carbon footprints.

"It means that you were using the term right, considering that we're not sailors on a boat, scouting for dangerous enemies on a land we're about to invade."

"Oh," Charlotte replied, clearly not understanding, but probably also beyond caring. They entered the arena and found the registration desk right in front of them. Charlotte's eyes went wider at seeing the rows of skates on the wall behind the clerk than they had on seeing the iPhone. As long as they didn't break any bones, Irene decided that this had been a good choice. They got their skates, with only a little confusion as they tried to figure out what Charlotte's shoe size was, and Irene showed Charlotte how to put the skates on.

Soon Charlotte was taking her first stumbling steps across the rubber floor mat, balanced on the thin blades. "This is so weird! Look at how hard it is to stand up!" She threw out her arms and wobbled, clearly delighting in unfamiliar contact with the ground.

"Wait until you get out onto the ice," Irene answered. "Just, take it slowly because your powers aren't going to help you here."

Charlotte nodded, though it was again clear that she wasn't really listening. Her concentration was on keeping her feet from buckling outward and her body from pitching forward.

Rock music pounded down from the speakers, filling the whole arena and making the walls vibrate. It was exciting. Irene felt her heart picking up speed and an urge to dance spread through her. Her legs twitched with the need to pick 'em up and put 'em down. She tentatively stepped onto the ice, and immediately felt her feet slip out from under her. Her arms flailed out and her body fell backwards. There was no way to stop her head from slamming into the hard ice.

And then she felt her fall slow until she came to a stop with only the gentlest bumps. Charlotte stumbled up next to her and held out a hand. "Come on! We just got here. You can't give up now."

As Irene lay there, the cold seeping through her sweatshirt, she reflected on the truth of those words, and how much easier her life would be if she could just learn to stand up on the ice.