He got his phone out, opened Sims. He sent Beth out on a quest so that she could get some more furniture. But suddenly the room was beeping more urgently. Eli stood—his grandfather seemed fine to him—then stuck his head out into the hall. Two nurses were charging toward him.

“What’s going on?” he said as they pushed past him into the room.

“His heart rate dropped,” one said. “Like a lot.”

Eli found the heartbeat line on the monitor, with long straight-aways between beats and beeps. He hadn’t noticed how quiet the room had gotten before the urgent beeps, but now the beats got faster again. The line more hilly.

“And now seems to be stabilizing,” one nurse said.

But then the beeps seemed to get too frequent. The line too mountainous, like a lie detector test gone crazy. His grandfather’s body started to buck in the bed; nurses rushed to calm or restrain. He was jolted awake.

“This makes no sense.” A nurse’s voice above the beeping. “He has a pacemaker.”

Then just like that, a normal heartbeat. His grandfather mumbling, “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

“It’s okay, Grandpa,” Eli said, going to his side. “You’re fine now.”

The nurses left then, and Eli picked up his bag and set it on the foot of the bed. He took the device out just to put it back in again.

A message said: Pacemakers are fun.

Eden’s plan better work.

Ilanka

ILANKA

What a weird day. What a weird couple of days. They’d evacuated at the bomb threat like everyone else and had taken the dreaded bus to Ilanka’s. Once home, Ilanka had been tempted to ask the others whether somehow the device was involved. Especially when she’d heard the bomb being described as a small cube that had a red digital countdown display. But a part of her didn’t want to know.

Whatever.

They were probably mad at her.

She’d left her phone off most of the day after telling her mom they were home and fine. Now, she turned it on. She had not one single text. Which seemed strange. But then there had been some missing texts on her parents’ phones, too, during the whole confusion about the accident. Had the device had something to do with that, also, or had it just been a glitch in service?

It didn’t matter.

No one had even missed her?

Did they even get her text explaining the confusion?

She looked out at the skyline and thought about that imaginary tightrope wire of hers, felt those same pangs, still, of wanting to escape her life. All in due time, she guessed.

She started a text, Hey guys. Just checking in to make sure you got my texts? What’s the latest with the device?