“Wouldn’t it be more effective to keep their heads up and scan for movement?” Alex said. “I mean, if you’re on the lookout for kids, it seems pretty dumb to keep your eyes glued to the ground—or your non-eyes or whatever.”

I hadn’t looked away from the membrane. Slowly, it dawned on me what Ezekiel had been doing. The realization made my throat go so dry that I had to swallow before I could talk. “They’re Mappers,” I said.

Everyone looked at me.

“What do you mean?” Ben asked.

Ezekiel’s lips fluttered as if he were about to say something, but all that came out was an odd vowel sound. The fast-forward stream kept zipping across the membrane covering his eyehole.

“They’re mapping the terrain,” Dr. Chatterjee said.

Ben’s laugh was high-pitched, nervous. “For what?”

I pried my eyes off the sight beneath me, looking at Patrick. “Do you remember Sheriff Blanton?”

Alex spoke before Patrick could reply. “What about my dad?”

I said, “When we came in, he was in your closet with his head tilted back toward the ceiling.”

“Like he was catching a signal,” Patrick said.

“What if he wasn’t receiving?” I said. “What if he was transmitting? Sending data.”

“Data?” Ben said. “What data?”

“This,” I said, pointing at the miniature feed playing in Ezekiel’s eye membrane.

We watched all that terrain continue to be vacuumed up and outlined as Ezekiel chewed up turf. It was hard to tell where he was heading until he bumped into a wall. The angle crept along the wall, coming to a locked door. Ezekiel’s hand rose into range, clutching his massive janitor’s ring of keys. He tried maybe fifteen keys in the lock, though considering the sped-up view, this took only a few seconds to watch. And then a key fit, the door swung wide, and the scene scrolled through a classroom. It moved through various floors and classrooms, the school’s interior being mapped like the football field.

The whole time Ezekiel’s cheek twitched, his Adam’s apple undulating. Aside from that, his face stayed expressionless.

“Wait a minute,” Ben said. “So you think this thing’s turning people into computers?”

Dr. Chatterjee said, “As organisms we’re not unlike computers to begin with. I mean to say they’re not unlike us. Maybe that’s why the eyeholes go all the way through. Maybe they need to access—or plug into—all parts of the brain.”