There was so much more to it, and he was learning more of it every week and month. The colors meant things, and he had only worked out the blues and the reds. Other colors separated from the white at times. There were a lot of greens in the crowd and along the station, pulling away from the outlines. He had ideas about what they meant, but he couldn’t say anything with confidence.

The fractures and formations in distortions around people were another part of it. There were elements to the way things broke up and distorted that had deeper meaning, things he didn’t understand in a way he could explain, but which made it easy for him to relate one personality and personality type to another, familiar one.

The portal took up much of the station in front of him. His multifaceted senses covered the tract of Gimel surrounding the portal, and the areas of Bet on the far side. His view encompassed the surroundings on the other side, the people, the terrain, and the different colors that bled out from the sharper white outlines.

You’re in the weeds, Relay communicated.

Crystalclear lifted his walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Weeds?”

Not entirely with us. Lost, or in a bit of a daze.

Crystalclear looked out beyond the portal. At the people amassed around it, human-shaped outlines with the outlines of clothes, blurs smearing around the white lines, their heads replaced with fractured, kaleidoscopic messes. A large group were in eerie unison. Singing together, possibly, or chanting.

“Yeah,” he replied, one more word for what others would perceive as a one-sided conversation.

It was his perpetual reality. To be mundane, or to be lost. The knowledge out of his reach, there if he could find out how to reach for it or connect it.

He focused more on the crowd.

His difficulty wasn’t in tracking everyone, so much as it was finding the right angles. He didn’t have eyes with his power deployed like this, and he wasn’t limited to one point of view. He set about making sure he could investigate everyone and their carry-on baggage without anyone being hidden with their outline closely matching someone they were standing in front of or behind.

He didn’t move his head as he looked back, up the stairs and out at the loosely organized lines of people. The trio had joined the line.

He used the phone, “The three people Relay wanted you guys to keep an eye out for just joined the line. They’re behind a shorter, elderly couple. One of them’s agitated.”

“Thank you, Crystalclear,” the voice on the phone replied.

While more of his focus was dwelling in that direction and area, making sure he was seeing everything from the necessary angles, he became aware of two people who others were paying a great deal of attention to.