Elena sat numbly in the conference room, surrounded by a team of Tech United scientists, wringing her hands to try to work some feeling back into her fingers. She needed to focus on the mission at hand if they were going to have any hope of saving Sam, but Patrick's words kept ringing in her ears.

Because what he had said was true, in part. The pain had been difficult to deal with and it had influenced her, even if it wasn't her main reason for giving in. And his most biting words—that once she realized she couldn't control Sam, she had given in—was completely true, in a way.

But it wasn't cowardice or treason. It was the hardest decision she had ever made. She'd spent a lifetime walking away from things she couldn't control, but this wasn't like that. She wasn't walking away. She was asking for help. She was choosing her best chance of survival for herself and for her friends. She knew that Patrick and Sam would never forgive her for it. That if something went wrong, she'd never forgive herself for the part she'd played. She was choosing to ignore that for the time being. She couldn't control everything, couldn't understand everything, couldn't fix everyone on her own. For once—for once in her life—she accepted that.

Patrick also sat at the table. He'd arrived a few minutes after she had. He pointedly avoided her glances, and she imagined it had been a hard choice for him, whether or not to come to the meeting. Maybe he had finally realized the same thing she had: that they were Sam's best chance to live, and the more minds that could be gathered, the better.

Dr. Brooke, the scientist who had run tests on Elena a few days before—she could hardly believe it had only been a few days—gestured toward Elena. "Alright, everyone, this is Elena Holmes. She's had a chance to run tests on the subject as well as experience the effects of the anomalies firsthand, so she—"

"Kid." Patrick kept his arms crossed and leaned back in his chair.

Dr. Brooke blinked.

"He's not a subject. He's a kid."

"It's—I'm not—"

"It's just how they talk, Patrick," Elena said softly.

"I bet it is."

Elena sighed. "He just doesn't want us to forget we're talking about a child."

"Of course." Dr. Brooke straightened her coat. "Elena, would you like to share your findings?"

"You first," Patrick cut in again, glaring at Dr. Brooke. "We came to you. It's your turn to chip in."

Elena could have throttled him. For now, she just said, "Calm down, Patrick. I'm happy to share what I've learned."

Elena stood and picked up a whiteboard marker on the side wall. She pulled out her phone, where she had stored her data, and wrote up a few figures from the past couple of days. She walked them through everything she had learned: the flux measurements, Sam's ability to pull and push the effects of the anomalies in and out—she caught herself before she used the word "powers"—but how the flux always remained the same.

One Tech United employee slid forward in his seat as she finished her explanations. "Were you able to track any correlation between the signs of the perturbations and the affected radius?"

Elena translated for Patrick's sake. "Changing how much space was affected by the anomalies didn't seem to change which way the colors shifted."

"Then what did?"

"We don't know. It seems to be random."

"Chaotic system," he muttered, and tapped away at his tablet.

Elena shifted her weight from one foot to another. She looked toward Patrick, but he was still avoiding her gaze.

"And the flux is constant," Dr. Brooke said.

"Constant over the affected space, regardless of how far he pushes them out. Increasing exponentially over time."

"In response to . . ."

She shrugged. "It's as if the powers have been mostly dormant for the majority of his life."

"That's enough." Patrick glared directly at Dr. Brooke. "Your turn."

"You two are still calling him Sam."

"Yes. He prefers it."

"But his real name is Planck."

"Yes."

Dr. Brooke shook her head. "It's either one amazing coincidence, or whoever named him from birth knew what the anomalies were going to be."

Elena sank into one of the chairs. "You think it has to do with—" Realization washed over her. "Planck's constant. Of course."

"Planck's what?" This time Patrick did look at her, but only for a moment, as if he had forgotten that he wasn't supposed to be.

"Planck's constant," Dr. Brooke said. "The coefficient of proportionality between the frequency and energy of a photon."

"Elena?"

Elena almost smiled in spite of her situation. She turned to Patrick. "So . . . a photon is a particle of light, yeah?"

Patrick nodded. "I think they said that in my high school chem class, yeah."

"Okay. A photon is like a little packet of energy. Those little packets of energy get absorbed by our eyes, and that's how we see colors."

"Okay."

"Well, the amount of energy depends on the frequency of the light. You multiply frequency times Planck's Constant, and you get the amount of energy in each photon."

"Frequency?"

"Yeah . . ." This was going to be harder to explain than she had thought. "Okay. Light is a wave, right?"

"You just said it was a particle."

"Light is weird." She tried to boil it down in her mind to just the facts he needed to understand. "Okay. Let's go back a step. The colors we see depend on the amount of energy in the light. The amount of energy in the light depends on Planck's constant. Does that make sense?"

"The words you're saying make sense. But it doesn't match what we've been seeing."

"It does, though! The frequency of the light is staying the same, but the energy has been shifting. That's why we've been seeing all the colors looking off."

"But the pain."

Dr. Brooke scoffed. "Oh, of course there's been some discomfort. The absorbtion and emission of photons depends on the energy—"

"Elena," Patrick said.

This time she did smile. "You know how our eyes absorb those packets of energy to see?"

"Yeah."

"Our skin kind of does the same thing with sunlight and other types of light. And—" She pressed her lips together. How was she supposed to explain ionization energy to someone who had hardly known what a photon was thirty seconds ago? She wasn't even sure she should use the word electron.

Again, she tried to boil it down to only the facts he needed to know to move forward with the conversation. "It could cause our cells to become charged. That's why we've been shocking each other so much. It's just . . . all of the organs in our bodies depend on Planck's constant in one way or another. It's weird and complicated, but they depend on those energies being what we expect them to be. So if Sam's changing Planck's Constant in the region around himself—"

"It would change everything. It would mess up everything."

"It was enough to throw off our infrared cameras when we were first tracking you," Dr. Baker said.

Elena held back her smile. "So the last thing we don't know is what affects whether the energy increases or decreases."

"Our technicians are on it," Dr. Brooke said. "Sam's being monitored by a series of devices that should track the energy shifts as well as a myriad of other factors."

"Where is he?" Patrick asked.

"He's in an isolation chamber right now, out of range of—"

"He's alone?"

"It's okay, Patrick. It's just to protect everyone from the health effects."

"You know he can feel pain too, right? He's probably terrified!"

Dr. Brooke sighed. "He's scared of himself, not us."

Patrick's eyes fell closed, and his words from earlier crashed down on Elena. They hadn't been able to protect him from all harm or all fear, but they'd kept him from being afraid of himself. He'd believed he was a superhero. Now, finally, the reality of their exaggeration was surfacing.

No, not exaggeration. Sam was special. More special than they had ever hoped to explain to him. But far from making the choice between being the hero or villain of this story, he was nothing but the victim of forces he could never hope to control.

Well, almost never. There had been the time he pulled in his powers to take out the people who were coming after him. But there was no pretending the anomalies were anything but destructive, and he couldn't stop them all together.

She'd been wrong when she said the increases and decreases of energy were the only thing they didn't know. That was unimportant in comparison to the question of how to stop it. "What are we going to do to stop it?" Elena asked.

"To stop the anomalies?" Dr. Brooke shook her head. "Why would we want to stop them?"

"Because they're killing people."

"That's why we're keeping everyone out of range. As for Planck—you say he can push the powers in and out as he needs to survive."

"But if the flux continues to grow, he'll still die!"

"Ah, that's the other thing we discovered, though. Planck is much more biologically resistant to the effects of the anomalies than most other people. He would have to be, having lived at the epicenter his whole life."

"You're saying he can't die from the anomalies?" Patrick said.

"Well, I wouldn't say can't. But his body adapts. We're confident he has a lot more time than you think."

She shook her head. "Then why did he pass out when he pulled in his powers?"

"Shock. Would have knocked out anyone his age. He might have even thought he'd killed the people who passed out."

Elena winced. It didn't sound right to her. Even if he wasn't going to die, he was alone, afraid, and in a lot of pain.

Another scientist at the table shook his head. "Don't you realize this is bigger than any of us, Miss Holmes? This is new. Every scientific endeavor that's ever been has rested on the assumption that physics works the same everywhere in the universe. Planck changes everything."

It did change everything. In her fear she hadn't had the chance to reflect on it. Humans observed the universe from a tiny corner of a tiny galaxy and assumed everything worked the same everywhere, applied the rules they had determined in tightly controlled labs to places they'd never been. And under those assumptions, the rules worked. But Sam proved they were wrong. What else could they be wrong about?

The man smiled and shook his head. "You're starting to understand, aren't you?"

Elena took a deep breath. "I think I am."

"We thought we were slaves to the laws of the universe, but if they can be changed, they could be ours. We could harness them, control them to our advantage. We promised we wouldn't hurt him, and we won't. He holds the key to everything. Think of the applications, in weaponry alone . . ."

Elena's heart sank.

She should never have agreed to come here. Better to have let Sam die in peace than to bring him here.

Her eyes met Patrick's for just a moment. He sighed and hung his head.