When he had the first symptom, Gardiah Bonga-Yonge was sitting at his desk in history class.  He was fourteen years old and a Troisième student at Lycée Joss in Yaounde, Cameroun.  They were in the middle of a lesson on American Imperialism when somehow, M. Dupont went off on a tangent about a small town he once visited in Nebraska where they had some kind of throwing contest - Gardiah couldn't quite understand what it was all about - and the teacher tasted a food there called Lime Jello Surprise.  This was green and jiggled and had numerous food particles suspended inside it and apparently, M. Dupont ate quite a lot of it, disparaging it all the while.  This was typical of a Frenchman.

          Gardiah was having trouble concentrating, because something beyond bizarre was happening to his body. This was difficult to describe and if he were to try to do so, whoever was listening would undoubtedly suggest that he be taken to the hospital.  Maybe not the regular sort of hospital, but a place for the insane.  It seemed that his consciousness was flashing back and forth between his head and his stomach.  It was the strangest and most frightening sensation.  One second he would be thinking with his brain, and the next his stomach, or something in the area of his stomach.

           M. Dupont must have noticed that Gardiah was wearing an astonished expression. 

           “Monsieur Bonga-Yonge, are we shocked at green jello stories?  Does the idea of jiggly food frighten you?”
           Gardiah took a long gulp of air and answered, “Uh, non, Monsieur.  Non, the green jello sounds interesting.”  He was aware that the thinking that came with his statement was originating from his middle, not his top.  A wave of panic moved over him.

            As she bent over to pick up beads from a broken necklace her mother had dropped on the floor, Deepti Yamura had the weird sensation that some kind of vibrating cord was running down the inside front of her body.  She could feel it move when she moved, as if it were made of rubber, but still quite firm and strong.  Being a twelve-year-old of some imagination, she wondered if somehow she had swallowed a rubber band and it had grown larger - or worse yet, was she infected with some new kind of worm?  India was full of worms.  Had she eaten dirt by accident, gotten it under her fingernails when picking up her baby sister?  Her heart thumped in her chest.

            “What's the matter?” asked her mother, Ritu, always sharp-eyed.  “You have a peculiar look about you.”

            “I'm all right,” replied Deepti, but this was a lie.  She did not want to upset her mother.   Ritu had been through bad times recently, losing her brother to cancer, her father in an especially vicious political uprising between Hindu and Muslim, and now Deepti's father was behaving in a sneaky, closed-mouth manner as if he too were becoming involved in clandestine affairs.    It was not a good time for Deepti to tell her that she had some strange thing inside her body. 

            Just then, she happened to glance at the carved box in which Ritu kept her sewing materials.  The box was closed, but Deepti could see inside it perfectly, as if it were open.  Perhaps even more perfectly because if she wanted, she could also see into the wood and watch a little insect who lived in a small tunnel there! My God, what was happening to her?  Suddenly, everything seemed covered with fog and she slipped to the floor in a dead faint.

 

            Yuan Chang sat at the dining table in his family's apartment on the fourth floor of a new, very sleek high-rise.  Outside the windows was a worse than usual settling of smog, but underneath it, Taipei bustled as usual.  Horns honked, someone screamed, and various engines revved.   It was two years since Yuan's family had back moved to Taiwan from New Jersey.  He had grown up in American schools, finishing the ninth grade, but after much agitation and with the help of tutoring, had adjusted to the more taxing Taiwanese system.  Now, engaging in his usual daily five hours of homework, he stopped to rub his eyes.  They'd been giving him trouble lately, but he had not mentioned this to his mother.  He knew full well what would follow - her mild hysteria, shouted accusations from his father (why had she not been aware of Yuan's problem until now?) and then unpleasant testing at the doctor's.  Better to suffer in silence.

            The symptom was just too weird to report anyway.   No one would believe him; they'd assume he was having a nervous breakdown.  He was seeing light around the edges of everything.  That, they might believe, but not the other thing.  The day before yesterday, when they were eating breakfast, Yuan had seen right into the center of his father's chest.  He had observed his father's heart beating there, seen the lungs and the ribs over them.  There were irregularities in what he visualized.   Did this mean something bad?  He didn't know.  His father was hotheaded, not prone to tolerate deviations from what he considered normal and masculine.  He did not believe in ghosts or the paranormal, not even in the existence of UFOs.   Yuan rubbed his eyes once again, but now it was even worse.  He could see inside the leaves of the plant his mother kept in the center of the table.

           

            Christine Wayne was explaining to her tenth grade biology class the reproduction techniques of a virus, when she stopped speaking and held her hand to her forehead.  She had the strangest impression that she was conscious in her heart area.  Used to believing, like most everyone else, that one is aware in the head, the sensation was disquieting.  Did consciousness move around inside the body?  If it did, why hadn't this happened before?  As far as she knew, it lived in the brain, though she was aware that some cultures might argue the point. 

            “Is something wrong?” asked one of the students. 

            Christine quickly lowered her hand.  For a moment, she could not seem to gather her wits to answer.   “Um, no,” she lied quickly, then added, “I-I feel kind of sick.  Okay, let's just go on.”    Returning to the viruses, she said, “Unable to reproduce on its own, the virus invades a cell and uses the-” Again, she stopped. She had suddenly noticed Tim Riley, who sat by the window in the second row.  He was looking right into her eyes, and she read his thoughts quite clearly.

            Though his face was still and his mouth closed in an apparently placid line, his mind screamed at her, “I'm desperate!  If nothing changes, I'm going to shoot myself.  I know where the gun is, just need to get some ammo.  If nothing changes...”

            She flinched, dropped her chalk and gasped for breath. 

            “Do you want to go see the nurse, Mrs. Wayne?” asked Kathy Grahowski in the front row.  “I'll walk down with you, if you want.”

            The girl was sweet.  “No, no,” said Christine. She was almost panting.  “But let's stop for today.  You can start your homework now, the questions at the end of chapter twelve.  Answer those and I'll just sit down while you work.”

            They flipped pages until the desired place and went to work, warily eyeing her now and then.  She continued to stare at the boy by the window.  He, like everyone else, had set to work.

            What was happening to her?  Did she have a brain tumor like the man in that movie who developed paranormal powers?  In spite of her terror, she could not stop thinking about Tim Riley.

            “Tim,” she said, “I want to talk to you after class.  I'll write you a note so you don't have to worry about being late to fourth period.”

            He looked at her with panic in his eyes.

 

            At the White House, a meeting was taking place in the Oval Office.  Three people were present: the President, Secretary of Defense and Marshall Whitewood, director of a branch of the CIA that was off the books.  There was no record of its existence anywhere available to members of Congress or the public, even to the rest of the CIA or, God forbid, the FBI.  There was no paper or cyber evidence, for that matter, of the existence of Marshall Whitewood.  He went home at night to a small, quiet home in Alexander, Virginia, but as far as his neighbors understood, his name was Bob Lynch, a writer for some unheard of British computer magazine.  When anyone shuffled over to ask his help concerning their crashed computer, he was always quick to say, “I don't know much more than you do about fixing the damn things.  I just write about them.”  And that usually ended it.  He had no wife or children.  He did own a cat named Shadow.

             “Marshall, find out what's going on.   Then put an end to it.   They're a risk to our security, do you hear me?  People who can see too much, do weird things?  Reports coming in since that strange, damn light in the sky.  Nobody knows what it was.  How can we keep control with people like that around?”

            “Of course, Mr. President.  You don't need to say more.”

            “Good.  You have enough staff?”

            “I have what I need,” said Marshall, his expression closed.  The President might live under the illusion that he controlled things, but he only knew the half of it.  If that.

            “Good,” said the President.  “Get them all.   I want a full report.”  

            Humoring him, Marshall nodded, shook hands and left the room.  The Secretary had not uttered a word.  He had long ago lost his balls anyway.  

 

            The small, dark wing of the CIA that Marshall headed up had far-reaching eyes.  The men (and they were all men) who worked under Marshall, like him, led isolated private lives.  Only one was married.  Marshall did not know what lies the man told his spouse.  That afternoon, for the second time, he called three agents on their impossible-to-track cells.  “What have you learned?” he asked each one.

            “There's rumor of two in Mumbai.  And one in a small town in the north.”

            “A report in Douala, Cameroun.  From the director of a lycée there.  Might be something brewing in Ukraine, but you know how they love to exaggerate the paranormal there.”

            Marshall didn't know that at all.

            “Taiwan,” said the third.  “A couple from the mainland there, but the reports are flimsy.”

            “Any in the U.S?” Marshall asked.

            “Haven't picked up anything yet,” two said.  The third put in, “Some kid up in Fargo, but it turned out to be a trick.”

            “I expect you in the air by morning.  You're equipped?”  

            “Affirmative,” they all said. 

            “I'll wait to hear from you,” he told each of them. 

 

            Christine Wayne had the sense to keep everything to herself.  Somehow she knew, as if with the instinct of an animal, that whatever was happening to her was dangerous.  Whether it was to herself, she didn't know, but she sensed that if she were to let anyone know about it, there would be a certainty of her dying. 

            Over the house, she heard the throb of a helicopter.  Her heart leaped to her throat.  Was it coming for her?  Why did she have such thoughts?  She ran to the window and looked out, couldn't see it at first, then located it to the west, heading toward Columbus.  Must be just one of the Army Reserves'.  But why was it black?  She was beginning to obsess on these things.

            Though she was in the habit of telling her husband everything, she did not tell him about this.  The thing was, you tell a person something, even one who loved you, and it was human nature for him to pass on the information to at least one other person.  And that person told and his recipients told and soon there would be a knock at the door.  Bryan might just want to confide in his mother or his sister or his friend Lewis; he would be worried about Christine and need to talk it out with someone.  And then a week or so later - and she knew this in the depths of her being - she would come home from school and there would be a man sitting in a chair waiting for her.  She would receive a bullet in the center of her forehead; the sound would be muffled.  There would be a police investigation and horrors of horrors, Bryan would be the prime suspect.  They would believe that he had hired someone to get rid of her.  He might even go to prison.  No, she could not let any of this come to pass.  Even though she was frightened, she would swallow any desire she might have to seek the comfort of a friend or to visit a doctor.  She would endure whatever was happening to her in total silence.

           

            Deepti Yamura was trying in vain to work a long, involved algebra problem.  It was not going well and she might end up having to ask her cousin Ravi for help.  This would involve bribing him with candy, of which she only had one piece left.  Ritu was down in the center courtyard rinsing out clothes, so Deepti was alone in their third floor apartment, which consisted of two rooms and opened onto a balcony shared by the other courtyard facing apartments. 

            It was difficult to concentrate, not only because she was not fond of math, but because the array of odd changes in her body had multiplied since their beginning.  Two weeks before, she had been tending a plant belonging to her mother when she suddenly was able to see within the leaves.  It was as if she had acquired X-ray vision and she watched, fascinated, as the plant's insides seemed to glitter, and juices and cells moved about in a jerky little dance of life.  It was akin to seeing a busy, colorful city from the air.  For some reason, this new development did not frighten her.  It was pleasing to see inside of plants.  However, last week she was frightened anew.  Since confiding in her mother about the bizarre changes, Ritu had dragged Deepti to see the doctor three times, though their stores of money were not up to such expense. During this last visit, Deepti had heard his thoughts. 

            She remembered the feeling she had of blood rushing from her head when she heard them.  The thoughts of a man who would do bad things if someone were to pay him.  Immediately, she had clammed up and hidden behind her mother.  When the doctor asked her to confirm what her mother had described, Deepti refused to comply.  But she knew inside, that no matter how quiet she remained, he had already heard what he needed to know. 

            Ever since, she had been apprehensive.  When they went to bed at night, she hooked a chair under the door handle.  Of course there was still the balcony, but what could she do about that?

            Suddenly a shadow fell upon her work paper.  Heart instantly thumping, she glanced up.  A man stood in the doorway.  He wore black trousers and a white shirt and was olive skinned, though he did not look Indian.  He raised his hand, which held something dark.  It was the last thing she knew.

           

            Marshall was not pleased when the Africa agent reported in. 

            “The kid seems to have disappeared.  He hasn't been at school.  One of his teachers said he disappeared the same day.  I hired a driver to take me to his birth village, but no go.  They all claim they haven't seen him.  His grandmother was crying hysterically, so I tended to believe her.”

            “You believed her, huh?  How long have you been working for me?”

            There was a silence.

            “If you don't have him by tomorrow night, I'm coming over there.”

 

            The regimented pace of Taiwanese school was starting to get to Yuan Chang.  How did anybody survive to grow up here?  Why didn't they all have nervous breakdowns?  Yuan had managed to keep up after a year, but now with all this weird stuff happening, he was so distracted most of the time that his grades had plummeted.  Every day, it seemed that everything intensified.  He now saw things as glowing from the inside out - people, plants, animals, even rocks. Everything was made of this dancing energy and it was so distracting and fascinating to watch that how was he supposed to read tiresome history (and in Chinese on top of everything else) or keep his attention on tedious calculus?  At least he was good in English, so no problem there.  Not that he cared.  He just wanted to be left alone to look at the new world he was suddenly seeing. 

            Both of his parents drove him nuts.  Especially his mother, who dragged him to this stupid psychiatrist who put him on pills that he flushed down the toilet.  His father told him, how ashamed he was to have a son who behaved like a hysterical girl.  Yuan was so sorry that he'd ever mentioned anything to his mother in the first place, but she'd caught him healing a bird.  His hand had just shot out and grabbed the little thing, faster than he ever imagined possible, and up close he'd seen what he suspected when watching it dart from bush to bush, that it had an ugly tumor of some kind on the side of its beak.  As he held it in his palms, he felt them heating up and when he looked at the bird, the tumor was gone.  His mother, who had been spying on him, went into her shrill third degree and he ended up spilling everything. 

            That was why, today, he was doing something that would end up causing nothing but trouble; but he simply needed a day to himself.  He was cutting all of his classes.  Let all the goodie-goodies show up as usual, all the robots who just lived to please their parents and society, but he, Yuan Chang, was taking a day off.

            He knew where to go.  There was a bunch of warehouses, one of which was temporarily vacant.  Maybe it was going to be torn down.  But it was big and empty as far as he knew - nice and dark and peaceful inside.  He'd brought food with him and had already stashed his sleeping bag there a couple of days before.  He planned to just lie down and relax, come what may.

            But when he slipped into the building and up to the second floor, someone was waiting for him.  

 

            Christine was changing so fast that she wasn't sure how much longer she'd be able to guard the secret.  Did it show somehow?  She appeared the same in the mirror.  But she knew that something would eventually give her away.  She could barely stand to keep up what passed for normal social intercourse; the ridiculous inanity of it, the preening and maneuvering, the insincerity.  How much longer could she tolerate listening to someone blither on about what car they wanted to buy or the addition they planned to add to the house or what movie they'd just seen when something so utterly astounding was happening to her?  When empirical evidence was pointing (and she was a sort of scientist after all) to the fact that she was apparently mutating into something other than a normal human being?  Or perhaps, evolving was more accurate?  

            Trouble was brewing with Bryan now.  Silence reigned in the house; they hadn't much to say to one another, whereas they'd been so close before this all started.  But everything he wanted to talk about now seemed inconsequential and what she tried to say to him flew right over his head.  She should be saddened by this, but somehow she felt she didn't have time to waste on such emotion.  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she had a mission.  

 

            Gardiah trembled as he watched the witch doctor, Ngoudjo Issa, a strange man “from no place,” as he was sometimes called, pull down the matting of leaves over the doorway.  The little hut stood between three giant trees and was covered with vines and leaves as tall as a man.  If you did not expect the house to be there, you would not see it.  Even if you did look for it, you would have trouble finding it.  Unless you were Ngoudjo Issa.

            Gardiah had been there three days now.  He was not permitted to leave even to evacuate his bowels.  “Yes, it is disgusting,” the witch doctor had agreed, “but you have no choice.  They are looking for you.  I will bring you food and water and remove your waste.  I cannot say if people can be trusted to keep their mouths closed.  But we have in our favor their terror and respect for me.  And indeed, should someone speak of you, I will find out who and his life will be worthless.  I have spread the word, my son.”

            Gardiah was not Ngoudjo Issa's son, but the man had taken an intense interest in the boy and vowed to do everything within his extensive power to protect him. 

            “I have seen a vision, I have spoken with the ancestors,” he told the boy, “and I know what is happening to you.  You must continue to live.  There are others like you, and more and more will there be, but certain forces will first try to murder them all.  However, my son, there is no stopping the process, you see?  No stopping it.  Eventually, there will be more of you than there are of them.”

            “But I do not understand,” said Gardiah, who was still afraid of his protector.  Ngoudjo Issa, though not an especially large man, was alarming to look at.  He appeared to be ancient, although still vigorous; was spry and quick.  His skin was weathered to leather and covered in fine creases, his hair white and his eyes bloodshot.  His hands were like a raptor's claws and around his neck hung numerous little bags and boxes filled, Gardiah supposed, with the makings of terrifying spells.  He smelled like a mix of smoke and weeds, though his breath was sweet.  Gardiah feared to look him in the eye.

            “You are frightened of me, son.  That is normal.  I am a man to fear.  There are hundreds of stories about me.  Some are true but most are not.  I have not yet killed a man with dark magic, although I have made some miserable enough to wish to die.  So rest easy, son, and keep my secrets.  If they choose to fear me, so much the better.”

            Gardiah's voice sounded strangled.  “Wh-who is trying to kill me, sir?”

            Ngoudjo Issa sighed, then squatted on his haunches to move closer to the boy.  “The American government.  Not the people; indeed there may be people like you there, but their government will try to kill them too.  They fear you; they fear what you are becoming.”

            The boy did not question this.  He himself feared what he was becoming.

            “Not only have I hidden you here, but I have woven magic around this place and only I am safe to come and go from it.  Should any man, be he African or white, be he from this country or some other, venture into this place, he will be caught by vines, by forces of the forest, by the very ground beneath him.  No, my son, no one will come here and stay among the sane and healthy.  But you also may not leave.  You may not go outside until I have undone the magic, for it can hurt you also.  I will let you know when that day comes.”

                         

            Marshall's cheeks flamed the color of a blood orange.  He knew he was damaging himself; his blood pressure had been one-sixty over ninety-five the last time he'd checked.  Apparently, the new medicine wasn't working.  He had the Africa agent on the cell.  “Witch doctor?” he bellowed.  “Am I supposed to take this seriously?  And how do you know this witch doctor has him?”

            “Though you may consider me a complete idiot, I do have my sources,” replied the agent.  “They're not afraid to tell me about this witch doctor, but as for divulging his actual location, their mouths are sewn shut.  He has quite a reputation.  No one in his right mind, according to the sources, would even consider messing with him.”

            Marshall rolled his eyes.  “Can't you pull the white-man-is-even-scarier routine?  More potent magic, all that?”

            “All due respect, sir, but what century are you in?  These people have cell phones and though they most likely don't own computers, certainly know about them and many of them how to use them.  They have television, cameras, radios, DVD players and guns.  What magic would you be referring to?”

            There was a silence while Marshall counted clouds in the sky to calm down.  He was standing on his tiny back stoop.

            “Do you know then, roughly what area the witch doctor has the target contained in?”

            “Well, yes,” said the agent.  “That would be roughly an area of  twenty-four thousand square miles.  A good part of the area between Douala and Edea.  That's a lot of jungle, sir.”

            “I'm coming,” said Marshall.  “Get me a room somewhere.  Not your hotel.”

            “I'm at the Ibis,” said the Agent.

            “As soon as I get there, I'm going to either kill or fire you,” said Marshall.

 

            Marshall was packing his carry-on when the door bell rang.  Irritated, he clomped down the hall to answer it, Shadow weaving between his legs, apparently trying to trip him.  It was probably the papergirl.  He owed her for a month.  He also remembered that he would need to set out long term food for the cat.

            It was not the papergirl.  Instead, a woman stood there.  She was in her late twenties, short with tousled dirty blond hair, a compact but slightly stocky figure and intense brown eyes.  One look from them and it felt like she was boring into Marshall's head.  It was disconcerting.  “Can I help you?” he asked.

            “We need to talk,” she said, stepping inside the door uninvited. 

            “Whoa,” he said, moving back.  “Um, I'm pretty busy right now, right in the middle of something.  Not a good time.” 

            He attempted to steer her back out and close the door, but for some reason, it wouldn't budge.  Was it stuck on the carpet?  He looked down, but her hand reached out and pushed the door shut.  Now she was standing in his living room. His mouth hung open.

            “My name is Christine Wayne.  You missed me in your search.  I'm one of those people you're trying to eliminate.”

            He was so startled that he caught his heel on the rug as he backed up and had to grab at the wall to keep erect. “H-how did you find me?” he demanded.  His section was among the most secret operations on the planet.

            She didn't answer, and instead sat down on Marshall's plain little sofa where she crossed her legs as if making herself quite comfortable.

            “Mr., uh, whatever your name is-”

            “You found me but you don't know my name?” he said.

            “Well, yes,” she said.  “I could zero in on you and where you are, but details like names and numbers don't come to mind as easily.  At least not for me. Perhaps for some of the others.”

            “But why would you come to me?  If you know what I'm doing?”

            “It's time to stop.  What is your name then?” she asked.

            He told her his true one.  What was the point of not?

            “Marshall,” she said then, “What you're doing is like smashing a few locusts when the whole sky is filled with them.  There is nothing you can do to stop what's happening.  Why soil your own soul, Marshall?  Stop now and change before you're outnumbered.”

            “What do you mean, we can't stop what's happening?  What is happening?”

            She patted the sofa next to her, and like an obedient boy, he sat.

            “You know that somehow, far back in time, something occurred to change the genetic structure of primates so that a certain new branch began on the tree.  Just a tiny change, a mere gene or two, but suddenly there was a new player in the game, suddenly humans were born. What caused that to happen is beyond me at present, Marshall.  It could have been a natural mutation, but I suspect not.  I expect it was planned, but that is neither here or there.  The thing is...”

            He leaned toward her.  “It's happening again?  Is that what you're telling me?”     

            “Yes, it's happening again.”

            He had a sudden mad impulse to pull out his weapon and silence her. He always carried one on his person loaded and ready and now he reached for it.  But Christine's hand shot out and pressed his arm back down.  Her touch was gentle but firm.  She took his hand and pressed it between her own.  

            “Look at me, Marshall,” she said.

            When his eyes met hers, a rush of feeling came over him.  She held his gaze as if it were locked in.  Suddenly, he was experiencing the strangest sensation of his consciousness moving about his body and even out into the room. 

            “Look at the cat, Marshall,” commanded Christine.

            He obeyed and gasped.  He was seeing into his pet; he saw organs and bones, the blood coursing through veins, food working its way through the small digestive tract.

            “Look at me,” Christine said. “Touch my heart.”

            She let go of Marshall's hand and he pressed it onto her chest.  He saw what she saw every day, her past, her family, her husband, her students.  As if burnt, he yanked his hand back. When he broke contact, he lost the vision.

            He understood then that he did not want really to hurt this woman.  Had the others he'd had killed been like her?  What had he done? What had he done?

            She stood up and as if reading these thoughts, said, “You have done much evil, Marshall, but you can stop now.  Call in your men.  Start over.  Be something else.”

            He nodded mutely, for the moment having lost his power of speech.  She let herself out the door as he laid his head in his hands and sobbed.

           

            After what had seemed an endless, stifling, stupendously boring yet terrifying time, the dark suddenly parted and light streamed into the hut's one window.  Gardiah stood up, heart thumping.  He felt he might faint.  Was this it now?  Was this it?  He was going to die now?  He held his hands up in front of his face as if to stop or sense what was about to happen, and surprisingly, he did receive an impression.  Someone was out there, but it was no one to fear.

            The door of the hut opened and in stepped Ngoudjo Issa.   To see him had become somewhat of a pleasure.

            The witch doctor smiled, showing a set of strong, yellowed teeth. “The road is no longer blocked.  You are free to go.  No one will hurt you now.  I checked everything - the movement of the clouds, the innards of a goat, the curl of the smoke, the path of the termite and all is well.  Go out, my boy, and be.”

            The door stood open and after only a moment's hesitation, Gardiah obeyed him.