He let the head clunk back to the floor. Then he tapped the membrane with a forefinger. The membrane turned on like a computer screen but stayed transparent at the same time, so we were looking through an image and at it at the same time.
It showed the gray early-morning sky broken by a few clouds, their shapes rendered with lines, sort of like you see on a blueprint. The picture—if you could call it that—twitched a few times, fuzzed with static like the TV back in the gym. Somewhere beneath my shock, it occurred to me that this interference might be because of the damage to the brain caused by the stun gun. Were the clouds in the image drifting? Before I could process any of this, the angle shifted, scanning across the sky.
It wasn’t a still picture. It was footage.
As the view tilted downward, the football stadium’s bleachers scrolled into sight, marked with those same odd structural outlines. It was as though some software program were tracing every edge and contour of the visual field. The point of view rose higher, about six feet off the field, and then the angle tilted forward severely so we were looking at the grass.
“What are we seeing?” Patrick asked.
The footage continued at a rapid clip, the line of the end zone coming into sight. A ninety-degree right turn spun the field on its axis, and the point of view moved forward, turf sweeping by, each blade of grass delineated by those digital-looking lines. Every now and then, the toe of a boot poked into range at the bottom.
My burning lungs told me I’d been holding my breath. I only realized that I knew the answer as I heard myself say it out loud: “We’re seeing what Ezekiel saw after he turned into a Host. This is the inside view.” My heartbeat made itself known against my ribs. “He’s being played like an avatar in a video game.”
Chatterjee blew out a breath. “It’s as though the virus was … engineered.”
For the first time, I noticed that the footage also played on the rear membrane, but upside down and reversed. Ms. Yee had taught us how pinhole cameras used to work, and it looked like a version of that.
I refocused on the front membrane. Ezekiel’s path continued in jerky fast-forward. Another turn and the ten-yard line flew by. The footage zipped forward at a dizzyingly swift rate, made even more dizzying by the close-up sight of the ground underfoot. Once the field had been covered by the gradually widening spiral, the point of view entered the bleachers, scanning them, then reversing back to solid ground. Like the male Hosts we’d seen in town, it seemed Ezekiel broke from the spiral pattern only when he encountered an obstacle or a redundancy. Then he straightened out, headed for new terrain, and started over from a different center position.
“They’re not just walking in patterns,” Ben said. “They’re covering all the ground. Searching strategically.”
“For what?” Alex asked.
“For us,” Ben said.
“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.