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under open shirts of various hues and types, atop baggy board shorts that reached past their knees, and brightly colored sneakers they’d all personalized.
    However, though they were wearing shorts meant for the surf, they were carrying hoverboards. All in all, an ordinary sight.
    “We were hanging out when we saw it,” Jon said, his extraordinarilybeautiful face shadowed under the bill of a battered gray cap and his distinctive violet eyes hidden by hazel contacts.
    Certain dangerous people knew the teenager existed and was part of DarkRiver, but there was no reason he had to make himself a high visibility target. Right now, he looked like a thousand other boys in the city. He wasn’t. Jon was one of the Forgotten, part of the young generation that was displaying striking new psychic abilities.
    DarkRiver had promised to back the boy should he want to ditch the contacts, stop dyeing his white-gold hair, but Jon had decided it was safer for his buddies and his little sister if he stayed under the radar until he was older and stronger. “Stops people from staring at me, too,” he’d said to Lucas, rubbing the place on his neck where he’d once had a Crawlers gang tattoo. “I just want to be one of the juveniles, you know?”
    Lucas understood, even better than Jon likely realized. Clay, Talin, Noor, and DarkRiver were the first real family Jon had ever had, the first time he had people around him on whom he could rely no matter what. He hated being reminded that he was in any way different from his packmates.
    “Is the thing you saw in the water or caught under the pier?” Clay asked the boy he’d adopted. It could’ve proved problematic, given Jon’s past, but of all the men in DarkRiver, it was Clay who best understood what it was to be a lost boy.
    He and Jon had connected like two puzzle pieces.
    Now, the boy shook his head, while around him, the other teenagers looked anywhere but at their alpha or Clay. “We were goofing off and it looked interesting, so, um”—his golden skin pinked—“these guys hung me off the pier by my ankles and I plucked it out.”
    His panther impressed by the group’s ingenuity and huffing in laughter at their very cublike behavior right then, Lucas took the small bottle one of the other teens held out. He could see why it had caught their attention. The bottle was crafted of lime green glass and partially covered by barnacles. Bobbing on the water under the piercing sunlight, it would’ve sparkled like a jewel. “You boys opened it?”
    Again, Jon was the one who spoke. Definitely a dominant and oneLucas was certain would grow up to become a cornerstone member of the pack. Lucas wouldn’t hesitate to leave Naya in Jon’s care; that said everything about his trust and faith in the boy.
    “Yes, sir.” Jon’s voice was as clear as a bell. “We saw the stopper and were joking about finding a message in a bottle. And then . . .” Lifting a hand, he passed a thin, curling piece of paper to Clay. “I didn’t want to try and put it back, maybe tear it.”
    “You did the right thing.” Unrolling it with care, Clay held the flimsy paper so he and Lucas could both read it.
    My name is Leila Savea and I’m a marine biologist. I was kidnapped while working alone in the Pacific Ocean a mile off the coast of Samoa and I’ve been held in a cold, gray prison since. They scarred my face, cut it up, said it was so a teleporter who uses faces to go places couldn’t find me. I don’t know if that’s true or if they just wanted to hurt me.
    I’m often drugged but they’re late with the dose today. I can write today.
    A week, maybe ten days ago, they took me out of this room to test drugs on me and when they weren’t looking, I stole a bottle that was on the shelves outside. There were lots of bottles. Like it was someone’s collection once, but they’re all covered with dust now.
    I took the paper and pen another time, when one of them forgot his lab coat in my