The lights in the middle school wing flashed brightly into Elena's eyes as she exited the hallway. She carried her medium sized blue backpack that had been cool a couple of months ago. Now small, compact backpacks were in. She sighed. Why did she even try anymore?
    Elena felt a light tap on her shoulder. It was Memoir.
    "Hey," she said quietly.
    "Hi!" Elena responded.
    "So, about the Tag virus, you know how I said it might be an artificial source?" Memoir asked. Elena nodded and stepped out of the way to avoid getting hit by some sixlets sprinting through the halls.
    Elena looked back at Memoir. She had changed a lot in the past week. She still didn't talk much, but her hair wasn't covering her face, and her eyes didn't point downward so much.
    "Yeah?" Elena said, fidgeting with the hair tie on her wrist that she still had from gym class. She pulled it this way and that until it snapped. Elena sighed and quickly shoved the broken hair tie into her jacket pocket.
    "Well, I'm wondering if that could be a start. But the only thing is, if it really is artificial, is it a toxin? Or is it something else?" Memoir wondered aloud.
    Elena nodded. That made sense, since the virus seemed to have a mind of its own, literally controlling its victim. It didn't multiply like most viruses. Wait... it didn't multiply. That meant it wasn't a virus, but, like Memoir had said, something else entirely. Elena relayed this revelation to Memoir.
    "Exactly. It isn't a virus like the media claims, and it can't be a toxin or a poison since it seems to think on it's own. Is there a type of pathogen we haven't discov-" Memoir was cut off by a girl with extremely long brown hair and amber eyes pushing her way in between the two almost-friends.
    "Ooh, this sounds interesting! What are you guys talking about? Wait, you're that weird girl that never talks!" the girl spoke to Memoir. She tilted her head with curiosity. Or maybe she was just being nosy. Elena rolled her eyes. Of course she would butt in on the conversation that just so happened to not be petty school talk.
    "Hi Sharon," Elena said with a sigh. She instantly regretted talking about their hypothesis in public. Not that it was secret, but it wasn't exactly known around the grade either.
    "Hi Elena! Can I join your little research group for this new virus? I heard you talking about it yesterday at lunch," Sharon asked. She pushed open the door at the entrance of the school and held it for Elena, but letting go when Memoir made to walk through. Memoir turned rapidly to the side To avoid being hit by the heavy glass door. "Oh, sorry about that, Mara."
    "Uh, her name is Memoir, first of all, and second of all, what? You want to join our research group?" Elena asked in astonishment. The fact that Sharon had overheard enough of Elena and her friends' conversation the day before was more than a little creepy. Didn't this girl TALK to people? Like a normal person?
    "Yeah! You said something about learning more about Tag. I want to join. I know that the school faculty wouldn't like it if some students were worrying themselves over this new scary thing. It might cause anxiety. But they don't have to know." Sharon threatened, her voice as sweet as sugar, with a hint of desperate poison.
    Memoir walked around Sharon to Elena's other side. It was clear that the clingy girl was making her uncomfortable. Elena tried to walk slower and distance herself from Sharon, with no luck. She just made pace with Elena and Memoir. Elena tried to ignore her. She turned away from Sharon, and towards Memoir. She looked up at the cloudy, gray sky that was green tinted, almost like a witches brew. She thought she caught sight of a patch of blue sky, but it disappeared faster than a wisp of a memory.
    "Elena?" The voice that Elena dreaded pulled her back down to Earth.
    "We have to catch our bus." Elena said shortly. She flipped her hair that was being blown around by the harsh, unforgiving wind behind her shoulder. She made to walk over to where hers and Memoir's bus was parked. It was the third one in an extensive line, what with all grades, kindergarten through twelfth grade, combined into one school.
    "I want to join!" Sharon called after her, and ran for the second of twenty buses that serviced all of the children of Highest Peak. Elena rolled her eyes again and gave her a grudging thumbs up. Sharon would never stop bothering them about it otherwise.
    Elena and Memoir stepped onto the bus and immediately spotted Evan, Stellan, Yamilia, and Adelyn.
    Elena sat down next to Yamilia, as always, as Memoir slid in next to Adelyn.
    Evan and Stellan smiled twin smiles at Elena. She grinned back. This was nice. The only thing they needed now was Liri, Norman, and Shane on their bus too. But, of course, that would've meant things would be perfect, and Elena didn't have THAT kind of luck, now, did she? No, that would be absurd.
    As soon as Elena got home, she made a beeline for the office, and pressed the button to boot up the computer. She started to research viruses. If her mom came in, she would use the excuse that it was good to stay informed about what was going on. They had even been learning about the genetic material of viruses in science. Her class had touched on viruses, and general information about them in sixth grade, but the memories had faded from her head, until all she was left with was a vague idea that it was not determined if it was a living thing, and something about a lysitic cycle? A genic cycle? Elena couldn't quite remember.
    She vivaciously stared at the screen, absorbing the information the website she had clicked on had to offer.

   Viruses are strange topic. There has been much debate as to whether or not they are living things. What do you believe? It is a controversial topic, so to come to a reasonable conclusion, we need to first look at the facts.
    First of all, what is a virus? A virus is an infectious agent that breeds and replicates only within the cells of another living organism. It replicates inside a cell, using the cells own breeding system for itself by injecting some of its genetic material into the host cell. From here, there are two ways that the virus can go on. First is the lytic cycle. From the time that the genetic material is injected into the cell, the cell copies the genetic material into more viruses. Eventually many copies are made, and the cell bursts. Then, the copies of the virus go out across the organism and infect other cells. The lysogenic cycle is much more sneaky. Once the genetic material is copied, it stays hidden inside the cell. When the cell replicates for any reason, as cells do, so is the infection. The result is essentially an army of viral cells that can infect and take over the body.
    Now, how can we determine if a virus is a living mechanism? We have to look at the six characteristics of life. Many things can fit a few characteristics, but to truly determine if the thing is living, it must meet all of the criteria.
The first characteristic is whether or not it is cellular. There are two types of a cellular being, multicellular, like a human, or unicellular, such as bacteria. Viruses are not cellular, but they meet enough of the other points for a person to argue that a virus may indeed be living. Something that makes this point a bit of a gray area for a virus is that though it is not cellular, and does not contain cytoplasm or organelles, it does contain genetic material.
Another trait of a living thing is that it reproduces. This is a tricky one when it comes to viruses, as viruses cannot reproduce on their own, they do have to use a host cell, but they do, as stated earlier, possess genetic material that can be used to replicate with the help of a host cell. It is not clear as to whether or not a cell "reproduces" in a way that can be used to determine if it is living or not.
Living things also respond to stimuli. For example, if you hear a loud noise, you might jump, whereas a rock, which is non-living, would not. With a virus, it is unknown whether it would respond to stimuli. Not enough research has been done to prove one side or the other, and though it doesn't respond to sound or light like you and I do, it is possible that a virus could respond to other stimuli.
Another thing that can be used to determine whether something is living or not is to look at if it grows and changes. This has been proven to be untrue, because a virus is produced inside of a cell in a fully formed state. They do not have a larva or a baby-like state, and will not change throughout their time.
Living things use energy as well. When it comes to using energy, the virus would latch onto it's host and basically steal energy from the host, so this doesn't quite count as consuming energy. As for the energy it takes to replicate, all of this energy is being used BY the host cell, FOR the virus. This is another characteristic that with a virus, lands in the gray area between yes and no.
The last characteristic that a living thing would exhibit would be adapting to its surroundings, which a virus does indeed do. Sometimes, a cell doesn't have the ability to support a virus through the lytic cycle, so the virus switches to using the lysogenic cycle, based on the conditions of the cell, so a virus does pass the test for adapting to its surroundings.
In conclusion, it is unclear whether or not a virus is a living thing. It is certainly not dead, because it does have working parts, but it isn't fully living. It does show many of the characteristics, but too many of them are unclear to be able to prove for sure whether a virus is living. You decide, and leave your opinion in the comments!
   
    Elena finished reading the article, and sat in the spinny, black chair for a moment, mulling over what she had just read. So Tag wasn't a typical virus, as it didn't seem to be reproducing, just passing itself along. It did seem to respond to stimuli, because of the fact that it seemingly controlled its victim. And it definitely wasn't just infecting one host cell. So what was Tag? And another thing, the article didn't mention anything on the superhuman abilities given to the victim. What caused Tag to do that to the person it was infecting?
    She wondered if it was like Memoir had said. It was artificial, not a virus at all, but something entirely different, something unseen, unheard of, undiscovered.
Or maybe it was new, created by this artificial source.
Maybe humans had made it.
Maybe Tag would be their destruction.
Maybe it was fate.
Maybe humans would destroy themselves.
No. Elena couldn't afford to think that way. Whether humans had caused it or not, she had to figure out what was going on, since all the adults were doing was flock to whichever family had been affected most recently and spread rumors. There was no news of anyone trying to solve the problem, just bring attention to it. Of course, the people of Highest Peak were small minded people, believing that they had a specialty, a career, something they were good at, and that was the only thing they were capable of doing for the world.
Elena wouldn't think like that. She was different, she told herself. She had a mom that specialized in genetics, and she herself was curious about the world, open to new learning, and ready to take on anything.
"We don't have to leave it to the adults, do we?" she whispered.
She nodded to herself.
She would try to help. But the adults wouldn't take her seriously, they would say that maybe she was just extra bothered by this, and she should see a therapist. She would learn, but not succeed.

—

    Memoir sat alone in the basement, in the dead of night with the ashes of the lost child. The man Jolon had tagged had lived next door to Memoir. She had been observing the moon and its pearly whiteness, the texture she could see from millions of miles away, when she had been interrupted by screams, and pounding of foot on road through the open window. She had witnessed Jolon's body disintegrate to ashes and float away with the wind. Memoir had rushed out, for once ignoring her mother's yelling to assess the damage, after the infected man had left. She had scooped up the ashes she could find, and taken them down to the basement for studying.    
    The room she had found was plain, with black walls, and a shiny floor and ceiling. The only thing it contained when Memoir had first opened the door was a reflective white desk, that had curving edges, and a sleek look, far different from the rest of the basement, which was old, shabby, and in need of drastic repair.
    In one of the dozens of boxes stacked in the old storage room, Memoir had found an old microscope. She'd tentatively lifted it out of the box. It was heavier than she'd had expected, as well as large and bulky, not at all like the ten newer ones their school owned. It did, fortunately, have a large handle to prevent drops. For that, Memoir was grateful. She had brought the microscope into the empty room, along with her Polaroid camera that Adelyn had gifted to her secretly on her thirteenth birthday. Adelyn was the only one who remembered Memoir's birthday. No one else even pretended to care. She brought the camera down from her almost bare bedroom to take pictures of her discoveries.
    Memoir had snuck upstairs while her mother and father were watching television in their bedroom. She had gone into the office and plucked a few pieces of paper and a single sharpened pencil off of her father's desk, hoping he wouldn't notice. And, of course, she brought in the ashes.
    Memoir took the ashes from the small jewelry box that she had snatched up from her mother's room as she had gone out to collect the ashes. It made Memoir more than a little sick that she was actively touching and observing the ashes of a dead person, a child, no less, who had had a full life ahead of him before Tag had so mercilessly stolen it.
    Memoir carefully slid a pinch of the ashes in between two small bits of glass she had found with the. microscope. The slides. She then stuck the slides precisely under the microscope, twisted the small and large knobs to focus, and put her eye to the lense. What she saw was surprising. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the ashes, she thought, although she had never looked at regular ashes under a microscope. Come to think of it, that was a great idea. Memoir hurdled herself up the stairs, three at a time, and into the grand parlor, or, as it would be called in a normal house (if her mother had not acted like the overly-portentous being she was), the living room. She scooped up a handful of ashes from the open, cold fireplace. These ashes were fresh from last nights family night, which, as always, Memoir had been excluded from. She was instead banished to her room.
    Once Memoir was back downstairs, she took another two slides to put the regular ashes in between and compare. She did her best to measure out about the same amount of ashes as were in the other slide, currently under the old microscope. She then looked through the microscope with the ordinary ashes under it. Something was most definitely different. These ashes seemed... duller. They were just plain. Swiftly, Memoir swapped out the two slides. And that was when she noticed...
    Jolon's ashes seemed to have a sort of sparkly aura about them. When Memoir took the ashes out of the microscope, there was no way to tell the difference between the two, but when magnified, each single flake of Jolon's ashes seemed to have it's own silvery aura. No two auras were perfectly alike in color, each was a little darker, a little lighter, a little shinier, a little brighter than the one before it. It was magnificent, and yet strange. What about the ashes of the child made them so special, worthy of a soft, silvery glow?
    Memoir had no idea. And she didn't want to try anymore. It was pointless. There had been no previous research done on this type of... whatever it was. Memoir was fifteen. She didn't have a degree, didn't have a PhD, and her highest level of experience on this subject was ninth grade science.
But she had to figure out the puzzle before anyone else died, before Tag affected too many people. Already there were so many people that had died from it. Marva, Jolon, Defjad, and eight other people. Defjad had eventually escaped captivity with superhuman strength, breaking through the door and tagging a woman in her twenties. None of them were currently still alive, save the person that had it at the present moment. If they didn't stop this, their small population of one thousand and forty two would diminish significantly, possibly wiping out all of Highest Peak...
Wait.
Wiping out of Highest Peak? That unnervingly clear thought could've been rephrased as destruction... and citizens were the mountain people... well, most of them anyway. And hadn't Adelyn said her mother's dream had told her Memoir would be the destruction of the mountain people?    
Was this how Memoir was doomed to fail?
And if Memoir was doomed to fail by wiping out the mountain people, presumably with the Tag virus...
Did that mean it was Memoir's time to die?
If it was, Memoir wanted it to be peacefully, and quickly. Though her mother was mountain folk, her father was not religious, and her mother had never taken the time to instill faith in her. For all she knew, their god, Akinor, hated her. For all she knew, Akinor was the one who had spoken to her mother in the dream.
Memoir shook her head, causing her curly blonde locks to bounce in front of her face. She banished the thought from her mind, focusing instead on what lay before her. Maybe her mother had been right. Maybe fate could be defied. If Memoir found a cure for Tag before it could ever reach her, then maybe she wouldn't be such a failure to her mother. Maybe, for once, her mother could actually love her, like she was her child and not some piece of long-discarded trash that had somehow found its way back into the house.
Memoir gathered up the ashes hastily as she heard the door slam above her. Kari was home. She couldn't figure out what Memoir was up to. Or all would be lost.

—

At school the next day, Memoir almost forgot about her mother, and the Tag virus. One more person had been infected, and the media was going crazy for it, but the teachers had prohibited talk about the virus, especially in the wake of Jolon's death, and for that one day, Memoir, Elena, Stellan, Evan, and Yamilia actually listened. Jolon had been the first and only child so far to contract the virus.
They talked about normal topics. Crushes, schoolwork, and books they had read recently. Memoir mentioned nothing of the work she had been secretly conducting in the basement. She had seen the silvery glow, and realized that she had nothing to go off of other than that. And what could she do with that information? That the ashes of a human body were different than the ashes of dried up wood? Yeah, that was pretty obvious. So Memoir had quit. She had moved the microscope back to it's place in one of the many dusty boxes, along with the slides. She had taken the pencil, paper, Polaroid, and ashes back up to her room, to be stuffed into her closet and forgotten about.
She didn't need to do it though.
If anyone found out, the knowledge she'd found could just as quickly be lost.
"So, Memoir, I know you haven't really talked much before now, but is there a special someone that you like?" Liri asked.
Memoir shook her head, blushing at the very thought of it. She really truly hadn't, and if she did now, she wouldn't know the feeling. She wouldn't be able to tell. Not unless someone pointed it out.
She looked over at Stellan. "Who do you like?" she asked. He was the only one who hadn't gone yet. Stellan's face turned red as her piercing eyes stared into him, seeming to glean the truth before he could utter a word.
"No one," he replied. He picked up his fork, and scooped up some mashed potatoes.
The endless chatter about mundane things confused Memoir. Why did people talk when they had nothing to say? Did it really matter who anyone liked? Or was the chit chat just to pass the time? But if it was, then how did everyone seem so happy to just be spending time together, just talking about completely meaningless things.
"Why are we talking about this, anyway? Does it matter? I mean, why talk when it isn't important?" Memoir asked, voicing her concern aloud.
"Because it's fun to spend time together," Shane replied, staring at Liri rather obviously, "Maybe it doesn't matter in the long run, but we still like to talk about it. Because we get to hear each other's thoughts and voices."
Memoir nodded, sinking back into her seat.
"Honestly, what you just said kinda reminds me of The Sound of Silence. You know, the one by Simon and Garfunkel? 'People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening,'" Elena commented. Everyone at the table laughed. Norman punched Elena in the shoulder playfully.
"Of course the music girl would make that connection! That is so random." he quipped.
"I am random. I don't even listen to music that much! Only when I'm in the shower, and when I do my homework, and when I'm out for a walk, and when I'm sad... okay, maybe I am the music girl." Elena acknowledged. She didn't play an instrument but was known as the girl who loved listening.
Memoir admired Elena's carefree air when she was with her friends. To people who didn't know her, she seemed more than slightly closed off, but as soon as Memoir had started to get to know her, she had slowly opened herself up. Memoir wished she could be like that. She wished she didn't have to protect herself. Her heart had already been broken many times by one person. She didn't need any more pain.