***JASON***

As soon as we get back home, Jeremy and I both retreat to our rooms the first chance we get so we can each catch a few more Zs. While I sleep, I dream of being Daredevil. He's such a cool character. Not as cool as Spider-Man or The Flash, but he's very unique. I bet that not only would Evan love the show if she were to see it (I suggested as much to Harris before leaving his place, and he said that he wouldn't mind rewatching the whole show from the beginning with everyone this time next weekend), but she would think it was cool if I were to cosplay as Daredevil.

Normally, I feel weird when I wake up and Evan's not lying next to me. But not this time. Not when my dreams have been so cool and refreshing. And on that subject, do they count as daydreams when they're actual, REM sleep dreams too? Another question for the ages, I guess.

I spend the evening talking to Evan. Or, more accurately, texting her. That is weird - as long as I've known her, she prefers to actually talk. However, when I ask her why she doesn't want to talk this time, she gets evasive and says, "I just don't feel up to it."

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"Hate to say it," she says, "but I'm having an ugly day today."

"Not possible."

"Spare me the bullshit," Evan says. I almost hear her laughing at me, even before she sends me an upside-down smiley-face emoji. "Besides..." Pause, then the rest of her text comes in a few seconds later. "I'm not feeling right. 'Ugly day' = 'mental health day.' You understand."

"Not another panic attack?"

I almost get one myself from waiting such a long time for her to text me back. "Not exactly," she says. "More like a nonspecific feeling of dread."

I smile at her Questionable Content reference. "You sure I can't come see you? Maybe bring you a Worry Hat? :D"

"I'll b fine" is her answer. "Don't worry about me so much, Jay. That's my job." She pauses again before sending one last pair of texts: "See you tomorrow" and "Love you."

"Love you too Snowflake," I say. Insert kiss emoji here.

Okay. Now I feel weird, and a little drained. Tonight, when I sleep again, I do something I haven't really done in a while. Before I ever started dating, I used to try to make myself fall asleep by imagining myself spooning a girl, but I would almost always, invariably, wind up crying myself to sleep because I felt so alone. Other than that last part, that's what I do tonight. Except, for the first time, the girl in my fantasy is someone I know, and not someone like, say, Ashley Tisdale.

In the morning, I come to school hoping to find and talk to Evan again, for real this time. However, the first person to find me at my locker today is, instead, Harris. He's learned from Evan, I guess, because like her, he announces his presence with a sneak-attack hug.

"And a very happy Manic Monday to you too," I laugh, reaching back to ruffle his bristly hair. He moves his head backwards at the same time, and I basically end up Gibbs-slapping him as a result, but he doesn't mind.

"It's all good, dude," he says with a laugh as I gibber out an apology. "I love you too much to be pissed at you for more than a second."

"Aww, how sweet."

"Oh, but I got something to show you. You're not gonna believe it even when you see it." He pulls out his phone, then asks, "First off - do you have Twitter? And if so, why haven't I followed you yet?"

"I don't social network," I say.

Harris grins stupidly. "Good man. It'll ruin your life. Unless..." He shows me his Twitter page, which has a red dot next to his name. Somehow, though, I don't think that's a normal feature of the site. My suspicions are confirmed when he touches that dot and is taken to a site that ominously asks, "ARE YOU READY FOR THE TRUTH?"

"Not particularly, Jesus," I mutter to the screen before Harris moves on to the next one by thumbing the last all-caps word.

A video plays of a man in shadows, talking through one of those creepy-ass hostage-taker digital filters. "You know who that is?" Harris asks.

"No, 'cause he's not showing his face."

"Listen to the accent."

I do, and slowly, it dawns on me that he's Russian or something like that. From there, I put two and two together and conclude... "Severide?"

"Mm-hmm. Hey, Kevin!" Harris catches sight of him and waves him over. "Dude, where's Evan? Get her over here - she needs to see this too!"

Kevin stops in his tracks, looks around, then disappears down the nearest hallway for a minute and comes back with Evan in tow. "Okay," he says. "What's so important?"

Evan looks at his screen, reads the "TRUTH" slogan on top of the webpage, and shakes her head. "No," she says. "Harris, you actually went there? I didn't - as soon as I found that page, I had to scan my computer for viruses."

"You really thought it was a virus?" Harris asks.

"Hell yeah, I did!" Evan cries. "Seriously, that page slowed my laptop down to a crawl."

Kevin snickers into his hand. "How old is your laptop again?"

"You know what slows my laptop down?" I ask. "Any kind of viral marketing sites. Like Capitol.pn, for instance." I nod at the paused video, which now shows Severide's silhouette frozen in mid-hand gesture. "This is kinda like that, don't you think?"

"Gotta be." Harris scrolls the video back so Evan and Kevin can watch it from the beginning. After a minute, however, he stops the video in the middle of its pro-warlock message and moves the screen up to the top of the page, with a new line of text appearing on the bottom half. "Claim your status," it reads. Underneath this are five symbols, one for each of the four powers, with a green square for Normals in the center.

"Did you do that?" I ask. "And can you do dual powers?"

"I'm not even sure they have that option," Harris says with a shrug. "Okay...Jay, you said you don't have any social network accounts?"

"No."

"Then I'll go Dark," he says, "just in case Michelle goes and picks Fire."

"Do you really need to do it differently?" Evan asks.

"Maybe." Harris hits the glossy black circle with the purple spots inside it, then watches as that thumbnail expands to cover the entire screen.

"Welcome, Dark," it reads. "To connect with others in your network, please finish the video." Said video pops back to life in the middle of the screen - man, it really wants us to watch it super duper badly, doesn't it?

"If we don't stop her," Severide's scrambled voice says, "this world will, as they say, 'go to Hell in a handbasket.'" He pauses for a second, draws breath, then says, "So how do we stop it, you ask?"

"I actually did ask," Harris cuts in. "Well, sort of."

Evan shushes him so we can hear Severide keep on talking. "When you join our Unite Network, you will be joining the fight against the destruction of warlocks' rights. We, humanity, have finally begun to approach a certain perfection point in terms of social acceptance of others. If Elena and her ilk succeed in their plans, our chances at allowing our society to reach its maximum potential will be lost." He folds his hands together. "In the future, would you rather see your descendants speak of modern Western civilization as a shining jewel of history, or a doomed and overextended repeat of the Roman Empire?"

"Yeah," Evan laughs, 'cause if we become the doomed Roman Empire, we might as well be The Hunger Games."

"I'd eat the nightlock berries with any of you," Harris says.

"Aww, how sweet," Kevin laughs, adjusting his Ice-blue Oakland A's ball cap.

"I've started a very slow rollout for the Unite Network," says Severide. "Some of you found your way here through the icons my people have left on your Twitter feeds."

"Yeah, didn't Taylor Swift do something similar?" I ask.

"I admit," Severide says with a small, private chuckle, "I may have been inspired by a certain insipid pop star with this particular method of viral marketing."

Evan chuckles, then punches my arm. "At least someone's got good taste," she says, nodding at the screen.

"Before long," Severide continues, "we hope to be able to open up membership to everyone, publicly. As long as there are people in government who would seek to enforce internet censorship laws-"

"He means Mallon Bosch, right?" I ask.

"Him and a bunch of shit-for-brains Republicans," Harris says.

"-I hate to be the sort of thing these legislators cite in their arguments, but we have very little choice," Severide says. "I've heard enough horror stories coming in from red states about people being arrested in the dead of night after posting pro-warlock messages on social media. This, however...without your social-media account as authentication, this private site is utterly untraceable."

"Okay," I mutter. "Can we validate any of these horror stories?"

Nobody answers just yet. Instead, we hear the last of Severide's message. "In short, my friends...welcome to the Unite Network. Onward and forward!" The video closes on the five symbols whooshing onto the screen and spinning around at high speed to reveal the letters in the word "UNITE." Then it moves aside to show what looks like Harris' Twitter feed, only on a black background. Messages keep popping up, filled with hashtags about the Four Powers shooting and other relevant topics. Right on the top is one post whose stats keep ticking up every second - 581 faves, then 645, then 789. Just how many people are in on this "slow rollout?" But what the message itself says is important enough to justify its popularity.

"Breaking News," it reads. "#FourPowers shooter confirmed as Javier Montoya, son of anti-warlock mastermind Elena Montoya." The sender's name, I'm not too surprised to see, is Nino Kelley. He's the local reporter who's already made the rounds on YouTube after he quit, live on the air, during Saturday night's newscast on Channel 2.

"Huh," Harris says when a small chirping noise plays. A red dot appears next to an envelope icon, and he presses it. "Private message? I've barely been on here long enough to connect with anyone...oh."

He has us all read the message in silence. "Dear Harris McCallum, welcome to the Unite Network," it says. "We're sure you'll be a most invaluable member of this community. First and foremost, we need your help to bring in more team members. Some of your friends already have social media accounts, but not all."

"He means me," I say. "And Jeremy. And Morgan too, I think."

"No, Morgan's on Instagram," Evan says. "He's got a good handle on that part of his inner Peter Parker."

"Better than me," I say. "But I don't think his mom has the same photo fetish as mine, so the art form never got ruined for him like it did for me."

"For those who have no social media," the message continues, "convince them to open such accounts. We only need one for each - although Twitter would be preferred, because Facebook's staff is populated with known anti-warlock individuals. Therefore we do not work with them. But we would love to work with your friends more closely, so please assist us in this endeavor. All the numbers we can get will be essential to our success.

"Wishing you the best, Nicholas Severide and Marten Drake."

Evan pulls out her own phone and checks her Twitter. "Should I go for it?" she asks, her thumb poised over the blue icon next to her name.

"Do it," says Kevin. "What about you, Jay? Are you gonna sign up for Twitter to get this?"

I shrug. "Maybe. But my 'rents don't like social networks. I mean, we drive past the Facebook headquarters every time we drive to my grandmother's place, and Mom and Dad always start ranting and raving about how social networks are useless and not gonna last."

"Doomsayers," Harris laughs.

"I know," I say. "All right, you guys got me. Stupid bloody peer pressure. I'll do it. But I gotta do it at home."

"You know they let you use social media on Wi-Fi at school now, right?" Evan asks. It's true - for the last couple of years, people would complain endlessly about being unable to check their Facebook statuses because the school's internet was designed to block any kind of social media. YouTube included - and, to my dismay, Pandora as of last month.

"Yeah," I say, "but if I download the app, my parents will find out. Can't risk that."

"You can't just ask their perm..." Harris' voice trails off when he realizes who he's talking about.

So, that afternoon, I get home and completely forego my homework in order to get this new, more important task taken care of. I sign up for Twitter (@JayCross16 - one through fifteen were taken), then start playing around with my new account while I wait for the spot to appear next to my name. I follow all my friends, then I find the accounts for all the people involved with The Flash and follow them as well. Stupid me, I even throw out a tweet with all their names, gushing about how unbelievably awesome they all are. Such a noob I am, but hey, being a time-traveling speedster like Barry Allen? That's goals, as the people of the Twitterverse seem to love to say. (I may be using that wrong, so don't go by me, all right?)

Before long, I return to my profile page and discover the black dot next to my name. I click on it and go to the Unite Network site, muting the Severide video as it plays because I've heard it already. Then I choose my Dark power and get a black Twitter-like homepage, nearly identical to the one Harris showed us before. Once again, I find my friends and follow them - as well as Nino Kelley, whose earlier post outing Javier Montoya as the shooter is still the number one post on the site. Then - quelle coïncidence - which of my favorite stars do I find putting up the number two post?

"I gotta stand up for the little guy on screen and off," says a message in a white box like Nino Kelley's - I gather that the boxes are meant to color-match the powers of their profiles' owners, which makes sense because Grant Gustin's a pretty well-known Light. "That's why I'm here, people. #UniteNetwork"

I have got to share that with all my friends. Now...what could I say to go along with it? Something short, sweet, and witty. Like I'm not an overexcited fanboy.

"#TheFlash is well and truly #OneOfUs," I say. "All respect to him."

Send. Now I just gotta wait and see what everyone else thinks. Evan and Harris are quick to fave my retweet (do we still use Twitter terminology here? The site looks similar enough, even with the wildly different color scheme), as is Michelle.

"Doing homework, Jason?"

Mom startles me so much that I hastily close my internet window, then slam my laptop shut and yell, "No!"

"Don't have any homework, then?" Mom asks. "Or is it just silly poetry?"

"I...no."

"Can I see it, what you're doing?" she asks sweetly as she crosses the threshold. In the process, she comes close to bumping into my chin-up bar. "Oh my God, this stupid thing..." she groans.

I try to subtly push my laptop out of sight. "N-No, it's nothing," I say.

Mom's smile vanishes. "Jay. Please don't."

"Come on, you don't have to know everything!"

Lightning-fast, Mom grabs my laptop, opens it, and gets to work. "What are you hiding?" she asks, her voice no longer so sweet.

"Jesus, stop it!"

"Jay!" Mom snaps. She turns around to take the laptop out of my reach, then steps away from me while continuing to look through the history on my browser. "Twitter?" she asks incredulously. "You're on Twitter?"

I gnash my teeth. "Oh, good," I say. "At least you found something innocent and normal, not my porn stash."

"Don't snark at me. When did you get on Twitter?"

"Uh...today?"

Mom tightens her grip on my laptop, shaking her head. "I thought you knew better than this."

"What, to not join a social network 'cause they're a bubble waiting to burst and easy to get addicted to?"

"No," Mom says. "You did this without telling us? Why?"

"I don't have to tell you I'm signing up for a Twitter page," I say. "All my friends have one, and you want me to have friends, right?"

She navigates to my Twitter page and checks my friend list. "Hmm. I didn't know you were friends with...Carlos Valdes? Candice Patton? Who are these people?"

"They're not my friends." I can't believe I have to explain this - see how backwards my mom can be sometimes? "They're actors. From The Flash. I'm following them. I'd follow more from the other shows I like, but-"

"Well, now you'll have to follow me too," Mom says. "I need to make sure you're good here, and you don't...you know, get cyberbullied or something."

"Don't start getting all parental on me, please." I reach out, but Mom keeps on walking away. "You do this, I won't be able to do anything without you getting all neurotic about it."

"Either I follow you, or I take this," Mom says, waving my laptop at me.

"What? For how long?"

"Until you agree to let me follow you."

"I can't!" But Mom knows how to defeat me. She starts walking away, and she doesn't get more than two inches out the door before I cave. Honestly, I hate myself sometimes.

With gritted teeth and clenched fists, I talk Mom through the process of setting up her own Twitter page, and how to follow me. When we're done, she leaves the room with a nice set of parting words: "Not so bad, was it? And one more thing...you don't really look at porn, do you?"

"No," I say truthfully. "Why would I? I've got a girlfriend!" Whoops, I might have said too much.

Mom grimaces, then says, "I told your dad not to buy those..." Her voice trails off as she leaves, but I know exactly what she must be talking about. And I thought Dad bought the Box of a Dozen Condoms all on his own, without consulting Mom about it. She wouldn't have approved, being the more devoutly religious of my two parents. Although Dad did tell me, when he gave me the talk while I was dating Dani, that Mom wanted me to hear it too, and learn that I should always use protection, that sort of thing. At the time, I didn't believe him. Still don't, in fact.

I roll my eyes at the wall, then take another look at my search history. I'd read somewhere that the Unite Network was well-hidden, and now I see just how much so - the site is completely absent from my history.

"Joke's on you, Mom," I mutter to myself, going back to Unite. This is where I'll do all my social-networking from now on, safe from prying eyes. It's perfect for me, I think.

It had better last.