The next twenty minutes were spent turning everyone into records.
Names, photographs, blood samples, Mark location and shape, observed manifestations, control, injuries caused, and whether the person could be transported normally.
Marek was photographed three times before someone photographed his Mark separately.
A man held a measuring tool near the black circle beneath his collarbone. "Thirty-eight millimeters."
"Do not touch it."
"I am not touching it."
The man moved the tool slightly farther away. "Thirteen peripheral structures."
"Scales."
The man paused. "You know what they are?"
"They resemble scales," Marek clarified.
He entered something into the tablet. "Subject identifies peripheral structures as scales."
"That was not a medical finding."
The man continued typing.
The dark-red scale pulsed.
He immediately stepped back. "Did that just change?"
"Yes."
"What caused it?"
"I have a condition inside it."
The typing stopped. "What?"
Marek glanced at the door Elia had been taken through. "It is difficult to explain."
The man called someone else over.
Marek regretted answering.
Eventually, the researchers were separated according to the twelve classifications already inside the government’s system. Aries went with Aries, Taurus with Taurus, Gemini with Gemini. The same process continued until most of the Awakened from the laboratory had been moved elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Marek remained.
Three other people were brought to the processing area from different parts of the university. One was a middle-aged woman wearing a chemistry department identification card. Another was a male student Marek did not recognize. The last wore the uniform of university maintenance.
All three had black Marks. The locations were slightly different, but the structure was the same.
An empty central circle surrounded by thirteen separated scales.
The student noticed Marek’s Mark almost immediately. "You have it too."
"Yes."
Relief appeared on his face before uncertainty replaced it again. "I thought mine was defective."
"That would require knowing what a correct one is supposed to look like."
The student stared at him. "That did not help."
"It was not intended to."
The four of them were escorted toward the service elevator. The maintenance worker addressed the officer walking beside them. "What Sign are we?"
"Unclassified."
"That is not a Sign."
"No."
"So what is it?"
The officer did not answer. The elevator doors closed. Marek watched the floor indicator descend from six.
Five. Four. Three.
It continued working normally.
After everything else that had happened tonight, a functioning elevator had become more reassuring than it deserved to be.
The chemistry researcher turned to him. "You know what it is?"
Marek remembered the constellations above the university. "Yes."
The others waited.
"Ophiuchus."
Even the security officer turned slightly. "How do you know?"
"It was in the sky. There were thirteen constellations. One was Ophiuchus."
The student frowned. "But the government only has twelve classifications."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don’t know."
Marek faced the elevator doors again. "That is another question nobody seems interested in answering."
The elevator reached the ground floor.
Outside, the university courtyard had stopped functioning like a university.
Temporary barriers divided the grounds into separate processing areas while security vehicles blocked the main roads. Medical tents had been raised near the athletics complex, and portable lights covered sections of the courtyard where hundreds of people were being registered, examined, or moved elsewhere.
Some waited quietly. Others argued with officers or repeatedly tried their phones.
The Awakened were already being handled differently according to their Marks.
A Taurus-marked man sat on the pavement with both hands open over his knees. Two people with Gemini Marks wore dark glasses similar to the officer from the laboratory. An Aries-marked woman kept both arms folded tightly against her chest while speaking to one of the soldiers.
The system was crude.
It was also working better than Marek expected.
Near the outer barricade, a soldier with a Taurus Mark accidentally bent part of a metal railing when he touched it. He released it immediately. Another soldier said something to him, and he adjusted his grip and stance before trying again.
More instructions.
Marek remembered the name the security officer had given Professor Halden.
Dr. Elias Mercer.
Then he raised his head. The laboratory windows had shown only part of the sky. From the courtyard, he could finally see most of it. The thirteen constellations were still there.
Marek had noticed them before, but he had not understood the problem.
They were not simply thirteen unusually bright groups of stars. They formed an enormous band across the sky, beginning near one horizon, passing overhead, and continuing toward the other.
Capricorn. Aquarius. Pisces. Aries. Taurus. Gemini. Cancer. Leo. Virgo. Libra. Scorpius. Ophiuchus. Sagittarius.
All thirteen were visible at the same time.
Marek stopped walking.
That should not have been possible. The zodiac constellations followed the ecliptic. From one location on Earth, a large portion of them should have been below the horizon at any given time.
These were not.
Some remained low in the east. Others crossed overhead. The rest continued west without disappearing beneath the horizon.
The student followed Marek’s attention upward. "Were they like that upstairs?"
"No."
Marek reconsidered. "Maybe."
He had been occupied with Elia, the changed city, the Marks, and a diagnostic toilet that had tried to sanitize him. He had registered that thirteen constellations were visible. He had not stopped to ask whether seeing all thirteen at once made sense.
The chemistry researcher had. "That is impossible."
"Yes."
She turned to Marek. "You sound very calm."
"People keep telling me that."
She returned to the sky.
Marek kept searching. The zodiac was not the only thing wrong. Ordinary stars remained visible between the brighter constellations, but the pattern was unfamiliar. Marek only knew a few stars well enough to identify without an application, but one of them should have been easy.
He searched north. Then checked again.
The student noticed. "What are you trying to find?"
"Polaris."
"The North Star?"
"Yes."
"Can you see it?"
"No."
The maintenance worker considered the lights surrounding the courtyard. "Maybe there is too much light."
"That would make it harder to see." Marek continued searching the northern sky. "But it would not move it."
Several bright stars occupied the area where Polaris should have been.
None matched what he remembered.
The chemistry researcher turned slowly until she faced the same direction. "Which way is north?"
The security officer pointed across the courtyard. "That way."
"And the North Star?"
The officer followed her attention upward. He did not answer. Probably could not.
Marek shifted his attention beyond the university grounds.
The forest was still there. It began almost immediately beyond buildings that should have led into another residential district. On another side of the campus, the unfamiliar coastline remained close enough to be visible from the courtyard.
Neither had existed yesterday.
The sky was wrong.
The surrounding terrain was wrong.
People had spent most of the last hour concentrating on the Marks that had appeared on their bodies.
Marek had done the same. It was becoming increasingly possible that the Marks were not the largest change that had happened.
A siren sounded somewhere beyond the university. Another answered from a different direction before the first suddenly stopped. Several seconds later, a bright object crossed the sky.
People around the courtyard began raising their heads.
Marek initially assumed it was an aircraft.
It was moving too quickly.
The object broke apart.
Three smaller lights separated from it and disappeared beyond the horizon. One of the security officers touched his radio.
"Another satellite?"
Static came through before someone answered. "Probably."
Marek turned toward him. "What do you mean, another satellite?"
The officer hesitated. "Star-tracking systems are having problems."
"Why?"
"I do not know."
Marek checked the sky again. He had a reasonable guess. Satellites relied on known celestial references for orientation. If the stars were no longer where those systems expected them to be, then navigation failures were not surprising.
Apparently, satellites had noticed the problem before most people on the ground had.
The security officer pointed toward a vehicle waiting near the barrier. "Keep moving."
The four unclassified Awakened continued across the courtyard.
Marek searched the medical tents while they walked. Elia might still have been there. She might already have been transferred.
There was no way to tell.
He touched the dark-red scale beneath his collarbone.
The First Motion moved against its boundary.
[CASE 001]
[RESOLUTION STATUS: INCOMPLETE]
The officer opened the vehicle door.
"Inside."
Marek stayed outside for another second. The medical tents were behind him. The thirteen constellations remained above. Ophiuchus was still among them.
The government had recognized twelve Signs and built a system around them.
The sky had shown thirteen.
Marek entered the vehicle. The door closed behind him. He still did not know where Elia had been taken nor where they were taking him. He only knew that the other twelve Signs had somewhere to go.
And Ophiuchus had been given a different category.
Unclassified.