Jess was only ten when the first pods washed up on the shore. She'd been standing with her toes dug into the sand, letting the cold Atlantic Ocean swirl around her ankles, daring herself to venture in. Something knocked against her shin, and when the wave retreated, some thing tumbled onto the wet sand. The first pods, the originals, were the size of her fist, oblong, with a smooth but springy shell. They shimmered with swirling colors, like an oil slick, but bright. By the time she'd bent to pick it up, the next wave had brought more of them. A dozen. Then a dozen more. In minutes, hundreds