The Lynx Tracks

The phone was a brick. A sleek, glass-and-aluminum slab that did absolutely nothing but reflect my own miserable face. Manitoba had officially pulled the plug. The 'Youth Digital Protection Act'—or as everyone under twenty called it, the Great Lobotomy—had gone live at midnight. No TikTok. No Discord. No AI chatbots to vent to when the world felt like it was shrinking. Just a gray screen and a prompt to 'Connect with Reality.' Reality sucked. It was June in the North End, and the heat was already thick enough to chew. The air inside our bungalow was stale, smelling of old tea and the specific, dusty heat of a furnace that hadn't been cleaned since the nineties.

I sat on the edge of my bed, my thumbs twitching. It’s a phantom limb thing. My brain kept sending signals to scroll, to tap, to check for the little red dots of validation that weren't coming back. I reached for my head, adjusting the felt ears pinned to my headband. They were gray with black tufts at the tips. My lynx ears. Online, I was part of a pack. I was a therian with three thousand followers who understood that my soul didn't fit into this human skin. Now, I was just a weird kid in a sweaty bedroom in Winnipeg, staring at a wall with peeling wallpaper.

"Misty? You dead in there or just fermenting?" Auntie Bev’s voice cut through the silence. She didn't knock. She never did. She just pushed the door open, her boots clomping on the linoleum. She was wearing her 'River Watch' vest and carrying a thermos that probably contained enough caffeine to jumpstart a dead car. She looked at me, then at the ears, then at the dead phone on the nightstand.

"The world didn't end," she said. She leaned against the doorframe, her face a map of deep lines and sharp eyes. "The government just took away your pacifier. Get up. We're going to the river."

"I can't," I muttered. My voice sounded rusty. "I'm... I'm processing."

"You're moping," Bev corrected. "And you're vibrating. I can see your thumbs moving. You look like you're trying to text the air. It’s creepy. Put on your tail and let’s go. The Red is high and the mud is perfect for tracking. If you’re going to pretend to be a cat, you might as well do it somewhere with actual dirt."

I looked at her, ready to drop a heavy layer of irony, but she just raised an eyebrow. Bev was Cree, sixty-something, and had spent the last forty years fighting the city over everything from bus routes to water quality. She didn't care about 'digital identities.' She cared about things you could touch. I stood up, grabbing my clip-on tail from the chair. It was faux fur, a bit matted from where I’d slept on it, but it felt right. When I clipped it to my belt loop, the weight of it against my thigh grounded me. It was the only thing that felt real in a world that had just been deleted.

"Fine," I said. "But if I get heatstroke, I’m haunting your kitchen."

"Good," Bev said, turning back toward the hall. "I could use the help with the dishes. Move it, Lynx. We’re losing the light."

We walked out into the humid afternoon. The neighborhood was eerily quiet. Usually, you’d see kids on their porches, heads down, faces lit by the blue glow of their screens. Now, they were just... sitting. Some were tossing a ball back and forth with a weird, mechanical desperation. Others were just staring at the street. It looked like a movie about a cult after the leader dies. Nobody knew what to do with their hands. I kept my eyes on the cracked sidewalk, my ears twitching with every passing car. I wasn't just a girl walking with her aunt. I was a predator moving through a concrete forest. That was the headspace I needed to survive this.

"Look at them," Bev said, nodding toward a group of teenagers sitting on a fence. They looked like they were waiting for a bus that was never coming. "Like ghosts. They’ve forgotten how to be bored. Boredom is where the good stuff starts, but they’re terrified of it."

"It’s not just boredom, Bev," I said, my voice sharp. "It’s everything. My friends, my community. It’s all gone. Imagine if the government just decided you couldn't talk to other Cree people anymore. That’s what this feels like."

Bev stopped walking and looked at me. She didn't laugh. She didn't give me that patronizing 'back in my day' look. She just nodded slowly. "I get that. But those people in your phone? They weren't your pack. Not really. A pack is someone who smells your fear and shares their meat. You’re looking for a connection in a place that’s made of light and nothing else. I’m taking you to the Red because the river doesn't care about bans. It’s still there. It’s always been there."

We hit the trail at the end of the street, the pavement giving way to the sticky, chocolate-colored mud of the Red River bank. The smell hit me—not the generic 'nature' smell from movies, but the real Winnipeg river smell. It was heavy, metallic, and thick with the scent of rotting vegetation and wet silt. It was gross, but it was visceral. It forced my lungs to work. I felt the humidity cling to my fur ears, making them heavy. I didn't care. I crouched low, my fingers brushing the tall grass.

"See anything?" Bev asked, her voice low.

I scanned the muddy bank. My eyes felt sharper out here. Maybe it was the lack of screen time, or maybe I was just trying too hard to be the lynx. Then I saw it. A flash of silver in the shallows. But it wasn't moving right. It was drifting, belly up, bumping against a half-submerged shopping cart.

"There," I pointed.

We walked closer, our boots sinking into the muck. It wasn't just one fish. There were dozens of them. Lake trout, their scales dull and their eyes cloudy. They weren't just dead; they looked wrong. Their bodies were emaciated, and their gills were a weird, brownish-gray color. They looked like they’d been hollowed out from the inside.

"Zombie fish," I whispered.

Bev knelt down, using a stick to turn one over. Her mouth thinned into a hard line. "Trout shouldn't even be this far south this time of year. And they definitely shouldn't be dying like this. Look at the eyes, Misty. That’s not just rot. That’s something else."

I leaned in, the scent of the dead fish mixing with the damp earth. It was sharp, like ammonia. My 'lynx' brain went on high alert. Something was very wrong with the water. The silence of the neighborhood followed us down here, but it wasn't empty anymore. It was heavy with the weight of something dying right under our noses, and for the first time in forty-eight hours, I forgot all about my dead phone.

Dead Pixels

The lab in the city center was a graveyard of good intentions. Bev and I stood in the lobby, the air-conditioning humming with a frantic, buzzing sound that made my teeth ache. Behind the plexiglass, a tired-looking woman in a lab coat was shaking her head. She didn't even look up from the stack of papers on her desk.

"I told you, Bev. We can't run the full panel," the woman said. Her name tag read 'Sarah.' "The reagents are stuck in a shipping container in the Strait of Hormuz. Something about a regional flare-up and a blocked channel. No chemicals, no tests. We’re down to basic pH strips and prayer."

"Sarah, there are hundreds of trout belly-up near the North End," Bev said, leaning her elbows on the counter. She had this way of taking up space, making herself the most important thing in the room without even raising her voice. "This isn't just a seasonal die-off. Their eyes are glazed like they’ve been bleached. My niece found them."

Sarah finally looked up, her gaze landing on me. I felt the familiar prickle of self-consciousness. I was still wearing the ears. I knew how I looked—a lanky teenager with faux-fur tufts and a tail, standing in a professional lab during a national crisis. I waited for the comment, the eye-roll, the 'kids these days' sigh.

Instead, Sarah just looked tired. "Nice ears. Lynx?"

"Yeah," I said, my voice small. "Canada lynx."

"Good choice. They’re solitary. Probably easier to be a lynx than a person right now," Sarah sighed, turning back to Bev. "Look, the whole supply chain is trashed. Between the ban and the shipping crisis, we’re back to the dark ages. If you want to know what’s killing those fish, you’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. Observe. Document. I can’t give you a chemical breakdown if I don’t have the chemicals."

Bev turned to me, her eyes glinting. "The old-fashioned way. You hear that, Misty? No Google. No AI to tell you what the symptoms mean. Just us and the mud."

We walked back out into the blinding June sun. The heat felt like a physical slap after the cool lab. I felt a surge of frustration. "This is ridiculous. In 2026, we shouldn't be guessing why the environment is dying because some boat is stuck in a canal halfway across the world."

"Welcome to the real world, kid," Bev said, tossing her keys in the air and catching them. "It’s fragile. You think the internet was this solid thing, but it was just cables under the ocean and satellites in the sky. It’s all just stuff. And right now, the stuff is breaking. We’re going back to the river."

"Wait, what about the community meeting tonight?" I asked. "You said you were going to talk to the neighborhood council."

"I am. But I need more than 'I saw some dead fish.' I need to know where it’s coming from. And you’re going to help me. Use those lynx senses you’re always talking about. What did you smell down there? Don't give me the 'nature' answer. Tell me the truth."

I thought back to the riverbank. The ammonia. The way the water felt warmer than it should have been for June. The Red was usually cold enough to make your ankles ache, but near that shopping cart, it had felt like lukewarm dishwater.

"It was warm," I said. "And it smelled like... like a cleaning product. Not bleach, but something sharper. Like industrial degreaser."

Bev nodded, pulling her old film camera out of her bag. It was a rugged, mechanical thing—no batteries, no screen. "That’s a start. A lynx doesn't need a lab. A lynx needs a trail."

We spent the rest of the afternoon tracking. We walked north, away from the parks and toward the industrial stretch where the old warehouses leaned over the water like decaying giants. The ground here was harder, covered in gravel and bits of broken glass that shimmered in the heat. I kept my tail tucked close to my leg so it wouldn't snag on the burrs.

As we walked, I noticed something. There were other kids out. Not many, but they were there, lurking in the shadows of the overpasses. They looked bored, restless. One boy, maybe fourteen, was sitting on a concrete pylon, throwing rocks into the water with a rhythmic, angry thud.

"Hey!" I called out.

He looked up, startled. He saw the ears and for a second, I thought he’d laugh. But then he saw Bev, and he saw the way I was crouched, looking at the water.

"You looking for the dead fish?" he asked.

"You saw them?" I stepped closer, my 'lynx' persona giving me a weird kind of confidence. Usually, I’d be too anxious to talk to a stranger, but out here, I was just another animal in the bush.

"They're everywhere up by the old cooling plant," the boy said, gesturing north. "My brother says it’s a curse because of the internet ban. Says the ghosts of the dead apps are poisoning the water."

"Your brother is an idiot," Bev said, though her voice was kind. "It’s not ghosts. It’s chemicals. You want to help?"

The boy hesitated, then hopped off the pylon. "Nothing else to do. My phone is a paperweight and my mom is losing her mind because she can't find recipes on Pinterest."

"Follow us," I said.

By the time we reached the industrial zone, there were four of us. The boy, whose name was Jack, and two girls from my school who had been wandering the tracks. We were a weird little parade—an Elder with a film camera and a pack of kids who didn't know how to exist without a signal.

I led the way, my nose twitching. The smell was getting stronger. It wasn't just ammonia now; it was a heavy, oily scent that seemed to coat the back of my throat. I dropped to all fours—not because I had to, but because it felt more stable on the steep, rip-rap embankment. The rocks were hot under my palms.

"There," I whispered, pointing to a thicket of overgrown willows.

Behind the trees, hidden from the main path, was a concrete pipe. It wasn't marked on any of the city maps Bev had shown me. A steady stream of steaming, brownish water was gushing out of it, disappearing into the Red. Around the mouth of the pipe, the water was thick with a white, frothy foam. And there, caught in the roots of the willows, were dozens more of the zombie fish, their bodies pulsing with the rhythm of the discharge.

"Gotcha," Bev whispered, raising her camera. The mechanical click-whirr of the shutter was the only sound in the humid air. It felt more permanent than any digital photo I’d ever taken. This was evidence. This was real.

High Water Marks

The neighborhood center was a low-slung brick building that usually smelled like floor wax and over-boiled coffee. Tonight, it smelled like sweat and frustration. With the social media ban in full effect, the 'analog' community meeting was packed. People were standing along the walls, fanning themselves with flyers. There was no air conditioning, just a few rattling floor fans that did nothing but move the hot air around.

"Order! Please, everyone, let’s have some order!" the council head, a man named Mr. Henderson, shouted over the din. He was red-faced and looked like he was about to have a stroke. People weren't used to debating in person. They were used to typing in all caps from the safety of their kitchens. Now, they were face-to-face, and the energy was volatile.

"The fish are dying! My kids can't go near the water!" a woman yelled from the third row.

"Who cares about the fish? My business is tanking because I can't run ads on Instagram!" someone else countered.

I sat in the back with Jack and the others. I still had my ears on. A few adults had given me side-eye, but mostly they were too busy arguing about their own problems to care about mine. I felt a weird sense of calm. While they were all yelling about what they’d lost, I was thinking about what we’d found. The pipe. The warm water. The smell of degreaser.

Bev stood up. She didn't wait to be called on. She just walked to the front of the room and stood there until the shouting died down. It took a while, but eventually, the sheer weight of her presence forced a silence.

"You’re all worried about your screens," Bev said, her voice echoing in the hall. "You’re worried about your 'likes' and your 'feeds.' But while you were staring at your dead phones, the river was being poisoned. My niece and a group of local kids found an illegal discharge pipe behind the old North End plant today. It’s dumping hot, chemical waste directly into the Red. That’s why the fish are dying. That’s why the water is foam. The 'zombie fish' aren't a curse. They’re a warning."

She held up a handful of physical photographs. They were grainy and black-and-white, developed in the small darkroom she kept in her basement, but the image was clear: the steaming pipe, the white foam, the dead trout.

"Who’s the contractor for that plant?" someone asked.

"City says it’s Mason Construction," Mr. Henderson said, checking a clipboard. "They’re supposed to be decommissioning the cooling system. It shouldn't be running at all."

"Well, it’s running," Bev said. "And it’s killing the land. We need to go down there. Now."

"We can't just go down there," Henderson protested. "It’s private property. We have to file a report. We have to wait for the provincial inspectors."

"The inspectors don't have testing kits because of the Hormuz crisis!" I yelled from the back. I didn't mean to shout, but the words just came out. Everyone turned to look at me. I felt the heat rise in my cheeks, but I didn't look away. I adjusted my ears and stood up. "If we wait, there won't be any fish left. There won't be a river left."

Jack stood up next to me. "She’s right. We’ve been watching it. We’re the ones who are actually out there. You guys are just sitting in here complaining about the internet."

One by one, the other kids in the back stood up. It was a silent, weird little movement. We were the 'digital generation,' the ones the government thought they were protecting by cutting us off. But the ban had done something they hadn't expected. It had made us look up. It had made us bored enough to pay attention.

"We’re going back tonight," I said, looking at Bev. "With or without the council."

Bev grinned. It was a sharp, dangerous look. "Sounds like a plan. Meeting adjourned."

We didn't wait for the adults to catch up. We were faster. We moved through the neighborhood like a pack, our sneakers slapping against the pavement. The sun was down now, and the air had cooled slightly, but the humidity was still a heavy blanket. The moon was a sliver of silver over the city, reflecting off the dark, slow-moving water of the Red.

I felt the shift in my own body. The lynx wasn't just a costume anymore; it was a framework. I was more observant, more attuned to the sounds of the night—the rustle of the leaves, the distant hum of the city, the heavy, rhythmic thud of a pump somewhere in the distance.

"Can you hear that?" I asked Jack.

He stopped, tilting his head. "The pump?"

"It’s coming from the plant," I said. "They’re still dumping."

We reached the industrial zone and slipped through the gap in the chain-link fence. We didn't use flashlights. We didn't need them. Our eyes had adjusted to the dark, and we knew the terrain. I led them down the rip-rap, my tail balancing me as I navigated the loose stones.

As we approached the pipe, we saw a flickering light. A man was there, wearing a yellow high-visibility vest. He was holding a tablet—a rugged, industrial one that still had some kind of local network connection—and he was looking at the pipe.

"That’s him," Bev whispered, appearing behind us. "That’s the contractor. Mason."

He was alone. He looked stressed, his face illuminated by the blue light of his screen as he tapped frantically. He was trying to bypass a sensor or shut down an alarm. Every few seconds, he’d look over his shoulder toward the access road.

"Stay back," Bev told us. She stepped out into the light, her camera around her neck. "Evening, Mr. Mason. Working late?"

The man jumped, nearly dropping his tablet. "Who the hell are you? This is a restricted site. You’re trespassing."

"I’m a taxpayer," Bev said, her voice like cold steel. "And these are the kids who found your little leak. Why is the cooling system running, Mason? And why is it dumping untreated brackish water into our river?"

"It’s a malfunction," Mason spat, his eyes darting toward us. He saw me—the ears, the tail—and a sneer curled his lip. "What is this, some kind of freak show? Get these kids out of here before I call the cops."

"The cops aren't coming," I said, stepping forward into the light. "They’re busy dealing with the riots downtown over the ban. And we’re not leaving until you shut that pipe off."

"You think you know how this works?" Mason laughed, but it was a nervous sound. "The system is glitched. The sensors are fried because we can't get the parts from overseas. If I don't vent the system, the whole plant overheats and we lose millions in equipment. The river can handle a little heat."

"The fish can't," I said. I looked at the foam, the dead silver bodies swirling in the current. "The land can't. You’re killing it because it’s easier than fixing it."

Mason stepped toward me, his face twisting. "Listen, you little furry weirdo—"

He didn't get to finish. Bev stepped between us, her film camera held up like a shield. "I’ve got three rolls of film of you standing over this pipe, Mason. I’ve got the discharge, the dead fish, and now I’ve got your confession that you’re doing this on purpose to save your equipment. You can shut it down now, or we can go to the papers. They’re still printing physical copies, you know. People are actually reading them now that they don't have TikTok to distract them."

Mason looked at Bev, then at the pack of kids standing behind her. There were ten of us now, standing in the shadows, silent and watchful. We weren't just kids; we were witnesses. He looked back at his tablet, the blue light making him look like a ghost. For a long moment, the only sound was the rushing of the toxic water.

Then, with a curse, he turned to the control panel on the wall and slammed his fist into the 'Emergency Stop' button. The rhythmic thud of the pump groaned, slowed, and finally died. The flow of water from the pipe dwindled to a trickle, then stopped.

The silence that followed was absolute. No screens, no pumps, no traffic. Just the sound of the river, breathing in the dark.

No Bars, Just Smoke

The bonfire was huge. We’d built it in the middle of a vacant lot near the riverbank, using old pallets and driftwood we’d hauled up from the mud. It wasn't just our pack there; half the neighborhood had shown up. People brought chairs, blankets, and coolers. Someone had a guitar. Someone else was roasting sausages on a wire hanger.

There wasn't a single phone in sight. Not because they were banned—though they were—but because nobody wanted them. For the first time in my life, the air felt clear. The 'digital rot' had been burned away by the heat of the fire and the reality of what we’d done.

Mason had been fired the next morning. The city, spurred on by Bev’s photos and the pressure from the neighborhood, had fast-tracked the repairs. They’d even found a way to source the filters locally, bypassing the shipping crisis. The fish were still dead, but the water was clearing. The Red was resilient. It just needed us to stop hurting it.

I sat on a log next to Bev, my ears still firmly in place. I didn't feel weird anymore. I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

"You did good, Lynx," Bev said, handing me a paper plate with a charred hot dog. "You used your head. And your nose."

"I think I’m going to start a real group," I said, watching the sparks dance toward the stars. "Not a Discord server. An actual pack. We’re going to monitor the riverbank. Check the pipes. Track the animals. Jack and the others are already in."

Bev nodded. "A scout pack. I like it. The land needs people who know how to look at it. Not just through a lens, but with their own eyes."

"It’s weird," I admitted. "I thought I needed the internet to be myself. I thought the 'lynx' was something I only did for the followers. But out here... it’s different. I don't need a like to know I’m real."

"That’s the secret, Misty," Bev said, her eyes reflecting the orange glow of the flames. "You’re not an avatar. You’re a part of all this. The mud, the water, the trout. It’s all connected. The internet just tried to make you think you were separate from it."

Across the fire, Jack was laughing, trying to explain the plot of a video game to an older man who clearly didn't understand a word of it. But they were talking. They were looking at each other. The boy wasn't twitching for his phone. He was present.

As the night went on, the stories started. Not the curated, polished stories people post online, but real ones. Messy stories about the neighborhood, about the history of the river, about the way things used to be and the way they could be again. Bev told a story about her grandmother's time on the land, and the whole circle went quiet, hanging on every word. Her voice was the only thing that mattered.

I leaned back, looking up at the sky. Without the light pollution of a million screens, the stars looked closer. I could see the constellations—the Great Bear, the Hunter. I felt the fur of my ears brush against my hair. I felt the weight of my tail against the log. I felt the pulse of the earth beneath my boots.

I wasn't Misty the student, or Misty the influencer, or Misty the weird kid with the ears. I was just a creature of the North End, a part of the pack, a watcher of the river.

Eventually, the fire died down to a bed of glowing embers. People started to drift away, heading back to their houses, their dark screens, and their quiet lives. But the silence didn't feel heavy anymore. It felt like a beginning.

Bev and I walked back to the bungalow, our shadows long under the streetlights. We sat on the porch for a while, watching the moon sink behind the trees.

"You going to sleep?" Bev asked.

"In a bit," I said. "I just want to listen for a while."

"Listen to what?"

"The river," I said. "It sounds different when the pumps are off."

Bev smiled, patted my shoulder, and went inside. I stayed on the porch, my ears twitching as a breeze stirred the leaves. In the distance, I heard the faint, sharp cry of a real lynx—or maybe it was just a cat, or maybe it was just my imagination. It didn't matter. I stood up, stretched my limbs, and felt the power of the night settle into my bones.

The phones were still dead. The world was still broken. But as I looked out over the dark neighborhood, I knew we weren't ghosts anymore. We were awake. And tomorrow, we’d be back at the water, ready to see what else the river had to tell us.