For the first time in a long time, the seemingly endless hours of school passed in a daze. Mason spent the entire day trying to comprehend his dream he experienced the previous night. The one that seemed so real, like a memory, so much so that he could still recall the cool touch of the blue cube against his hand, the rush of power that flooded his body and sent ripples down his spine, and the scent of charred flesh and metal as the yeerk dracon beams destroyed the andalite and his ship.

	An amazing, terrifying, and vivid dream. So unbelievable, but so real. The nagging worry that he was losing his mind, coupled with the brilliant detail that he could remember of the last night brought on a slight headache. And the pain only seemed to double when Mason received the note, stuffed into the vents of his locker.

	[i]Meet us at the trailhead behind the school at three.[/i]

	Mason wasn’t sure what to make of the note, its quick scrawl indicated haste, and there could only be one reason for meeting some unknown person behind the school. Hit by a wave of nausea Mason decided to skip out on his next class, spending the afternoon in the boys’ room mentally debating whether to tear the note to shreds, or meet Tammy, Adrian, and whoever else had been with him that night in the abandoned construction site. Powers, responsibilities, alien invasions, mind control, he wanted no part in all of that.

	In the end he did both.

	Leaving the shredded remains of the note on the bathroom floor Mason hiked out around the school, cautiously approaching the place where he’d been asked to meet ‘Us’, cautious because he already had had bad occurrences in abandoned places. Already a small group had gathered, and with rising dread Mason recognized them all. Joining them Mason remained silent, trying to find some explanation which didn’t involve acceptance. Only once the deer appeared, and Emma excitedly indicated that she wanted to ‘acquire’ it did Mason speak up.

	“You’ll never get any closer to that deer. It’ll run away” He said, almost cruelly. He didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but the confusing day had left him short of nerve. “You all know we just got pricked by… Some drug laced needle, or inhaled some toxin or something that gave as hallucinations right.” Grasping at straws Mason stared around at the others, trying to display a shield of seriousness to hide his anxiety. “That’s right, we all just happened to be there at the same time, and all saw similar things in our state. We probably need to go to the doctor or something. There’s no aliens, no yeerks, no powers.” He turned almost accusingly towards Lalna, pointing at the strange man in anger. “It was probably you wasn’t it. You’re kinda weird, what’d you give us that made us see all of that at the construction site? I ought to call the cops on you for giving kids some experimental and potentially dangerous narcotic!”