“Mel? Are you awake yet?” Dyna asked, tapping her knuckles against her roommate’s door.

The clock had just ticked past noon and Melanie’s shoes were still on the rack next to the door. Dyna had been excused from lectures thanks to her morning MRI and CT scans—both of which came back with no obvious anomalies—but for Mel to skip classes likely meant that she had gone out drinking last night. Carroll wasn’t a regular school; everyone in attendance was being paid to be here. If people skipped out on training, lectures, or laboratory work, they had better have a good reason for it.

Drinking was not a good reason.

Dyna’s knuckles hit the door a little harder. It wasn’t that she cared, she wasn’t Mel’s mother, but she did have a few questions.

The door swung open with just enough force for Dyna to describe the motion as angry. Melanie stood on the other side, shoulders slumped and head canted to one side as if she couldn’t quite work up the effort to hold it up all the way. Her eyes were the same way, half lidded and barely focused. Her smooth brown hair, normally tied up in a stylish ponytail, was in utter disarray.

“You look like crap.”

The door slammed shut in Dyna’s face.

“Wait! I’m sorry! Did you call in sick? Do you want me to do it for you?”

The door slowly creaked open again. Mel stepped out wearing a harsh glare and a purple bathrobe that she hadn’t had a moment ago. She pulled it around herself a little tighter, in a way that made Dyna think it was real, before stepping out of her room.

“Don’t bother,” Mel grumbled. “All activities are canceled. Didn’t you get the message?”

Dyna blinked. Her phone had apparently not survived the events of the test. Walter said he would be bringing her a replacement at some point, but it had yet to arrive. “I had to get a few scans done,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

That basement was supposed to be a secret. While any one of the many mind readers around Carroll could probably pluck it from her brain, she wasn’t going to intentionally say anything about the laboratory or the test.

“Why did they cancel?”

“No clue,” Mel said, stopping at the kitchen counter. She shoved the coffee pot into place with quite a bit more force than necessary. When she started struggling with the pull-off lid on the coffee grounds, Dyna moved up and shooed her away. “Thanks,” she said, slumping into one of the dining room chairs.

“Did I mention you look like crap?” Dyna asked, scooping up some of the coffee and dumping it into a filter. She didn’t exactly like the stuff herself, but a high school job at a coffee shop had taught her more than enough to make it.

“Feel like it too. No idea why they canceled classes, but I am not complaining.”

“Had a long night out?”

“I wish. Almost threw up last night. Just a sudden splitting headache, but it was splitting. Nearly ran down to the docs, but the worst of it passed in a few seconds.”

“A… sudden headache,” Dyna said with a wince. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Melanie said, waving her off. Dyna only winced again at that. “My head feels much better, but didn’t get much sleep.”

“Maybe you should go back to sleep instead of drinking caffeine,” Dyna said, trying not to feel guilty. Walter had told her some of what happened. What had happened to people down in the facility. Maybe this wasn’t related, but if everyone was experiencing headaches, that would explain the empty halls earlier even better than the cancellation of classes.

It wasn’t her fault though. She didn’t mean to… do whatever she had done.

“If I sleep any more, I won’t be able to get to sleep tonight,” Mel said, shaking her head. She sat up a little straighter. It looked forced.

“Coffee will be a few minutes,” Dyna said as she sat down opposite from her roommate. “Mind if I ask you something?”

“Depends. Do I have to think much?”

“What was your first time like?”

Melanie raised one eyebrow, then the other, then she curled her lip into a smile. “Excuse me? Not that I mind sharing, but what brought this on?”

“I just…” can’t say anything about what happened down there… “I’ve asked you what it feels like to use your illusions now-a-days, but was it different your first time?”

Melanie’s smirk fell with a roll of her eyes. “Figures,” she mumbled under her breath. “Boring.”

“Boring? It felt boring?” Dyna clenched her hands into fists, trying to stop from grinding her teeth together. She took a deep breath and slowly relaxed her hands. “All you people are here learning what is basically magic to the rest of us. And yet half the people here slack off! They don’t take it seriously. How can you not find it exciting? How can you not chase after your talents with all your might?”

“If you’re done…”

“I… didn’t mean you,” Dyna said, ducking her head.

“First of all, nobody can work on something constantly. You’ve got to relax. Have fun. Go out drinking on the weekends. If I just sat around in my own head thinking constantly, I’d go insane. I put in eight hours most days and even that feels like far too much to think at myself. It’s exhausting, draining, and far more work than it looks like from the outside.”

“I didn’t mean you,” Dyna said again.

“Secondly, I meant your question was boring compared to what I thought it would be. Not that I felt bored to discover I could project images into other people’s minds.”

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“Bored with my…” Dyna felt her ears start to burn as she realized just how she had phrased the question. “Not what I meant!”

“Obviously,” Mel said, eyes rolling. “Is that coffee ready?”

The pot had filled up during their conversation. Best to drink it while it was fresh. She stood, pulled one mug from the cupboard, then pulled a second one down after a moment of hesitation.

“I suppose I felt relieved,” Mel said while her back was turned. “I got answers. I finally knew why my father almost took my mother’s head off with a shotgun while attempting to kill my childhood friend.”

Dyna jerked, spilling coffee across the counter. She didn’t clean it up, spinning around. “What?”

“My childhood friend was imaginary,” Mel said in a flat matter-of-fact tone. “A little boy without a face—proper faces were hard to imagine back then. He did have a wide, ear-to-ear grin and big black spots for eyes.”

She motioned to her side. In an almost theatrical rippling—likely to make it obvious that it was an illusion—a little boy appeared. Maybe ten years old with a solid mass of black hair. True to Mel’s description, its eyes were solid black pits that stretched far too far into the back of its head. And its smile…

Dyna couldn’t help but shudder, even as the boy gave a playful wave before disappearing. She liked horror movies. They were really the only movies she liked to watch. But seeing something like that in real life, even while knowing it was an illusion, didn’t sit well. Especially not after that test from the night before. Some of the things she had seen in the walls of that room would have been right at home in a movie.

“My father kept shouting about a demon in the house when the police took him away. I didn’t understand what I was doing until three foster homes and two full run-aways later.”

“That’s…”

“It’s fine,” Mel said with a shrug. “I’ve been much better in the last two years. Coffee?”

Dyna pressed her lips together before turning around. She quickly grabbed a paper towel and wiped up the counter, rinsing the bottoms of the mugs off in the sink. “Did you…” she started as she filled up one mug to the top and the second about a third of the way. “Did you ever find your father and tell him what happened?”

“Nope. The man died in prison not long after he got arrested.”

“Oh.” Dyna didn’t know what else to say. She hadn’t meant to ask about this at all. Not what Melanie felt upon discovering what her powers were, but about what using her powers felt like the very first time she used them. She couldn’t exactly correct herself now, after all that. “Sorry,” she said as she placed the full mug in front of her roommate.

“Not your fault.”

It isn’t yours either, Dyna wanted to say. But she couldn’t quite work up the courage to open her mouth. Instead, she simply took her seat and held her mug in both hands, staring down into the black surface of the coffee.

The moment she started drinking, Melanie opened her mouth.

“Now, about my other first time. I was—”

Dyna started coughing and sputtering into her mug, glad she had only poured a little for herself. “That’s okay,” she coughed out, trying to clear her wind pipe. “You don’t have to force yourself.”

“Oh it isn’t much trouble. It’s a much funner story, after all.”

Slamming her mug down on the table, Dyna held up her bare wrist. “Look at the time. I’ve got to go buy a watch.” She got to her feet and bolted for the door.

“Nothing to be embarrassed about,” Mel called after her with a lighthearted laugh.

“Not embarrassed,” Dyna called out before she shut the door.

She really wasn’t. Mel’s stories would probably be far more extreme than she would expect, but Dyna wasn’t a fool. She saw the attempt to lighten the atmosphere for what it was. It was just that she didn’t want to force Mel to act.

Leave her some time for herself. Dyna would be back later and everything would cool down.

Besides, she really did have something she wanted to do outside the dormitories.

She had intended to use her room before learning that classes were canceled. Now, she should be able to easily find an unused meditation room. Reflecting on the test and trying to think about what she had done toward the end seemed like the best way to do something.

Her excited pace faltered before she reached the elevator.

If she did end up doing something, would it give everyone a headache again? Maybe it wasn’t that great of an idea. Walter had said that he would come find her after her scans, but that could be today or it could be later this week. He hadn’t given her a specific time frame. In fact, he had specifically said ‘at a later date.’

The phrasing implied multiple days.

Could she really sit still and do nothing after experiencing her first taste of something since arriving at Carroll?

“Graves!” a voice called down the hall. “You’re wearing a hole in the floor. Something eating you?”

Dyna turned to find Niko staring down at her. With his height, Niko Hendrix tended to look down on everyone, but he was nice enough that he did so only physically.

“Hey, Niko. Just have had a lot to think about after yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah. Rough day, wasn’t it,” Niko said, stepping out of his dorm room. He walked down the hall, crossing the short distance from his door to where Dyna stood. “I didn’t do so well either.”

Dyna blinked, then quickly nodded. She had nearly forgotten about the regular psionic tests. Simple coin flip guessing, card reading, and general, basic information gathering tests. Somehow, it all seemed so far away even though she had just barely gone through it the day before.

“I don’t think doing well is the important part,” Dyna said, trying to not look too impatient with the interruption. “Just doing something at all.”

“Not sure I managed that much,” Niko said, sighing.

The poor guy. One of Dyna’s few friends outside Melanie. It wasn’t that she was bullied here at Carroll, but lots of people would rather spend their time with their peers, rather than the suspected control subject of this grand experiment. Like her, Niko didn’t have any real way of demonstrating his power.

“They didn’t give you a special test?” Dyna asked.

He could accurately predict the outcome of a situation with exactly two possibilities. The problem was that most situations had more outcomes. Even a coin could land on its edge when flipped. Most tests that he produced results in had been carefully designed just for him.

In every other way, he was effectively another control subject.

Not actually, of course. That would be bad science. But a large portion of their peers here didn’t care for the science.

“The standard one. I did roughly average. Nothing better than a non-psychic would get. What about you?”

“The test went poorly. But… I might have had a breakthrough after. I—” Dyna cut herself off. “Well, I’m apparently not supposed to say exactly what happened. But I think it is something good.”

“That’s wonderful,” Niko said, genuine excitement lighting up in his brown eyes. He pressed two fingers to his temple and winked. “So, can you read my mind now?”

“No. Nothing like that. The breakthrough wasn’t that big. More of an… idea? I was just about to go down to a meditation room and think on it some more.” Dyna decided as she spoke that she really was going to do it. Nothing bad would happen. If she felt like something big was coming, she would stop immediately.

But to just ignore this breakthrough until Walter showed up at some unknown time in the future?

Dyna couldn’t do that.

“Well, I wish you luck,” Niko said, offering a bright smile.

“Thanks. I’ll probably need it,” Dyna said. She turned away, only to pause and glance back. “Hey Niko, did you get any headaches last night?”

“Not really. Jefferson collapsed though. I called the docs and they took him away to one of the med labs. He came back this morning groggy and sluggish, but he’s been getting better.”

Niko’s roommate, Jefferson, was an empath—able to tell what others were feeling. Had that caused a more severe reaction to whatever it was that Dyna had done? Niko said he hadn’t gotten a headache. Because he wasn’t considered a strong psychic?

There were probably dozens of scientists going over the data of who reacted and who didn’t and what all that meant. Thinking about it herself wasn’t necessary in the slightest.

But knowing that what she had done had caused issues for more than just Melanie meant that she had to be careful.

“Just wondering since Mel mentioned something about it,” Dyna said, turning away. “Anyway, catch you later!”

“Good luck!” he said again.

“Thanks.”

Time to go think at myself for a few hours.