“You likely already know that they drug us,” Soohae was saying once Hanna had calmed down and they were all now sitting on the bed. Soohae had assured Hanna that no one would be coming here. Most of the time they seemed to forget Soohae even existed. Legacy was often her only visitor and would bring her food and necessities that she pilfered from staff closets and the kitchen—which was the room behind the double doors at the Nurse’s Station.

On this particular night, Legacy had secured vanilla pudding, which Soo had partially devoured before poking at it and setting it aside on the nightstand.

“It’s more than that,” Soohae sighed, continuing. “They’re not drugging everyone the same way. They’re looking for something—or Sol is—and she won’t stop until its found.”

“Looking for what?” Hanna asked, but Legacy just shook her head.

“If we knew that, we wouldn’t be here,” Legacy muttered sourly. Soohae turned and put a hand on Legacy’s knee. The younger girl seemed to calm down.

“They don’t let us go out and get much sunlight, they keep us locked away. They only let us meet with those they don’t believe will be a risk,” Soohae continued. “And it’s possible whatever they’re looking for must be some particular reaction to the drugs. Maybe some certain mix of drugs. What they’re hoping for is impossible to say. We’d need more information, which means we’d need access.

Hanna thought of Cris, how Anderson said he hadn’t returned since he traded her food trays at that fateful lunch.

“Why do they do this? How can it help them find something?” Hanna asked, frowning.

Legacy shrugged, but Soohae just smiled sadly. “Aren’t you also from a different timeline?” she asked softly.

The world stopped and spun, taking Hanna with it. This Soohae. Was she..?

Soohae nodded and looked down at her hands in her lap. “We’ve met before,” she said simply. “The drugs that they use, they make it so that you can’t leave. They trap you here,” she lamented. “You start to go mad when you are pulled between timelines or worlds or whatever it is exactly. They try to keep you from traveling.” Her face grew pained. “But it’s different for me. It’s like I travel, not my mind. I can’t really explain it right now, I’m still trying to figure it out without going crazy.” She looked up. “But whatever they’re looking for, I feel like we can’t let them find it.”

“And all this is just to…LOOK for something? But what? What’s so important that they would upend and destroy lives to find?”

“Not them,” Soohae said quietly, her face shifting to something of pity and remorse. “Not them,” she repeated. “Sol.”

Hanna’s skin grew bumpy as the cold swept through her.

“This all started with Sol.” Soohae continued. “We think so, anyway. It’s difficult to access the labs, even when the world forgets you exist. There are still cameras. We have to assume that Sol monitors everything..” She trailed off.

Hanna closed her eyes tight and allowed herself a moment to try to digest the information.

“So, what you were saying, about the traveling. You said you start to go mad when you’re pulled between timelines. Is that true?”

Soohae opened her mouth then shut it. She looked over to Legacy with an unsure expression. Frowning, Legacy cleared her throat.

“I might have found something someplace I’m not supposed to have been,” Legacy began, narrowing her eyes. “Paperwork of interviews with some of the patients. I don’t know what it means, but I think it might have been referring to the traveling either making people mad, or the lack of traveling when stuck in another world doing it. I’m not exactly sure. Something about stress induced psychosis? I don’t know.”

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Hanna sighed, frustrated. “How can you NOT be sure? Did it say, or didn’t it?” She didn’t mean to snap at Legacy, but she just felt so helpless. So useless.

Legacy scoffed and put her hands on her hips. “What do you want from me? I’m a fifteen-year-old, not a rocket scientist! I can’t understand more than half of that jargon! I was just doing what I can to get you out. To get you both home, you and Aema.”

Hanna looked at the younger girl sheepishly. She felt bad, but she wasn’t about to apologize and look even weaker. “And Isis too, right?”

Legacy gave a snort. “Obviously,” she muttered sarcastically. “We’re not leaving that evil witch in Aema’s body one minute longer than we have to! We don’t even know why she’s there. There’s no obvious advantage to having Aema in Isis’ body. After all, Aema tries hard, but she’s no nurse.”

“So, then, all we really have are conspiracy theories, right?” Hanna looked between the girls. Soohae dropped her eyes while Legacy turned her head away, jerking her shoulder up in a half-shrug.

“It’s better than having nothing,” Legacy muttered bitterly.

Hanna sighed, but nodded her agreement. It did make a sort of sense, but she still felt like there was something missing. Some large piece of information. Whether it was something she was supposed to ask or something she was supposed to relay, she couldn’t remember. Her brain just felt foggy.

“Let’s let Hanna get some sleep for now,” Soohae suggested, raising a hand at Hanna’s panicked expression. “Don’t worry. Whatever they have you on now, for some reason you aren’t traveling. Let’s just think of that information as a win for now. She gave her head a nod towards the door. “Have Legacy take you to your room and I’ll come and see you again once I have the chance.”

Hanna nodded and began to get up when something clicked. “What about Candace?” she asked.

“What about her?” Legacy scoffed. Soohae gave her a sharp look.

“Which Candace, dear?” Soo asked gently.

Hanna thought back to the Candace she met in that second world. How she seemed to change from sweet, thoughtful Candace into Aema’s—no, Isis’s—lacky. She had become twisted.

“The Candace from World 2,” she finally answered, frowning.

Soo opened her mouth, but Legacy cut her off.

“Candace is dead,” Legacy told her flatly.

“Legacy,” Soohae warned quietly.

“Well, she may as well be! As far as we know, she’s been in that catatonic state since long before Hanna…well, this Hanna, came here.”

That was it! That must have been when she changed, Hanna thought to herself. She tried to remember how long she had been in World 2, but the truth of the matter was that time didn’t seem to follow any set rules when it came to this traveling. But it now made total sense that World 2’s Candace was switched and now lay here in a coma while World 3's evil Candace played Isis’ little helper.

“How can we find out for sure?” Hanna asked. “You know, which Candace is there and here, if she’s really in a coma and how it happened. All of it.”

Legacy stared at her coolly while Soo stared down at her hands in her lap. “We’d have to find her, or at least find her charts,” Legacy finally responded, frowning. “Which wouldn’t be easy to do, and would probably be a death case for sure.”

“A death case?”

Legacy rolled her eyes and huffed a sigh. “A death case. Like, if you get caught, it’s reason enough for them to kill you. A suicide mission. A ‘She knows too much, so now we have to kill her’—”

“Alright, I get it,” Hanna grumped, throwing her hands up in annoyance. “Fine, I won’t ask about it again.” She leveled the younger girl with a stare. “For now.”

“Fine,” Legacy replied, raising an eyebrow.

“Fine,” Hanna echoed.

“Fine,” Legacy repeated slightly louder, as if she had to have the last word. Hanna just rolled her eyes.

After giving Soohae another hug, Hanna got up and followed a silent, somber Legacy out of the room and back to her own. “Make sure you leave things how you found them. Like your door. Don’t lock it. It might be a test,” the younger girl instructed sharply as she began to retreat into her room.

“Legacy?” Hanna said tentatively before Legacy could disappear behind her door.

“Hm?” Legacy mumbled, half turning towards Hanna.

“How do you get out of your room if they lock the doors here?” she asked. The younger girl just grinned.

“I have my ways,” she replied wryly with a smirk. “Goodnight, Hanna,” she added mysteriously and, with a little wave, disappeared into her room.

Part of Hanna grumped at the kept secret and part of her was sort of relieved. If it was something she could do herself, she would have been tempted to try it—and likely gotten caught and suffered for it. Shrugging one shoulder to herself, Hanna quietly entered her room, closing the door behind her.

Over the next few hours, Hanna thought long and hard over the conversation before finally falling into a restless, fitful sleep. Soohae wasn’t a ghost, wasn’t dead, and all of this—all of it—was because of Sol. Probably. It had nothing to do with Hanna and the basement. She was pulled into it as much as everyone else was. And poor Candace..

She sighed and, as she drifted off, she thought of Soohae’s forlorn expression. “It isn’t them,” her mind’s Soohae repeated. “It’s Sol.”