Elliott disappears into the fog between the pine trunks. His voice weaves out toward me. “So up pop road signs, right when you were thinking about them. But you had no idea what they should say, plus I bet you were concentrating more on our conversation than the road—so the things you were thinking about the hardest, that’s what went on the signs. We’re controlling our surroundings, or at least small elements of them—with our thoughts, our memories, our expectations.”

I turn in a circle. I stare out into the fog. Patches of it blow across the street and the forest, thickening in spots, wisp-thin in others. The things Elliott willed into existence are less than a block away. If I go inside the little ramshackle stand, will its shelves be stocked? Are our imaginations powerful enough to create a hundred minuscule details with a single sweeping thought?

Dread clutches a tight fist around my chest. My thoughts are not about gas cans and mile markers. They are not helpful, not easy to control.

Especially when I’m worried they could actually come true.

“Yes!” Elliott exults, striding back toward me, his form fuzzy through the fog. “Callahan, come check this out!”

My legs move. I follow him, trying to keep my mind blank. Empty. A white slate, a clean landscape. But fear and exhaustion are fizzing at the backs of my eyes, making it even harder than normal to keep my thoughts straight.

It was bad enough when I thought the aliens could read my mind. But me … I trust me even less than I trust aliens. I’ve had my own brain turn against me before, and it was the worst experience of my life. And that was when my thoughts couldn’t accidentally come true.

Elliott is standing in front of a cement slab the size of a small house, inlaid in the grass. At its edge is a reinforced metal door that opens upward. He pulls on the handle and disappears down some stairs.

A light turns on. A light. Electricity, where there should be none.

A white slate. A clean landscape. Don’t think. I tap the frame, follow him down and close the door behind me. There are two dead bolts. I slide them shut. Drop my hand. Then reach up and double-check that I really did lock them. That they’ll stay locked when all I can think about is them accidentally sliding back open.

“Come on,” Elliott calls. I have to finish my fifth round of double-checking before I can tear myself away from the dead bolts, turn around, and walk down the stairs.