“I think so. That’s why it was so hard to tell whose dream it was—I only figured it out because the night before we met, you saw your reflection in the dream and then—”

“You recognized me the next day,” he finished for me.

“Yeah.”

“I was in the basement. Running.” He turned his body back to face the park, his jaw tensing with each word. “That’s the dream you’re talking about right? I’m running through the AM to—to—”

His jaw tensed once more, like he was clamping down on whatever words he was trying to avoid saying out loud.

“To save someone,” I finished, unaware up until that moment that that’s what he was trying to do. “You were trying to rescue someone. That really was the AM’s basement. That’s why the hallway looked the same.”

“What hallway?”

I explained about my exploring and finding a hallway I recognized from his dream, but without all the doors.

“Oh yeah.” He nodded. “That must have been right above me.”

“So, in the basement, they…” I wasn’t even sure how to complete that sentence.

“They keep people prisoner.”

“And you…”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “That nightmare you saw … that was from the last time I was in that building. It was last summer. I broke in to save someone. Someone who had been trapped in there for a very long time.”

“Where are they now?” I asked, imagining that poor man still trapped in the basement, looking hopeless and half-dead.

“Safe,” he said, and it was clear that he wasn’t going to give me any more than that.

“What— When— Does—” There were a million questions shooting through my brain but finally it settled on the one that would have the simplest answer. “How did you break in?”

“It was easy.” He shrugged.

“How? I know it’s not actually a prison—or, well, I guess it is,” I realized, “but it’s not like you can just walk in there—they’ve got security in the lobby.”

“That kind of stuff isn’t a problem for me,” he said simply. “Or, at least, it wasn’t.”

“What do you mean?” And then the penny dropped. “Your ability … what was it?”

His jaw clenched, his mouth tightening. I now realize how careful he had been to avoid mentioning the specifics of his ability up until that point. How reluctant he was to say much about it.

“I was able to influence people,” he said. “Make them … feel comfortable, if I wanted them to feel comfortable.” The way he said it made it sound like there were a few other examples he could have given.

“Mind control?” I asked, feeling like I wanted to slide to the other end of the bench. But Damien just rolled his eyes.

“Definitely not,” he said. “Several Atypical medical professionals have been very adamant about the fact that what I do is not mind control.”