they’ve been banned. turns out they weren’t actually Unusual themselves—not the first creepy person to try to invade our space and I’m certain they won’t be the last.

theneonthorn

you all know I have a personal no PM rule for myself, but I’ll just say: every whisper you’ve heard about That Place is true.

tacotacotaco

I’m going to message you—I have some positive insight, actually, which I know puts me in the minority.

thatsahumanperson

I’ll take it.

MAY 28TH, 2017

My hands are shaking as I write this. I can’t believe I just did something so crazy, so reckless. In real life.

It wasn’t a dream. It feels like a dream, like something I conjured out of thin air, but every inch of it was real. I’m still processing it, still trying to understand everything that happened, want to write it down so that I remember every moment, not because it was good, because it wasn’t, but because it was important. I know something changed inside of me tonight, permanently, and that’s worth making permanent note of.

It all started with a text from Damien.

I’m going back there tonight. Dr. Sharpe has set up her lab and it’ll just be a skeleton crew with the long weekend.

I wanted to pretend I didn’t know what he was talking about, wanted to pretend that I was going to listen to Aaron and not do something incredibly stupid, that I wasn’t still thinking about the idea of some magical cure being in the halls of the AM but I just couldn’t.

So I went. And it was incredibly stupid.

I’m not even sure I could write down exactly what happened—or if it would be smart to. I mean … I just committed a crime. I’m not even sure how. Damien was confident, saying he’d done this before, but that had been with his ability. I didn’t know how he planned to break in when he couldn’t get everything he wanted.

It started with Damien picking me up outside our diner in a car that did not at all reflect his personality (a boring, tan sedan), parking it in the middle of nowhere, walking a mile to the facility, and then sneaking down to a service entrance Damien was sure would be easy to break into.

“This is your master plan?” I hissed. “Just … picking a lock?”

“This exit was totally clear when I broke Mark out. And that was a holiday weekend too, so it’s the same guard rotation.”

I tried not to pass out from nerves as Damien struggled to pick the lock.

“Haven’t you done this before?”

“Not since I was thirteen,” he muttered and then, to my enormous surprise, the door actually opened. We were in.