For a split second, it was normal.

The usual rush of air, the world stretching and blurring into streaks of light. But then, it stopped.

They weren't at camp, they weren't in the lab. They were somewhere else. The space between.

It was vast, endless, but in a way that made Abigail aware of just how endless it was. A void of shifting, churning static, pressing against Abby like a thousand whispering voices. Jacob was right beside her, but also millions of miles away.

The more Abby tried to make sense of the space, the more it hurt. Shapes moved in the distance, against the grain of the universe, forming angles and lines that refused to follow the laws of reality, folding in on themselves. The same patterns that Jacob had painted. A low, resonant vibration filled the void, shaking her teeth and bones.

"It's them" he whispered. "The patterns I saw. They're here. That's where they came from." He raised his hand, trying to reach out to the writhing shapes, and Abby felt a pull, like the void was trying to drag him away.

"Jake!" Abby pulled him back, her voice echoing strangely, but also not at all at the same time. The shapes turned toward them, their edges sharpening, aligned, all pointing towards Abigail Louden. She felt their attention in her soul - like eyes without faces, cold, endless, ancient and all-knowing.

Panic clawed at her. She focused on the common house again, picturing it desperately, clinging to the image like a lifeline. Please, she begged to anyone that would listen. Please.

Her power surged, fighting the void's pull aggressively, and the world snapped back into place two feet above the wooden common house floor.

They hit the ground hard. Jacob collapsed beside her, coughing, his painted face streaked with sweat. The room wasn't lit, dim, the rain still pattering on, but it was real. Solid. Safe.

"Abby!" Riley's voice called out, cutting through the haze, sharp with concern, but also relief. She rushed over, grabbed Abby's arm and pulled her to her feet. Jacob had fallen onto the couch in the corner. "What happened? You were gone for... a minute?"

"I saw the space between the teleports." Abby answered, shaken and exhausted. "Jacob was right, there's something... different in there."

"They're still going deeper," Marigold said from the window, looking down onto the clearing. "I can feel them stepping over the vines." She shook her head. "Where the hell is Sadie?"

"I should have never let him go in there" Abby mumbled, sitting down on the couch next to Jacob. He wasn't there, he was absent, mumbling and tracing patterns with trembling hands. "This is my fault."

"Hey, hey. Marigold got closer to her. "Don't say that. Nobody knows what we're dealing with here." She tried to console Abby, but it was no use.

On the table, Autumn had put a few of the Jacob drawings. She was looking at them, curious, but almost knowing.

"Autumn?" Riley asked, gently. "What's-"

"I know them too. These patterns. They're... gravity."

Riley sighed. "Don't tell me you're going crazy, too."

"It's not like that." She shook her head. "It's just... this is how it feels. This is how my power feels when I use it."

Riley considered the paper. "Like... circles?"

"It's hard to explain. But this is... closest I've ever seen it visualised."

"You really-" Riley wanted to ask, but was cut short by the door to the common house rattling. It creaked open, and Abby's power flared instinctively, ready to teleport. Autumn raised her fists, half a dozen forks and knives from the kitchen drawer floating around her, pointing at the door. But it was just Sadie, rain-soaked and pale.

"Sadie?" Marigold asked and Autumn lowered her knives. "Where the hell have you been?"

Sadie didn't answer right away. She stepped inside, and Abby could see who was standing behind her. She'd never seen him before, only in Riley's drawings, but it was unmistakable - it was Dr. Allen Truman.

"What- what the hell is he doing here?!" Riley called out as she looked in her father's eyes. They were tired, weary, both parts exhausted and relieved.

Sadie's expression hardened, but there was something else. Something like... guilt. "I made a deal."

"What?"

"Last night. I went to the mobile lab at the visitor centre."

"What kind of deal?" Autumn asked, not taking her eyes off of Dr. Truman.

"They get access to the lab. Full run of the place. Whatever they need. In exchange, they leave us alone. Don't mention camp to anyone. No arrests, no raids. We're safe here." She paused. "I didn't have a choice."

"Bullshit!" Riley called out, panicked. "You're stronger than anything the government can throw at us! We could have just left this place, rebuilt somewhere new-"

"And where would that have led you?" Dr. Truman said. "New York?"

Silence fell in the treehouse.

He cleared his throat. "The United States Geological Survey is aware of the mountain and the anomaly within. My team and I will move in, set up safeguards to contain the spread of the-"

His voice faltered.

"God," he whispered, more to himself than anything. "I'm just glad to know you're okay."

Riley didn't move an inch.

"I didn't know if you were alive" he continued. "I looked everywhere. Filed reports. Called every hospital from Tahoe to Chicago, and you just..." He swallowed. "Vanished."

"You were going to lock me up" Riley said, accusingly. "You were going to drag me to Menlo Park and-"

"That was never the plan, Riley. We just... we needed to know what you were capable of. How you were connected to all of this." He pinched the bridge of his nose and wiped away what could have become a tear. "I'm sorry."

Riley didn't answer. Silence pressed in around them. Abby watched them with her arms folded, and Sadie just stood between them, like a bodyguard.

"I came here because of the anomaly. Not because of you. Although I should've known." His gaze moved across the others in the room. Abby, Autumn, Marigold, Jacob crumpled on the couch. "I didn't expect to find this. A camp. A community."

"A family." Sadie corrected him.

Dr. Truman nodded. "I can believe that."

"So... what happens now?" Abby finally asked.

"We will set up our field lab in the clearing, move into the compound as much as we can. And I'll need to talk to you. We need to assess the situation, see what is going on here, and how we deal with it."

"I say we let him." Sadie said. Marigold gave a faint, tired shrug. Autumn nodded. Abby said nothing, but looked less like she wanted to teleport Allen a few feet back over the edge of the platform.

"Thank you." Dr. Truman said, relieved. "We're going to figure this out, I promise."

---

It was still raining. Lightly, but still enough to leave everything muddy and slick as the scientists arrived. Their trucks - government issue, grey, muddy around the wheel wells - rumbled down from the park trail, kicking up gravel. Abby sat on a log a bit further away from the cabin, arms tucked around her knees, hoodie pulled up. Her glasses were smudged, dirty, but she didn't care. The others were around too, out of sight, but watching. They had to have been.

Sadie's cabin looked like it always had. The half-collapsed porch, moss on the roof, a few boards missing, but now it buzzed with new life. People were unloading metal cases, tripods, flight crates with the USGS logo stencilled on them. They even parked the mobile lab trailer right next to it.

Dr. Allen Truman was in the middle of it all, directing traffic like it was muscle memory.

Abby pulled the penguin plush Jacob had won for her at the Keystone fair closer into her lap. Allen Truman glanced over at her and gave her a little wave.

"I'm just watching."

"You're allowed" Allen said, stepping closer. He wasn't wearing a lab coat - just a waterproof jacket, muddy hiking boots, a cap he'd gotten from the gift shop. "I'm not going to kick you off your log."

"Still rather you weren't here."

"I get that." Abby watched a woman with short black hair and a waterproof clipboard bark orders at a grad student hauling boxes.

"That's Dr. Marlene Hutton." Dr. Truman said. "Field logistics. We were classmates. Riley knows her."

Abby watched her for a moment. Her black bob was immaculate, despite the drizzle, and her voice could cut through inches of steel. "She seems fun."

"If you label your samples correctly." Allen replied with a smirk. He turned as Dr. David Vassos stepped out from the mobile lab trailer. His long coat was stained with mineral dust, and he didn't seem to register the rain. His beard had grown scruffier since the polaroids in Truman's journal they had found in the mountain, and his eyes were glassy. Distant. The way Jacob's had looked. He muttered something to himself, then wandered off again.

"He okay?" Abby asked.

Dr. Truman sighed. "He's brilliant. Smartest man I know. But this... thing, in the mountain, it got to him. He's the one who found it. Don't think he's slept more than three hours a night since."

Abby said nothing. The rain whispered through the trees.

"I didn't know if I'd ever see Riley again," Dr. Truman said and took a seat on the log next to Abby. She looked at him, really looked this time. The lines on his face. The tiredness behind his eyes that didn't come from travel.

"She's tougher than she looks" Abby said.

"I know." He replied. "The only reason I haven't completely lost my mind yet."

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a bulky Motorola flip phone, navy blue, scratched to hell and back.

"I've been in touch with your parents," he said. "They've been looking for you the day you disappeared. Posters. Missing persons. Even hired a private eye."

Abby's mouth went dry.

"They're good folks. Scared, sure, but they never gave up looking for you. I told them I'd give you this, once you're ready." Abby considered the phone in her hand, and flipped it open. The screen wasn't backlit, but she could clearly see her home phone number.

"Truman! Gimme a hand here!" Dr. Marlene Hutton called, and he walked over to a scientific looking machine. Abby looked at the display again, and finally pressed the call button.

The phone had barely enough time to ring once.

"Hello?" Her mother's voice. Staticky, compressed, but hers.

"Mom?"

The silence on the other end was sharp and sudden. Then, a gasp. "Abby? Is that- are you- where are you?"

"I'm okay. I'm okay, mom." She sniffled. "I'm safe."

"Oh my god... Al, come here! It's Abby, she's- baby, are you okay? Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm not hurt. I promise." She wiped tears from her cheeks, sitting down on the edge of a crate. "I'm with Riley, at Mount Rushmore."

Her father's voice came next. "Abby. Are you somewhere we can come get you?"

She shook her head, even though they couldn't see her. "Not yet. It's... complicated. But we're okay. Riley's dad is here. And I miss you."

Her mother was crying now. "We miss you too, every day, we just- please don't disappear like that again, Abby. Just tell us, okay? Tell us where you're going."

"I will" she whispered. "I promise."

They talked for minutes, about everything and nothing. About the camp. About the other kinds, about the mountain and the secret lab. She told them she loved them, over and over. They told her the same.

When she finally hung up, her hands were shaking and her face was streaked with tears. She went over the the field lab, and gave Dr. Truman his phone back.

"Thank you for keeping them hoping" Abby said.

He nodded. "They deserve that much."