I find myself a table in the corner of the nearly empty room, and think harder than I've ever thought before. I think back to starting this dysfunctional road trip, the Trackers appearing, the party we had the first night at uni, moving from Sheffield and starting uni, living alone in a cramped flat for a year out of the pure principle of finally being able to do whatever the hell I wanted.

I take the train of thought back to when I was at secondary school, when I did exceptionally better than anyone thought I would in my GCSEs, and the time I got suspended when I was thirteen for getting into a fight with Andrew Mahon after he made fun of me because my foster mum was in her early seventies, and my first day at the school when I made Annabel check every room before I stepped into it to analyse the people in my classes.

I go back to primary school, when I broke my wrist after jumping off a tree and thinking the grass underneath would soften the blow, telling everyone that my sister was in the class too except she's older than all of us, and I'm so focused that it's the most vivid I've ever remembered any of it, and as I go further and further back and start creeping towards my early years of primary school, I feel like I'm going to remember. It's going to happen. The memories are going to keep spilling out, and I'm going to remember everything from day one.

Then I reach a cold, hard stop.

I feel embarrassed for ever entertaining the possibility.

I'm halfway through my second drink and feeling slightly buzzed when someone props a glass of water opposite me on the plastic table. I lift my head to see Ava sitting down in the seat at the other end of the table. Great.

"Whoa, hi," she says as if I'm the one who crept up on her. "Can't sleep?"

"Something like that," I mutter. "Don't worry, I'm not getting drunk or anything."

I briefly consider the water she's brought might be for me, but as I entertain the thought, Ava takes a sip from it. She opens her mouth and flashes her perfectly white teeth to speak, but I get in there before she can.

"Fancy flexing your aura reading muscles?"

We make base in her and Carmen's room. It's the biggest of the three cabins we have, and I need space for any melodramatic passing out I decide to do. Carmen is fast asleep. Ava and I sit opposite each other on the carpet at the end of the girls' bed, our legs crossed, and I let her work her magic. I still feel like an idiot when I participate in this stuff, but after a few minutes of having my eyes closed and trying to empty my mind, I begin falling.

I see an all too familiar scene. It's the accident. I figure it's the moments leading up to what happened in my last vision because I see my mother's corpse for the first time. She's hunched over, her back against the car, and there's a man scurrying towards me as I sit crying in the middle of the road. Annabel and my dad are still in the same place. The man swoops down and grabs me as a bolt of darkness flies in our direction, and we dart into the forest. From there, it's nothing new. I still don't recognise the man's face.

I don't pass out when I return to reality, but only just. I can't focus my vision, and my head is spinning. I almost growl in frustration. That's not good enough. I need a new memory. I ask Ava to do it again. She's hesitant, but agrees so long as I give it five minutes to regain myself. We try again, and it works a little faster this time. But it's still nothing new.

I pass out for around twenty seconds after this vision, but manage to convince Ava to do it again. I promise her it's the last try. This time, the process is almost instantaneous.What I see is the same night, but much earlier. When nobody is dead.

I can hear the patter of light rain on a car roof, Dad is talking in a rushed voice but the sound is muffled, and I can only assume we're speeding down the road we're due to crash on. I'm sitting on what I guess is someone's lap because my head is pressed into a woman's chest. If this whole memory is just me being dumb, deaf and blind then I'm going to be really pissed off.

As if my eight-year-old self can hear my frustration, he lifts his head up to see my mum's face. We're sitting in the backseat while my dad is at the wheel, and I can see the back of a man's head in the passenger seat. It's nearly pitch black outside, but I can make out enough to know I was right. We're speeding down the road everyone's about to die on.

"Felix, honey, go back to sleep." My mother's voice is the calmest I've ever heard it, but I've had enough of these visions to know she's just masking her fear. "It's really late, okay? You've got to be up early for school tomorrow, you don't want to be tired."

"Is he awake?" my dad shoots from the front of the car, and he doesn't mask the panic quite so well. "Phoebe, get him back to sleep."

"Don't panic," the man in the passenger seat pipes up in a hushed voice, his attention on my dad. "The last thing we need is for him to get scared and his energy go haywire. If you start freaking out, so will he." The man turns and looks at me. He's the same one from the forest. "Hey, Felix," he says with a tiny smirk. "Sleeping lions, quick!"

Just like that, I squeeze my eyes shut. I'm giggling. For the love of--Why is eight-year-old me so useless? Sure, I'm a literal child with no foresight into what's actually happening, and with no idea that everyone is about to die a violent death, but c'mon.

"I just saw you peek, you're going to have to try harder," the man whispers. "Mummy's definitely beating you."

I didn't peek. Just saying. My eyes stay shut, and it doesn't take me long to figure out what the man is doing because I'm beginning to feel tired. As my younger self is starting to drift off, my present self is hit with a realisation like a blow to the head. Annabel. She's not in the car with us. There's no sign of Annabel. Where the hell is Annabel?

I'm yelling at my younger self to ask after her, but he's too focused on this stupid game to be of any use, and he's falling back asleep, fast. Then in some cruel attempt to grant my wish, there's a sudden jolt, my mum screams, my dad shouts something, the car comes to a screeching halt, and my eyes shoot open to see the low ceiling of a ship cabin.

I sit up, trying to catch my breath as the room spins around me, and as I try to scramble to a standing position, I just fall right back down. Where's Ava? I lean my back against the end of her and Carmen's bed, my breath still coming out in short bursts. My head is thumping. I forgot how jarring this whole process is.

I look down, and notice I'm sitting on a blanket, and there's a pillow where my head was resting moments ago. How long have I been out of it? I give it another five minutes until I try to stand again. My head still feels hazy, but I manage to stay on my feet. Ava and Carmen are both fast asleep in bed. I need to do it again.

As silently as possible, I shake Ava's shoulder without trying to disturb Carmen. It takes a few goes, and I'm still unsteady on my feet, but I get there in the end.

"Whoa, what time is it? Are you okay? Has something happened?" she whispers in a slight mumble, obviously not fully awake yet.

"I don't know, still night. Everything's fine, I just need one more go at this whole aura crap."

"No." Her answer is blunt.

"C'mon Ava, it's starting to work, please." I inwardly cringe at how desperate I sound. Carmen fidgets in her sleep, so I lower my voice. "If we keep at it, we can figure this out."

"No, Felix." This time, Ava sounds wide awake.

I can't make out her expression in the darkness, only that her eyes are open and staring into mine.

"Hey, what's happening?" Carmen's muffled voice distracts me for a moment.

Her face is buried into a pillow, and her eyes are shut. My head's still throbbing. God, I feel sick.

"Nothing, don't worry, go back to sleep," I reply. I turn back to Ava and whisper, "why not? Our flight's not until the afternoon. We can book a hotel room and you can just use it to sleep in until we need to leave. I'll pay for it, I don't mind."

"Not because I'll be tired, because it's not good for you, Felix. It's hurting you."

Ava's eyes shift to the bedside table. I didn't even realise, but I'm leaning on it, and I'm pretty sure it's the only reason I'm still on my feet. I consider letting go to test that theory, but decide against it.

"I'm fine," I argue. "It worked last time, I remembered something new. Please, Ava?"

"I said no."

I swear under my breath, and release my hand from the bedside table. The fuzziness in my head makes me stumble, and I trip. I fall to the floor as my eyelids turn heavy, but before I hit it, Ava grabs my arm to soften the blow. As she keeps hold of me, I focus on the feeling of her skin on mine, and then just like that, I'm having another vision. 

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A/N: Felix clearly needs to calm it. In other news, any thoughts on our mystery man? More importantly, is he still around (be it in ghostie form or flesh form)?