The ground hangs beneath my feet. The stars splayed out across the sky; dancing lights, shifting and spinning around me. The air cool and crisp, tumbling down the mountain side into the valley below.

"Emerson, are you seeing this?" I call out. I can feel him behind me, feel him watching me. I feel the layer of sweet on my skin and in my hair drying and making me chilled. The hike up the mountain was long. And even with Emerson helping me over the biggest logs and rocks, obstacles his long legs were never concerned with, I was tired.

Then I hear him from the darkness of the tree cover behind, "I've seen it before Aideen."

"Silly, you haven't seen it with me, so get your scared little behind out here and sit with me!" I yell over my shoulder, patting the ground beside me. I hear the rocks crunch behind me as he approaches the cliff ledge I sit on. He sits down beside me, keeping his feet firmly planted on the rock, whereas mine dangle over the precarious ledge. My red sneakers kicked the rock, sending shards sliding down, creating the sound of glass breaking as they tumbled. I sneak a glance at him. In the dark, his black hair looked blacker, and his blue eyes shown brighter. Ethereal, that's how he looked.

"I can feel you hyperventilating." I say, sarcastically.

"I am sorry, is my terror amusing?"

"Yes. Yes, it is." I give him slight push on the arm, which only makes him breathe faster. I scoot away from the edge. Pulling my legs into my chest, I wrap my arms around them and rest my chin on my knees. "Better?" I turn my head to the side, resting my cheek on my knees so I could see his expression.

"Marginally." He smirks, making eye contact briefly, before looking back to the sky. For a guy so afraid of heights, he certainly did spend a lot of time looking up.

* * *

The sound of the vault door opening wakes me up. I must have fallen asleep on the couch. A sliver of light appears on the far wall. Someone stumbles in the opening and judging by the slurred expletive that accompanied the struggle, it was Jeremiah. And he was drunk.

I almost sit up to yell at him for ruining a perfectly good dream when I heard another voice, low and whispered. I decide to stay hidden instead, waiting to see what comes of it.

"Jer, I thought you were going to talk with him, not get drunk with him." Footsteps moves across the space. The door closes; the lock spinning back into place.

"Dad, he is freaking messed up; getting drunk seemed like the best medication." The surefooted steps move the dragging footsteps to the center of the room. A large body flops into a chair.

"Emerson is seriously messed up." I perk up at the sound of a name I hadn't heard in nearly a decade. I was wide awake now, ears straining against the stillness of the dark.

The sound of a water running from the tap covers up the mumblings of one drunken Jeremiah.

"Here drink this." The second voice was Henry's. What did Henry know about Emerson? Henry knew about Emerson when I was with him nearly a decade ago, but nothing recent to my knowledge. But more importantly, what did Jeremiah know about Emerson?

"Ugh, what is it?" slurred Jeremiah.

"Water. Now drink." Chair legs scrape against the concrete floor.

"Okay, now what do you mean he is messed up?" Henry's voice was barely discernible. He must be right next to Jeremiah, not needing to speak very loudly.

"High school. You, you remember him in high school. With all those nightmares and memories and crap. Man, he looked like crap." A snapping sound echoes through the bunker. As if Henry just snapped his fingers in Jeremiah's face

"Focus! What does that have to do with right now?"

"Well," Jeremiah paused again, an empty glass hits the table with a thud. "he has been having the nightmares/dreams/memories, whatever the heck you want to call them, again. About a month now. So, of course, Jenna is freaking out, probably going to send him to a psych ward. Basically, we are going to lose our only playing piece in this entire damn chess game. AND we will lose. End of story. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 fricking dollars."

"Did you say a month?" Henry asked quickly, cutting off Jeremiah's dooms-day word vomit.

"Yeah, why?"

"Dammit, that means he is still connected to Aideen." Henry replied aggressively; he didn't swear very often but when he did he meant business.

"Yeah." Jeremiah paused, "Wait, why?"

"She has been Troy, New York with Jo, following Nathan. For a month now."

"Oh, I get it." Jeremiah's voice pauses, "I don't get it." He corrects his statement.

"Meaning, if they are in a two-hundred-mile radius of one another for an extended period of time, he still losses his marbles."

Jeremiah voice resonated through the space, "PLINK, PLINK, PLINK". Freaking drunk Jeremiah, animating the sound of Emerson's marbles falling out his head.

I hear a chair slide back into place at the table.

"Okay my boy, here we go." Henry must be helping Jeremiah to his feet. "Off to bed with you, you are entirely worthless until you are sober." The shuffling feet make their way towards me. I close my eyes and slow down my breathing, pretending to be sleeping. One of the rooms that houses bunks is just beyond the living area. Henry takes a decreasingly coherency Jeremiah there.

"Wait," Jeremiah says, stopping the shuffling. "there was...was something about a lizard? No, a gecko, like Gieco! No, that still isn't right. I just know, I know there was something about a reptile."

"Tell me in the morning." Henry replies quietly, pushing Jeremiah into a cot on the other side of the door.

I wait, continuing to pretend to sleep, until I hear Henry settling down in the same bunk room as Jeremiah. I uncover, leaving the warmth of my blanket cocoon behind, instantly regretting falling asleep in a sports bra without a shirt, and head to the bunk room where I know Tucker is for the night. He got off his door guard shift at midnight, Molly – one of the newbies – took over until noon tomorrow.

I pad my way across the living space, pushing the metallic door open, internally cursing as it scrapes the cold concrete flooring. The crack of light hits Tuckers face; I could tell it was him by the way the light reflected off his bright hair. He wakes up, instinctively reaching for Herald, his gun, which he has propped next to the cot.

"Stand down, it's just me." I whisper as I walk across the room. "Can I be little spoon?"

He scoots his back up to the wall and holds the covers open for me to crawl in. In his groggy, half-awake state, he whispers "Another nightmare?"

I crawl into the covers, warmed by Tucker's body heat. Laying down on my side, my short stature fitting against him perfectly. He wraps his arms around me, and I snuggle against his well-muscled body. Suddenly, he tenses, exclaiming "Jesus Christ, your feet are cold!"

I giggle unapologetically. Despite what it looked like, Tucker and my relationship had been, and always will be platonic. I had known him for almost seven years, ever since I was 18 and he was 21, back when he had signed on to be the security coordinator of our small program. As an ex-marine, he had trained all of us in various forms of armed and unarmed combat. But more than that, he had always provided an emotional haven that I never thought I was missing. If there was anyone here who knew me, understanding all the things I couldn't say, it was Tucker.

"No, not a nightmare. Just a dream; a vivid memory." I replied, answering his question.

"I'm sorry I doubted you, Tucker." I continue, feeling guilty for earlier today, "I shouldn't have laughed off your concern about Jeremiah." I rotate my head to see him. His eyelids open, revealing the strange eyes beneath. One all blue, the other split down the middle, half blue and half hazel.

"No, you were probably right. It's all just a conspiracy anyways."

He closes his eyes, falling back to sleep almost instantly. I swear he had a knack for that, something I envied. I never could fall asleep that fast. My racing mind always kept me up. Now was no exception, I couldn't process everything I had overheard. Henry knew who Emerson was; he was employed by my father to drive me to and from Emerson's house my entire childhood while I was posing as his imaginary friend. But how did Jeremiah know?

Henry and I had agreed that we weren't going to talk about Emerson after he had run away with his family, and I ran away from my father. Sally knew, she was his wife after all, but their children; Jeremiah, Micah, Lilli, and Caney, were never supposed to know. They knew that Henry worked for my father, which is how he knew me. And they knew that it wasn't safe for me there anymore. Which was why I, a scrawny 15-year-old, came into their life with nothing more than a backpack. And why they were gracious enough to take me in and call me family.

My mind kept circling around to it though, how did Jeremiah know? And how did he know Emerson well enough that were drinking buddies? But more than that, what was their plan with him now? And what did I have to do with his nightmares? Did he dream about me the way I dreamed about him? All I knew for sure was that I was going to have to confront Jeremiah tomorrow. I fell asleep with those questions circling my head the way Tucker's arms circled me. But not even the comfort of my best friend would keep away the feeling of betrayal that had gripped my chest.