Cassie didn't find any of her classes to be particularly difficult. Due to block schedule, Cassie only had her specialties class, math, English, and PE that day. The next day would be specialties, an open period, Science, and History. At least, that's what she deciphered from the schedule.

Brie had all of the same classes as Cassie, barring the specialties ones, so they were able to grab seats next to one another for basically everything. There weren't very many kids their age there yet, much less girls their age, so the two friends had glued themselves to one another. Only having known each other for a day did nothing to affect that they based their seating charts solely around being adjacent to one another.

None of the academics classes were very... well, anything. They didn't do anything. At all. Cassie and Brie just played games and talked through them. The kids in each grade were in the same classes, and as Cassie and Brie were the first two twelve year olds, they were the only ones there for the first few days.

That was one hundred percent fine by the girls, who were content with chatting about their powers, hopes, and everything else. Well, almost everything. Cassie had decided that she was not going to tell anyone about Joshua. Instead, she was planning to try contacting him using the tricks that Jazz taught.

"So, did you learn how to do anything neat?" Cassie asked. Brie shrugged and held out one hand to Cassie.

She said, "Kinda, I guess. I can't change things for long-term like Kayla or Clarissa can, but I can do..." Brie trailed off and concentrated on her outstretched hand. Slowly but surely, the skin began to pale and then fade away entirely, along with the rest of her arm.

"Oh, awesome! You can make yourself invisible!" Cassie exclaimed, grabbing onto the arm that seemed to not be there at all. The illusion snapped back as soon as Cassie touched her.

"Only my arm. Kayla said to practice in front of a mirror for my whole body. What about you, Cassie? Can you read my mind?" Brie hummed and thought very loudly of the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

"Not unless you do that. But I can—" do this.

Cassie watched in amusement as her friend's eyes widened in excitement. Brie tried desperately to think something back to Cassie, but succeeded only in creating a lot of white noise around them. Cassie focussed on tuning it out.

That was what Jazz had recommended doing for homework—working on hiding her thoughts and keeping other's thoughts out of her mind.

"Once you have training, and it only takes a few weeks to be decently proficient, you start hearing things when you don't want to hear them. At least, Ali and I did, so it's best to train from the start to keep other's voices out of your mind," was what Jazz had said. "Otherwise you start wanting to wear a tinfoil hat."

The girls went back and forth showing off their specialties for each class, as there was not much else to do. Only during fourth period PE was there an actual lesson plan laid out. PE was not solely a single-grade class so there were more than two students.

Kids were scrambling left and right for the first ten or twenty minutes of class. This was until the girl running the class—a tall brunette who was about the same age as Jazz, incredibly pretty but with an aura that said "don't try anything or I can and will kill you"—managed to get everyone in check. The PE teacher, who called herself Christa, announced that whoever wanted to could play the game of the day, volleyball.

Unlike some of the other PE classes held in the project's facility, Christa's class had only non-physical specialties. That was how they were divided, or so Jazz had told Cassie. The kids with powers like super strength and flying were put into a different PE than those who could read minds or change what people saw. After all, someone who had super speed would have a mind-numbing advantage over a poor child who could do things like the girl who was placed next to Cassie at the start of the game.

Her name was Gene, and she wore a permanent smirk. The sixteen-year-old honestly looked like she knew how and when the world was going to end, and wanted it to take place. Cassie discovered, after being inclined to switch places from her own perfectly great position to Gene's not-so-great one that Gene could control people's decisions.

As the dirty-blonde haired girl told Cassie later when they were cooling off, she couldn't read minds. That was the sole domain of the psychics. Gene could just be quite convincing. Ask for a few dollars from some guy on the street? He'd probably say 'sure!' and give her twenty.

Cassie went over a list in her mind as she climbed up the stairs after PE. The list of people she had met was growing and growing, and it seemed like knowing someone's specialty along with their name was etiquette here.

So, huh. Cassie tried to form a comprehensible list in her mind, but found herself unable to remember who she had started with by the time she reached the end. After a few attempts, she gave up and ducked into her room instead. She glanced around the bunks and tried to find a notepad. Then she checked the two bags she had been given and found a spiral notebook and mechanical pencil.

If they didn't have tablets to use, then they had to have something, Cassie supposed. She made two columns down the paper, heading one with 'Name' and the other with 'Specialty'. Although everyone seemed to use the word specialty to describe both the people and their powers, Cassie thought that this would get confusing fast on a list that had both.

Cassandra: Psychic

Cassie felt the need to put her own name at the top of the list, and writing it out in full gave her a sense of home. She wasn't lost or missing—she was still Cassandra Gilligan.

Rachel: None?

Joshua: Psychic?

The two kids who were the biggest part of Cassie's life, at least the life that she had been happily living before, and she knew the least about them. In terms of specialties, that is. The rest of the list, though, came much easier.

Brie: Vis-Manip

Eve: Electricity

Kimberly: Languages

Nikola: Sound

Maverick: Technology

Gene: Power of Suggestion

Em: X-Ray Vision

Jazz: Psychic

Skye: ???

Rose: ???

Cassie left more rows on the bottom of the list and tore the paper from its binding so she could fold it neatly. Then she placed the paper underneath her pillow and put the notebook back into her bag. At the very least, the list would keep everything real. Anything that Cassie did, whether it was writing something, or talking in someone's mind made everything to feel less like a dream. Sometimes she wished that it was a dream and she could wake to the sound of her alarm and Joshua rushing around the Gilligans' flat.

After making sure that everything was tidy and placing her schedule into one of her bags, Cassie left the room once again. She knew that there would be bunches of people waiting downstairs for dinner. There was only an hour (give or take) between the time that classes let out for the last kids and when food was served. Lunch, which was between periods two and three, had been surprisingly good chicken, beef, or veggie burgers. Cassie wanted to check out any specialties that people would let her observe before dinnertime.

As it turned out, most Specialties were eager to make a show of their powers if given the chance. The rare exceptions were a few of the older people and several teenagers who shyly declined and returned to speaking with smaller groups of friends.

Still, Cassie was met with astonishing enthusiasm and displays of flying, a girl just barely older than Cassie herself bending the edge of the playground only to mold it back into shape, and a boy who smiled slightly before tapping lightly on Cassie's arm and changing her skin to a shade of light blue.

At first Cassie was certain that the boy had been part of the men's dorm for vis-manip kids. Then she realized that the color did not disappear even as the young teen stopped paying attention to her. Cassie had to track down the boy to change her back to how she originally was: distinctly not the color of a blueberry.

By the time dinner was distributed to the masses, Cassie had been levitated, lifted and thrown into the air, and made to disappear from where she stood only to reappear several yards away. That last one had gotten the Specialty who did it in fairly major trouble, due to the fact that the teleportation Specialties were definitely not supposed to use their powers on other people.

For a few minutes after that, Cassie had to listen to Em worry about what might have happened had something gone wrong. When they ate, though, Em sat a few seats down from Brie and Cassie and they all grinned and chatted happily.

From what Jazz had told Cassie, the younger girl came to the conclusion that Em was big on worrying about the new arrivals. She made sure to watch out for them and make sure that they didn't absolutely hate it at the project. Cassie did her best to convince Em that both Brie and herself were nowhere near a mental breakdown or more than a bout of homesickness. Cassie wasn't sure if that was actually the truth, as truth be told she desperately wanted to find Rachel and hug her as tightly as she could, but she did not want to worry Em.

Em brought Cassie and Brie with her when she rejoined her friends after eating. It was the same three girls that had been with Em on the previous day. As they barely knew one another at all, Em decided to organize for them to play games to learn more. They were ten times worse than the games which teachers forced their new students to play to introduce themselves. Still, they all laughed as they played, so it was a decent enough time.

Names and specialties were a given, but Em made them say them anyway. Cassie was thankful because she had no clue what Rose and Skye's specialties were. At all.

It turned out that Skye was one of the unlucky kids, stuck with a less-than-superhero-befitting power. She was able to control the organs in her own or any other person's body. This had led to some massive damages which had to be fixed by one of the healing Specialties, at least until Skye had figured out to control the power. Now she was considered a member of the medical team, though she was only as a last resort.

There were two reasons behind this. One was that healing Specialties couldn't fix either the brain or the heart, while Skye could at least keep the injured person alive long enough for surgery or other conventional treatment. The second reason was that the healing Specialties couldn't heal themselves. Only those around them and those they were touching.

Rose had a slightly more practical talent, though perhaps not one seen in most comic books. She could, with a mere touch, cause someone to fall asleep. Second touch woke them up, so she didn't have to worry over accidentally leaving one of her friends sleeping through a class. She was their Maleficent, as Skye called her, putting people under with a spell.

Mostly, Rose confided, she liked to help any of the girls with insomnia get a better night's rest. Her specialty hadn't begun to show itself until a year after arriving on the campus of the school beneath the ground. Rose promised that she was to the point where the power only had an effect if she wanted it to.

They went around in circles asking one another random questions, wherein Cassie discovered that Rose's first kiss was because of a dare from one of her roommates and was with Skye. (Skye muttered something to the effect of 'who needs a dare' and the others giggled.) Brie told them that her favorite animal was the penguin because they walked like they had something to hide. Cassie talked about how she was certain that dragons were real and lizards made up until first grade. Eve sighed before saying that she could let her hair change back to its natural black if she stopped running electricity through it all the time, but she chose not to.

Em divulged that with her power, she could see people even when they went invisible and had caught couples making out in the hallways more than once. Cassie and Brie exchanged a meaningful glance at that new information. They would have to keep an eye out for randomly disappearing and re-appearing couples.

"I think Clarissa has a boyfriend, actually, and I wouldn't be surprised if she did that," Brie said to Cassie, who rolled her eyes at the mention of the rude girl from the vis-manip group. "We might get Em to help us spoil their fun if she keeps being mean to everyone."

Em heard this and giggled. "Oh, yes. Definitely. She called one of the new kids an imbecile on his first day last year. Clarissa has a horrible temper."

Skye was the only one of their group who had been on any official dates, which was not unusual given that she was the eldest of the group. While Skye was sixteen, both Eve and Rose were only fifteen. And then Em was ten and Cassie and Brie both twelve, so that was really out of the picture.

"Of course, I dumped him when he called me 'scary as heck' on our first date. I swear, the speed Specialties have no tact," Skye announced to the others, rolling her eyes.

By the time the girls split up and ran up to their rooms to get ready for bed, they were all wearing smiles and Brie and Cassie were much more familiar with their new friends. Cassie rushed through getting ready, as she was slightly fearful that she would be late getting to her dorm and lose the specialties class for a while. She held learning the psychic tricks above that of having a leisurely shower and stroll to her room. Cassie went into her room a good ten minutes before official lights-out, so her rush might have been slightly overdone.

Jazz wasn't there when Cassie laid down on her bed, pulling out the list from under her pillow to fill out Rose and Skye's specialties. Cassie placed the paper back after adding—

Skye: Organs

Rose: Bringing Sleep

After that, Cassie stared at the ceiling and thought. Not about anything specific. More that she just... thought. Or didn't think. Honestly, Cassie decided, there really isn't a good way to describe it. She just let her mind do its own thing for a while. She would try to contact Joshua, but not right then. She'd wait until later in the night, when Jazz was fast asleep.

At that moment, and about twenty seconds before all of the hallway lights flicked off for the night, Jazz dashed into the room. She was breathing fairly hard, but was smiling happily that she had not been marked down as being out after the curfew. Cassie laughed slightly when she saw Jazz breathe a deep sigh and collapse against the back of the door.

"Out to see a boy?" Cassie asked, and she admitted that her words were a bit mocking. Honestly, if Jazz had been twenty seconds away from a mark on her records to see a boy, then she deserved a bit of mocking. But Jazz shook her head and shrugged slightly.

Jazz said, "No, I wouldn't like any of the boys."

Cassie thought this a fairly odd way to answer the question, when a simple answer would have been 'no, Cassie, I don't have a boyfriend'. So, she returned the unnecessarily complicated answer with another question.

"Girls, then?"

This drew yet another shake of Jazz's head and even a slight laugh. She finally denied Cassie's question with, "Nobody, as far as I'm concerned. I was with some of my friends in an empty dorm that no one ever messes with. We like to meet up there."

Jazz grabbed her pajamas and ducked into the makeshift changing room she had constructed that morning.

Alright then, Cassie told her mentor, trying to use all of the tips that Jazz had given her during their lesson that morning. She still felt very shaky in her words, and everything was weird and different inside her head. Jazz had promised that the uncertainty would go away with time.

"You're doing very well with that, Cassie!" Jazz exclaimed as she climbed over to her own bunk and slid under her covers. She couldn't hide all of her tiredness with peppy enthusiasm, however, and she tapered off with a yawn. "Just keep at it and you'll be able to start working on more advanced stuff in no time at all."

Jazz flipped off the light beside her bed. Cassie did the same with the light beside her and gently placed her head on her pillow. She couldn't let herself fall asleep yet, as she had plans for the night, but Cassie wanted to make sure she let Jazz get to sleep as quickly as possible.

After all, Cassie decided, it was about time that she got to talk to her brother.