#my grandpa is an insane conspiracy theorist

[cartoon-skeleton]

will not survive xmas party on dads side of family today

[concrete-the-cat]

Okay. Vent though, because I came here to do that and had a long scroll to cheer me up because damn. Watching 9/11 footage is surreal and - fuck, I was cheerful at my Grandpa's funeral (granted I was young, but, still) and that shit made me tear up.

Note to conspiracy theorists.

We can... tolerate, you. At least normally, on normal days. Even if we're annoyed and you're batshit insane (or even if you're not and have evidence to back it up!) you're not a nuisance.

Until you're talking, boldly, about a national tragedy. More so than that, when you're talking about a national tragedy on the day of it. While images, people, scream in the background behind you.

There is an essence of respect that must not be shattered when it comes to that. When you are talking, almost solely and only stopping to acknowledge when asked, about the manner in which thousands of innocent people died and how they died that way rather than the fact that thousands of innocent people died. Period, no matter how it happened.

Was it odd. the way it went down? Yes. And to be honest, I'm okay discussing it. I enjoy, wholeheartedly, having an open mind about anything, any topic, and I can handle it myself. I am okay to think about alternative versions than what the mainstream is saying - hell, I'll agree with you on some points!

But you don't, ever, do that boldly, and enthusiastically, as if it's fun to discuss - and when your family looks at you, practically begging with anything but their words for you to shut up, or at least quiet down, that is the only time when you will mention that it's tragic all the same and then get back to it only 5 minutes later.

So yes, people will tolerate you.

That is if you can tolerate people.

Especially people who aren't alive and should be.

[scary-lasagna]

What would happen if the new proxy started calling them grandpa? 😂

In an endearing way.

Referencing the Veteran posts

Masky

"I'm not a grandpa."

Yes, he is.

Everyone else already calls him the grouchy grandpa, so it's not much of a difference from everyone else.

But like of the many nicknames he's received over the years, he just simply goes along with it. Because if he's learned anything, he's learned that if he makes a big deal out of it, Toby will continue out of spite.

And since you're the new apprentice, you will soon shortly follow in his footsteps in being as aggravating as humanly possible.

Masky will accept the role as the grumpy grandpa, and will really show you who's a fucking grandpa when he body slams you into the training mat.

Hoodie

"Haha! I don't think I'm that old, kid!"

As usual, Brian has lighthearted jokes prepared.

But he does realize that he is getting up in age, but he doesn't see it negatively.

Brian had a grandpop once, himself. And he inspires to be as great as him. After all, his own grandfather taunt him half of the things he knows about the wilderness, ranging from hunting to identifying which mushrooms are safe to eat.

Was he an insane conspiracy theorist and doomsday prepper? Yes. But did the man know what he was talking about when it came to surviving in the wild? Also yes.

So, in time, maybe Brian will become the crazy grandpa. But after seeing Tim fully bodyslam [Y/N] at the ripe age of old, he believes he might have competition.

Toby

Definitely pretends to be offended, and then plays along into the elderly dynamic.

"Oh sorry, I couldn't hear you because I'm a gRANDPA."

Toby is young at heart, and he only hopes that his bones can keep up with his mentality.

Over the years, he hasn't changed one bit. And in reality, he never planned to live this long. But thanks to Slender, and a lot of work from Eyeless Jack, Toby has survived through countless stab wounds, bullet holes, peanut allergies, and oddly attractive women who have tried to kill him.

But after thinking, and how many jokes he can make, Toby will proudly be your grandfather.

"Oh [Y/N]? Yeah, that's my grandkid. I love them. Look at all of these pictures I have of them! This one is when Tim bodyslammed them so hard they broke a rib!"

[childrenofhypnos]

Chapter 24: Research

The second half of October settled over the Sleeping City in a blanket of dark clouds and cold winds. The sun crept late over the skyline in the mornings, and at night the ever-burning lights of the city seemed far away in the gloom, despite the skyscrapers surrounding the campus on all sides. The great glowing sign—FIND HOME HERE, CHILDREN OF HYPNOS—that overlooked the city became a great white will-o’-the-wisp in the sky, unreadable and untethered from the earth.

In the days following the visit to the Sandman, the hairs on the back of Emery’s neck prickled for every possible reason. Small sounds behind her. Movements in the corner of her eyes. The heater beneath her dorm room window turning off suddenly in the middle of the night, just as it always had. Most of the time she could tell herself she was paranoid, that her doppelgänger—if it was even actually active—would not yet be outside the Dream. But even when she knew that beyond a doubt, she still hurried a little faster to somewhere that she could press her back in a corner.

If her doppelgänger wasn’t active now, it would be after all this. When she wasn’t paranoid, she was wondering if this was part of the reason the Insanity Prime began so soon: because so many dreamhunters feared it. Because they’d grown up fearing it, and it wore on them until it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Wes, on the other hand, had gone about his days as if nothing had changed. He’d always been stone-faced, but this was a new level. He faced their classes, their classmates, and their teachers with the same frown he always had. He had no reason to be paranoid about a doppelgänger, but it was like he wasn’t worried about the other things Klaus had said, either, and whether or not those were true. The dreamkiller coup. The cover-ups. The withholding of information they should be learning. He sat with her and Edgar during breakfast, sometimes joined her and Joel and Jacqueline for lunch, but at dinner she caught him always walking back to Kirkland from the Crossing with a boxed dinner, watching his feet instead of the path ahead, eyebrows furrowed together.

Marcia had returned to teaching classes. She was angrier than ever, and was taking it out on the students by running them into the ground during fitness training and yelling in their ears during weapons work. Emery tried to catch her after class like she had before, to ask how many of Klaus’s claims she believed was real, but Marcia disappeared before Emery had a chance, and every other time Emery saw her, she was in the Crossing, surrounded by too many people to get her alone or to speak privately.

Emery was extra glad now that she’d pushed to include Joel, Jacqueline, Kris, and Lewis in on the research. They were the only ones she could talk to about it now. She hadn’t told Edgar anything new they’d found out; he didn’t need to know, he wouldn’t be able to help, and there was a chance—much bigger now than Emery would have guessed a month or two ago—that he would spill everything to Grandpa Al. The others didn’t have the same allegiance to Grandpa Al, not more than any other student on campus, and all of them knew it was important enough not to tell anyone else.

“We still don’t know how much of what he said is true.” Emery sat on her bed, back in the corner, hugging her pillow, while Joel sat close enough to hold her ankles. Kris sat in her desk chair, Lewis leaned on the desk beside her, and Jacqueline paced the room.

“He sounds like a conspiracy theorist,” Jacqueline said. She was in full Vice President mode, which meant zero nonsense taken and her complete focus set on solving the problem at hand.

“So you don’t believe him?” Lewis said.

“Oh, no.” Jacqueline snapped to a stop, hand raised. “I completely believe him. The dreamkillers lied and feared the possibility of their own powerlessness so much they overthrew an efficient dreamseeker government? Seems legit to me. I have no idea what the dreamseekers might have known about doppelgängers that caused all of this, but I believe it one hundred percent.”

“Jacqueline Fenhallow, conspiracy theorist,” Lewis said.

Kris gently hit his knee. “Jacqueline isn’t a conspiracy theorist.”

“If Jacqueline believes it, I believe it,” Emery added.

Lewis held both hands up. “So do I. Have I ever bet against her?”

“But what about your doppelgänger?” Kris said, her voice small and her eyes huge, and Emery just wanted to hug her. “Will you need help with that?”

“If it’s active, I can’t have help with it. Doppelgängers tear apart people who get between them and their hunter, the same way a normal nightmare will attack someone who gets between them and their dreamer.”

“It’s not supposed to happen until later, though,” Lewis said. “Isn’t this too early?”

“Yep.”

“So you don’t know what’s going on at all.”

“Not really, no.”

“And the plan is…?”

“Try to find what Klaus was talking about with the dreamseeker notes about doppelgängers. See if we can figure out what might have been cut out, then figure out if it has anything to do with why my doppelgänger is active.”

Joel, who had been quiet until then, looked up suddenly. “When?”

“Well…as soon as I told you guys.”

“So we’re helping.” It wasn’t a question; Joel said it with relief.

“Wait.” Lewis looked from Emery to Jacqueline, as if Jacqueline had some other answers for him. “Does this—your doppelgänger isn’t going to come after us for this, right? Because we’re helping you.”

Jacqueline shot him a nasty look.

“No,” Emery said. “At least, I’m pretty sure. Klaus said it hasn’t left the Dream yet, and even if it had, it’s more like…you have to physically put yourself between it and me. I don’t think doppelgängers care if you help me look some stuff up in a library.”

“Oh. Well. Good.”

“Let’s go, then,” Joel said, standing up and pulling Emery’s ankles.

Sliding off the bed, Emery glanced at her phone. “It’s nine thirty. You really want to start researching this late?”

“We’ve already wasted a lot of time,” he said.

Jacqueline was tapping away at her own phone. “I’m telling Ver that I can’t hang out tonight. Already texted Jager to meet us at the library, too. Kris, you’re in charge of snacks.”

“As always,” Kris said, beaming.

“Lewis, you get coffee.”

“As always,” Lewis replied, rolling his eyes.

The three of them marched out the door, not looking back to see if Emery and Joel were following. Joel had stopped tugging on Emery’s ankles, so she gently pulled her legs from his grasp and stood up, too.

“I figured you would help, but I didn’t think you’d be so…eager,” she said.

Joel rubbed the back of his head. “I don’t really care about the cover-ups and whatever happened with the Hypnos State. I mean, it’s interesting, and I want to know the truth, but if I don’t know, it won’t bother me. But I don’t want your doppelgänger to be—I don’t want you to have to—” He groaned. “All I’m trying to say is I always thought I was going to be useless when it came to your doppelgänger, but now I can actually help.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. Wait, seriously about the helping? Why wouldn’t I be serious about the helping?”

“No, are you serious about always thinking you were going to be useless.”

“What else would I have thought?”

Emery put her head in her hands and laughed. “It wasn’t what you thought. I didn’t know you thought about this at all. I thought the day division students never really thought about Insanity Primes or doppelgängers or anything.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “You do when you care about someone who has to think about them. You’re my best friend, Em—I want you to be around for a long time. I know you’re awesome and nothing’s ever going to beat you, but if I can keep you safe, I’ll do whatever I have to.”

Order keeps us safe.

Emery hugged him, pressing her face into his shoulder. He put his arms around her immediately.

“You know I love you, right?” she said.

“I had a guess.” Joel trapped her head in the crook of his arm and kissed the side of her head. “I love you too. Let’s go be nerds.”

~

When they got to the library, Wes was waiting for them inside the front door with Ridley. She was holding an armful of banana nut muffins from the Crossing, carrying a backpack twice the size of her torso, and smiling like they were about to have a sleepover. Emery shot Wes a look; he shrugged and said, “You brought your friends, I brought mine.”

They found a table on the third floor, near the windows, where no one could sneak up on them behind a bookshelf. Kris, Lewis, and Joel had Fenhallow’s databases pulled up on their laptops while Emery, Wes, and Jacqueline amassed a stack of reference books. Ridley flitted between the books and the computers, unable to stay in her seat for more than a few minutes, taking breaks to make sure everyone always had a muffin or one of the sandwiches Kris made, or enough to drink.

“Has anyone found anything yet?” Emery said, head in one hand and a book as thick as her arm open in front of her. “All I’ve got is A History of the Hypnos State, Then and Now, and by ‘Now’ they mean the 1940s and world powers trying to recruit dreamhunters to fight in World War II. Back then everything they knew about doppelgängers was all like, carnival science. Phrenology and stuff.” She pushed the book aside.

“I haven’t found anything beyond what we already know,” Joel said. “Floating hair, bad temper, shows up during the Insanity Prime.”

Emery kicked Wes under the table. “What are you reading all frowny like that?”

Wes lifted the book. The front said Dreamseeking: The Pioneers of the Mind’s Frontier. “The first person to open a gateway was a dreamseeker.” He began to read. “‘One eyewitness reported Guinard holding her hands out, fingers clawed, as if to pry open the air. When she drew her hands apart, the fabric of the waking world followed her fingers, like curtains drawn back, leaving between them a dark entrance flanked by columns identical to those outside the justice building in the square she walked through each morning.’ This was in eighteen seventy-three, in France. According to this, Marie Guinard opening the first gateway was the inspiration for most of Fabian Fenhallow’s teachings. She was the one who taught him how.”

Jacqueline sighed. “I could have told you that.”

“And it doesn’t help us much,” Emery said.

“In class, Professor Lenton said it was a dreamhunter.” Wes flipped through a few more pages of the book. “Jonathan Arrington.”

“So either he lied or he was misinformed.”

Lewis shook his head. “Lenton doesn’t lie about facts. He would have been misinformed.”

“Then he’d have to be misinformed by the Hypnos State.” Wes said. “Why would they lie?”

“You mean besides because he was a dreamhunter, and the whole curriculum here is cherry-picked? Probably because Jonathan Arrington was an aristocratic white guy and Marie Guinard was a black woman and the daughter of slaves.” Jacqueline spit venom at her computer screen, never looking up. “History loves white guys.”

“It’s a start,” Emery said. “What we’re taught doesn’t match up to what we find. I’m surprised they didn’t take that book out of here completely.”

“They have to leave some things here, or else it would look too suspicious,” Wes said.

Kris raised her hand.

Emery said, “Kris, you can just talk, you don’t have to be called on.”

Kris jumped in. “The day division students, especially the ones in sleep research, have to use books like those for essay and project references. The dreamseekers are a big topic because of their immunity to the Dream’s mental pressure. If they removed books like that, we would notice.”

Emery sat up. “Klaus mentioned references! He said there were references in some articles or essays that didn’t lead back to anything, like their sources didn’t exist. He was trying to find more material on doppelgängers and that’s why he couldn’t. Look through the sources on the articles, not the articles themselves. Find the ones that are about doppelgängers or the Dream, or are written by dreamseekers, and try to locate those.”

They went back to work. Emery abandoned the dustier books she’d found for more recent essays and anthologies. Some of them had pages and pages of references, printed close together and in tiny font. Most, thankfully, weren’t by dreamseekers. Emery copied them down anyway, the names of the articles and the names of the authors, handing them over to Joel, Kris, and Lewis so they could try to look up the articles.

After nearly another hour of looking—during which Ridley got out of her seat fourteen times, and Kris and Joel alone made it through the rest of the snacks—Lewis went still, staring at his computer screen.

“I can’t find this one.” He held up the paper with Wes’s scrawled handwriting and tapped a title near the bottom. Hunting the Hunters: The Origins and Effects of the Manifestations of the Dreamhunter Subconscious. “I’ve looked through the library’s online database and their catalogue of physical copies, and then I went and Googled it just in case it was never in the collection. It didn’t come up at all. Anywhere. The Google results didn’t return anything remotely close to what we needed—it was like they were scrubbed clean.”

Jacqueline took the paper from him. “Gabriel Fenhallow. This was written by my dad.”

Her voice was very small and quiet when she said it, and they all looked at her. Wes glanced at the paper. “I thought he was probably related, but I didn’t know the date on that article.”

Jacqueline nodded, tossing the paper quickly back to Lewis and returning to her book. “Yeah, he was a scholar, or whatever. After they took the school from us he got really into researching the Dream. Well, he was always into researching the Dream, he published things before they took the school, but…” Jacqueline rubbed her forehead. Emery had never heard her ramble so much. Emery had never heard her ramble at all. Jacqueline didn’t ramble. She spoke, and she demanded.

A moment of quiet passed before she seemed to gather herself, and said, “So, this one is missing. One instance doesn’t make a trend.”

Over another hour and a half, they found over a dozen sources that led back to empty space on the internet and a blank library catalogue. All written by dreamseekers, all with titles relating to manifestation of the Dream. The information in the essays and books in which they’d been cited amounted to little; none of it was about doppelgängers, which Emery suspected was the reason those texts themselves hadn’t been pulled. One instance didn’t make a trend, but twelve could.

“I get that we’re students,” Emery said, glancing at Wes, “and most of us aren’t going to amount to much more than cannon fodder, but there’s a lot more going on that they’re not telling us about.”

“Well, yeah.” Ridley stood at the end of the table, paused in the process of picking apart a banana nut muffin. She hadn’t sat down once in the last half hour. Her eyebrows were furrowed, putting her in a surprisingly close imitation of Wes’s natural expression. She’d definitely spoken, though Emery didn’t immediately put the words to her. They weren’t perky enough.

“What does that mean?” Emery said.

“Most governments operate like that. Transparency seems like it’d be nice, but I don’t know…I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff going on that I don’t want or need to know about.”

“You sound like my grandpa. Heirarchy is there for a reason. Order keeps us safe.” Emery mimed her hands up and fingers spread, like a fanatic at a revival. She slumped in her chair. “You’re probably right. If everything knew Klaus had taken the sand, that even one doppelgänger was active before it should be, that the dreamseekers might have known something and the dreamkillers chased them all out…there’d be hysteria.”

Especially if it got out past the Sleeping City. There were so many other Hypnos State training facilities across the world, not to mention the Hypnos Centers in every major city. If there was hysteria, if something happened—if dreamhunters tried to revolt—what would happen to everyone else? What would happen when there were no dreamhunters to hunt dreams?

They all went quiet. It was easy to believe lies were necessary when Emery wasn’t involved, but whatever had happened with the dreamseekers, and the doppelgängers, and the dreamkillers—that affected her life, now. It affected Wes. It affected Jacqueline.

“Everyone doesn’t need to know, but I do.” Emery took a deep breath, trying to still the panicking of her heart in her chest. “I’m going to go find my doppelgänger. I need to know for sure that it’s real, and if it is, I need to kill it. As soon as I learn how to open a gateway.”

“I can help with that,” Jacqueline said. Her eyes were bright, her fists clenched on the table. All that rambling had vanished.

“And we’ll have to find a place to practice that no one will sense what we’re doing. A den mother passing by my dorm room will be able to feel a gateway open inside.”

“I can help with that,” Joel said. “I already have an idea. Just have to check a few things.”

Kris nudged Lewis in the arm. “We can’t do much, but we’re a good cheering squad.”

Ridley kept picking at her muffin.

Emery looked at Wes. He shrugged.

“I’m in,” he said.

It was all she needed to hear.

(Next time on The Children of Hypnos --> The God Of War Comes To Town)

[childrenofhypnos]

Chapter 23: Keeping Secrets

The blood rushed so loud in Emery’s ears she couldn’t hear their footsteps clanging on the metal staircases. Couldn’t hear Wes saying something to her as he checked corners to make sure no one was around. Couldn’t hear the dinging of the elevator as they rode it back up, out of the Fenhallow Underground and into the administration building.

Her doppelgänger was active.

It had been active for months.

It had been active while she was in the Dream, and she hadn’t known, and it could have come for her then.

Emery had to brace herself against the wall of the elevator to stay standing. She’d assumed when it happened, when it finally came for her, she’d feel it. She’d know she was standing on the edge of her Insanity Prime and she’d feel some switch get flipped, something that said It’s coming for you, the doppelgänger is coming for you.

“I don’t feel different,” she said aloud, looking at Wes, who was frowning deeper than ever. “I still feel like me. I thought it would feel different.”

“Do we trust him?” Wes said, a plain question, not an accusation.

“We do,” Emery said.

The elevator doors opened. David the Receptionist stood there in his black-rimmed glasses and thick cardigan, hands tucked behind his back, looking apologetic.

“The dean would like to see you,” he said.

“Yeah,” Emery replied, without inflection. She couldn’t drudge up even a hint of sarcasm.

David followed them up to the second floor, but didn’t go into Grandpa Al’s office with them.

Grandpa Al sat behind his desk, typing on his laptop, head tilted up so he could look down through his glasses perched on the end of his nose. He didn’t look up at them or stop typing. He didn’t so much as sniff when Wes closed the door. Emery hovered behind one of the chairs before the desk, trying to detect disappointment on him, but it was like looking in on a room through a two-way mirror. He could have been in the room alone for all he reacted.

Emery took one chair. Wes took the other. Grandpa Al kept typing. Slow chicken pecks, his eyebrows raised, eyes half-lidded. The building’s furnace kicked on; a breeze picked up outside and a storm of brown leaves swept past the windows.

Her doppelgänger was active. Grandpa Al would want to know that; he’d want to help her. If the doppelgänger hadn’t left the Dream yet, if it was still weak, would the termination request need to be put in? Couldn’t they wait? He was a dreamkiller; he’d gone through this before. And he only wanted to keep her safe. He always only wanted to keep her safe.

“So,” Grandpa Al said finally, after what felt like hours. His voice was light. He typed for another second, tapped Enter smartly, and closed his laptop. He took his glasses off and reached for the cleaning cloth in his pocket. “How was your trip to the Underground? Did you learn anything from our friend?”

Emery’s hands fisted in the hem of her sweater. “He didn’t tell us anything.”

“Interesting. He seemed to be speaking on the recording, and you were there for some time.”

“He admitted that he was stealing sand from the research clinic,” Wes said.

Grandpa Al perched his glasses back on his nose and looked first at Wes over the rims, then at Emery. She felt like he could read the truth scribbled across her face. Doppelgängerdoppelgängerdoppelgänger. He could sense the Insanity Prime looming up on her. He would know. He would sniff it out like a bloodhound. Her cheeks had already flushed; a bead of sweat ran between her shoulder blades.

“I--” she started. “He said I--”

“He only answered that question,” Wes said, talking over her. “About the stealing. After that, he kept telling us how dangerous it was going to be if he was allowed to slip into sleeping sand withdrawal. He said he was using it to keep himself awake for the whole time he was gone. If he falls asleep, his nightmares will come for him, won’t they? His dream was strong; Emery couldn’t shoot some of the things in there. Shouldn’t something be done to prevent that? There should be some kind of rehabilitation techniques, or something Dr. Lupova can help with--”

Grandpa Al held up a hand. “I appreciate your concern, Wesley, and it’s well-founded. The appropriate precautions will be taken to ensure Fenhallow remains safe.” He glanced at Emery again. “Are you sure there’s nothing else he might have mentioned?”

Doppelgängerdoppelgängerdoppelgängerdoppelgängerdoppelgänger

“No,” Emery said. “And--Marcia only let us in because she thought we could get information out of him. About what he’s been doing.”

“I’m sure she did.” Grandpa Al took a deep breath and laced his hands together on top of the computer. “That may explain why Marcia let you in, but not why you wanted to speak to him in the first place.”

“To find out what he was doing that the Hypnos State wanted him caught,” Emery said. “You never told us.”

Grandpa Al raised an eyebrow. “Is that the whole reason?”

“Yes,” they both said at the same time. Emery cringed.

Nothing registered on Grandpa Al’s face. Emery’s heart sank to somewhere around her ankles. He looked from Wes to Emery and back again.

“Well, in that case…The two of you deliberately raised alarms in the research labs, disrupting normal work; you stole from a senior member of the faculty; and you broke into a restricted area of campus in search of answers for a mission to which you were never assigned. You have consistently shown disregard for authority and put yourself in dangerous positions. I can’t have a pair of renegades running loose in this school, especially when one of them is my granddaughter. Effective immediately, both of you are on suspension from missions, your accumulated mission credits are revoked, and you are forbidden from leaving campus.”

“What?” Emery shot out of her chair. “You can’t do that! If we don’t have all our credits, we’ll be at the bottom of the class—”

“And you’ll stay there if your attendance suffers, as I believe it’s doing right now.”

Emery glanced at the clock on the wall. They were ten minutes late to Dream Theory.

Grandpa Al’s voice was hard. “This punishment is because I want to know you’re going to follow an order when I give it to you. Being a dreamhunter doesn’t mean being the most powerful, or completing the most missions. It means striving for the good of the whole. We function most effectively when we work together to complete tasks given by those who understand the scope of our resources and goals. Partners, rules, heirarchy—we have these things for a reason. Order keeps us safe.

“The two of you will be responsible for escorting the Ward Reviewer who arrives to evaluate the school. I’d like you to ready his quarters, lead him around campus, and make sure he has everything he needs, including answers to any question he may have.”

Emery’s cheeks were burning. “And now we’re guide dogs?”

“It’s that or you clean dishes in the kitchens for a month.”

Wes stood and grabbed Emery’s sleeve. “Let’s go. The later we are, the more points Professor Lenton will dock us.”

“But—”

“Let’s go.”

Wes pulled her from the room. Grandpa Al watched them go, and Emery stared at him, trying to find the right words, trying to find a way to put the strange maelstrom of emotion inside her into words. Outside the room, she tore her arm from Wes’s grip and followed him from the administration building. They hurried down the front steps, over the inlaid quotes, until Wes stopped on the landing halfway between the admin building and the quad.

He spun on her.

“You’re seriously going to get upset about rankings right now?” he said, keeping his voice low. “Your doppelgänger is active somewhere, and you almost told him. That was the one thing we weren’t supposed to do.”

“I—I don’t care about the rankings. I don’t, I just—it was a knee-jerk reaction. But I thought he could help. He won’t report me. He’s kept me safe my whole life. If there’s anyone at this school who’s going to understand, it’s him.”

Wes scowled. “Are you positive he doesn’t think the State’s rules will keep you safer? Or that he won’t choose the safety of many over the safety of one? That’s what the doppelgänger termination laws are for—keeping other people safe.”

“You don’t trust him?”

“Oh no, I trust him. I trust that he’s known as a strong proponent of Hypnos State policies. Didn’t you hear what he just said? Rules are in place for a reason? Order keeps us safe? He was the one who notified the Ward of his own son’s doppelgänger. Why wouldn’t he do the same for you?”

“He did that because everyone already knew it existed,” Emery sniped back. “Dad got extra training and time alone to prepare. And it was time, they expected it—it was a completely different situation.”

“It’s really not. No one can keep you safe from your own doppelgänger, no matter how powerful they are. You’re the only one who can kill it. That’s why dreamkillers don’t just go hunt down all the doppelgängers that appear.”

“He can’t kill it for me, but he’d understand that something is wrong! Maybe he would know why this is happening, and how to stop it. Besides, what are we going to accomplish now on our own? I’d like to figure out if it’s true, if my doppelgänger really is active, but after that…”

Wes huffed and crossed his arms. “Klaus said a lot of things about the State.”

“Yeah, he did.”

“A lot of things I don’t think the dean would confirm, whether or not they’re true. Do you think the dreamseekers were actually silenced?”

“I don’t know.” Emery pushed her hair away from her forehead and looked across campus. The sun was high in the sky now, but the quad was mostly quiet. Classes had started. “Klaus could be a conspiracy theorist. This could all be nonsense.”

“Does he have any reason to lie to us?”

“He hasn’t slept in three years. He could be out of his mind.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Emery sighed. “Well. There is one way to find out. He said he was doing doppelgänger research here in Fenhallow’s library when he found those gaps. The absence of information from dreamseekers. That was only a few years ago. If we do the same research, we should find those gaps.”

“Confirm his claims.”

“Exactly.” Emery already had her phone out. “I’m going to text Joel and the others to let them know we need help. Jacqueline and Kris are research experts—if there’s something out of the ordinary, they’ll find it.”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to keep telling them about all this? If this is true, if the dreamkiller coup of the State was actually a cover-up, that’s not something they’re going to let us off the hook for knowing just because we’re teenagers.”

“Yeah, obviously, but Joel and the rest of them will kill me if they find out we knew more and didn’t tell them. They’re my friends; they’ll want to help.”

He scratched at the back of his head, making his hair stand up. “Fine. What about this Ward Reviewer?”

Emery rolled her eyes. “Grandpa always used to give me menial tasks to keep me busy when I was little. This is the exact same thing. The review doesn’t start until next week; we can do the research before then.”

A second of silence passed between them, during which the beginnings of a headache stirred behind Emery’s eyes. She groaned and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “Research is starting to sound a lot like do nothing.”

Wes frowned. “How are you at the top of our class, again? You don’t get perfect grades by hating work.”

Emery shrugged. “I like to win.”

“So. Win this.”

He said it so simply, like discovering the secrets of a world organization and fighting the avatar of your own subconscious were as easy as looking over a study guide. Maybe it was. Maybe, for right now, she didn’t have to look at it as anything more complicated. There was a mission at hand; she’d start with the resources she had.

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “We should get to Dream Theory.”

“So Lenton doesn’t destroy our grades, yeah.”

“No—so I can try to learn how to open a gateway. If we’re going to see if my doppelgänger actually exists, we’re going to have to hunt for her.”

(Next time on The Children of Hypnos --> Libraries Are Great!)