Mercy took careful notes on Lena's condition, speaking with and observing her daily. She found out several things, each one puzzling her more than the last.

Lena's ability to estimate the passage of time was mediocre at best, and nonexistent at worst. Indeed, Angela found that a short conversation might feel like hours to Lena, who quickly lost interest, and that ten minutes to the girl could sometimes feel like seconds.

So Angela began to help rehabilitate her ability to tell time. She would sit outside the chamber (for clocks, Winston explained to her, would malfunction if inside) and ask Lena to count seconds with her, "One Mississippi, Two Mississippi," or else she would sometimes have her patient complete small exercises.

"Okay Lena," Mercy said as she began one of these tests, "I am going to start this clock, and I want you to tell me when you think a minute has passed. It doesn't have to be exact. Just guesstimate. Okay?"

Tracer nodded, eyes hard and focused, and Mercy started the clock.

Barely ten seconds had gone by, though, when Tracer said, "Okay."

"Okay?"

"That was a minute. Wasn't it?"

Mercy glanced at the clock, "Lena, that was eleven seconds."

Lena cast her gaze downward.

"That's okay, Lena. You are getting better—remember when you simply forgot we were counting altogether?" Mercy smiled softly, "See this clock on the wall? I want you to use it, whenever you are confused, or scared, try to look at the clock. Alright?"

Tracer nodded, smiling sadly. And it was this uncharacteristic quietness that upset Angela the most when regarding her patient, who by all accounts was before this incident a right chatterbox.

Additionally, it seemed that Lena's sporadic disappearances were completely random, and upon reappearance she would sometimes awaken as if from a nightmare, but other times continue an interrupted conversation as though no time had passed at all.

And she seemed to imagine things, would suddenly spout nonsense, or briefly insist things were true that were not. Mercy thought she seemed delusional, though when the delusions passed Lena could rarely recall them, and even more rarely explain what they meant.

As the next month passed, Tracer did seem to be improving very gradually, falling into bouts of confusion and delusion that only became more occasional with time. Soon she would gab happily with Angela or Winston for hours at a time before her language became muddled as she unknowingly told stories out of order or even pronounced words backwards, or in other cases she would eventually steer the conversation towards events or characters that to Mercy seemed imagined. Still, lucidity was becoming Lena's norm and a smile regularly graced her face again.

"And then I got her the scarf!" Tracer finished one day, after Mercy asked her to tell a story as an exercise.

Angela smiled warmly, though the story made little sense, and it seemed like Tracer expected her to know who this "Emily" character was.

"I miss Christmas," Tracer lamented as Mercy glanced at the small Christmas tree in the corner of the lab, "I mean real Christmas. When I'm not a secret lab experiment, and I can hug my friends, and eat turkey. I love to think about people home with their families, eating pie, being happy. It's a grand old time, it is. You 'n Jack 'n Winston. Even the bad guys. They outta have families too, right? Like Reaper. What do you s'pose he does for the holidays?"

"Oh, Lena," Mercy said concern rising in her voice, "It's perfectly normal after a traumatic or near-death experience to believe you saw something like an after-life, or a Grim Reaper-like figure leading you to—"

Tracer burst into laughter at that, "'Grim Reaper'? Are ya kidding? That edgy wannabe? He wishes."

"Lena, what on Earth are you talking about?"

After searching desperately in Mercy's eyes for a spark of recognition, Lena's jokey assuredness was replaced with confusion. She looked to Winston, watching her from farther away, equally bewildered. She somehow felt a chill run through her unfeeling bones.

"Lena?" Mercy asked, "'The Reaper'?"

"The what?"

"You were just saying. The Reaper. 'Edgy wannabe'?"

Lena stared blankly, confusion in her eyes, "I've heard that before. Where have I heard that before?"

Mercy opted not to remind her patient that she'd heard it from her own mouth just moments ago, knowing that the conversation would continue in circles.

And on top of it all, no one could touch her. Tracer was a ghost, and it was only those surfaces that were permanent fixtures of the building that offered her any physical resistance (another peculiar feature of her condition that begged more research).

It was a puzzle, to say the least. A miracle, to say the most, that she was there at all. But puzzling to both Dr. Ziegler and Dr. Winston, though experts in their fields.

When Tracer's improvement seemed to stagnate, the two scientists were at a loss. Each time that Tracer would disappear, they could lose days or weeks of work and she seemed to regress in her rehabilitation.

"Please, please help me!" Tracer cried as she suddenly appeared back in the chamber after one absence of thirty-three hours, "Please!"

"She's back!" Winston called, as had become nothing short of a routine for the doctors. He and Dr. Zeigler quickly approached the chamber, Mercy entering as soon as she saw Lena's distress.

"They think I'm insane. I'm losing my mind. It's not worth it, it's not worth it." Lena shouted over silent noise, "Please, it's not worth it."

"Lena, you're fine. You're safe," Mercy said.

"Please, you have to help me," Tracer begged, "ever since I got out… I'm not the same as I was!"

"Since you got out of the Slipstream?"

"No, no. Since I got out of the lab. Since I got out. This place. Here." Lena gestured wildly at the chamber around her.

"You're here, Lena. You're here in the lab, you disappeared but now you're back."

Something in Tracer's face told Mercy that Lena wasn't talking about being lost in time again, but she had no clue what she was talking about, and a moment later Tracer had no clue either.

"Count with me," Mercy said, "Look at the clock. One Mississippi, Two Mississippi…"

Tracer did not count audibly, but she did calm down. For the rest of the day, though, she retreated into herself, muttering nonsense, clutching her hair like she was trying to put together an impossible puzzle.

And it was that day that Winston and Mercy sighed in unison, glanced at each other, and said:

"We need help."