I now have two betas, and much to my amusement they occasionally give me conflicting advice. The finished product is in part attributable to the editing and suggestions of Wolfschild and K. Hanna Korossy. They both deserve considerable thanks for their efforts. Also, if either of you find any of your suggestions not followed, I fully intend to blame the other for contradicting you.

Thank you all for reviewing; I'm pleased you find this work entertaining. It's especially flattering to hear that people actually anticipate updates—I'll try not to disappoint.

Neither this chapter nor the next will have a lot of action or horror. You can bet that I will get to those things. Still, what happens in this chapter especially is extremely important—we see the beginnings of the central challenge of the story. This will pay off considerably. Believe me when I say that if you find something weird, there's a reason for that.

Disorder

Chapter 2: Prodromal Stage

Sam woke up a few seconds after Dean loaded him into the car, but he didn't open his eyes. He didn't even open his eyes when Dean slid down into the driver's seat and put two fingers on his throat, checking his pulse for what Sam assumed to be the third or fourth time in the last few minutes. Sam played unconscious because he didn't want to see his brother's face. He didn't want to have another mortifying conversation about his "gifts." He didn't want to know how much heavier this made the load Dean was already carrying, and how much less Dean was going to let him shoulder now.

Of course, he couldn't avoid it forever. Being choked like that could only knock someone out for a few minutes if it was done right. If he continued to feign unconsciousness, Dean would start to suspect he'd damaged Sam's brain. And Sam didn't really want to make things worse.

Come on, Sam, he thought. Be a man.

Sam opened his eyes slowly, and, as he well expected, Dean immediately noticed.

"Sammy. How're you doing?"

"Fine," Sam said quietly. There was a long silence as Dean sized him up, evaluating his claim.

"I'm a little tired," Sam amended. At the very best, that was an understatement. Every muscle in his body felt overworked. He was sore and weak.

"I'm taking you back to the motel," Dean said.

"I had a vision, Dean; I've had them before. This isn't that big a deal," Sam answered wearily.

"Yeah, well, you've never had a vision where you felt your guts being ripped out before."

Sam sighed. "You figured that out?"

"I may not be as smart as you are, Sammy, but you told me you were seeing what happened last night, and suddenly you were rolling on the ground screaming, grabbing at your stomach. Those dots aren't hard to connect," Dean groused.

"Look, I'm alright Dean. Just give me a few minu—"

"You felt the guy die!" Dean erupted. "And I'm not fucking blind. You're not okay, you're exhausted. I've never seen you look like this after a vision. You're going to bed." Dean took his eyes off the road just long enough to give his brother a stone-faced look. This is not a discussion.

"You stopped it before he died," Sam said quietly, not even trying to hide the gratitude.

Dean didn't respond for a moment, but Sam saw relief flash in his eyes. "Still."

Sam considered resisting further. He wanted to fight. He wanted to show his brother he was strong enough to do this job, no matter what it threw at him. He wanted to win back some of the credibility he'd lost. But he was just too damned tired.

He let his head fall back onto the headrest and closed his eyes.

Dean needed to be outside, but he wasn't quite ready to leave Sam alone yet, so he'd worked out a compromise. He leaned against the wall just outside the motel room door, under the dilapidated maple awning. The door was cracked open.

Sam had passed out almost as soon as his head had hit the pillow. He'd barely even put up a fight in the car, Dean reflected; the kid needed rest. Then again, what the hell was he thinking putting up any fight at all? Two psychic freak-outs in a day? He'd better believe Dean was pulling him out of the fire.

Honestly, Dean wasn't sure if he was more put off that Sam had resisted even a little, or that he hadn't resisted more. The first made him angry, the second made him nervous. He gave the kid shit for it, but he needed Sam to challenge him. It had taken him a while to see it, but he finally had, and for the first time in months he'd begun to feel like he had a shot at recovery. For the first time in his life he'd let his brother shoulder some of the weight, and it was really, truly helping. He wasn't ready for Sam to be this vulnerable again.

Wait, what the hell was this? He didn't have any right to be feeling this way. He wasn't the one this town was torturing, he was not the victim here. Sam was. Sam, the only family he had left. Sam, who he'd been leaning on instead of protecting.

Fuck. This was his fault. Dean could have called it off after the panic attack. He could have taken Sam back right then, and investigated the house himself. Of course, they never would have gotten the information Sam picked up from the vision, but Dean didn't see the price as particularly fair. They'd have figured it out eventually without all the screaming.

Boy had that ever taken him by surprise. He'd literally never heard Sam scream like that before. He hadn't known he was capable of it.

Well, he was done. He was done letting Sam push himself, done leaning on him, done putting him in danger. Sam was safe for now; Dean might as well use the time effectively. The sooner he figured this out, the sooner this stuff would stop happening to his brother. He pulled the door closed and locked it.

Quarantines didn't happen without sick people. Somebody at the hospital would have some information.

The hospital was new and well-appointed. Dean guessed that it was the central facility for Jeremiah as well as the smaller surrounding towns.

Bluffing his way in wasn't particularly difficult—he still had his fake CDC badge and a Glen-Plaid monkey-suit—but he was worried about getting any of the doctors to talk to him. That was where Sam had always come in handy; even if he couldn't get them with his disarming sincerity, he knew enough medical jargon to be convincing. Which was actually hilarious, since Dean was pretty sure it all came from watching Grey's Anatomy and House, M.D.

Sam wasn't here, though, and that was the way Dean wanted it. He could do this himself.

He followed the blue arrows toward the administration wing, just as the receptionist had directed. All he'd said was that he was from the CDC, and she'd immediately told him where to go; that was a good sign that there was something here. And…there it was, on the left: Admin 303, Dr. Matthews, Head of Psychiatry. Dean knocked on the door, and momentarily wondered if it would be harder to bluff a shrink than a normal doctor.

"Come in," someone called. Dean opened the door and stepped inside.

Dr. Matthews was a balding man in his late forties whose taste in clothing—a blue-striped dress shirt and a charcoal suit—indicated a conservative personality. Even though he was sitting, Dean could see that he was thin and reasonably tall, maybe taller than he. Not as tall as Sam, though.

"Please, Dr. Danislaw, sit down," Matthews said, looking up from a paper he was furrowing his brow at just long enough to gesture at a chair on Dean's side of the antique-looking—Dean couldn't be sure—oak desk. In fact, it looked like the whole room had been furnished with pieces from the Atticus Finch Collection. Dean was just waiting for the guy to pull a gold pocket-watch out of his jacket. Or put on a monocle.

While he waited, Dean pretty quickly sized Matthews up as the kind of psychiatrist who focused on science and treatment rather than on dreams and feelings. There were no inspirational posters on his walls, and no pop-psychology books on his shelves. There was neither a TV nor a radio. God, Dean hoped it would turn out that this guy was somehow responsible for everything. Otherwise he was just boring.

Dean cleared his throat, trying to get Matthews' attention, but the doctor held up a finger.

"Just a moment, please," he said.

Fuck you I don't have time for this.

"'Kay," Dean answered genially. Another long silence.

"All right," Matthews said as he flipped over the last page of the document he'd been reading. "Sorry to keep you waiting, Doctor, but this information might be important to what's happening here."

"Please, call me Jack," Dean answered smarmily. He leaned in and looked at Matthews with his best approximation of Sam's sincerity. "What is going on here, Dr. Matthews?"

Matthews eyed him suspiciously. Apparently Dean's best approximation was not particularly good. "Aren't you from the CDC? Didn't they tell you what was happening here?"

Oh shit. It took a long moment for Dean to figure out how to answer that. He barely managed to cover it.

"They told me what they know, which isn't much. I want you to tell me what you know," Dean managed, some of his nervousness leaking into his voice.

Matthews seemed satisfied with that answer. Thank fucking God. The older man sat back in his chair tiredly while Dean pulled out a notepad and pencil.

"That is a long story," Matthews started with a sigh. "Obviously, you know that my initial report to the CDC three months ago was based on the diagnosis of four extremely atypical cases of delusional psychosis. Since that time, we've regularly updated Atlanta with new cases."

"How many are you at now?" Dean asked carefully, hoping this wasn't something he was supposed to know.

"Twenty-eight. There have been two more since my last report a week ago. Obviously, you guys did the right thing authorizing the quarantine last night."

"So what about this psychosis?" Dean asked.

Matthews looked at him appraisingly again. "That's all in my reports, Dr. Danislaw."

"Jack," Dean reminded him. This time he'd been expecting it. "And you know these patients better than I do. If all I needed was what was in the reports, I wouldn't be here."

"Right," Matthews said, slumping down again. "It fits nearly all of the diagnostic criteria for severe paranoid schizophrenia, but as I said, it's extremely atypical."

Dean gestured for Matthews to go on.

"Firstly, there is virtually no prodromal stage. Onset is rapid and acute."

Dean wrote that down. Hopefully Sam would know what "prodromal" meant.

"Secondly, it has a relapsing/remitting symptomatic course, though like true schizophrenia, it is still degenerative. That is to say, while symptoms do not get more intense, they do come more frequently as the disease progresses."

Matthews paused and drew in another deep breath. Dean could see from the circles under the man's eyes that what was going on here was keeping him from sleep.

"Obviously, the most atypical component of this illness is that it is spreading. Psychotic disorders can't be transmitted. But the fact that the number of patients is increasing every week suggests a contagion or environmental cause. Then again, there are no disease vectors that make any sense. There are no geographical clusters, either among workplaces or among residences of the patients. There are no clear infection pathways. There is no correlation between being around someone with the disease and becoming sick. And," Matthews held up the document he'd been reading when Dean had come in, "We tested the water for everything we could think of. All negative."

Dean perked up momentarily. They hadn't tested it for everything Dean could think of.

"What about treatments?" Dean probed.

"Patients respond fairly well to antipsychotic drugs. At least, they respond as well as anyone with psychosis this severe can be expected to. There are unique challenges, though. Because of the relapsing/remitting characteristic of the disease, it's hard to hit the sweet spot with the medications; the dosage has to be strong enough to prevent a psychotic break when the disease relapses but weak enough that it doesn't limit functionality when it remits," the doctor sighed. "There is, of course, no cure."

Dean scribbled all of that down. That was just about all he needed. He stood.

"Is that helpful, Doctor? Jack, I mean," Matthews asked, genuinely hopeful.

"Yes, very helpful, Dr. Matthews." Dean looked down at the desk. "We're going to need additional copies of all your files, if that's not too much trouble."

"Not at all," Matthews replied as he rose. "Just go see Jada, down the hall. I'll tell her you're coming."

"Thank you, Doctor," Dean said, extending his hand. The man grasped it firmly.

"I'm in over my head here, Jack," Matthews said sincerely. "Thank you for your help."

Dean smiled at him warmly. "It's my job."

Sam was still asleep when Dean got back to the motel room at 6:30 PM. Dean had brought back some food, but decided not to wake him. He'd give his brother every second of rest he could.

Dean draped his leather jacket across a chair, placed the files and notes on the nightstand, and sat down heavily on his bed, dropping the bag of food at his side unopened. None of this added up. Sam should not be having visionshere at all. There was nothing that indicated any connection to the demon that had killed their parents, and Sam's visions were always related to that.

He supposed it was possible that one of the "special children," the kids like Sam for whom the demon apparently had an awful plan, was responsible. Dean stifled a shudder at the thought. Sam was dangerously close to obsessed with the idea that he and those like him were somehow destined to become killers. If this turned out to be another example of someone like him going ape-shit…

No. There was no evidence of that. The only reason they thought that the visions had to be related to the demon was that they always had been. Some of the visions seemed pretty tangential. He'd had visions about a poltergeist in their old home, and that barely fit the pattern. Yes, the demon had murdered their mother there. And yes, their mother's spirit had still been there. But neither the poltergeist nor the new family living there had anything to do with the demon.

Maybe Sam's powers were expanding, and now he was going to start having visions about things unrelated to the demon. That was consistent with the whole 'postcognition' thing, seeing things after they happened rather than just before. It also neatly explained the new intensity of the visions, and—fuck—it was possible that Sam was going to start experiencing his "death visions" from the perspective of the victims on a regular basis.

There weren't words to express how much Dean hated that idea.

He needed a drink, but even though it was still early and his brother was out like a light, Dean decided against going out again. He put the bag of food on the dresser—he wasn't hungry anymore—then grabbed the stack of hospital files.

He leafed through them for a few—extremely boring—hours before finally going to sleep.

Sam was standing in a field of knee-high grass under a cloudless sky. He could hear birds singing, but there were no trees.

At the center of the field was a simple stone altar, just rough-hewn blocks sitting one upon the other, but it was compelling. It drew him, despite his unease, and he found himself closing on it. He couldn't tell if he was walking towards it, or if the Earth was just moving beneath him. Einstein might say it didn't matter.

The birds stopped singing and the sky shifted, clouds rushing to cover it, their movements stuttering and starting like stop-motion photography. It became cold, and Sam realized he was barefooted and his clothes were thin and light. He hugged his arms around his chest.

He was standing over the altar now, and it was beginning to rain. The stone blocks were covered in symbols that seemed familiar but were indistinct. They looked to be marked in blood, but even had they not been, Sam felt like the very forms of the characters connoted an ancient and instinctual terror.

The blood wasn't even dry; it mixed with the rain and ran down off the blocks in tiny reddish streams. Against his fears, Sam knelt down at the altar, and after a moment he reached over to touch one of the symbols. The one that seemed important.

There was a clap of thunder and then warmth and darkness. He was surrounded by blackness, but it was not a void. He could feel something in there with him, breathing or flexing, massive in scope and horrid in demeanor. It was like it was around him, or beneath him, or behind him, but no matter where he turned there was no light and so he couldn't see it.

A flash of shining black.

A glint of mottled blood-red.

A spark of orange firelight.

The earth shook with a predatory growl and Sam could feel it closing, coming up on him from whatever direction. He ran, but in the blackness he could not judge his position, or that of the thing that was chasing him. Still he ran, in a straight line, until he crashed face-first into a rocky wall. He dropped to the ground, bruised and battered, and it was upon him.

Then he saw its awful face, and he knew that it was over.

Sam bolted upright and was out of bed in a flash. He felt his face and found no bruises or contusions. It took a few seconds before he realized it had been a dream, and a few more until he realized that his splitting headache indicated that it had been more than just a dream.

"Sammy?" Dean called from behind him, wearily pulling the covers off his face.

Of course. Because there was no part of this that Sam was going to get to keep to himself. Sam took a deep breath. "I think I had another vision, Dean," he answered, turning around slowly and willing all of the fear off his face. He glanced at the clock on the dresser by the television: 5:45 AM. He'd slept for more than twelve hours. He noticed a notepad and a stack of files on the nightstand between their beds.

"What did you see?"

Sam wasn't ready for that question, if only because he wasn't really sure what the answer was yet. "What's that?" he deflected, indicating the notepad.

"What, this?" Dean held up the pad. "Notes from the hospital."

Sam wrinkled his nose and glared. "You went to the hospital without me?"

"Yeah. It went fine," Dean replied matter-of-factly. "What did you see?"

Sam looked at Dean annoyedly for a moment before coming around to the other side of his bed and sitting down to face his brother.

"It was pretty abstract. A stone altar in a field. Bloody symbols. Darkness. Something chasing me." Sam grunted, frustrated. "I feel like it was important, but I can't explain it, and I have no idea what any of it means."

"Stone altar. Like demon worship?"

"Maybe. Sorry, man. That's all I got," Sam said with a twinge of embarrassment. The feeling was becoming familiar. "These new visions are weird, man. It's like I'm actually there."

The silence that followed was almost unbearably awkward. Sam could see Dean searching for something to say, but he decided to change the subject before he could. He gestured at the files and the notes. "What'd you pick up at the hospital?"

"So, I guess we're up now?" Dean mock-complained. "Some of us didn't get fourteen hours of sleep."

Sam looked at him expectantly.

Dean stretched his arms. "It isn't just suicides. People are coming down with the crazies."

Sam took a moment to digest that. "People are going insane?"

"Yup," Dean answered, smiling ever more broadly. "And, uh. I mean I know I said it before, but…good call about this one, man."

There was a moment there—not a long one, but a distinct and important one—between Dean saying those words and Sam processing them during which Sam felt good about himself. In that moment, Dean was proud of him and letting it show, and Sam didn't see anything wrong with that. It didn't matter that it wasn't like Dean. It didn't matter that it didn't make sense. It didn't matter that Dean's eyes betrayed a worry his smile belied. Dean was proud of him, and that genuinely felt good.

In the next moment—just a second later really—reality set in, just like it always did. The out-of-character behavior, the absurdity of it, the worry in the eyes…it was all too clear. Dean was protecting him, patronizing him, propping him up like he was a discouraged child and it hurt. Worse than it really should have. Worse than was rational.

As he had for years, Sam came to anger first as his defense. So the next split-second was about how much he wanted to yell at Dean, to cuss him out—to absolutely fucking take his head off for treating him that way. He wanted to communicate his strength and his resiliency the way that men did, the way that brothers did, the way he always had when the other man had been his father; with an energetic and determined rage.

Here was the kicker. He couldn't make it happen.

Even though he wanted to, even though he needed to, he couldn't find the fire. It startled him, and the next moment, the last moment of the few seconds of silence, was about fear. What did it mean that he wasn't angry? This was what it meant to be a man: to have the power to turn hardship into motivation, to prove, through ferocity, that you could not be conquered. After four years of college and seminars on feminist deconstructions of the culture of masculinity he was right back here and who the hell had he been kidding? It was all about strength. Where was his?

"Earth to Sam," Dean teased. Sam realized he was staring at the floor and snapped back up to his brother's face. Dean looked him over carefully. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Sam lied, because something was wrong, he just didn't know what. He didn't even feel hurt anymore, just scared, but not enough to do anything. So he just sat there, confused and impotent, and withdrew.

End Chapter 2