There was a vile taste in his mouth.

Psychic energy was typically felt by a sixth sense located within the pineal gland. Eddie Bodkin's alleged energy had felt like a very faint touch in the center of his brain, the feeling similar to that of a fly crawling up an arm. On rare occasions, the energy could have a synesthetic effect, in which the energy was felt through one of the other five senses.

Truman swallowed, the action not diminishing the foul, sickly-sweet taste at all. It was like someone had forced a cup of sap down his throat, sap that had been mixed liberally with toxic sludge, with a light hint of something vaguely fruity laced throughout the concoction. The taste had come upon him at the front stairs leading to the school's main entrance and had only gotten worse after they had entered the building.

Sasha was feeling too, if the grimace was any indication. It's like I drank a syrup and gasoline cocktail and vomited it up, Sasha thought, his hand covering his mouth.

Same here. Truman searched the school's lobby for a water fountain. It was across from the main office, next to a clear case full of trophy's and photos of the school's alumni. He strode over to it, his loafers making an annoying squeaking noise on the white tile floor. The water, though lukewarm, was refreshing, and it did abate the nasty taste a little bit. He took several gulps of water before turning back to Sasha. "You want in on this?" he asked, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

Sasha considered the fountain for a moment before declining. "Germs," he explained.

"Suit yourself." He took one last drink, knowing that the relief was probably only temporary. "Maybe they have a vending machine around here somewhere." Sasha shrugged as they walked over to the main office.

A pretty lady with blond, styled hair was sitting at the front desk, typing away at a blocky computer. She looked up as they entered, smiling politely. Her smile did not reach her eyes. "Are you gentlemen the uh…agents? That Sheriff Walls said were coming?" She sat up, her posture stiff.

"That's us." Truman smiled, doing his best to appear non-threatening. He couldn't tell if the secretary's apprehension was due to them specifically or if was just because the recent events had rattled her.

Her son is a junior, though not one of the victims, clarified Sasha.

She must be scared out of her wits. "Sorry we're late," he said apologetically. "We got uh, sidetracked."

Her face brightened. "Did you find a lead?" she asked, hopeful.

"I, uh, can't really discuss that," he replied, looking down at the nameplate on her desk, "Mrs. Anderson."

"I understand." She got up from her seat, eyes downcast. "I'll go tell the principal that you're here."

"Thank you. Um, actually…" Truman smiled sheepishly. "Do you have any water? Hate to bother you, but…"

"Oh! Of course!" She hurried over to the mini-fridge set in the corner of the room and grabbed two bottles. "Here you are," she said as she handed them over.

"Thank you so much." Truman took them gratefully and tossed one to Sasha. Sasha twisted the cap off immediately and downed nearly half the contents in one gulp.

Mrs. Anderson came back quickly. "Principal Stokes is waiting for you. Go right on in."

Principal Stokes looked so much like an older version of her secretary that Truman had to wonder if they were mother and daughter. No relation, Sasha thought as they greeted the principal.

Are you always gonna answer every question that pops into my head like that?

Do you want me to stop?

No, it's…uh, I'm just sorry they're all so dumb.

"Welcome to Braxton County High, gentlemen," Principal Stokes said, cutting their mental conversation short. "I only wish it was under better circumstances." She settled back down into her chair after shaking both of their hands. "My goodness, you fellows don't look much older than the students here."

"We're actually in our mid-thirties," Sasha replied, the lie sliding effortlessly out of his mouth. "Psychics age slower than the general population due to the strain that our abilities put on our system."

"Pardon my French, but that's a load of crap," Principal Stokes countered just as effortlessly. "And I wasn't calling your credentials into question with that remark. I actually think that your youth is a plus. The students here might trust you more than they did the police or C.D.C."

"Do you think your students might be hiding something?"Truman asked.

"I honestly don't know what to think," Stokes took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Maybe it's a new S.T.D. Maybe they've all been sniffing glue. Right now all of our students are on edge, especially the juniors." She put her glasses back on and glanced up at the wall clock above the doorway. It read 10:25. "Classes change in twelve minutes. You ought to watch these kids out in the hallway. It's not just the afflicted ones who are affected by this."

Truman mulled the principal's words over. There was definitely something supernatural at play here- the nasty taste that he and Sasha were experiencing was proof enough of that- so this wasn't being caused by any ordinary street drug or disease outbreak. However, certain psychedelics, particularly those cut with naturally occurring psychoactive ingredients such as psitanium might be potent enough to destroy a normal person's brain if ingested irresponsibly. Though that wouldn't explain the strange, foul-tasting energy…

Psychedelics do not cause this sort of effect, and certainly not for such an extended period of time, Sasha informed him. Besides, it is unlikely that anybody in this town would have access to the materials necessary to create such a drug.

There went that theory. "Aside from all of them being in the same grade, is there anything else that these students have in common?"

"That's the only thing that I can think of that's tying all of this together," Principal Stokes said as she bent over and picked a file box up from off the floor. She placed it on her desk. These are the permanent records of all of the victims." Each file was clearly labeled and arranged in alphabetical order, starting with Bartlet, G.

It was going to take a while to go through all of this by hand. "Do you know, off the top of your head," Truman said, hoping that he and Sasha might have a shortcut, "if any of these students are over eighteen?"

Principal Stokes raised an eyebrow, unsure of why she was being asked this question. "No, the oldest one is that Vipperman boy. He's seventeen."

Damn. The Young Minds Protection Act made it impossible for Psycho-Portals to be used on anybody under the age of eighteen. No way for them to gather clues directly from the minds of any of the victims.

Is there no way to bypass that at all? Sasha inquired.

No, none that I know of. That was probably a good thing, even if it was inconveniencing them at this time.

Sasha apparently did not agree. I do not understand your nation's obsession with the age eighteen. A sixteen-year old's brain is not that different developmentally from an eighteen year old's brain.

Truman wasn't sure how true that statement was, but it was a moot point either way. They were not going to be exploring any of these student's brains in the near future. So what angle could they look into? The only connection these students had to each other was that they attended Braxton County High and were all juniors. Juniors that likely had a specific set of courses taught by a specific set of teachers. The sheriff had interviewed all of the teachers employed at the school, but all of them claimed that they hadn't seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. Of course, if one of them was involved with this somehow, than it wouldn't have been too difficult to lie, given the sheer outlandishness of the situation. "How many teachers are employed here?" he asked.

"Forty, I'd say." She tilted her head, mentally counting. "And I'd guess that there are about thirty more people on the staff that aren't teachers, if that matters."

At least seventy people worked at this school. And there were, at last count, five-hundred students, with about a fifth of those students being juniors. The school was the most probable source of whatever strangeness was going on here, but Truman hoped that he and Sasha would not have to look into six-hundred people before finding a person of interest. "Out of those forty, how many of those teach junior-level courses?"

"That's difficult to say," Stokes answered. "We do have teachers that teach junior-level courses and only junior courses."

"But not all of these students are on the same level academically, are they?" Sasha added. He was leafing through the files telekinetically, giving each one a brief look.

Stokes stared at him, a bit taken aback by the blatant display of psychic ability happening right in front her. She shook it off quickly and nodded in response to Sasha's observation. "We've got students like Vipperman, Green, and Jones, who are all in various remedial classes. Cheyanne Walker and Christopher Sealoft were both on the honor roll and taking senior-level calculus. Most of the others fall somewhere between." She rubbed her temples. "That's not counting all the electives."

Jesus. Truman had never considered just how spread out these students were academically. He hadn't attended public school- it had been private school for him until age thirteen, and then the agency had taken over his education at his father's request for the next four years after that. Mediocre as his performance had been during those years, he had muddled through somehow with the educational equivalent of an Associate's Degree. I have no idea how a public high school works, he admitted to Sasha.

I quit school when I was twelve, so I know less than you do.

Truman shot Sasha a quick glance. What, really? You just quit?

I chose to take my education into my own hands.

If the way Sasha spoke was any indication, he'd done a damn good job of being his own educator. "Do those files contain class schedules?" he asked.

"They do. It's the first sheet in each file." Sasha began telekinetically pulling the first sheet out of each folder, floating them over to the center of the desk and stacking them in a neat pile. Stokes looked on, mildly impressed. "Well that's one way to prevent paper cuts," she commented wryly.

"I don't need a paper shredder either," Sasha replied.

"Because you can shred them telekinetically?"

"Because I can burn them all."

Stokes gave a soft 'ah' of understanding before addressing Truman. "What exactly are you looking for?"

We need Eddie Bodkin's file, Sasha thought before Truman could answer Stokes' question. That is, if we're considering him a person of interest.

"Er…" Truman was not good at speaking to two people at once. "We just want to see if there are any other possible connections these students have to each other." To Sasha, he thought, Should I ask her for it?

They both responded at the same time. No, Sasha thought as the principal said "You mean you want to see if that connection is a teacher." She said something else, but he was distracted by Sasha's telepathic voice. She'll get suspicious if we ask her about a random 10th grader who, to her knowledge, was gone before any of this began. The fewer people who know about Eddie Bodkin, the better.

So what should we do?

"Agent Zanotto?" Principal Stokes was looking at him expectantly.

"Yes?"

Look out the window. I can see her car from here.

What did that have to do with anything? The principal's expectant look became one of annoyance and confusion. "Was that 'yes' the answer to my question?"

Her eyes were narrowed and Truman had a feeling that she was about to start lecturing him like he was one of her students. "I didn't…um…" Lord, he could feel his face heating up. "I didn't hear what you asked."

Truman, we need to distract her.

You're distracting me! Do you know what she asked?

No. I was looking out the window.

Principal Stokes pursed her lips, and then repeated her question. "Do you suspect that one of our teachers could be behind this?"

"We don't have any suspects yet, ma'am," Truman answered, grateful that Sasha had gone silent for the moment. "We've just begun investigating and we need to look into as many angles as we possibly can."

Truman. Look out that window and tell me if you think you can set off her car alarm.

Why?

Because I can't reach that far and we need a way to get her out of here for a minute so I can get Bodkin's file.

The principal's reserved parking spot was a couple hundred feet away from where they were sitting, but Truman had always had a much longer telekinetic reach that most other psychics. I could, but can't you make up some lie and have her give it to us? I don't want to damage her car accidently.

No. This woman can sense bullshit as easily as we can sense psychic energy. Just poke it hard enough so that the alarm goes off.

As Truman and Sasha were having their mental conversation, Principal Stokes had been expressing her doubts that any of her teachers could have been up to anything suspicious. "I mean, I'm not saying that our teachers and students get along perfectly. I'm sure there are days when any of our staff members would take well behaved zombies over some of the knuckleheads in this pile," she said, gesturing towards the stack of papers. She frowned. "I'm sorry. That was inappropriate. Not even the worst of them deserves what they're going through right now."

I'm going to ask her some questions. You concentrate on activating that car alarm. His tone left no room for protest or concerns, and Truman had to admit that this was probably the easiest way to get her out of the room. Out loud, Sasha asked the principal if she knew of any staff members who had special interests.

"Special interests? What do you mean?"

Sasha rephrased his question. "Do you know of anybody with an interest in the paranormal?"

Truman focused his psychic attention on the principal's blue Honda Civic outside. He was going to try poking the car first, as a poke was less likely to accidently break a window. He poked the car as gently as he could. Nothing happened. "Well," the principal replied, "one of the gym teachers is really into that crystal stuff. But I don't think that's really relevant. Do you?"

Sasha than began talking about various psycho-geological minerals, explaining their different properties and their potential relevance to this case, all the while using a whole lot of terms that sounded really cool (even if Truman had no idea what they meant). He poked the car a second time and again, nothing happened. Damn. Was he going to have to put a dent in this woman's car?

Principal Stokes allowed Sasha to finish speaking before making it clear that she didn't believe a single thing that he had just said. "Young man," she said sternly, her lips thin. "Does your agency train you to spout such nonsense? Is this some sort of idiotic interrogation technique? Because I'll have you know-". Her tirade was cut short by a loud, high-pitched honking noise coming from the parking lot. "What- that's my car!" She opened one of her desk drawers with more force than necessary. "It's those damn squirrels,' she muttered, digging through her purse. "Jumping on my car again." She got up, her keys in hand. "They're driving me nuts."

Truman laughed. Stokes looked at him quizzically. "Oh…you said that the squirrels were driving you nuts. I thought that was a joke." The blaring of the car alarm at least spared the three of them from an awkward silence.

"I'll be right back. Excuse me." She walked out of her office, shaking her head.

The top drawer of the file cabinet behind her desk opened the second her door closed. "You got that opened pretty quickly," Truman said, impressed.

"It was unlocked." Sasha walked over to the cabinet to get a closer look at the files within. He located Eddie's file just as the principal arrived in the faculty parking lot. That was good- if she had happened to glance back at her office she probably would've seen them rifling through her file cabinet. "She seems to be handling this well," Truman remarked as Sasha tucked the stolen file into the box with the others.

"Hmm." Sasha shut the cabinet. "She thought that I was a punk and that you were a dope."

Truman shrugged. That was a fair assessment, at least of him anyway. "Were you…did you see anything suspicious in her mind?"

"Her thoughts were nothing out of the ordinary for a middle-aged education professional dealing with an unexplainable paranormal crisis," Sasha replied. The blare of the car alarm stopped. "Her recent memories are equally innocuous."

Truman scratched his beard. "If she was going to organize an attack on her students she probably wouldn't target the good ones. Plus, we don't even know how this is happening."

"May I ask you a personal question?"

"Go ahead."

"What's with the beard?"

"I look like a giant toddler without it."

"Ah." Sasha looked up at the clock above the door. "It's almost time for the classes to change," he observed as he levitated his water bottle from off the floor and into his hand.

"Oh. You think we should go see if we can find some of the victims?" Truman glanced out the window. The principal was making her way back to the building. "We can meet her at the entrance."

The bell rang just as they were informing the principal of their plan. "You'll find most of the victims on the second floor of the east wing," she said, pointing to the hallway just to the right of the entrance. A staircase could be seen at the end of the hall, already crowded with students. "We tried keeping the victims corralled in the library but …" She trailed off, putting her hand over her mouth.

"You couldn't stop them from going to their classes," Truman finished. The taste that he had been able to ignore for the last few minutes had suddenly gotten much stronger. He unscrewed the cap of his water bottle.

"Not without injuring them or ourselves." Stokes shook her head. "It was easier to just let them go to class. It's not like they're disrupting anything intentionally."

"Do they go to all of their scheduled classes?" Truman asked. There were students scurrying around them, oddly silent as they made their way through the school.

Stokes watched them, a troubled look on her face. "They're not usually on time because they walk so slowly, but they get there eventually."

"Do they take lunch breaks?"

"Yep. They get in line, they take their trays, and they eat whatever the lunch ladies give them." Stokes tapped her chin, thinking. "However, the ones who had extra-curricular activities did stop going to them. They all just go straight home after school now."

"Alright. We're gonna go see if we can find one of them." Truman paused, his attention caught by a slow-moving student with a red backpack. Was that a victim? The student, sensing that he was being stared at, turned his head. He paled when he saw Truman and Sasha standing with the principal and then ran off; knocking over a trash can in his hurry. The crash startled the nearby students, some of them screaming in fright.

"Oh, jeez," Truman said, scratching the back of his neck. "I didn't mean to scare him."

"That's Hugh Miller. He's always been as skittish as a rabbit." Stokes frowned, the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth getting deeper. "Of course, all of the students have become anxious ever since mid-September, when the police gave up on solving this on their own. It's like I have a hundred Hugh Millers walking around and jumping at their own shadows."

Sasha nudged Truman with his elbow. "We should get moving," he said, his brows furrowed and his voice laced with discomfort. Perhaps he was picking up on something Truman couldn't? What's wrong? he thought.

I keep seeing flashes of…a pattern? I'm not certain what it is. He put a hand on his forehead. It only appears for a fraction of a second.

Stoke chose that moment to take her leave. "I'll look through those schedules and see if any of those students have anything else in common." Truman gave her a quick "thanks" as she rushed off.

By the time they made it to the second floor of the east wing, the majority of the students had made it to their classrooms. The hall was mostly empty, except for the shuffling forms of five students. They didn't pick their feet up when they walked, and their footsteps were silent, save for the odd squeak here and there as their shoes (all comfy slip-ons) slid on the tile floor.

It felt like there was a toxic, syrupy slime in his mouth, and Truman drank the last of his water in an attempt to wash it down. It didn't help. Sasha wasn't faring much better. He'd taken his glasses off and had put his hand over his eyes, his face a pained grimace. "You okay?"

"That pattern again." Sasha removed his hand and looked at Truman. His eyes were grey and slightly slanted. "It's all I can see anytime I try to read one of their minds," he explained, gesturing at the slow-moving teens.

"What does it look like? Can you describe it?"

"It vaguely resembles a pair of eyes. I think?" He put his glasses back on. "They weren't human eyes, and they kept changing colors. They would be black for a quarter of a second, then red, than violet, than black again." He brushed a strand of hair off of his forehead. "There was also a ring of bright yellow around the…iris? It didn't change color, but it was very grating to look at."

Looking at those images sounded like a great way to trigger a seizure. "Maybe you should cut back on the telepathy for now," he suggested, watching a zombified teen approach. The teen, dressed in a simple sweat suit, stared vacantly ahead, his mouth open.

"Why?" Sasha was focusing all of his telepathic ability on the teen.

"What if you get sick?" Truman also reached out psychically and flinched, the strange pattern strong enough for even his meager telepathy to pick up on. "Jesus!" he exclaimed, his head already hurting from the one-second exposure he had to the teen's mind.

"I'm not going to get sick," Sasha argued, undeterred in his efforts to probe the passing teen's mind. "It looks like this pattern is working as some sort of hypnotic mental block. With enough focus, I may be able to break through it."

"Or you might give yourself a seizure." The teen was now sliding past them. He didn't acknowledge either one of them as he moved. A florescent light flickered above them.

Sasha, still trying to break through the block, winched in pain. The pain didn't stop him from doubling down on his efforts. Oh boy. At this rate, he was going to give himself a stroke. Truman tried reasoning with him. "Sasha, we don't know what that pattern actually is. What if you end up like that guy?" The teen had now passed them by, oblivious to the telepath trying to break into his mind.

Sasha was either intentionally ignoring him or he was too deep in the teen's mind to hear what he was saying. Shit. Time to act. Truman telekinetically picked the skinny German up, the sudden action severing his connection to the student. "W-What!" His voice, usually pretty deep and inflectionless, came out in a startled shriek. He regained his composure quickly. "Put me down," he ordered, and Truman did as the passing teen shuffled off into a nearby classroom.

Sasha straightened his jacket, deliberately not looking at Truman. A bit of blood was coming out of his nose. "You got…uh." Truman gestured weakly at his own nose. Sasha reached into his pocket, pulling out a plastic packet of tissues. He casually wiped the blood away and discarded the used tissue into a nearby trashcan. He opened his mouth, as though he was going to say something, but then closed it, changing his mind. Truman put his hands in his pockets, unsure if he'd gone too far by stopping Sasha. He may have been the senior Psychonaut, but he didn't outrank him- had he overstepped his boundaries? On the other hand, any psychic effort that caused a nosebleed was not something to take lightly. Sasha's face was its usual stoic mask, but he was squeezing the packet of tissues pretty hard. He was frustrated, but Truman couldn't tell if that frustration was directed at himself or at Truman for interrupting him. Perhaps it was both.

A girl's chattering caught both agents' attention, and the incident was put aside for the moment. Two girls were at the far end of the hall, one tall with honey-blonde hair put up in a high pony-tail, the other a short brunette with glasses. The brunette was the speaker, and the conversation was one-sided. Their arms were linked- kind of. The blonde's arms were at her sides, with the brunette's left arm hooked around her right arm. Their gait was odd- they were both moving slowly, but it almost seemed like the brunette was letting the blonde drag her forward. The blonde was staring straight ahead, and had it not been so obvious that she was one of the victims he would have thought that she was staring at them. As it was, it appeared that she didn't even register her friend's presence right next to her. The blonde was wearing some sort of sport's jersey with the school's mascot emblazoned on it. There had been five victims who were athletes, but only one of them had been female. Could that be Cheyanne Walker?

They were heading his and Sasha's way, whoever they were. The brunette stopped talking upon seeing them, tightening her grip on her friend's arm. She stopped, briefly, her eyes wide and wary behind her glasses, but the blonde dragged her forward after a second. She averted her eyes as they passed them by, a sweet, floral scent coming off of one of them.

Smells like roses and vanilla, Truman observed.

Sasha wrinkled his nose. It's a little strong.

The girls entered a classroom a little further down and across the hall from where they were standing. "So…should we go back downstairs? I think we've seen all there is to see up here," Truman said.

"That girl with the glasses is going to come back out in a minute," Sasha said. "Her name is Diane Garcia. And the other one is Cheyanne Walker."

The report on Cheyanne had said that she'd been at a friend's house the last time she had been seen in a normal state of mind. Diane Garcia must have been that friend. "You think we should talk to her? She seemed kind of scared of us," Truman said.

"She's spent quite a bit of time with one of the victims during last two months. She may have some insights that the Sheriff and the Principal do not." Sasha leaned back against the row of lockers behind them. "It's worth a try."

After a minute of waiting, Diane exited the classroom. She didn't appear too happy to see that Truman and Sasha were still standing there. Truman gave her a friendly smile. "I'm just going to class," she said nervously, though she didn't move from her spot in front of the door. Her accent was different, her drawl slower and longer that of the other people they had spoken too in this town.

"Are you Diane Garcia?" Truman asked, trying to sound as non-threatening as possible."Can we talk to you for a second?" Diane bit her lip and shrank back against the door, looking very much like she wanted to run back in and hide. It was then that he realized that she had no idea who they were because they hadn't actually introduced themselves. Two strange men just hanging out in the hall would be cause for concern for any teen girl even during normal circumstances. Man, I am dumb as hell, he thought as he pulled out his badge, hoping to salvage the situation. "We're with the Psychonauts," he explained. "We're trying to find out what happened to your friend."

The explanation seemed to ease her nervousness a bit. She relaxed her shoulders. "I already told the police everything I know about…about the last time I saw her when she still Cheyanne. But I'll talk to you," she said, her voice wavering slightly, "if it'll help."

She was putting on a brave front. "We've already read through the witness reports," he said gently. "But, I'm going to be honest. The questions we're going to ask you might sound a little strange or nonsensical to you. But just bear with us, okay? We're here to help."

Diane swallowed and stepped away from the door. "Okay," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"The last time you saw Cheyanne acting normally was on August 28th, right?"

Diane nodded. "We were hanging out at my house after school. I don't even remember what we were doing, exactly." She crossed her arms around her chest, looking him right in the eye. "And no, we weren't doing any drugs, so don't even ask!"

"I, uh, wasn't going to."

"The F.B.I. guy wouldn't stop pestering me about it."

"The Psychonauts don't usually deal with narcotics, miss."

"What do you guys deal with then? Are you like ghost hunters or something?"

"We specialize mainly in paranormal investigations, although I don't think we've ever hunted any ghosts." The Psychonauts also worked in espionage and counter-terrorism, but he didn't think that Diane needed to know about any of that.

Diane shuffled her feet. "So what's happening with Cheyanne and the others…it's not a natural thing?"

Truman wasn't sure how to answer that without scaring her further. "I can't really get into the details, but it sure looks that way." He hoped that wasn't too much information.

Diane was quiet for a moment, her wide-eyed gaze shifting from Truman to Sasha and then down the hall. He considered just letting her go, if only because she looked so upset, but then she spoke. "Cheyanne left my house at around 7:30 that night. It's a twenty minute walk from my place to hers, but it was still light out and she always walked home like that and we didn't think anything would happen to her because this is a small town and everybody knows everybody and I don't how she-" Diane choked back a sob, her eyes filling with tears. Sasha wordlessly handed her his packet of tissues. She put her glasses on her head and wiped her eyes with a tissue. "Thank you," she said, sniffling.

"Tell me about Cheyanne," Truman said after Diane had regained her composure. "What was-What's she like?"

Diane had already been asked this question, and she had a response lined up. "She didn't have any enemies. Nobody was out to get her. She was the niceest person I knew and she was my best friend." She blew her nose. "Is my best friend," she corrected.

"Did she ever complain about any of her teachers? Or about any of the other staff here?"

"No. But she wasn't really the type to complain if somebody annoyed her." She squeezed the packet of tissues, the plastic making a soft crinkling sound. "She always looked on the bright side of things. If she could talk right now, she'd probably say something like 'well, at least I'm finally getting enough sleep!'" She tried to chuckle, but it came out sounding more like a whimper.

Truman's other missions had been team-based stings on psychic terrorist cells, where he'd been brought along as extra muscle. He didn't particularly enjoy fighting, but he had to admit that knocking some thug into a wall was a lot easier than standing in front of this poor girl who was on the verge of a breakdown. And there was no way that she was the only one- every victim here was somebody's child, somebody's sibling, somebody's friend, somebody's student- and their fate currently rested on the shoulders of a rookie agent and the Vice-Head's awkward lump of a son.

God help this town.

No. This was not the time to start thinking about all the ways he could screw this up. He could save that for later. "How about you? You're a junior, right? Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary? Or seen anybody acting weird?"

Diane shook her head. "I've been kind of spacey lately, to be honest."

That was alarming. In her distressed state the culprit-whatever it was- could easily sneak up on her. "You aren't going anywhere by yourself, are you?" From what they had gathered from the police reports, all of the victims had supposedly been by themselves before they had been discovered in their stupor.

"The only time my parents let me out of their sight is when I'm at school," Diane said. "If my mom could put me on a leash, she would. My dad wants to send me back to Texas until this whole thing blows over, but…" She turned away, her eyes on the classroom she had exited. Cheyanne could be seen through glass plane of the door, sitting in the front row. "I couldn't leave her. Not like that."

"You two are really close," Truman said, touched by her loyalty. From what he had seen, no other victims had any friends willing to be near them in their zombified state.

Diane didn't look away from the classroom. "She bought me this rose-scented body spray from Victoria's Secret the week before she was…you know. I've been spraying it on her, because I thought that maybe she'd smell it and remember me." She switched her gaze from the door to her shoes. "But that's stupid, isn't it? It hasn't worked. Nothing has."

"It's not stupid. Studies have shown that memories and emotions can be triggered by sensory cues," Sasha said. He spoke in his usual blunt, matter-of-fact way, and Truman supposed that this was a close to comforting as Sasha would get.

"Yeah, and you've been talking to her a lot," Truman added. "They say that coma victims respond pretty well to hearing their friends and family talk. So don't give up on it yet." Of course, Cheyanne wasn't in a coma-it looked like she was in some sort of hypnotic trance, caused by whoever or whatever had placed that strange pattern in her mind. It was unlikely that she would be brought back to her old self without the aid of a counter-hypnotism specialist. But Diane's efforts probably made her feel less helpless in the face of such awful circumstances, and it couldn't hurt her to continue them, so long as her parents were being as protective of her as she claimed they were.

Diane continued to gaze down at her shoes, chewing on her lip. "I should probably go to class," she said abruptly.

"Uh, wait, I have one last question," Truman said before she could walk away. She looked up at them, her tears gone but her eyes and nose still red. "Do you have any idea what the deal was with the Otterpops?"

"There isn't some weird new popsicle drug going around!" Diane snapped, "I already told the F.B.I that!"

"Okay, we believe you! We don't think anyone's doing any drugs," Truman assured hastily, "But it's just strange that the early victims were so fixated on them."

"Yeah, it was," Diane muttered. "But I really don't know what all that was about. Can I go now, please?"

"Yeah, go ahead. Thanks for your time."

She took a few steps away from them, and then paused, lingering in the hallway, before turning back towards them. "You guys will help her, right? You'll solve this?"

Sasha spoke before he could. "Miss, we are not the F.B.I. We are better equipped to handle this than they are." Was that a hint of scorn in his voice? "We certainly aren't going to be so quick to write this off as 'drugs' and leave it at that."

Diane seemed to take heart from these words. She offered them both a weak smile before she headed off, her classroom only four doors down. Truman sighed the second she was out of sight. Talk about pressure. Chasing down petty terrorists was definitely easier than this.

If Sasha feeling any doubt or uncertainly about his ability to solve this case, he didn't show it. "She took my tissues," he stated plainly, before walking back towards the stairs.