Chapter 10:

Wren POV-

"Hey, Wren, you okay?" my mom asked as I approached them in the school courtyard. I glanced at my dad who stood leisurely next to my mom, wondering how he had possibly gotten to school before us.

"I'm fine. Why does everyone keep asking me that?" I huffed sitting on a bench.

"Hey, we're just concerned, that's all," my mom said defensively. I sighed. Of course, I knew that but I didn't want them to ask me because I couldn't very well answer them. What could I possibly say? Oh, you know, I'm just a little bit out of it because I have dreams about the apocalyptic future and I'm worried about my parents, who are you guys, and who are fighting the war against the ghosts. Yeah, something tells me that that would not go over well at all.

"I know. Thanks," I sighed reluctantly.

"Why are you so crabby anyway?" Tucker asked, and I saw my dad give him an elbow to the ribs out of the corner of my eye.

"I just…had a bad dream," I said. My mom nodded before casting a strange look at my dad. There they go again, acting weird and being mysterious.

As much as I want to find out what they're hiding from me, at the same time, I am having a hard time, morally, digging into my parents' secrets…even if they aren't technically my parents yet.

"Do you want to talk about it?" my mom pressed, sounding less like the concerned parent I'm familiar with, and more like she was trying to get information out of me.

"No…not yet," I replied, which was, not technically a lie.

I didn't want to talk about it. The memories were too strong…and too disturbing. And, more than that, they made me consider, for the first time, that my parents, my future parents, had more dangerous secrets that they had never told us about.

It scared me. My parents and I have always had a really close relationship. I mean during wartime, why would we keep secrets from each other when we might not get tomorrow to tell each other the truth?

But now I didn't know the way that I used to.

The first bell rang for class to start and I sighed as we all stood up, gathering our things, to head off to first period.

Danny POV-

In second period, when Wren was not around I took the opportunity to ask Tucker about what he found.

"Tucker did you find out anything about all these kids?" I asked in a low voice.

"No. Nothing, at all. It's like they don't exist or something…none of their names are in the database and there was nothing about an exchange program. In fact, doing a foreign exchange of an entire military base is completely unheard of," he exclaimed quietly, like he was frustrated, throwing his hands up in confusion.

"Weird," I nodded.

"Very," Tucker agreed, "But that leaves the question: if they're not from an air force base in Turkey, than where are they from?"

"And more importantly, who went through the trouble of creating this lie to bring them here?" I wondered.

I glanced over to the back corner of the room where Wren's friend James was sitting taking notes.

He did look like Dash. The resemblance was so similar, it was almost scary. He had the same tall, blockish body of someone made to play football, the same face, and the same eyes. The only difference was the fact that his hair was a darker shade, almost to the point of a light brown, and the fact that he was actually taking notes and trying to pay attention in class.

'Hmm…' I mused, 'Maybe they are a superior alien race that came to replace us one at a time.' I didn't seriously consider this thought but, to be honest, it made the most sense of anything that had happened in the past two days.

In my next class, I decided to confront Sam about some of the things I had been noticing.

"Okay, well wasn't it a little weird that she stood up for us?" I asked.

"No," Sam said, not looking up from her history textbook, "I wish more people would take a stand against Dash."

"Yeah, I get that. But she didn't have to stand up for us…and it almost seemed like she was personally insulted," I explained. Sam said nothing, but I noticed that her eyes stopped skimming the page, like she had actually stopped to consider that, "And then when we broke up the thing with Dash…it was almost like she instinctively ran to us."

"Well, we were the ones saving her," Sam reminded me.

"This was different…" I trailed off, shaking my head, but, at the same time, having no reasonable explanation for why this was different.

Sam sighed, closing her book to look at me. "I don't know, Danny, you have a point. Nothing is adding up…but neither of us have an explanation either. What did Tucker find out?"

"Nothing. Absolutely, nothing," I told her. Sam pursed her lips, trying to create a reasonable theory, but not being able to.

"Okay," she said, pulling out a piece of paper, "What do we know?" I breathed a sigh of relief, happy that Sam was finally seeing the need for us to investigate this seriously.

"Everyone looks familiar," I started and she jotted it down beside a 1, "There is no record of them. Someone wants them for some reason. Their fake stories are incredibly thorough. They give vague recounts of their past. They have loyalties to certain people despite barely knowing them. They seem surprised by simple things like stars. They came with all family members except adults. They might or might not be halfas. And Wrens dad hates the Packers," I rattled off. Sam gave me an 'are-you-kidding-me-look' with my last suggestion.

"What?" I asked, "It's worth noting." Sam rolled her eyes but wrote down the bit about the Packers anyway.

"What else?" she asked and I racked my brain trying to think of something.

"Her parents look familiar too. And her dad is the leader of…something, I just don't know what," I finished.

"So what now?" Sam asked, folding up the list and shoving it in her back pocket.

"Well…I was planning on going into her brother's dreams tonight…and…I don't know maybe, following them around?" I suggested.

"Danny you can't follow them around. It's bad enough that you're going into their dreams," Sam admonished me.

"Maybe I can't. But I know someone who can," I smirked and felt my eyes turn green.