After eating two large helpings of shepherd’s pie that made Lance’s eyes widen, Sapph stood up from the table and declared herself ready to go. “I’m warm, I’m still not super-tired, and now I’ve got a full stomach. This is the best time to keep going,” she said, almost daring Scottie to override her. 

To her faint surprise, he just nodded and got up to refill her walking bag. “Do you want me to put the thermos in with some hot chai, or just do sodas?” he asked.

She frowned, thinking. “Just sodas, because we have the heating blanket to continue to test,” she said finally. “Let’s really stretch some boundaries.”

Scottie raised one dark eyebrow but let it pass. He put four cold Dr. Peppers into the insulated portion of her bag, made sure everything else was ready to go, zipped it up and then shouldered the bag.

“So where should we start?” Pat said, looking around at everyone.

“I vote the barn,” Lance said, as Sapph said, “The barn. Let’s go to the most recently active.”

Pat laughed. “That was my thought as well,” he confessed. “Let’s go.”

It took them about twenty minutes to get over to the barn and get all their equipment set up. Sapph and Scottie stayed outside as the others set up the REM pods, so she wouldn’t set them off. “Do you have a plan?” Scottie asked her.

Sapph had been considering that all the way up to the barn. “I think so,” she said. “First, I would like you to do a quick clairvoyant scan of the area, before I go in. See if there’s actually someone there.”

He stepped into the open doorway and his dark eyes went unfocused. “It’s a barn,” he said, a little dryly. “One that used to –” He frowned.

“What?” Sapph came up next to him, peering into the dim room. Everyone inside wore red headlamps so as not to destroy their night vision, making the large area glow oddly. “What are you seeing?”

Scottie was concentrating on an area to the far back of the barn, where Sapph could vaguely see the outlines of old horse stalls. “I..don’t know,” he said. “It’s like it’s…foggy…there.”

“Foggy?”

“It’s the only word that comes to mind,” he said. “Want to try and see?”

Normally, it was him slipping into her mind to see what she saw; now, Sapph put her ungloved hand on his upper arm and closed her eyes. She felt the nudge of his thoughts on the edge of her mind, inviting her in, and she followed it.