Once again Joel found himself the centre of attention. He slouched back in his chair, hands stuffed in oversized pockets, and tried his best to shy away from the inquisitive Veritas stares.

“Man, I dunno…” he mumbled.

“Please, Mr Gibson, come to the front of the class and tell everyone your story,”

It took a jolt from Kaori’s elbow to stir her boyfriend into life, then he shuffled around the maze of tables in his oversized jeans until he was standing in front of the whitescreen, hands still in pockets and eyes cast at the golden carpet.

“Ah, man, this sounds proper crazy now I’ve got an audience,” he said, “Right…well you guys might’ve forgotten some stuff like I had, ’til Lyra slapped me around a bit…”

“I taught ye to meditate, ye fecking twat,”

“Yeah, well, meditate, right…”

“I remember most shit,” said Theseus, “Even the shit that don’t make sense. Spit it out, Gibson: there some kinda gate to Hell underneath that freakshow club of yours?”

Joel perked up at antagonism. “Man, don’t patronise me! And yeah, that’s kinda it. Maybe,”

Theseus rolled his eyes. “These days I’m almost ready to believe anything,” he said, then shot Phoenie a stern glare, “Just don’t you get any ideas, lady,”

Joel scuffed his feet on the carpet, ignorant to the inter-Veritas politics. “Look, I heard about it from one of the dealers, okay? Me and Kao used to do this thing – man, Lyra, don’t look at me like that – we did this thing where we went into a trance or something and they gave us these proper awesome hallucinations…”

“See the connection, Team?” interjected Phoenie.

“Yeah, well, they weren’t like covering up memories or nothing, just nice dreams and stuff. But yeah, we gave up on that ’cause it was bad shit. Anyway, so this dude who was our dealer and stuff, he came up to me last night and said they’d got a lot of proper good deals going on tonight, cause it was gonna be a big celebration or something. Man, I just got a bit freaked out ’cause he was saying they’d been planning this for a while and it was gonna open a doorway that’d change the whole town. I didn’t think much about it ‘til Lyra kicked my front door down this morning and made me meditate and remember stuff,”

“I don’t be forgotten nothing,” she said, “But I weren’t involved with that bastard cult so I had to get Gibson to be remembering it all. Figured if it were something big then youse guys would be wanting ta do something about it. Never crossed me mind it’d be those bastards messing with our minds, though,”

“Man, I never could’ve thought it’d be this big,” said Joel, “Like, everything’s come down to this final battle or something,”

“I still ain’t convinced,” said Theseus, “Some crazy drug dealers are playing with our heads why?”

Andromeda looked up from her notes. “Maybe because we figured them out?” she offered.

“But this shit’s been going on months already!” said Theseus, “What the hell have those bastards got to do with all the crap we’ve been forgetting?”

“It’s obviously a long-term plan,” said Andromeda, “Think about how long it’s taken us to realise. The hypnosis was so subtle at first we wouldn’t notice it. We were groomed like…like cattle,”

Chapter 46
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