Tuesday, Feburary 2nd
Around 11 o'clock, during the Fourth Years' pre-lunch study break

Parachute ready. Payload secure. Engine in place...

Alvis rubbed his temples, stifling a groan. It was not the worst headache he'd ever experienced, but damn him if it wasn't the most annoying. Pressure twinged across his forehead at every tick and note of his pre-launch checklist, turning what should have been a simple engine test into a trial of will. He would have dosed it off with aspirin but he was already toeing close to the daily recommended limit. He could that Divination for that.

Muttering under his breath about Professor Trelawney, he gave the hand-made rocket -- Model 6, Mock 2 -- a final twist to secure it on the launch site, fastening a copper circle around its middle to keep it in place for the test burn. Here on the Astronomy Tower open viewing platform, the air was barely above freezing and the thick clouds overhead threatened to snow again as they had this morning. Still, being in the open air with no easily-combustible foliage or furniture around made all the difference in the world should this test burn decide to blow up, or accidentally launch, or fill the area with smoke. He'd slipped up here twice before in the previous semester and hadn't been caught yet. Fingers crossed that the third attempt of his oft-forgotten pet project would be the charm.

As he had for the last two tests, once the rocket was secure he enclosed it in a chalk circle with runes at each compass point, locking a basic shield charm around the platform. He then backed off to the other side of the platform, pulled his Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes Patented Shield Cloak^TM on as a final precaution, and took a deep breath before aiming his wand at the rocket. "T-minus five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One."

Muttering a basic charm under his breath, he flicked his wand. A section of the rocket's casing twisted around, slipping a certain rune into the etched-in sequence. A second later the spark it created ignited the potion in the engine. Clean white smoke and yellow sparks poured from the end of the tube, its heat hissing and spitting in the cold air. The shield kept the sparks contained, but the smoke was allowed to drift clear.

For 32 seconds, everything went exactly as planned. Alvis dared to hope that he might have actually gotten the balance right this time. Then, bang! something in the rocket gave way. With a high-pitched whistle, the model spun tight circles on its launchpad, working steadily up the thin rod that would have, in a proper launch, kept it up-right. Before Alvis could so much as move, it reached the top of the runic shield and burst free, shooting towards him over the rooftop.

Alvis hit the deck, yanking his Shield Cloak over his head. The rocket spun right past him and off the edge of the roof, spinning noisy loop-de-loops like a Catherine wheel. The loops grew larger and longer the further it spun into the open air. With no way to douse the flame once it started, there was nothing left to do but let it burn itself out.

"Dangit," Alvis muttered to no-one in particular. "I really thought I had it this...time..."

The rocket was coming back around. For whatever reason, it came out of the endless spirals and shot back towards the tower. Alvis moved to duck again, but instead of coming his way the rocket struck further down on the tower. He heard shattering glass, then a series of loud thumps as the rocket bounced full-speed off the stone walls inside. Alvis hurried to peer over the edge. Half a story below the classroom proper, a familiar-looking window lay in pieces.

"Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no..."

Snatching up his cloak, he raced down the stairs to Professor Trishna's office full-speed, hoping that he wasn't running just to get himself expelled for critically injuring a teacher.

It wasn't every day that one got hit in the head by a ballistic missile. In fact, he was pretty sure that'd never happened to him before. He considered this as he lay dazed in his fallen office chair, his heart hammering and his head aching. The window was broken, all the warm air of the office swiftly being replaced by the cold winter wind.

It'd been a nice, quiet sort of day up until now - one where it was cold as all hell in the tower, but nonetheless the snow muffled the sounds of the children running about, and blanketed the castle in a kind of silent coat. It was peaceful and a good sort of day to get caught up on paperwork, in other words - from the comfort of his small but warm office, preferably with the fire going and a blanket around his shoulders. And wearing the thickest socks he owned.

Hours had gone by in that quiet office, the space filled by the quiet sound of the record player, of shuffling paper and the crackling fire.

Up until the window shattered and he got smacked in the head, anyway. That'd certainly put a cap on it, and in his surprise he'd gone over backwards - knocking the piles of paper over and leaving himself laying in a mess of office chair, paper, ink, and legs.

And a rocket, which lay nearby, fizzing and popping. Cautiously, he sat up - struggling to free himself from the office chair, which didn't make it easy. Then he crawled over to and picked up the rocket, turning it over in his hand. It looked magically powered, which was surprising and intriguing. It'd certainly worked up speed - the small amount of blood going down the side of his face was testament to that.

He was still sitting on the floor when Alvis arrived, and Tapendra greeted the boy with the slightly wavering smile of the slightly concussed. "Norling," he said, and that explained a lot. "Watch the glass, it's a right bugger if you get it in your foot."

In his hand, the rocket sparked and fizzed again; he yipped in surprise and dropped it, where it continued to shook sparks onto his trouser leg.

Alvis froze stone-still in the door to Trishna's office, going as pale as the Gray Lady while he took in the damage. Shattered window. Overturned furniture. Papers everywhere. Ink pooling under the desk. And Professor Trishna, crouched on the floor with a wobbly smile and the rocket in hand, telling him to watch out for the glass.

Alvis gulped. "I...I'm wearing shoes, P-Professor."

Merlin, Trishna was bleeding!

The rocket sparked again, sparks coming both from its end and from the ruptured side of its reinforced-cardboard tube. Alvis yanked the Shield Cloak off his neck and tossed it, shield-down, over the model. The rocket continued to hiss and jump as he dragged it clear of the papers. The second it was somewhere safe he was back at with the professor, scrambling in his pockets for something he could use to stem the bleeding. His hands shook. His voice wasn't much better.

"I am so, so sorry! I never thought it would -- it's never come back before, not on an open-air launch, and this wasn't even supposed to be a launch it's just a test and even if it did come back that chances of it actually hitting a window are...are..."

Handkerchief. Ink-stained, but it would have to do. Alvis crouched next to Professor Trishna and tried to follow the blood trail back to its source. It didn't look too bad, since the professor was still conscious, but Alvis had gotten a 'not so bad' bash in the head from Egypt, and look what happened to him -- screwed-up eyesight and more headaches than ever.

"I-I can go get Madame Nagde. But she can't climb the tower. Um." He sniffed. Dammit, this was no time to cry. He wasn't a first-year! "M-Maybe Mister Woodward's on patrol. But fur's probably not good to get in a wound. I could try the library or..." Another sniff, and this time his eyes started to water. Frustration, fear, concern, and his head was still hurting. This was a nightmare. "I'm really sorry Professor. I don't know what do."

He had shoes on! "Oh. Good lad. Smart choice," Tapendra said, rather more happily than he probably would have otherwise. He shook his head as Alvis dealt with the rocket - watching the boy fling his cloak over it surprised him, at first, until the effect on the rocket made his realize what it was. A good choice to have that, then.

The surge of adrenalin was calming, but as was usually the case with him when this sort of thing happened, he was feeling a rather overpowering urge to laugh. Alvis's panic wasn't helping that much, and he raised his hands reassuringly.

The boy crouched next to him, and Tapendra followed the handkerchief with his own fingers as Alvis dabbed at the wound. Mostly it seemed to be a cut on his head, maybe a bit of a bruise. It's been a glancing blow, which he supposed was a good thing.

Somehow the thought of getting the aid of a lion was a bizarre one indeed, and that very nearly made the giggling urge overpower him. Poor Woodward, bizarre bugger that he was. Tapendra couldn't help the half smile and half smirk that took over his expression.

"No, no, that's alright," he said, shaking his head when the handkerchief seemed to have gotten most of the blood. "Head wounds always look worse than they actually are - she'll be alright. Doesn't even hurt too much." He smiled at Alvis, patting the boy on the shoulder. Poor boy seemed on the verge of tears.

He got to his feet, using his desk to help him do so, and looked about the office. An utter disaster zone, that's what it was. Papers were even fluttering out the window as the cold breezes moved about the small space. It wasn't that different from how the office normally was, really.

Merlin's tits, it was cold in here.

The rocket still seemed to be hissing and spitting, though in a manner that made him think death throes rather than an active rocket. He picked his way around the glass on the floor to find his wand, which had fallen behind the desk as the same time he had.

"The rocket's yours, then?" He spoke casually, movements still a bit jittery. His curiosity was certainly quite peaked, however - enough to make him almost not mind behind hit in the head. "Where'd you launch it from?"

Alvis's wand-hand gave a nervous twitch as the Professor picked his way around the room, still entirely too perky given the state of his office. Inexplicable euphoria was not a symptom of a concussion and while Trishna seemed to be having some balance issues he didn't seem tired or slowed the way the medical books said. But all this smiling and chuckling was just not like him. Alvis couldn't help but worry.

“Y-Yes sir. The rocket’s mine. I launched it off the…” He gestured awkwardly towards the ceiling. “Off the tower. The observation landing. I’ve got the password, you know, for Astronomy club meetings.”

Alvis wasn’t technically on the roster for Astronomy Club leadership, but he was an unofficial sort of second-in-command by virtue of sticking around the longest. The President, a seventh-year, had granted him ready access to the tower last semester so he could set up for the meetings scheduled right up against her N.E.W.T.s study sessions. Had the Professor known that, or had he just gotten a whole extra level of the Astronmy club in trouble?

“There's no grass up there so nothing melts or catches fire, and the flat surface is ideal for a steady launch. B-But I wasn’t trying to launch it today really. It was only a test for the propellant – it’s using Erumpet exploding fluid, you see, thickened into the base stock for a high-viscosity potion that held a steady burn in small-sample tests. This was only meant to be the next step up but the safety line broke and then it was spinning and it left the launchpad and went banging around and next thing I knew..."

His head pounded with every heart-beat, whining loudly over the effort it took to think. Alvis hissed through his teeth and rubbed his forehead in an attempt to dispel the pressure. Stupid meditation assignments. He'd forgotten something, hadn't pinned the rocket in properly, and it had to be because of the headache. Thinking shouldn't hurt, not up here away from the crowds. This was one of the only places in school that was genuinely quiet.

"I'm sorry," he said for what felt like the hundredth time. "I've worked out all these testing protocols, but I must have forgotten something. I didn't mean for this to happen." He picked his way carefully around the room, trying both to clear out of the way and draw near enough to the teacher that he might, maybe, without forcing his way in, pick up on what was going on inside Trishna's head, just to make sure-for-sure that the blow hadn't damaged his brain.  "Are you sure you're all right, Professor? You seem a little...jittery."

If Tapendra worried about the Astronomy club handing about the password, he didn't indicate it, instead shaking his head to try and clear it. The rush of adrenalin was making him extremely jittery and he was possessed of the desire to shake his entire body in an effort to make the feeling go away.

It was fading, which he appreciated. He found his wand buried in one of the paperwork avalanches, digging it out while trying not to mess the stack of paper up anymore than it was already.

"Erumpent?" He asked, as he did this. That seemed...well, it might work well, he supposed, though that particular fuel would be highly volatile.  The fact a student was launching rockets at all was one of those things he was keenly aware he should be upset about, but he definitely wasn't. Hopefully McGonagall wouldn't find out.

He straightened up, holding his wand to his temple, a simple healing spell beginning to close the cut and make the headache dissipate. It'd been a glancing blow, which was probably for the best. "Ugh," he said to himself, eyes half-lidded as he rubbed the side of his head, unwittingly echoing Alvis's own gesture.

When he did open his eyes fully again, his head felt much better, as if the pressure of the headache had lifted. The rush was fading as well, and so when he looked at Alvis again he felt much...well, clearer. He considered what Alvis had said, not yet taking particular notice of Alvis's approach. He raised an eyebrow at the boy's hiss, however, unsure what to make of it.

"That's alright, Norling. No harm done-" He paused, looked about the office, and slightly sheepishly added, "That can't be undone, anyway. Just don't repeat this with Storm's office." He smiled, very slightly - Ignan would be far less charitable, he was sure.

"Do you have a way to turn it off?" He asked, looking at the cloak - which still occasionally jumped and sputtered a bit now and then. He assumed not - model rockets tended not to boast that kind of feature.

"Erumpent?"

"And...other ingredients." Alvis shrugged, the list of potion elements running through his mind. Fireweed. Sulphur vive. Good old fashioned saltpetre. When mixed with the fluid as a base it all congealed into a paste that kept up a nice steady burn under ideal conditions....but of course this hadn't been ideal conditions, and it probably wouldn't do to tell his Head of House that he'd been keeping up this experiments on and off since his twelfth birthday. Especially not after that incident with the bed curtains in second year...

Alvis shuddered at the mention of Professor Storm, his face going pale at the prospect of the Defense teacher's wrath. He swallowed that fear and shifted his glance to the cloak when Trishna drew attention to it. "No, sir. But it doesn't burn long. Should be mostly dead by now." As the words left his mouth the bundle gave a final kick and quieted, venting a last bit of smoke tinged gray-green. That was new.

"Should be cool enough to dispose of soon. D-Do you need any help cleaning up? I feel like I ought to do something after all this." It dawned on him that the second pulse was from the teacher's headache, not his own, and swung his bag around to dig inside. "Ah! I've also got aspirin, if you'd like. For the headache." After a moment of digging, he pulled out a white plastic bottle which rattled with tablets as he held it out to the Professor. "You might as well. I can't have any more today. I'm up to the limit. Always am after Divination with Trelawney..."

He bit his lip. At the Yule Ball, Zoe had suggested that he tell Professor Trishna about his 'little legilimency problem.' She thought a professor ought to know and she was right. But this...surrounded by the mess he'd made in the middle of the office he'd destroyed...seemed like a bad time to bring up anything. He caught Tapendra's gaze for a split moment and quickly averted his eyes to the floor before his mind could attempt to delve too deep into the Professor's head.

"Other ingredients," Tapendra echoed, eyebrow rising ever so slightly. With magic ingredients, the other in rocket fuels could be a long, volatile and dangerous list indeed. Erumpet was not a bad choice, but depending on what it was mixed with...

He instinctively rubbed his temple as his head throbbed a bit. He leaned on his desk as he did so, looking over to the rocket as it loudly fizzled itself dead.

"Oh - dispose of - that's not -" He started, shaking his head as he looked around the office. He flushed, ever so slightly. How did one admit it always looked a bit like this? He kept the desk and miniature office space in the classroom above clean largely by dumping things at random into this one.

"No, that's alright, it's always a nightmare in here," he said finally, stopping and looking down to Alvis in surprise as the boy produced a bottle of asprin. While it wasn't surprising the boy knew his head hurt, it was the pill bottle itself that gave Tapendra pause. "Err, thank you," he said.

He took it, looking at the bottle for a moment before looking back to Alvis. He wasn't aware of any medical conditions the boy had that would necessitate taking asprin, and so even as he popped the top of the bottle off and pulled out two small pills he frowned, concerned.

"I had Trelawney in school," he admitted, getting more comfortable against his desk as he weighed the pills in his hand. "She was a fright, but I can't say she gave me headaches. What's she have you doing that's making you take these?" He gestured with the bottle. "Not having you inhale fumes, is she? I thought she stopped that after McFeardley's hair caught fire in '89."

Alvis laughed. He shouldn't, because whoever McFeardley was they could have been seriously injured, but it burst out of him before he could stop it. He coughed to force the chuckles under control and rubbed at his temple to ward off the resulting twangs.

"Oh, no sir, nothing like that. I mean she's always got incense burning, but that's not what causes these." He gestured vaguely at his head, then brushed a few stray hairs out from behind his glasses. "I always get headaches. They're chronic and they got worse after -- you know, Egypt."

Alvis cringed. He -- along with Philo Falkin and Professor Reid's squib sister -- had caused the Professors no small end of trouble during that incident, to say nothing of the paperwork that must have cropped up while having his concussion treated. Why was it that he never got a chance to talk to Professor Trishna when he wasn't causing the man some ungodly amount of trouble?

"So they were already pretty bad last semester, and then they were getting better? But they've been acting up more often now because Trelawney opens every class with this meditation exercise. Which works just fine for everyone else, but when I do it..." Bugger, this wasn't coming out right. Hopping all around the timeline wouldn't make any sense. "It's, uh. It's hard to explain. Honestly, I'm not sure where to start."

There was Egypt, and there was the Body Swap, and Casey, and Mr. Gries and the consultation and then, after all that, there was the meditation...

Enough. Just spit it out already.

"Professor, how much do you know about legilimency?"

Oh Merlin, the bloody incense. After having muggleborn friends, he'd suspected the incense was being burned to cover up the smell of something else - but he wasn't about to mutter that to Alvis. Trelawney had always been a crazy old bat, but she wasn't usually harmful. On purpose, anyway. Her tendency to predict  a student's death usually scared the 3rd years when they first got subjected to it.

Still, when Alvis explained, Tapendra made no effort to hide the worry on his features. He remembered the incident in Egypt a bit too well, and the boy having headaches after having taken a blow to the head was not a good sign. At all. He didn't have to be a doctor or mediwizard to puzzle out that one.

"Have you had your head checked out, Norling?" He asked, tone not unkind as he looked at the boy's head. It didn't look any different, but it didn't have to, did it? Not for issues with skulls. Those could be subtle and get to you. "By a muggle doctor, I mean," he added, unsure if wizards could really detect the more subtle forms of brain damage or growths. If only Simon wasn't still laid out...

His logical path - that this was an after effect of the blow the boy had received in Egypt - was a bit derailed as Alvis explained. He brought his fingers up to his mouth habitually, eyebrows rising.

"Well, I -" He started. He knew quite a bit of Legilimency, truth be told. Well, not a lot, really, but he could perform it. He understood the basics, he supposed. But his practice there was something he'd prefer to keep secret...yet answering Alvis truthfully seemed prudent. He agonized over that for a long moment, one he realized was going on too long.

"I know a...bit," he said finally. "Professor Storm and I talk theory, now and then. Why?"

Alvis's face stuck halfway between a grateful smile at the Professor's concern and an aggravated huff at the thought that a doctor could properly treat his broken head. “Yes, I’ve seen a muggle doctor. My mother is a muggle, she sends me the pills, and once a holiday she takes me up to Liverpool to see a neurologist. He thinks I’m fascinating.” Alvis trusted doctors as much as healers for most things, but after years of being poked and prodded for studies in 'the development of psychosomatic symptoms in prepubescents' he'd grown rather tired of his neurologist.

In the long silence between his question and the answer, Alvis wrung his hands and scanned the room for something, anything to focus on besides the professor himself. The rocket had finally stopped smoking, so he knelt to pick it up, testing its heat through the cloak before beginning to dismantle it for recoverable parts. If nothing else, it gave his hands something to do.

When the answer finally came, he took a deep breath to steady his nerves. “Why? Because that’s what it is. That's what causes the headaches. I'm a legilimens. And I know --” Alvis fumbled the rocket as the nose cone came loose unexpectedly, scrambling to catch half-melted plastic before it hit the floor. "I know that doesn't make any sense. I've never been trained, I've never practiced, I've never even tried using the spell but..."

Deep breath. Narrow the thoughts. Alvis folded his shield cloak over his knees as he thought of the most logical place to begin.

"After...certain things...happened last semester, I went to see Mr. Gries of Beaxbatons. He's a mind magic expert, he tested me and confirmed it. I've been doing legilimency. But I don't mean to!" He held the cloak defensively and stared up at the professor with pleading eyes. The last thing he wanted was for Trishna, a man he'd admired, to think that he'd been purposefully rummaging around in peoples' minds. "It just happens. I know things about people that I shouldn't know. I know when they're lying, or when they're trying to cover up an emotion -- I never understood why people bothered before, it seemed so obvious, but it wasn't really, it's just...me."

He bit his lip and tugged nervously at the edge of his cloak, half-dreading Trishna's reaction. This wasn't normal. Even in the wizarding world, abnormalities were rarely a good sign.

The boy's answer of yes didn't really contain whatever the prognosis was that the doctor had come to. Still, Alvis's twisted expression made Tappy hesitate to pry into that further; he didn't seem too pleased about the experience.
 
And what Alvis said next rather took it from his mind.

His eyebrows drew together as the boy fumbled through an explanation, unable to fathom a response for a good long while. A legilimens? That didn't - well, yes, it didn't make sense! It didn't work that way. It had to be activated. One couldn't accidently do it - it wasn't magic so base as to be used by young children, and it was a rare adult wizard indeed who could accomplish it wandlessly. To have it happen wandlessly, wordlessly and passively...

Baffled and trying to think of a response, in the end he listened to Alvis in stunned silence, mouth half-open - broadcasting confusion for miles, no doubt. When the boy fell silent he reached up and rubbed his beard in a slightly hopeless manner, the habit automatic as he thought.

If it had been, or seemed, natural..."You've been doing this since you were very young, then?" He asked, as his thoughts raced. But...how could that happen? Was Alvis the first of a new kind of genetic power, perhaps? The origins of things like Metamorphs or Seers were vague at best - what was there, really, to stop another from appearing?

"And other people don't...notice it happening, I assume," he added, looking at Alvis. He wasn't, and didn't seem, upset - rather, curiosity and worry got the better of him. Alvis did not seem the sort to lie about this sort of thing, and so Tapendra chose to assume what the boy said was true, rather than dismissing it out of hand.

As the professor gaped, Alvis fidgeted with the remains of his rocket. At least Professor Trishna didn't seem angry or disappointed or offended. He just seemed baffled, which was...yeah, honestly, a completely rational emotion. There was no documentation of Alvis's problem turning up anywhere in the wizarding world. Being confronted with a student who claimed the impossible couldn't be an easy thing to comprehend. The fact that he was open to listen to such insanity was a blessing in itself.

In answer to the first question, Alvis shrugged. "We think so. It's hard to tell...my village is pretty small. Not a lot of reference points to test it. And the headaches...they've been there long as I can remember.

"Usually, people don't notice, no. Only one person's ever 'noticed' and even then, it's probably just because he's paranoid." He'd gleaned, not from Casey's mind but from his actions and individual research, that his classmate -- his friend -- was learning occlumency. That made Alvis wonder if Professor Storm would have noticed if he'd ever dared to look the man in the eye. It was not a theory he intended to test anytime soon.

"It's weird, sometimes. I know, now that I know, that I'm in other peoples' minds, but it doesn't feel like that all the time. Sometimes, it's more like their thoughts are coming into my head. Sometimes, I'll catch a stray emotion, and it takes me a while to....I don't realize, at first, that it's not mine. A-And Professor Trelawney, she always opens her lessons with this meditation exercise, where she goes on about 'opening your mind' but if I do that I hear everything." The memory made him cringe. He'd only gone through with the full meditation once, the very first time, and had faked the effort ever since to in an attempt to avoid the storm of students' thoughts. It didn't always work.

He rubbed his temple again, muttering. "I can't stop it. I don't know how to control it. I don't even know where to start. The library's no help. I'm not even sure what good telling you is going to do, I just...I know have to do something about it. I just don't know how."

Legilimency doesn't work like that, cried the rational, explanation-seeking part of his mind. It's not that easy - and you have to learn it -

That part of his mind was quieting down, now, overcome by all the explanations he ran though it, tasting them, dismissing them in turn. The birth of a new magical talent? Maybe - didn't know enough to say yes or no. Some sort of disease? Same as before - ought to write to Simon, if he was awake yet - maybe it was some sort of...reaction to something?

The professor's mind was a storm of confusion and thought, Tapendra standing silent as he focused, brows pressing together.

There was one thing, one thought that kept popping up. Whatever this was, it could be dangerous. Especially if he overheard the wrong thing, and his condition got out...

Tapendra looked at Alvis suddenly. Merlin, what had this kid overheard from the heads of others, or even his own? He hadn't heard him thinking about...he'd never be able to think about sex anywhere near the 4th years ever again, would he -

No. Not worrying about that now.

He sighed, the sound sudden and sharp in the otherwise quiet office. He found himself absently stroking his beard as he tried to find some sort of answer. "When you say you can hear everything - you mean you can hear and feel everyone, I assume," he said. "Can you describe it? What it feels like, what the thoughts sound like?"

Alvis felt the Professor's sudden, concerned gaze before he looked up and saw it, catching a quick blast of Trishna's horrified fascination. Alvis was always more sensitive to thoughts that were about him, made by people while they looked at him. He'd spent a few late nights contemplating why that might be and finally decided that he didn't know enough about mind-magic to say for sure.

He nodded in answer to the Professor's first question and rolled the second around in his mind a moment before moving to the second. "Describing it is rather complicated, to be honest. Most of the time, it doesn't 'sound' like anything. Usually it's a feeling. Emotions, usual, or the intent to lie. When it does turn into words, it's only -- usually -- when I look people in the eye and really think about them."

Which was why he now made a point to avoid the professor's direct gaze. Even it wasn't the rudest possible thing imaginable, he wasn't sure he wanted confirmation that one of his favorite teachers thought him a freak.

"When that happens, it sounds like...like when you've just woken up, or you're walking alone, or concentrating really hard, and you think you hear someone calling your name, but then you turn around and there's no one there." A horrifying thought struck him. He clutched the bundle of rocket parts like a security blanket. "That is something that other people do, right? It's not just me?"