The study was a fairly straightforward one: take a bunch of people who had never done psychotropic drugs and see how they fared with this new pharmaceutical for pain. Why exactly the company needed specifically people who’d never taken such drugs before, she didn’t really want to question too hard. Money was too tight for questions. And this was one of the few trials that not only promised a paycheck, it was also one of the few to promise something hefty even if the trial itself didn’t go well.

She assumed it was to create a control group. A baseline for how much of an effect the new drug might have on ‘virgin systems’ as the doctors involved with the trial kept describing it. Just like the selected participants themselves, she didn’t really question the wording because of the price point. She didn’t really question anything until after the first dose.

The type who’s quick to latch on to anyone kind to her, she’d built up walls. Much needed walls, but ones notoriously hard to scale all the same. Thus, building up a rapport with the other trial members had not been a priority for her. Something she wished she’d done differently when she heard a group of five participants describing the exact same strange dream she’d had. Or at least aspects of it. Barging in on people having dinner sounded too rude for her to stomach, though the continued eavesdropping was only marginally better.

Blue fireflies, though three of the people were arguing over just what shade of blue, seemed way too much of a coincidence for them not to have experienced a collective dream somehow. The sliver of moon was mentioned too, the way it loomed low and large in the sky. But there was no mention of the girl. None. No matter how hard she strained her ears even to catch the words of the soft-spoken woman at the far end of the table. How could she have been the only one to see the girl when everything else was seemingly shared?

Not for the first time, she wished they hadn’t taken her phone. Though now, she wanted it for something other than to just while away the time as she sat and ate alone.