Harold was really starting to question his luck. For months he had remained at Helix, trapped within the green-and-white walls, with nowhere to go until their very first mission of the term had allowed their squad to leave. Now he was leaving more frequently than ever, at the cost of encountering numerous Gargantuans in less than a week.

He didn't know if it was a blessing or a punishment.

"What do you think this one is?" Jimmy wondered aloud from the other side of the drop ship.

"What do you mean?" Helen asked.

"I mean, the first one was a gorilla, and the second was a salamander—not counting those weird hornets—but what do you think the third Gargantuan is?"

Helen stared absently at the wall. "I don't know, but I wouldn't mind if it was something cute, like a kitten, or an otter."

Harold snorted. "Seriously? 'Cute'? With our luck it's probably going to be some kind of hydra, like the one in those myths."

"Or a giant fire-breathing horse," snickered Jimmy.

"Or a radioactive jellyfish," said Harold. They burst out laughing. The rain continued to fall around them, beating the windows, but for the first time that night the spell of grimness had been broken, and they were able to enjoy a moment of reprieve.

When the laughter had died down, Harold said, "I've never been to Massachusetts, what's it like?"

"Eh, I went there once in my first year, not bad but kind of plain," Jimmy said.

"That's helpful."

Jimmy nodded, impervious to the sarcasm, and silence fell again for another long while.

"You're about to get a firsthand experience of the place, boy," O'Riley called from the front. "We're here."

The trio stood up and moved to the front, gazing down at the city. Boston, Massachusetts spread out below them, lined with spines of tall buildings and wide, busy roads. The sun had risen, casting a faint, yellow glow through the haze of rain. The city seemed nice from above, but as Jimmy had said, rather plain.

They were to swoop in under cover of the rain and early morning twilight, and begin their investigation into the reported sightings while maintaining the cover of visiting family in the city.

"Ready up, boys," Helen said, putting on her supply pack. Harold and Jimmy fixed their own to their backs, and the drop ship swooped lower towards a small, sparkling river beside the highway. The three jumped, but this time no one pulled their parachutes. Cold water exploded over Harold as they dived into the river, but luckily the suit kept most of the water out, and the internal heating resisted the chill of the river. He forced his way to the surface and gasped, taking in great lungfuls of air. Jimmy and Helen surfaced as well, and together they swam to the mainland.

The moment they were clear of the water, they pulled off their jumpsuits, revealing plain civilian clothes underneath.

Helen was dressed in a knee-length, light blue, polka-dot shirtwaist dress, with her hair pinned up in a neat bun and adorned with a large purple bow. Jimmy sported a pair of khaki trousers with pronounced seams and a simple, long-sleeved, white dress shirt. Harold, on the other hand, had opted for black trousers held up by suspenders, with a striped, dark blue vest over a plain t-shirt. His hair had been smoothed down, and he hated it.

"Well, don't you look dapper?" Helen said, giggling.

"Let's just go," Harold said bitterly, and they strode off into town.

There wasn't anyone in sight. That was to be expected, given the hour of the morning. Rows and rows of large square houses rolled by on either side as they walked, completely silent. The sun was climbing higher in the sky, but its light was being obscured by the dense clouds. Harold, who had forgotten to pack his own umbrella, had to share with Jimmy while a light drizzle swept over them.

"Bet you wish you'd let me handle the packing now, don't you?" he said, smirking.

Harold rolled his eyes and didn't respond, though Jimmy laughed nonetheless. Deeper and deeper down the street they walked. They didn't know what they were looking for yet, but they kept their eyes out for anything that seemed out of the ordinary.

"Huh," Helen said, and Harold and Jimmy looked around at her.

"What?" they said in unison.

"That house is covered in glitter."

They looked at the house she was indicating, which was pale blue in colour and, as she had pointed out, dusted with glitter, twinkling serenely in the dim sunlight.

"Is that a thing? Do people actually decorate their houses like this nowadays?" Harold asked.

"Can't see why they would," said Jimmy. "Maybe they just thought it looked nice."

"Or they're attention-seekers." Helen rolled her eyes. "Let's just keep walking."

Further and further down the street they walked. The rain had stopped by now, and the sun was fully out. They weren't worried about meeting anyone; they knew the inhabitants would be skeptical of these new faces, but at this point, it didn't faze them, and so long as the police didn't bother them, they would be all right—though they had contingencies for that as well.

The first person they saw outside came about two blocks ahead. The man was large, with a grubby brown beard, and bald. But he was not looking at them. In fact, he wasn't looking at anything.

"Is he sleeping?" Jimmy said incredulously.

The man was sprawled on his lawn beside the openly running garden hose, snoring loudly. The water was coursing over him, but he didn't seem to notice.

"I think he is," Harold said, a grin forming on his face. "Should I go slap him awake before he gets washed out into the middle of the road?"

"No!" Helen hissed. "We don't want to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves. He'll wake eventually...I think." She cast him a skeptical look, though she pulled them along either way.

A few minutes later, Helen said, "Ah, this looks like someone we can ask."

A woman was kneeling before her garden bushes, her back turned to the road, apparently pruning the flowers.

"Ma'am?" Helen called from the side of the road. "Good morning, Ma'am? I was wondering if we could ask you a few questions?"

The woman didn't respond. She didn't even move.

"Ma'am?" said Helen again, a little more loudly. "Ma'am, we just wanted to ask if you could tell us anything about the strange animal sightings in town this week?"

Still no response. The woman was either deaf or dutifully ignoring them. Or...

"I don't believe it," Harold said grimly.

"What?" Jimmy said.

Harold stepped onto the lawn, ignoring Helen's yelp of "What are you doing?" and strode right up to the woman. She did not acknowledge his presence in any way, but he didn't expect her to. When he finally reached her, he grabbed her shoulder and wheeled her around. Her eyes were closed and her head lolled hopelessly to the side. Her breathing was gentle, her grip on her tools loose. She was most certainly asleep.

"This one's out too," he said to the other two, who looked bewildered.

"What, did everyone in this town have a late night or something?" Jimmy said. A small twinkle caught Harold's eye and he looked around. There was a bucket of water beside her, with a dash of the same glittering powder across the surface.

"Look at this." He nudged the bucket. "The other guy was practically bathing with the garden hose. You think something could have gotten into the water supply?"

"You mean, like the Gargantuan somehow polluted it?" Jimmy said, looking alarmed.

"If that's true, then the animal would be water-based," Helen said.

"Oh God, we're not really going to have to deal with a radioactive jellyfish, are we?" Jimmy said.

"Do you think she lives alone?" Harold asked.

Helen hurried up to the front door and knocked. After a few seconds, she pounded on the door again. She looked around at them, then timidly pushed it open.

"Oh my," they heard her gasp.

"What?"

"Her husband, I think—he fell asleep watching TV."

"So is it happening to everyone, or—"

"Oh my God," Jimmy said, as if a sudden realization had just struck him. "What if someone left their stove on?"

"We can't check every house in the neighbourhood!" Harold said, his voice a little desperate.

Before any of the other two could answer, a sound crossed the air—a sound that in this situation could only serve to make matters far worse: a police siren.

"Hurry!" Helen hissed, rushing back to the sidewalk. Harold heaved the woman up and bolted into the house, then dropped her unceremoniously onto the sofa beside her husband and raced back outside. He, Helen, and Jimmy stood still as the vehicle slowly came into view, trying to act casual.

"Why is he moving so slow?" Jimmy whispered.

"I don't know, intimidation tactics?" Harold suggested.

Helen squinted ahead at the vehicle. "No, I...I think he's—oh my—" She gasped. The car had suddenly veered off course, swinging into another yard and ripping through the fence. Harold, Helen, and Jimmy darted towards it. When they arrived, they saw the policeman at the helm, his head bent over the wheel, blood flowering from a large gash on his forehead.

"He must have fallen asleep while driving," Jimmy said.

"This is bad," said Helen. "We need to call the Academy, this is too much for us."

"Wait!" Harold said, as she pulled out her tablet. "We can't, not yet."

"What do you mean, not yet?" she said shrilly.

"I mean, this is the perfect opportunity to do what we came here to do, isn't it? All the civilians are out of the way, which means we can hunt the Gargantuan in peace. And judging by all this, it's likely still here!"

"And what if someone dies because we didn't call for help?" Helen demanded. "Look at this!" She gestured at the policeman again.

"Okay, fine!" Harold conceded. "Just hurry."

Helen's fingers sped across the screen as she typed the SOS. Then she said, "Done."

"Well, what do we do now?" Jimmy asked. "We can't just stay here."

Helen looked around and took a deep breath. "We should probably split up, cover more ground—"

Harold interrupted. "No way! This thing has probably sent the entire population of this town to sleep already. What if it decides to show while we're separated? I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to be stuck like this forever." He patted the policeman's shoulder, and the groaned contentedly, mumbling.

Helen exhaled forcefully through her nose. "Okay, fine. Let's keep moving, but we have to check the other houses. All right?"

Jimmy and Harold nodded.

"Let's get cracking, then."

It was horribly dull, tedious work, checking the houses. Each time, they had to look around all the rooms inside for unlikely places the residents may have fallen asleep, then move them to more convenient positions, all while checking to ensure that whatever tasks they had been doing before falling asleep had been properly finished and were stopped. The more houses they entered, the more Harold said faint traces of that glittering powder.

Had they been having some kind of party, or something?

"I'm getting too old for this," Harold groaned as he lugged a pair of heavyset twins from around the dining table to sit with their parents in the living room. Their mother had made pancakes. Harold took a bite of one.

"Mmm, not bad."

He saw Helen and Jimmy looking at him, shaking their heads.

"What? They're not going to eat them. And besides, they could lay off the sweets for a while anyway."

They continued on to the next house. Harold was becoming angry. As unreasonable as it sounded, it seemed as if these people had deliberately chosen to fall asleep in the most inconvenient places to make their job more difficult.

"Never speak of this again," Harold said, as they emerged, wet and deeply disturbed, from a house in which one man had fallen asleep in the shower.

As they went back onto the streets, Harold saw a shadow flitting ahead. He paused.

"Is something wrong?" Helen said.

"I thought I saw something move."

"What, like an animal?" Jimmy said. "Couldn't have been, all the other pets were affected too."

"Not an animal, a man. At least, I think it was a man."

They started forward again, moving a little more cautiously this time. Harold was looking out for the mysterious man, craning his neck over the fences.

"Harold, there can't be anyone there, everybody we've seen so far is asleep. We should be focusing on helping the other residents."

"I know that, but—there he is!" Harold pointed at the man, who was framed perfectly on the steps of a house a few blocks down.

"Harold, I don't see any—"

But Harold was not listening to her. He darted off, rushing towards the man.

"Harold, wait!" He heard Jimmy and Helen's racing feet behind him, but he did not slow down. He cut across lawns and jumped over fences, determinedly closing in on the man.

"Stop!" Harold shouted, and immediately cursed himself. Why was he shouting stop? When in history had anyone who had been yelled at to stop ever actually stopped?

He put on a burst of speed, building up strength in his legs, then leapt onto the rooftop of a neighbouring house. He charged across the tiles, feeling them sink beneath his feet, and his target looked up at him. His face was covered by a black mask, but he was still running. Harold took one last, powerful leap and landed just behind him, so forcefully that the ground cracked.

Then he dived at the man. Harold caught him around the middle and both went flying to the ground. They rolled, fists flailing, but when they had come to a halt, Harold was pinning the man beneath him.

And it was then that he made a dreadful discovery. The man wasn't wearing a mask.

He had no face.

Where skin and eyes should have been was a swirling mass of darkness, cold and empty. A faint whispering noise was issuing from it, as if the man was trying to speak.

Harold shook his head, focusing on the man himself.

"Who are you?" Harold shouted. "Why were you watching us?"

The man didn't speak, but the whispering grew louder. So loud that it became almost deafening. Harold winced as the noise filled his ears, tightening his grip on the target's collar in response. And then the man melted underneath him. He completely dissolved into the ground, like a shadow that had been hit by sunlight. And Harold was alone in the street, clutching empty air.

Eyes widened in horror, he stumbled to his feet. The sun had disappeared. The sky, which had been a clear turquoise, was now a velvety black. There were no stars, no moon. It simply stretched on above him, a boundless expanse of empty blackness. And Helen and Jimmy were gone.

"Jimmy? Helen?"

His voice echoed around, but no one responded.

"Jimmy! Helen!"

His breath hitched. His heart was pounding against his ribs like a vicious animal threatening to burst out of its cage.

"JIMMY! HELEN!"