“What do you mean tomorrow? Tomorrow’s Saturday. Right?”

At first, Josh had been overwhelmed by the request that he had received. A request to meet a more experienced marked person. It was intimidating, especially considering the way in which Margot spoke about them. She seemed nervous, as if this Gul person was very influential and important. And though she had called them a friend, there was clearly more to it than she was letting on.

Of course, that overwhelming feeling was quickly overshadowed by Josh’s realization that he may have been asleep for longer than he thought.

“You were asleep for like thirty hours dude.” Sara said gently, as if to avoid startling him. “You skipped Friday altogether.”

“I don’t feel…” Before Josh could finish, his stomach groaned and he suddenly felt very dizzy. “I take that back, I do feel it.”

“Maybe we should get some food in you… maybe let you shower up too.” Sara offered a hand to Josh to help lift him out of the chair he’d taken in the spare bedroom. “Food first though.”

Josh tried to stand up without help initially, but soon realized that the longer he was awake the more weak he felt. It was amazing, in retrospect, that he’d made it to the spare bedroom from the couch at all. But food sounded amazing, so much so that Josh managed to pull himself to his feet and shamble back out to the kitchen.

Back out in the open space of the penthouse apartment, things looked much the same. But they felt different. The bright daylight outside the windows had new meaning. Time hadn’t left a mark on the apartment, but it had still passed over it. It made everything that had seemed normal before look a little strange. A little different.

Connor was still stationed at his chair in the study, laptop open and now fully occupying him. He didn’t even look up at the three of them when they walked through the room and made their way to the kitchen. Not until Sara opened the fridge at least, then Connor took notice.

“Hey, toss me an apple?” He called out from the study.

Sara had an impish grin and she pulled the fruit from the crisper and looked first to Josh, then to Margot.

“Give him you best shot, sweet pea.” Margot said with a quiet chuckle.

The look of relaxed humor on her face made Josh relax somewhat as well. Margot had been visibly concerned and anxious up to that point. So as Sara lobbed an apple in an impressive overhand pitch directly at Connor, Josh couldn’t help but snicker as well. The throw was good, nearly perfectly at his face, and Connor struggled to duck out of the way when he realized what was happening. He managed to get a hand up to block his face, and the apple hit his thumb and rolled off to hit his forehead too. There was a hollow crunch, louder than Connors exclamation of pain, as the apple split in half on impact.

“Underhand next time? Please?” Connor muttered quietly.

Sara ignored the comment and turned back to Josh. “Sandwich sound good? Turkey club?”

“You don’t have to make me a sandw”—Josh stopped mid statement as he picked up the motherly glare in both Margot and Sara’s eyes—”Sure. A turkey club sounds great.”

While Sara began to assemble a sandwich, Margot gestured for Josh to give her his full attention. “I want to warn you a little about Gul, since you’ve agreed to meet them.”

“I can’t promise I’ll be able to focus, my body is really wigging out on me right now. But I will try.”

Josh’s answer was half excuse to avoid having to listen too closely, half true. He was starting to realize that he was dehydrated as well, and began to worry about his bladder, which surprisingly had not burst in the whole thirty hours he’d been asleep. But as that dawned on him it began to feel as though it might.

“Actually,” Josh held up a hand as he spoke. “I need to go really quick.”

Josh stood, shakily at first, and managed to stay on his feet as he made his way to the bathroom. Once he was inside with the door closed behind him, he realized how wobbly his legs were. It wasn’t safe to stand. So for the next ten minutes, Josh sat on the toilet and let thirty hours of delayed functions take their course. Whatever magic had preserved his faculties, Josh was grateful. It would have been embarrassing in the extreme if he had lost control of them while asleep on the couch.

When Josh returned to the kitchen, he was given curious and concerned looks, but there were no comments. There was a sandwich on a little circular plate waiting on the kitchen island in front of the chair he had been sitting on. Without a word, Josh sat down and began to eat; for which his body was incredibly thankful. Josh wasn’t sure food had ever tasted so good before, but that was probably because he hadn’t eaten in over a day. When the sandwich was gone, and it was gone quickly, Sara pushed a tall novelty cup of water over to Josh and took his plate. Water, it seemed, had never been quite so refreshing either. If the experience hadn’t been so fraught with negativity, Josh thought that a day of sleep and fasting might have been a nice experience if ending it always felt so nice. But as things were, it wasn’t worth it.

“Feeling better?” Margot asked as soon as Josh put down the cup.

“Yes. That… that helped a lot.” Josh said with a gasp fresh from finishing his drink. “You wanted to tell me about Gul? I’m pretty sure I should be able to focus now.”

“Right…” Margot said with a drawl that ended in a sigh. “Well, they’re not very sociable. They don’t like meeting new people, because it’s very taxing on them. There’s this self-appointed obligation that they have, they need to be clear on who they are and how to talk to them before you can actually talk to them.”

“I think I’m getting to understand why that might be.” Josh hummed.

Margot let out a huff of air in agreement as she shook her head in agreement. “A lot of us are different. Marked people all have an opportunity to reinvent themselves, to reset as we call it. Gul, however, resets often. They’ve been trying to lock down an identity for themselves for longer than I’ve been alive. And while it’s difficult to address them because of that, calling Gul they or them is a lot easier than what the old norm used to be.”

“Just out of curiosity, what was the old norm?” Josh really wanted to ask about what she meant by resetting. He’d heard the term while Margot had been talking about him. But it didn’t seem like the right time to ask.

“When I first met Gul, they still insisted that rather than gender them we all use the phrase ‘that one’.” Margot groaned at the memory. “Which was well within their right to request, but it was so wordy that my mouth couldn’t keep up with what I was saying. You wouldn’t think two words would be that bad, but in a conversation it’s torture.”

“So I need to be careful about how I address Gul. That shouldn’t be too bad.”

“Well, that. But you need to let Gul explain how to talk to them. And patiently.”

“A little harder. But if I can endure a two hour lecture, I can listen patiently to someone that wants to help.”

“That’s the other problem.” Margot said with a hissing noise made through clenched teeth. “Gul may not want to help you. They want to meet you, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll help. Gul’s inquisitive, so they might just want to keep an eye on you for record keeping and study purposes.”

“They want to meet me so they can study me?”

Josh watched as Sara’s eyes were starting to dart back and forth between him and her mother. It felt like she knew something that Margot wasn’t saying.But at this point Josh wasn’t going to bother asking what it was because he knew it was only going to lead to more questions and information that he probably didn’t want to hear.

“Considering your unique circumstances… yes. I’m fairly certain Gul wants to study you, but probably not up close. They probably want me to study you, actually.”

Sara was starting to lean closer into the conversation, as if trying to make a space for her to make a comment that she clearly wanted to make.

“I don’t know what kind of studying you mean, but I’d rather not be a lab rat.” Josh said with a frown. “But I’ll talk to them at least. Maybe I’ll learn something.”

“Just”—Sara went ahead and burst into the conversation—”Just make sure you don’t stare at them. That’s impolite, but a common reaction.”

“So you’ve met Gul before?” Josh turned his attention to Sara now, realizing he may have preemptively misjudged whatever information she had.

Sara bit her lip nervously and nodded, her golden hair bouncing around her face as she did. “They were very nice to me, but that was probably because of Margot. They even forgave me for staring at their head.”

Josh was about to ask, but Margot answered before the question could be said. “Like I said, Gul is still refining their identity. They do have a few things decided on, though. Firstly that they like the name Gul, and secondly, that they hate having any sort of bodily hair. And to that end, they have removed all of the hair on their body.”

That was a strange description to Josh. While changing one’s name and deciding the level of hair on their body was totally within the realm of things one could normally do with their physical appearance, those being the only things that Gul had decided on in regards to their identity made Josh question just how all-encompassing a reset might be. Was it just a formal changing of identity and appearance? Or was there a more surgical element to it?

“Oookay.” Josh let the word linger in his mouth. “I think I can avoid staring too. Anything else I should be aware of before I plunge headlong into this meeting?”

“It’s not so much a thing you need to worry about, because I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything stupid while talking to Gul…” Margot began, but the more she talked the less confident she sounded. “There aren’t exactly ranks amount marked people, we don’t have a leadership hierarchy at least. We each have our own designs and groups that cooperate with each other, but some of us are highly regarded. Gul is one of those highly regarded marked individuals. So, don’t get on their bad side if at all possible. If anything, make a good impression so that marked individuals will be more friendly to you.”

That wasn’t ominous at all. And the confidence that Margot was showing in Josh was amazing. It made him excited to go to sleep and wake up the next morning to meet Gul and have all of his problems figured out. But these are sarcastic comments of course, sarcastic comments that made their way through Josh’s head and and no further in the direction of the real word. He was fully capable of keeping his mouth shut and listening to the advice of those around him. That didn’t change the fact, of course, that that advice was beginning to veer off the rails.

“So where and when am I supposed to meet Gul?”

Margot cocked her head to the side, as if finally accepting that the meeting was going to happen at all. “I’ll get a message to them and we should know by tomorrow morning. But if I had to guess, Gul will choose somewhere in public that they can reserve a private space. Maybe a library or a restaurant, and it will probably be later in the day.”

“So I’ll have all day to wait for them…”

Josh didn’t like the sound of that. Knowing that something was looming in his future that he had to plan around made him not want to plan anything at all. After all, what could you plan on doing during the day when you have an important meeting of indeterminate length at an indeterminate time?

Sara intervened again, leaning in to make sure no one would interrupt her while did. “We can finally do some self-defense practice while we wait! If you want to, I mean. Today or tomorrow. Or both.”

That was something Josh felt like he hadn’t though about in ages. At least since the first dream. And it was still something that he wanted to do, but as he sat there and realized how disgusting he felt after sleeping for over a day, the last thing he wanted was to be in close contact to other people; and definitely not if it was some sort of exercise.

“I think I want to go back to the dorms and clean up first. I have a lot I need to process… and I smell awful.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything.” Margot said with a cheeky grin. “But yes. You do.”

“That’s probably a good idea. But… maybe…” Sara was struggling to say something important, Josh could tell. She was getting flush in the face and was clearly too embarrassed for whatever reason.

Connor was the one who finally said what Sara wanted to. “Once you clean up, pack an overnight bag. You should spend the night here till we know more about what’s going on.”

“I should be fine on my own…” Josh was quickly interrupted by Sara.

“No. One horribly inexplicable dream is a unfortunate, but having two so similar… that’s the start of a pattern.” She was less red in the face now that Connor had broken down the conversational barrier for her. “You shouldn’t have to risk that happening a third time if we know you can sleep here safely.”

What Sara was saying was a truth that Josh wasn’t ready to acknowledge yet. There was the beginning of a pattern forming, Josh had already known that. But two times could still be a coincidence. At least that was what he had told himself. And there had been the one night after the first dream where he had passed out from exhaustion and not dreamed at all. It had been a lot like the night… or day, he’d just had. Who was to say it wasn’t just a matter of having an overactive imagination.

“I’ll think about it.” Josh said, trying very hard not to sound dismissive about it. “But getting the grease of a full days sleep off me is still at the top of my priority list.”

“At least, come back when you’re done. Even if you aren’t going to spend the night. We can still get some more questions answered if you want.”

“Okay.” There was no apprehension in Josh’s agreement and Sara looked very pleased with herself for negotiating her deal.

When Josh made his way out of the apartment, he was immediately self-conscious about his disheveled appearance. It didn’t matter if he didn’t see a single soul he recognized, he still regretted that he looked like he’d showered in days. And he felt it was a pretty obvious look. The few people who’s gaze he did meet at random gave him disgusted looks, which was enough to compel him to take the long way around campus to the dorm in case he did actually see someone he knew.

The walk was long, and by the time Josh had made it back to the bottom floor of his dorm he was hungry and thirsty again. He felt like he’d been wandering in the desert, even though it was a crisp sixty-five degrees out and overcast. Josh wasn’t worried at all about Kerry being home when he got there, but as soon at he went to unlock the apartment door he heard his roommate inside and he braced for the worst.