As suddenly as the missing weeks had started, they stopped.

It had been nearly three months before he'd realized that the strange sensation of doing things he didn't remember one week a month had disappeared. His temper was better. He was sleeping better. Things with him and Marina hadn't lasted...but he'd expected that. He was his own worst enemy when it came to relationships.

What was more puzzling was that the random growth and shrinkage of both the plaques in his brain and his hippocampus, that has begun in September of 2015--stopped. The plaques were still there, mocking him and Caleb from the films of the MRI. The shadow of the largest expansion of his hippocampus was as well. There had been no explanation on what had happened for nearly a year. No viable explanation, at least, nothing that Caleb would entertain to Mackenzie.

It should have been a relief.

He finally finished his dissertation and was awarded his Ph.D. on a chilly day in January that he couldn't get out of his house thanks to the snow. He got a hefty raise from the Aquarium both for his efforts in fundraising and his new degree, enough for him to be able to renovate his condo the way he'd been planning for over five years. It was strange not to be writing a check to an institution of higher learning or the U.S. Department of Education for the better part of ten years. It was strange to feel like everything was 'settled'.

But it wasn't settled. There was this tugging feeling at the back of Mackenzie's head. It couldn't all be this easy. It couldn't just be gone like this, could it?

As the months passed, it didn't dwell in his mind anymore, not for extended periods of times. He still had the dreams, the same dreamed that had haunted him from the time of the accident, of floating in the sea, breathing with no assistance and following sharks and morays and schools of other fish. But they were joined with ones of him with a red-haired woman, laughing and playing. Ones of battles fought in the streets of Boston, this Boston.When he woke up, there was that sense of something missing, something just at the very edge of his consciousness that he couldn't quite grasp.

After a while, he stopped trying to figure out the whys and wherefores. It was over, it had been done and he wasn't getting worse, there wasn't any additional memory loss in the present--why should he be concerned? A headache was simply that: a headache. He's been dealing with them for years. That wasn't going to change. He went about his daily routines. He maintained his memory boards. He spent time with friends. He bickered with Lyssa and Silas. He organized the new educational outreach schedule for the winter, then the spring and fall. Time passed in the way it had before all of this started. He had his continued battles with Caleb about not going to a therapist. He had his continued battles with his mother about not settling down, giving her some grandchildren. He found his solace every time he tossed the lines off of Oracle, flipped a coin and set her heading out towards the open ocean. He even spent a glorious week sailing to Canada, nothing but him and the sea and the occasional pod of dolphin following him up the coast.

It was all the way it was---until it wasn't anymore.

He should have pegged this as one of those headaches. One minute he was sort-of-kind-of flirting with Jeff (to be fair, he sort-of-kind-of flirted with everyone), the next it felt like an icepick was going through his temple. It was how it always started but it had been so long, he ignored it. It was just another migraine, nothing some medicine wouldn't fix. He went to bed, head still hurting but again, it wasn't anything he hadn't done before. He'd lived with pain his whole life. He'd wake up Sunday either needing to puke and close every blind in his condo or he'd have to deal with the dull throb behind his right eye until the pain passed and he could deal with what he needed to do to get ready for work on Monday.

He woke up Sunday...but it wasn't to anything he particularly liked. He woke up to the feeling of being stuffed somewhere in the back of his own head. Seeing through his own eyes, but the consciousness directing his movements wasn't his own. Not any more.

Oh great. This again.


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