DUST

They came in the night. They changed everyone. Now it's just Joey, two friends, and a town that forgot how to scream.

It started with a taste of copper. A ringing in the ears. A strange, metallic shimmer on the skin.

Then the town of Crestfall began to change.

Joey McGill is fourteen years old when the dust falls. It settles over the cornfields like a silent fog, carried by crop dusters that fly too low and too late. By morning, his mother can't stop humming. By lunch, his teachers are smiling at walls. By sunset, the town is a symphony of synchronized, empty-eyed bliss. And Joey is one of the few who can still feel the ringing.

He is not alone. Riley Tate arrived in Crestfall two weeks ago, already too angry to fit in. Stephen Darrow has been his best friend since kindergarten, but now Stephen's hands won't stop shaking. Together, they are the last people in town who can still think for themselves. And the ones running the experiment know it.

Because the dust is not a toxin. It is a delivery system.

Nanoparticles. Neural interfaces. A corporate cure for the human condition that was not supposed to start until next year.

The Grain Elevator at the center of town is not storing wheat anymore. It is storing them. Their memories. Their fears. Their very identities. And the backup is almost complete.

If Joey and his friends cannot reach the tower, if they cannot break the signal, the people of Crestfall will not just lose their minds.

They will lose themselves. Forever.

The dust does not just change you.

It makes you forget you ever were.