Gary Brandt ratchets up the tension in his tale from The Dimension Of Mind Dot Com when a mysterious missing child case becomes the perfect trap to reveal just how much the Navy knows about the girls' supernatural abilities.
When Officer Mom pulls Eileen from school for an 'emergency search party,' the girls find themselves face-to-face with Commander Beaker at a park swarming with military personnel, helicopters, and search dogs—all looking for a vanished two-year-old.
The setup feels suspicious from the start: why would they need three thirteen-year-old girls for a professional rescue operation? Ella's casual mention of 'silent vortexes' and 'crystalline structures' near a distant peak four miles away sends helicopters racing toward the exact location, where they find the child safe with stories of a 'big bear' protecting him.
The whole scenario screams government test, and Eileen's mom realizes her daughter and friends just demonstrated knowledge that no middle schoolers should possess.
But the real bombshell drops at their 'celebratory' lobster dinner when Commander Beaker reveals the terrifying truth: Helana is literally dying from dimensional density poisoning, her interdimensional body becoming too heavy to return home, threatening to explode 'like a nuclear bomb' if she tries to leave.
The Navy has been tracking her for weeks, knows about their telepathic abilities, and has already contacted her parents through 'remote viewers'—making this whole friendship feel like part of some cosmic setup.
Beaker's offer to hide them in a summer program while treating Helana's condition with 'scalar wave treatments' sounds both like salvation and potential imprisonment, complete with promises of extraordinary powers, world travel, and cutting-edge technology.
Ella's diary entry captures the emotional whiplash perfectly: excitement about machine guns mixed with genuine terror about Helana's condition, plus the dawning realization that their quiet supernatural adventures have evolved into something requiring military protection.
Brandt masterfully transforms what seemed like a simple interdimensional friendship story into a high-stakes government conspiracy where the girls must choose between normal teenage life and accepting responsibility for potentially changing humanity's future.