Author: Tower Curator

 

Dyna got out of the makeshift motor home in the middle of the loading and unloading zone. Leaving it abandoned would probably see it towed, but at the moment, Dyna was far too wound up to care. There just wasn’t time to figure out a better parking spot. Grafton was already inside the airport terminal.

Keeping the mirror up and ready, Dyna moved to follow him. The mirror was currently black, not showing anything useful. She tried to concentrate on the people in the airport, to perhaps use them as beacons as she had used the officer, but so far, she was coming up with nothing. Once again, uncertainties regarding her artifact were coming back to bite her.

Did she need to know the people being observed? Did it not count if the person whose perspective she wanted wasn’t focusing on someone? Did the officer just have a slightly higher psychic potential, leading to him being a better focus than some random person in the airport? Were there even people in the airport? It was late at night and this place was no LAX.

The Idaho Falls Regional Airport was just that. A regional airport. It was meant for smaller, shorter distance flights. LAX was a bustling city in its own right. Depending on the hour, its population probably exceeded that of Idaho Falls. Maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but only maybe.

The airport here had a mere two levels to it. Only four gates. Two were up an escalator, two were on the ground floor. All four were past a security gate. Given that the police officer had dropped Grafton off at the front of the building instead of going around to the runways, Dyna had to assume that he was not going to head directly to a private jet already out on the tarmac.

That was good for her. It gave her time. Maybe not much time, but more time than she would have had. A quick glance at the flight schedule showed only a single departing plane in the next hour. Then one in the hour after that. Then apparently nothing until the next morning. As long as Dyna was making assumptions, she figured that he would be taking the next flight. A three hour flight to Las Vegas, Nevada.

It was scheduled for departure in twenty-two minutes.

Ruby would be here shortly. Within the scheduled departure window.

That gave Dyna some measure of calm. She was making a lot of assumptions about how soon Grafton would get out of reach, but they seemed like logical assumptions. The only major concern she had was his ability to control the minds of others. Depending on how many people he could control at once and how far reaching his ability was, he might be able to just waltz onto the plane, order it to depart early, and disappear before Dyna could do anything.

But that didn’t seem likely. A flight departing ahead of schedule without boarding its passengers would be cause for alarm. Even if he mind controlled traffic control here, aviation was a complex industry with many points of contact that would all find an erratic flight concerning. He might even wind up shot down.

So he was trapped here. For twenty minutes at least.

Maybe walking up to a security guard and claiming that she heard someone talking about a bomb would get that flight delayed even further. But that might also force his hand into actually hijacking the flight. Or worse, he might make them think that Dyna was the threat, not him. If things turned out poorly, that could be a fall-back plan.

For now…

“How do I get past the security gate?”

Calling it a gate might be giving it too much credit, but it was still a security checkpoint staffed by two guards with some x-ray machines for bags and a metal detector for the people. A small line of future passengers moved through at a slow and steady pace, showing off tickets and letting the guards examine their bags. Grafton wasn’t among them. Either he had already made it through the line or, more likely, he simply walked through without submitting to checks.

It must be nice. Dyna was willing to admit that being able to see from people’s perspective had come in handy more than once, but having a more active power would not go unwelcome. Emerald would simply have been able to appear on the other side of the gate with no one the wiser. Melanie’s illusions could have provided a number of solutions, from making her appear invisible to showing off an imaginary ticket.

“Purchase a ticket.”

Dyna blinked, then turned her attention to one of the counters to the side of the security gate. A pair of attendants sat behind a large desk. Neither were occupied with customers, but…

Looking back to the security gate, Dyna frowned. The passengers were dumping their belongings into a tray to pass through the x-ray machine along with their bags. They themselves stepped through the metal detectors.

Dyna slowly shook her head. The holster under her arm was empty. No gun meant it shouldn’t set off the detector. That wasn’t what she was worried about.

Her mirror, made of metal, would certainly have to go into the tray. That would have been fine if it were merely a compact mirror, psionic energy emissions or not, but it wasn’t. It had a camera in it. A fairly obvious camera at that. The mere presence of the camera might see her pulled off to the side.

Rather than stand about looking awkward any longer, Dyna headed to the restrooms. After checking to make sure the stalls were all empty, Dyna held up her phone.

“Ruby, how would you get past the security checkpoint?”

“There will be other ways for employees. Probably unattended doors or elevators. It’s a small airport, right? Nothing happens here. Security presence will be low.”

“Just find another door? Should I wait for you.”

“I’d rather you got eyes on the target as soon as possible. Don’t want to come all this way only for him to already be gone.”

Dyna pressed her lips together, conceding the point. Her mirror was still dark. Presumably, that meant he was still nearby. But unless it lit back up again, she would have to do this the old fashioned way.

“Your life is not in immediate danger. The Carroll Institute—”

“I know. I know. You said that already,” Dyna said, interrupting Beatrice. She wasn’t quite sure how many felonies she had committed this evening. Probably a lot. What was one or two more in the name of keeping the Aztec calendar out of Id’s hands?

“Ignore her,” Ruby said. “She’s just a glorified secretary. Here’s a tip: Act like you belong. You know what you’re doing. You’re supposed to be there. If you can find a high-visibility vest and a hardhat, you’ll be completely invisible.”

“And where am I going to get a vest and hardhat?”

“High visibility vests and ear protection are standard uniforms for those working on the runways.”

“Exactly!” Ruby said, agreeing with Beatrice for once. “They probably have a room full of them.”

“The Idaho Falls Regional Airport faculty offices should be located to the left of the main security checkpoint.”

“Thank you.”

“The door will require a code or scanned card.”

“I don’t suppose you can help with that?”

“This system—”

“Limited. I know.”

“But I have a hypothesis.”

“Is this the time for that?”

“This system was designed for analysis of large quantities of data. This system has dedicated significant resources to analyzing data relevant to Dyna Graves. This will be a test: The code is seven, four, one, four.”

“What?” Dyna wasn’t sure what Beatrice was talking about. Or rather, she wasn’t sure what the relevance data analysis on her had with the code to an airport’s employee room. But Beatrice was odd. She was willing to ignore oddities like that. “I thought you were limited?”

“Data analysis continues. Please provide additional data points.”

Dyna held the phone away from her face for a moment, noting the long call time, wondering if something hadn’t broken in Beatrice.

“Ignore the stupid secretary,” Ruby snapped over the line. “Get moving!”

“Right.”

Later, assuming she got out of this alright, she could warn Walter or Doctor Cross that Beatrice was acting up. For now…

Dyna took a breath and slapped her cheeks in an attempt to focus. She couldn’t look nervous or out of place. Ruby was right.

She needed to act like she belonged. People said that worked. More people than just Ruby. She had read plenty of stories online about people walking into concert back stages just because they looked vaguely like security and acted like they were supposed to be there.

The mirror wasn’t acting useful at the moment, so she slipped it into her pocket. She kept the phone, just in case either of the others had updates for her, but tried to make herself look as casual as possible by fake tapping on the screen. That had the added advantage of letting her keep her head down. Not that the nearly deserted airport had many people to watch her.

Leaving the restroom, Dyna followed Beatrice’s instructions. Just past a small quiet room, she spotted a plain metal door with an electronic handle. Dyna walked up to it like she was used to it, stopping at the keypad for only a moment before entering the combination Beatrice had provided.

A little red light turned green and some mechanical noises inside the handle clicked.

Dyna pushed into a hallway. A fairly short hallway with a few open doorways on either side. The first on the right was a small break room. The first on the left looked like baggage handling. An open form office followed after that. The last doorway opened to a locker room.

It didn’t take much effort at all to find what she was looking for. Right next to the door, a number of bright yellow vests hung on a rack. She didn’t see any hardhats or ear protection nearby, but those probably wouldn’t be needed if she wasn’t going out onto the actual airfield.

“Got it,” she said, wasting no time in grabbing the first one.

“Now find a way into the secure part of the airport,” Ruby said. “Avoid the main gate. There will probably be a door somewhere in the back rooms.”

“Okay. I can do that. Beatrice, I don’t suppose you have a map?”

“More exact layouts than the public maps are difficult to acquire for airports for security purposes. This system is ope—”

“Finding it myself then.”

It shouldn’t be difficult. She knew that the security gate was to the right of the door she entered, meaning it would have to be on the right side of the hallway. There was a sign posted at the far end of the hall, but that actually had an exit sign. Presumably for emergencies, though it wasn’t labeled as emergency only. It probably lead to the tarmac.

The locker room lacked any doors. That meant the office room or the break room.

Two workers in the hall made Dyna’s stomach clench. She almost turned and ran straight for the tarmac door, but they passed by with little more than a nod of their heads in her direction. They didn’t even stop their conversation about some local college’s football team.

Idaho Falls seemed like the kind of place where everyone would just know each other. Maybe the city itself was too big, but a small regional airport? They made sitcoms about the five people working at such places. But that was obviously not the case or they would have stopped her.

Confidence marginally increased, Dyna peeked into the break room. No door. That meant backtracking to the office.

The office looked more like another hallway that someone had dragged a few desks into. It screamed of a temporary setup that had been around for years. But there was a door at the far end. One that, as long as she hadn’t gotten too turned around, should open into the secure section of the terminal.

About half the desks were empty. The other half, maybe ten people in total, were working. Some talked on phones, others focused on computer screens. No one was paying attention to the woman standing in the doorway despite the bright vest she had on.

With a deep breath, Dyna started walking through. Her steps were firm and confident… hopefully.

“Hey…”

Halfway through, a voice just about made her jump.

“Super’s going to start shouting if he sees that phone out.”

Dyna blinked, confused at first. Her panicked mind didn’t quite process what he was saying fast enough to react accordingly.

“Are you alright?”

“No—Yes, I mean…” Dyna closed her eyes and slipped the phone into her pocket. “Just waiting on a call from my mother. She’s ill and the doctors were doing some tests…” She wasn’t even sure what she was saying. The words just fell out of her mouth.

And they seemed to work. The woman talking to her, a shorter lady with dyed orange hair, immediately took on a look of understanding. “Do you need to go?”

“No. No. There’s nothing I can do. If I leave, I’ll just think about it nonstop. I just need to focus on work.”

“I understand. But best do that with your phone away. It will help you to not think about it too.”

“Yeah. Thanks. You’re probably right. I appreciate the warning.”

The woman offered a smile, sat back down, and promptly started working again.

Dyna didn’t stick around. That felt as close of an encounter as could be, but the woman didn’t raise any alarms or call for security. She wasn’t even the least bit suspicious. Which did make Dyna a little worried about general airport security, but she was in no position to complain.

Reaching the end of the office hallway, Dyna opened the door to find just what she expected. The secure portion of the airport terminal. One of the boarding gates was just in front of her. Gate one. The doors were closed and the lights were dimmed.

Dyna’s eyes flicked to the television screen that acted as a schedule. The Vegas flight was departing from gate four. That should be upstairs on the right. Boarding was apparently due to start in five minutes.

Keeping her vest on just in case, Dyna hurried around to the escalators near the security gate. The guards didn’t bother her, not that she really went past them.

A small crowd of between seventy and a hundred people—far more than Dyna was expecting—were standing or seated around the chairs and couches at gate four. Some were children. Many were adults. A few looked like tourists, others looked like they were heading out on business.

Dyna hung back, pulling out her mirror. Just in case. The glass panes were still dark, unfortunately.

While the high visibility vest apparently did make her nearly invisible, she doubted it would work on Grafton. The man knew her. He had seen her up close. More than that, there were exceedingly few people with silvery hair running around the airport. A few old ladies, but that was a bit different. So one person, who just so happened to have hair exactly like that of the woman he had kidnapped earlier, would surely stand out.

Keeping back near a signboard advertising some restaurant simply called Katherine’s, Dyna scanned the crowd. She honestly couldn’t remember much of Grafton’s face. The prosthetic churning and chugging along had proved distracting enough to pull all her attention to it. Still, that was distinctive enough. That and his brown tweed suit.

“Now boarding flight J4184, seats A through D please come to the gate. Have your ticket ready to present to the attendants.”

A little less than a quarter of the assembled passengers started rummaging through their things, standing up, and otherwise moving about.

And that was enough for Dyna to spot him. Seated at a small chair up against the window, he casually browsed a magazine, ignoring the movement around him. He simply flipped the pages.

“Got you,” Dyna whispered.

Then…

Then what?

She hadn’t thought this far ahead.

“Ruby?” she hissed, pulling out her phone. “I see him. Now what?”

“I’m almost there. Keep him from getting on the plane. It’ll be more difficult if he boards.”

“Okay…” Dyna’s eyes snapped back and forth between the people lining up at the gate and Grafton. “Ideas?”

“Don’t start a fight. Security will pull you guys apart and he’ll disappear. You’re wearing that outfit, right?”

“Yes?”

“Use it. Got to go. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Just stall.”

“Ruby has disconnected her phone.”

“Yeah, I figured.” The passengers weren’t quite boarding just yet. Maybe Grafton was far enough down the list that he wouldn’t board before Ruby arrived?

Except, she couldn’t count on that. Ruby had given her a mission.

Keeping the line of passengers between herself and Grafton, Dyna jogged up to the attendants at the gate. She walked right up to them. A man and a woman standing just behind a ticket counter. Waving the man over, Dyna started whispering.

“One of the bag loaders noticed something leaking from one of the engines. Radios aren’t working right either, we couldn’t contact the pilots or the… control room?” Dyna tried to not sound too uncertain, but continued on with her explanation, hopefully before the attendant could think about it too deeply. “We need to hold off boarding for a bit while we figure out what is going on.”

“That… is not protocol.”

“Yeah, well. Things are broken right now. They just told me to run up and tell you in case communications weren’t working.” Dyna forced a scoff. “Don’t like it? Take it up with the super. My job is done.”

Shrugging, Dyna stalked off. Hopefully that would get them talking on the phone, trying to figure out what went wrong. Nothing was actually wrong, but maybe they would think something was wrong. It only needed to delay them by a few minutes.

Ruby would be here soon.

On her way away, Dyna peered between the lined up passengers toward the window where Grafton had been sitting.

Her blood ran cold when all she saw was an empty seat.

 

 

“This system is operating in a limited capacity.”

“I know you can help,” Dyna said between breaths. “You’re a lot more capable than Ruby says.”

“Understood.”

“Is that a yes? Great. I need to find… a police car. I don’t know the license plate or any other identifying information. The officer said his name. It was something like Olive. Don’t remember exactly. There is a guy in the back seat who walks with a limp and has machinery attached to the right side of his head.”

“Understood.”

Dyna rushed to the storage facility’s entrance. A large fenced gate had closed over the road, but a large button clearly meant to be pressed from the window of a car opened it up, allowing Dyna out onto the main street. Which, from a quick glance around, was probably somewhere on the outskirts of Idaho Falls. Aside from the storage facility, about the only thing around was a large white barn-style building with thick black letters reading Falls Livestock Auction. A faint few orange street lamps dotted the road around both buildings, providing a bare minimum of light.

“I could use transportation as well. And can you send a message to Emerald and Ruby? Let them know that they’re chasing the wrong person. The guy in the police car has the artifact.”

“Understood.”

Unlike the last time Dyna got help from Beatrice, there wasn’t much around. No cars parked outside shops. No shops with security cameras. No people meandering about. There was a whole lot less to work with here. Dyna doubted she would be able to just happen across another car that left its engine running and its doors unlocked. Idaho Falls could be the most relaxed city with regards to security practices, but there still needed to be cars around in order to drive them away.

“How far away is Ruby? She was supposed to be on her way here already, right?”

“This system is operating in a limited capacity. Please stand by.”

“I don’t know that I have time for that. The guy is getting further and further away. I don’t know where he’s headed…”

“Understood. Please stand by.”

Beatrice’s calm, cool voice didn’t sit well with Dyna. She was tense. Her nerves tingled. Part of that was probably the cold air gnawing at her cheeks, nose, and eyebrows, but the other part was a desire to do something. To not fail again. She wasn’t a very good psychic. She wasn’t a very good artificer. But she could at least help out in recovering the artifact. Even just tracking down the guy…

Dyna blinked. An idea struck her.

Pulling out her mirror, she glanced down at the reflective lenses. They showed off just herself at the moment. Not from any odd angles either, it was just an entirely mundane reflection. Dyna looked up to the roof to try to find the perspective she had seen up there, then rotated slowly until she found a far more mundane security camera than those down in Psychodynamics.

The other people watching her weren’t watching anymore, apparently.

Which was fine for her purposes.

That guy with the prosthetics, Grafton. His perspective had appeared in the mirror once. That meant it could happen again. So far, her mirror had always needed someone to be the focus of another’s perspective. A person under their observation. Either herself, Emerald, or Harold had worked. But…

Assuming the man was still in the police car—which Dyna had no reason to doubt given that it would be a great way of avoiding traffic if needed—then there was a person right there able to act as a psychic beacon.

Closing her eyes, Dyna concentrated. Her fingers rubbed against the eye-shaped necklace she wore. She had bought it as a good luck charm before arriving at the institute. Just a little thing that she got because of her initial excitement. It hadn’t brought much luck, but it was an eye and she needed an eye on the officer right now.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, the lenses of the mirror turned dark. Dyna wasn’t quite sure how she knew that with her eyes shut, but opening them, she quickly found the mirror’s glass switch from dark to an image.

Dyna saw the interior of the police cruiser. The perspective came from the back seat. The officer, likely still controlled, drove on in the front. Dyna couldn’t see outside the vehicle all that well. Not in the dark. But from what she could see, they didn’t seem to be driving that fast. Probably to avoid attracting attention.

While Dyna couldn’t see outside the car to try to guess at their location, she could see the inside. A computer sat right between the driver seat and the passenger seat. The same one that she had noticed earlier with the map. A GPS device. Holding her mirror right up to her eyes, she squinted at the display.

“I know where they are and which way they’re headed. Still don’t know a destination. How far is Willow Street and… I think that says Kennedy. How far is that from where I’m at?” Dyna asked, quickly giving the name of the Mountainside Self-Storage. Even in whatever limited capacity Beatrice was supposedly acting under, she should still have access to a map.

Sure enough, Beatrice gave an answer. “Approximately two point eight miles.”

“That’s it? That’s not far at all.”

“It is for someone without a vehicle.”

“Where’s Ruby?”

“Unknown. This system is operating—”

“Yes, yes. Limited capacity. I get it. You should really fix that. Hook up more servers or whatever.”

“Understood.”

Dyna bit her lip, looking down at her mirror. Although obeying the speed limit, the police car was getting further and further away while she stood still. Ruby had been on her way since Dyna arrived at the storage facility. She could wait. But… who knew how long that would be.

Blinking as another idea hit her, Dyna looked back to the facility. “People store cars at places like this, right?” Just from where she stood, she could see a few recreational vehicles parked on one side of the buildings.

“Warning: Your life is not in immediate danger. The Carroll Institute may not approve of your intent.”

“They would rather have the Aztec Calendar wind up in the hands of people who will almost certainly misuse it? Cross called it a portent of apocalypse. Shouldn’t we really make sure that thing stays locked up?”

Beatrice didn’t respond. Such things probably were not her decision to make. In fact, Dyna wasn’t sure how many decisions Beatrice could make. Dyna didn’t know exactly what Beatrice was, but it was obviously some kind of computer system. An artificial intelligence. Not an avid reader of technology news and information, Dyna wasn’t wholly certain what that meant, but Beatrice felt person-enough for her.

Deciding that asking forgiveness later was the better option between stealing a vehicle and letting a portent of apocalypse find its way into Id’s hands, Dyna quickly rushed back into the storage facility and to the area where the recreational vehicles were stored. Would they all be unlocked with their keys in the ignition? She doubted it. But there had to be something.

“Do you know how to hotwire a car?”

“Dyna…”

“I’m just asking,” she said as she ran down the rows of RVs. They had several doors. The two usual ones and often a door on the back or side. All she needed was for one person to have forgotten to lock one door.

She quickly found one. A door that opened. Not because someone didn’t lock the door, but because it didn’t seem to have a lock in the first place.

It was an old school bus. One of the shorter ones. Someone must have purchased it and converted it into a motor home. Most of the seats had been removed, replaced with tables, a makeshift kitchen, and a bed. Dyna felt a bit bad about intruding on something that someone had obviously put a lot of work into, but…

The apocalypse was at hand. With that in mind, she felt she could justify just about anything.

Unfortunately, while the door had pushed open, it did require a key to actually get moving. “So, do you know how to hotwire a bus?”

“Information of that sort is readily available online.”

“That’s a yes, right?”

Beatrice waited one short pause before speaking. That short moment of silence somehow conveyed a bit more disappointment than Dyna would have expected from a computer. Still, she ended up saying, “Yes.”

“Walk me through it?”

“Understood.”

Apparently, this being an older bus worked out well for Dyna. Modern vehicles almost always contained safeguards against hotwiring. Things that would lock the starter or set off alarms. It did require a few tools, but this being a converted home, Dyna was able to find a pair of scissors and a knife in the kitchen area. A spark of two wires together had the engine rumbling.

And still no sign of Ruby.

“Can’t you call her?”

“I attempted several methods of communication. Ruby may be in a high stress environment at this time.”

That could be. Especially if she noticed the police car and decided to chase after it. A quick glance at the mirror, however, showed no sign of alarm in either of the occupants. Which could mean that Ruby was just ignoring the ‘glorified secretary’.

Shaking her head, Dyna put her hands to the wheel.

It was strange. She had already done the hard work. Thanks to her actions, the bus probably needed at least a few hundred dollars worth of repair work. But now that it was time to actually get moving, she felt a bit more tension in her stomach.

But the longer she hesitated, the further away Grafton got.

Dyna hit the gas. The gate in to the facility had closed during her tinkering. A few more seconds went down the drain as she had to get out of the bus, run around to the button, and then rush back into the bus. She drove through, then paused.

“I don’t suppose you have eyes on the police car.”

“This system is—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dyna held her mirror up to her face again, squinting to try to see the GPS map in the police car.

“Based on the previous location you gave me, the vehicle in question could be at any one of seventy-eight thousand points in the nearby area. Assuming they continued to follow the speed limit. Failing that, two-hundred thirty-seven thousand—”

“That’s way too many. They’re traveling westward on Lincoln? I think.”

“The Idaho Falls Regional Airport is the highest value point of interest within Idaho Falls along the path you have outlined.”

“That makes sense. Id has a laboratory, but it probably isn’t in the city. It’s too close to the Carroll Institute. Taking a flight out would be the fastest way of getting away from here.”

“I can direct you. Take a left. Drive for one point two miles then take another left. This is the fastest available route.”

“Got it. Text Ruby and Emerald too.”

“Understood.”

Dyna pulled out of the storage facility and onto the road. Then she floored it. The bus didn’t exactly fly down the street. Dyna hadn’t ever driven a vehicle quite so large before. It certainly felt heavy. Between a bus and a police cruiser, she had no doubts about who would win a race. If Grafton spotted her, had the driver switch to a highway escape route, and then went even a little over the speed limit, Dyna would never catch up to him.

Perhaps it was good that he had gotten such a lead. It would allow her to catch up without tipping him off. In fact, keeping hidden until he was out of the vehicle entirely was probably going to be her best bet at catching him. That meant the airport, assuming that was his end destination. And it would leave her with only a short time between him getting out of his car and getting into a plane.

“Take a left now. Continue straight for two point nine miles. You are on the fastest available route.”

“Thank you.”

Glad she had someone who actually knew how to navigate Idaho Falls keeping her on the right path, Dyna followed along. Though she did wish that Beatrice could take the wheel entirely. That would let her peek at the mirror and ensure that Grafton wasn’t going somewhere else.

As it was, a red light allowed her the opportunity to squint through the mirror again. She considered blowing right through it, catching her up even faster than speeding would allow, but the thought of plowing into someone else’s car forced her to stop. Not only did she not want to kill someone, but wrecking the bus would only stop her from reaching the airport in time.

The good news was that the police car was still on the same path.

Dyna wasn’t quite sure what Grafton’s plan was. He had a fairly distinctive appearance. Was he just going to walk into the airport like any old traveler? It was possible. If he was as strong of a mind controller as he seemed to be, he could probably just make everyone ignore him. Dyna felt it was most likely that he would take a private jet. Maybe he would just drive straight to it, then have it take him directly to wherever Id was actually based.

Which raised a question. Was it better to let him leave with the artifact if it meant getting more information on Id’s whereabouts? Could they get information?

If not, the idea was moot anyway.

“Can you track flights, Beatrice?”

“Not at this time. This system is operating—”

“What do you need to operate at a higher capacity?”

“Authority.”

“How?”

“A nine of thirteen majority vote from the administrator council or an emergency escalation of system privileges granted by either White or Doctor ████████.”

Dyna grimaced at the burst of static from her phone. It was resting in her lap, set to speaker phone so she could drive without hindrance. For a moment, she thought the connection had been cut off, but Beatrice kept talking.

“White’s escalation authority has been temporarily revoked pending review of the most recent escalation incident, ordered by the administrators. The administrators have never passed a vote for system escalation.”

“And Doctor… who? I didn’t quite catch his name.”

“Doctor ████████,” Beatrice said with the same burst of static as before, “is currently unavailable.”

“So we’re stuck then. No other way?”

“Emerald has granted me level two autonomy for the duration of the ongoing situation. Had she not, we would not be speaking.”

“Well, thank goodness for that I suppose.”

“I am sorry. The tasks you have for me cannot be fulfilled.”

“Don’t… beat yourself up over it. It isn’t your fault, I guess.”

“Understood. Turn onto Mapleberry and continue straight for five point one miles. Your destination will be on the right.”

“Thanks. Can you connect me to Emerald and Ruby? A group call?”

“Ruby has failed to respond to my communication thus far. My analysis indicates that she is indisposed. Emerald is unlikely to respond. My analysis indicates that she is indisposed. In addition, Emerald’s artifact is known to disrupt communications.”

“Try anyway, please.”

“Understood.”

Dyna waited, focusing on the road. The road she was on at the moment wasn’t exactly a highway, but it didn’t have much in the way of stop signs or traffic lights. That let her travel even more over the posted speed limit. Having been unable to check the mirror for a few minutes now, she mostly had to hope that Grafton was still on the way to the airport.

“What do you want?” An obviously irritated Ruby startled Dyna by shouting over the phone.

It took Dyna a second to respond. “Where are you?” she said after a moment.

“Dyna? I thought you got kidnapped.”

“It was a fake kidnapping.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know,” Dyna snapped. Ruby should have known that if she had read even one of Beatrice’s messages. The girl probably blocked Beatrice. That sounded like something she would have done. “How fast can you get to the airport?”

“With Ruby connected, I can calculate the time,” Beatrice cut in. “Ruby is currently sixteen minutes away from the Idaho Falls Regional Airport, assuming she begins travel immediately.”

Ignoring Ruby’s sudden groan, Dyna asked, “How far am I?”

“Four minutes. You are on the fastest available route.”

“Ruby, where is Emerald?”

“I don’t know. Doing her own thing. She was smiling at me when she told me to come find you… I didn’t argue or ask what she planned.”

“Okay. Get to the airport. I’ll… try to stall him until you get there? Beatrice can direct you if—”

“I don’t need—”

“Let Beatrice help you. And answer her calls.”

“I blocked her months ago. This call appeared as if you had called. Annoying secretary…”

“Then unblock her!” Dyna snapped. “And get to the airport as fast as possible. Or that Aztec calendar is going to be flying out of the city and we won’t be able to get it back.”

“What? How? Emerald and I—”

“If you wouldn’t have blocked Beatrice, you would probably know.”

“Fine… I’m on my way.”

“Good… Good…” Dyna said, noting a passing sign that let all travelers know that the airport was just ahead. “Please hurry.”

“I’ll be there. Don’t wait up for me.”

Glancing at the mirror—not looking close enough to see the map, just quickly glancing to see what was going on—Dyna frowned. Grafton was getting out of the police car. She could see the airport’s front entrance in his perspective. But he left the officer in the car and, shortly after walking away from him, the mirror turned dark.

“I don’t know that I have time to wait,” Dyna said.

 

 

Dyna didn’t know where she was being taken. The door was locked. The driver was obviously being controlled somehow. She had thought it seemed strange when, despite matching the description of someone involved in a potential shooting, he hadn’t frisked her and arrested her. In retrospect, that should have been a huge red flag. It was so clear now, but a few minutes ago, she had been far, far more concerned with the fact that Harold had gotten away and her memories of how were fuzzy at best.

Now, she wondered if he had really gotten away or if these people had gotten to him.

These people being the man in the backseat and whoever he worked for.

Dyna couldn’t take her eyes off him. Not that she thought eye contact would help if he turned his mental attentions toward her. He was clearly a psychic of some sort. Likely a mind controller. She might be able to fight him off thanks to the training the Carroll Institute had put her through, which could be why he hadn’t tried… that she knew of.

She did have to wonder why the local police didn’t get that same training.

But it was the machine on the side of his head that really kept her attention. It moved. She hadn’t noticed at first because the interior of the car didn’t have much light, but every time they passed a street lamp, she saw it. Little wheels, one larger than the other but neither larger than an old silver dollar, connected by a small metal rod. Like the wheels of an old train.

Never had she seen anything like it before. No one at the Carroll Institute, topside or down in Psychodynamics, had an implant quite like that. Or an implant at all, as far as Dyna knew. While there were companies working on brain-computer interfaces, few had actually made their entry into public availability. Those that had were little more than highly invasive remote controls. And they were small computer chips, not actual hunks of industrial machinery slapped onto the side of someone’s head.

Was it for his psionic ability? Did it amplify it somehow? Or was it for some other medical reason?

It seemed far too much of a coincidence to assume that a psychic needed an implant like that for reasons unrelated to psychic abilities. It had to be some kind of amplifier or enhancer. Deciding on that explanation, she had to wonder why the Carroll Institute didn’t employ such technology. Was it too invasive? It certainly didn’t look good, but Dyna was willing to bet that at least a few psychics would volunteer themselves for such experiments.

Even her. If they had offered an implant instead of an artifact… Dyna might have taken them up on the offer. Despite all the trouble the artifact had come along with, Dyna was perfectly willing to admit that it was exciting. Not being chased around town or anything like that—though some might call that exciting in a very different way—but just doing something, even if she was still getting a handle on exactly what she was doing.

Her next question, one she couldn’t stop herself from asking, was whether or not such an implant would work for her.

Being able to see people who had it out for her was all well and good, but she couldn’t help but wonder what her natural psychic ability might be. Everyone around her had one. Even the other artificers. Emerald, useless though she claimed it was, could see alternate futures. Ruby was a clairvoyant centered on herself, constantly and perfectly aware of every part of her body. Sapphire, Dyna knew less about, but Ruby called him the ultimate mind reader.

If it did work, would she accept such an implant?

“We are here.”

Dyna jolted at the whispered words. A knot of tension twisted in her stomach. Distracted, she almost forgot just where she was and what she had been doing.

Namely, being kidnapped.

Taking her eyes off the man, she quickly glanced about. They were in another alley? No. Long strips of buildings extended along a narrow street on either side of her like an alley, but they were covered in narrow garage-like doors. A self-storage facility. The police car parked beneath a flickering orange light that hung above one of the bright red doors.

Neither the mind controlled police officer or the man with the implants had seen fit to confiscate her phone. They both knew she had it given that she had pulled it out before realizing that someone had been sitting in the back. She didn’t bother hiding her text to Emerald stating her new location.

Ustd, came the response. Btc loc, Red inc.

For all that Emerald presented a prim and proper and even motherly attitude in person, her texts were surprisingly incomprehensible. Dyna assumed Emerald understood and that Ruby was on her way, but hadn’t the slightest idea what btc loc meant.

Gthr info.

And, apparently, that Dyna should gather information.

Dyna still couldn’t open her own car door. The police officer didn’t move from his seat, keeping his hands lightly gripping the steering wheel, while the man in the backseat pushed open his door and stepped outside. Wearing a light brown tweed suit and walking with a faint limp, he didn’t look all that threatening. Were it not for the machinery on the side of his face, he might have looked like a chauffeur coming to open Dyna’s door for her.

When he did open the door, Dyna’s first thought was that she could run. There wasn’t anything physically stopping her. Nobody handcuffed her or broke her legs. Gather information? Who did Emerald think she was talking to? That order certainly wasn’t holding her here either.

“My employer does not wish to make this encounter more hostile than needed.”

Dyna blinked, confused for just a moment before understanding what he meant. She narrowed her eyes. “Asking me to kindly walk with you doesn’t work when you’ve got a gun to the back of my head.” There wasn’t a literal gun to her head—the officer still stared straight ahead with his hands on the wheel—but what else could he have meant? He clearly saw her thinking about dashing off into the night and decided to put a stop to it with a threat.

Something he didn’t even deny. Shrugging one shoulder, he turned away from the police car and started toward one of the shuttered doors. When he turned, he didn’t turn his head at all, Dyna noticed. When he looked back to see if she was coming, he turned at the waist, keeping his neck stiff and straight.

That combined with his limp made Dyna wonder if the implant actually was for mundane medical purposes.

But… it was a faint wonder at best.

As the red light flashed on the side of his head and the small wheels started chugging along, Dyna stood. Not because she was forced to—she felt no intrusion into her mind—but because she didn’t want to test whether or not the Carroll Institute’s training would be enough to stand up to amplified psychic powers.

Once Dyna started following him, he turned and continued walking without a word. A stiff and frail walk. Dyna could probably give him a light shove and he would topple over without any resistance. While she was unarmed, slamming her phone into the moving parts of the implant might disrupt him enough to let her get away.

Consulting with her mirror, Dyna decided against trying to fight him. His back was to her, so he didn’t appear on the lenses, but two distinct other perspectives did. One probably belonged to someone standing on the rooftops. The other looked like it was watching a bank of monitors attached to security cameras.

There were other people here, others with eyes on her. Probably others with hostile intent.

He stopped in front of storage locker 1537 and typed a code that Dyna missed into the mounted keypad.

The door slowly lifted up.

Dyna wasn’t quite sure what she had expected. Not a whole lot. The storage units couldn’t be much larger than their doors given how closely they were compacted together. Perhaps she had thought there would be little more than one person seated in a chair. Instead, she found a massive room. The neighboring walls had been knocked down. Potentially every wall in the entire block of storage units.

The walls hadn’t been knocked down for fun. Every square foot of the space was filled with equipment. Shelves and tables filled with bubbling vats, vials of colored liquid, and microscopes and computer monitors. Exposed metal rods with electricity arcing between them. More machinery, similar in aesthetic to the implant on her kidnapper’s head, chugged along in various parts of the room.

One of the larger centerpieces that quickly drew Dyna’s attention were three tall tubes, each larger than she was. A disembodied spinal column floated in the crystal clear blue water of one, suspended—or perhaps anchored—by several wires. Both of the other two contained brains. Because of course they contained brains. What else would mad psychics have floating in jars?

It really made a lot more sense that they had a full warehouse of equipment. This organization had to compete with the Carroll Institute, who had a whole entire underground laboratory that Dyna had yet to fully explore despite having gone on more than one aimless walk through Psychodynamics. It was a bit strange that it was so close to the Carroll Institute, but this couldn’t be their only base of operations. It probably wasn’t their main base of operations either.

They certainly had a different style. Everything in the Carroll Institute had a sleek, modern look to it, often adorned with wood or brass. Here? It looked like Dyna had stumbled into an industrial factory.

“Psionic spike registered, ma’am.”

“Quintessence generation confirmed.”

“Manifestation underway. It’s working? It’s actually working.”

There were people about as well. The warehouse wasn’t just an unattended collection of equipment. All wore the same long white coats with thick black buttons—though the buttons were off-center, running up one side of their clothes. Several, those working with liquids mostly, had thick black gloves on. Some wore thinner medical gloves. Others—especially those working with the computers or grungy machinery, wore nothing at all. Dyna couldn’t see any of their faces. Without exception, they all wore silvery masks. Not mirrored masks as they weren’t reflective, but they probably existed for the same reason that the Carroll Institute used those silver suits around psionic energy emitters and receivers.

“Of course it is working,” a woman said, speaking in a smooth voice. It sounded just familiar enough to niggle at the back of Dyna’s mind. “Begin actualization. Lock and isolate. This is exactly what we needed.”

The woman, standing just in front of one of the large brain tubes, was the only one in the room who wasn’t wearing a laboratory coat. It was more like a duster from an old western, except slightly sleeker with obvious modern design elements. It was tight until the waist then flared out. Some kind of half vest covered her shoulders, part of her arms, and her upper chest. Dyna wondered if it was armor, though it looked a bit too thin.

“Actualization started,” one of the more traditional scientists said after pulling a heavy-looking lever. One of the nearby machines started spinning and churning as sparks of lightning danced between two donut-shaped towers.

“Wonderful. Alert me the moment we have a location. See how much we can influence it toward one of our preferred areas.” As soon as she finished speaking, the woman turned to face the door.

Dyna let out a hiss.

Her face, like those of everyone else in the room, was hidden behind a silver mask. But her hair… her long black hair, tied into a ponytail, moved behind her. It didn’t move like hair should move. Rather, it moved like she was underwater. The hair drifted slowly behind her, lagging behind only to swing just a bit too far as it fanned out behind her.

“Id.”

Dyna figured that Id was the one who wanted to speak with her despite her captor only referring to her as his employer. Seeing her in person—or seeing that hair—made her stomach tense. She had thought that was just some mysterious thing she had decided on during their little mind meeting to make her seem more enigmatic. But it was real?

“One moment, Dyna Graves. Sorry about the mess. We are in the middle of an experiment that simply cannot wait. Mister Grafton, do you have the artifact?”

Eyes widening, Dyna whirled to the side to find the man with the machine on his head pulling out a large object from the inside of his tweed jacket. It was wrapped in foil, so Dyna couldn’t see what it was, but it was definitely the same foil disc that Harold had taken.

If the Aztec artifact was right here, where were Emerald and Ruby? Hadn’t they been chasing after that?

“Spike registered.”

“Isolating and decoupling.”

“Wonderful,” Id said. “Mister Grafton, please keep that safe for the time being. You may go ahead and head out. I’ll contact you shortly.” Turning fully to face Dyna as the man with the prosthetics backed out of the storage unit, the masked face of Id tilted slightly to one side. “Dyna Graves. How are you tonight?”

Shifting where she stood, Dyna glared. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say or do in a situation like this. She didn’t know what Id wanted from her and didn’t want to just start talking, offering free information to the enemy. In fact, the longer she just stood around watching, trying to figure out what they were doing, the better it was for her. She would have more to report on once she got out of here.

Assuming she got out of this safely.

“I intended for us to meet somewhere a little more casual,” Id said, clasping her hands behind her back as she started to pace. “Perhaps over tea or… No, wait. You prefer hot chocolate, don’t you?”

That had Dyna’s eyebrow twitching. Yes, she did prefer hot chocolate. The only reason Id knew that was because she stole the information from Dyna’s mind.

Her eyes darted around, leaving the brushed silver mask covering Id’s face for just a moment. She didn’t see any weapons. No obvious handguns, at least. With everyone in the room wearing a long laboratory coat except for Id and the recently departed man with the prosthetics, they could probably hide weapons easily enough. But they were all the scientist types. The only people who carried weapons at the Carroll Institute were the security team and the artificers. And Dyna wasn’t even sure about the latter group. It could just be Emerald and Ruby. The time she met Sapphire, he didn’t have a holster or gun.

Then again, these people might not need guns. Between the invasion of Dyna’s mind and the ease of mind control the prosthetic man displayed, they might be able to overpower anyone who had hostile intentions toward them.

“Something wrong?”

Dyna snapped her attentions back to Id. “You kidnapped me.”

“If what we suspect about you is true—and all evidence so far confirms this—I would posit that it is far more likely you wanted to meet with us.”

“Excuse me? I might have gotten into that car, but that was entirely under false pretenses. If I had known that your cyborg was lurking in the back seat, I would have run off without hesitation.”

Id shook her head. Without even holes for eyes, it was impossible to discern her facial expressions. Body language spoke more than enough of her apparent disappointment. “I tried to tell you, Dyna, that it isn’t what you think you want that matters.”

“Oh. This conversation again,” Dyna said, tone flat. “Yes, Miss Subconscious, my subconscious desperately wanted to get kidnapped, so I went out and put myself into a situation where just that would happen.” While speaking, she rolled her eyes. She put as much effort into it as possible, just in case that mask Id had limited her vision.

“Position locked. Location B-3.”

Id turned with a light hum. “Less than ideal. Better than it could have been. Continue.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Tell me, Dyna,” Id said. “Do you trust yourself?”

“Sure.”

Id clicked her tongue and shook her head. “You’re shrugging off my question because you don’t like me. That’s fine. I like to hear myself talk.

“I told you before that the human brain is a black box of mystery and imagination. That… was the case and still is for the majority of humanity. But some of us have cracked open that box. Do you know what we found?”

“I suspect you’re going to tell me.”

“Indeed. The literal answer, which is the one relevant to our current conversation, is that we found electrochemical charges dancing about. It is through understanding these electrochemical signals that we can begin to manipulate them. Psychics do so through a passive, intuitive manner. Transmitting and receiving through instinct alone. I doubt an illusionist could explain to you which neurons they are triggering to produce false images in your mind. That instinct causes pressure or traces, shall we say, that you should be trained to detect.”

“Spike registered.”

“Isolating. Irrelevant. Discarding.”

Id ignored the scientists behind her, keeping her focus on Dyna. “What if there wasn’t a mind intruding on your own, leaving those traces behind? Tell me Dyna, can you trust yourself? Do you trust what you are seeing in front of you?”

“Spike registered.”

“Actualizing.”

“Isolated. Decoupling.”

“Dyna, do you believe we are breathing the same air right now? Do you think we’re in the same room? Do you think we would actually set up a laboratory underneath our… competitor’s nose?”

Dyna’s eyes widened ever so slightly. Feeling the back of her mind for the signs the Carroll Institute taught her to recognize, only to come up blank. And yet, she did not miss Id’s meaning.

“You’re an illusion.”

“Spike registered.”

“Actualizing.”

“Isolated. Engaging.”

“A projection,” Id said. “Kidnapped you, did you say? Dyna, you are standing in a small room on your own. Nothing is holding you there. You can leave at any moment. We can’t stop you.” Turning to the technician at the engine-like machine, she snapped out a few quick orders. “Disable the device. Activate the Continuity Engine! And… Dyna,” she said, turning back. “Thank you. You’ve been far more help than you realize.”

“What—”

Dyna didn’t get a chance to say more than a single word. A bright flash of light blinded her, forcing her to shield her eyes with her arm. The light only lasted an instant, but it took several seconds of standing tense and blinking her eyes before she could partially see again.

The room was empty. Much as Id suggested, it was a small room. Slightly deeper than it was wide, and it was only as wide as the open garage door behind her. Apart from the solid brick walls that hadn’t been knocked out, there was a single device in the center of the room. It looked like a construction yard floodlight. The kind with two square lights propped up on a tripod.

They tricked her. They had never been present at all. Whatever the floodlights were, they must have been projecting that image. If what Id had said was true, they had projected it straight into Dyna’s mind and she hadn’t felt a thing. It had felt real, but…

Dyna moved, placing a hand on the nearest brick wall. Solid. Unmovable. Real.

It had all been fake. A display to… talk? This was the second time that Id had showed up, said thanks for something, then disappeared without actually doing anything other than having a small chat. Dyna… wasn’t sure what to think of that.

“Damn.”

Oddly enough, Dyna felt more confused than anything. Frustrated, yes. Definitely frustrated. She wasn’t sure what she would have wanted from a situation like that. Getting away safely was a good start, but it left her… unfulfilled. Like she was supposed to do something more. Gather information at the very least, as Emerald had said. And while she did have a few tidbits of information, it didn’t feel like enough. It wasn’t anything tangible.

That, perhaps, was the problem.

She could walk back to the Institute, tell them about Harold, about Id, about the disappearing laboratory and the way the illusion left no mental traces that she had been able to lock down. They would bombard her with another array of tests to be sure that she was still herself, but everything had slipped through her fingers. First Harold, then Id, then apparently even the artifact.

Dyna froze. The artifact. She didn’t know what it was supposed to do, what its themes were, as Cross and Harold had put it, but it was supposedly dangerous.

The man—Grafton, Id called him—hadn’t been part of the illusion. He had opened Dyna’s car door for her and punched in the code to open the garage.

That was why he had left early, why he hadn’t handed over the artifact to his boss. He was real. Or, at least, really here.

It had only been a minute or two. He couldn’t have gotten far.

Dyna rushed out of the storage unit. The police car was gone. Probably with him in it.

Dyna didn’t know how far off Emerald and Ruby were. She didn’t have time to wait for them.

Pulling out her phone, Dyna didn’t text them. She could do that in a minute. Time was of the essence. Instead, she dialed the Carroll Institute reception desk.

Ruby might not have much faith, but Dyna had seen proof with her own ears.

“This is Beatrice.”

“I need your help.”

 

 

Harold, currently seated in the back of his car, unnerved Dyna. He wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t struggling with his zip ties or trying to twist his arms out from behind his back. He just sat there, staring through his small round glasses. Every time Dyna glanced up into the rear-view mirror, she met his eyes.

It made her feel guilty. Dyna couldn’t quite explain why. He was the bad guy here. She had even texted Emerald about her plan to take this guy to the arcade and had gotten approval in the form of a code to get into the front door; Dyna hadn’t even considered that she would need a code to get in.

Removing him from the danger of the diner, the employees that were potentially planning on killing him and the sniper on the roof, was the right decision.

His stare still made her squirm. It wasn’t even a glare.

Dyna checked her mirror. It was back to its normal reflective state. No dark lenses or other perspectives. Driving through the streets of Idaho Falls was going well. No sign of anyone following her. Dyna was willing to admit that she didn’t know exactly what to look for, but she was taking random turns and checking the cars behind her every time.

Unfortunately, that meant looking in the rear-view mirror.

“Why did you do it?” Dyna asked before checking the mirror. She couldn’t stop herself. It wasn’t that she was afraid of silence. She just wanted him to stop staring. At least blink once in a while. “You were handing off an artifact, weren’t you?”

If she had misunderstood the situation, things were about to get a whole lot more awkward than they already were.

Harold didn’t respond. When Dyna glanced up to the mirror to check behind her, she found him still just staring.

“They tried to kill you, you know? I fired the gun that startled you, but that was to stop them from shooting you first. You know what my mirror does, right? I saw them taking aim at you through a scope.”

“Am I supposed to offer a deep debt of gratitude?” he said, voice low and smooth. “You aren’t even telling the truth. All the tests on your mirror come back with no detected anomalous properties.”

Dyna blinked. He responded. That was… good. Progress?

“I mean, I doubt you’re very happy right now, but they really did try to kill you. Ruby was there as well. She… didn’t see, exactly, but…” Dyna shook her head, deciding to just ignore the topic of her mirror. It worked. She knew it did. It just only worked under very specific situations. “Honestly, what did you expect? How do you even decide to betray a psychic institution? Someone was bound to find out sooner or later.”

“Later shouldn’t have mattered. I wasn’t going back. I was in far too deep for that. After verifying the authenticity of the artifact…” He trailed off. A glance in the mirror showed him finally breaking with that stare in order to glance downward with a scowl on his face.

“You planned on them shooting you?”

“Of course not,” he snapped. “They were… I was supposed to be the head of my own department.”

“Based on what I saw, they didn’t want you to have a head at all.”

Harold snapped his gaze back up. Dyna caught the glare in the corner of her eyes. “Funny.”

Dyna shrugged. “So that’s it? Envious of Doctor Cross, so you—”

“Cross?” Harold said, tone smooth and calm. Even soothing. “The man is a menace. I’ve been working with him for five years and he can’t even remember my name. I’m not even sure if he realizes that he’s had the same assistant his entire time here. Nobody likes him. Everyone who interacts with him does so under protest. Anyone who claims to hold him in deep regard is lying through their teeth. His picture would be next to the idiom dictionary for being unable to see past your own nose.”

Dyna sighed. She didn’t doubt that Cross wasn’t the best coworker around—he had called her Delta more than once to her face instead of Dyna—but… it seemed so petty. Perhaps movies had given her some false expectations, but she expected something a little more grandiose as a motive. Or at least huge piles of money. But the opportunity to be the head of his own department, seemingly just because he couldn’t stand working under Doctor Cross?

She shook her head. What a sad reason.

“Don’t believe me?” Harold said, apparently taking her sigh and shake of her head in a different light. “Just look at the deep trouble you’ve gotten yourself into. It’s not going to stop here. Arresting me isn’t going to help. You’ll wind up deeper and deeper in trouble. All because he couldn’t think beyond his own ideas.”

That had Dyna narrowing her eyes. “Wasn’t that you?”

“Me? I didn’t drag you down to the deeper depths of Psychodynamics with promises of power.”

“You sold me out to whoever you’re dealing with. Id and her ilk. Walter told me there was a communications error that led to my identity leaking to them.”

Harold shook his head. “You’ve got the wrong person then. I’m not trying to hurt people.” He slumped, letting out a long sigh. “I just wanted my ideas to not be contemptuously swiped off the top of a desk and into the trash.”

Dyna, stopped for a moment at a stop sign, took the time to really look over him in the rear-view mirror. He… didn’t look or sound like he was lying. She was hardly an expert on body language or detecting subterfuge, but lying here didn’t make much sense. Why admit that he was trying to jump ship away from the Carroll Institute but not that he turned her over.

“There’s other spies? Who?”

“How should I know? It’s not like we sit around the water cooler discussing what deep state organization is going to buy secrets.”

“You didn’t have a contact or handler or some other spy-word for person that tells you what to do?”

Harold scoffed. “I had a phone number and a coded phrase book. An old woman answered the phone whenever I called and pretended to be my grandmother.”

“Is that how spies operate? Aren’t you supposed to listen to coded radio stations that have been continuously operating since the fifties?”

“I’m not a spy. I’m just a… deeply disgruntled research associate,” he said with a sigh.

Dyna flicked her eyes up to the mirror again. Harold was still staring down at his lap. He looked… pitiful? She tried not to see him that way, but it wasn’t easy. It helped knowing—or at least believing—that he wasn’t the one to have sold her out. Someone else had done that.

She still had the problem of a traitor.

None of the other researchers really stood out to her. Doctor Cross was the exception, but she doubted that he was going to sell her out. She had been his project and, while Walter had said that he would be taking over, he hadn’t actually done much. Dyna still met with Doctor Cross nearly every day to do what he wanted, whether that be analysis of her compact mirror or to perform a scan of her brain. Not to mention, she had apparently been sold out the very first day, well before Walter might have instigated certain protocols with regard to her safety.

Of course, the Carroll Institute was a large place. It could have been some custodial staff that she had passed in the hall without even thinking twice about. Or maybe another of the initiates had put two and two together to somehow connect Dyna to the psionic cascade she had caused during the first test with Walter. There were a thousand possibilities. Maybe more.

Firming her grip on the steering wheel, Dyna decided that it didn’t matter. At least not at this point in time. It was a topic to bring up with Walter and Cross, but for now, she had this traitor to watch out for.

“I’m surprised you’re admitting everything,” Dyna said as they continued through the streets. She hadn’t paid perfect attention to the arcade’s location during her previous visit. It had been a bit of a hectic day, after all. But she thought she knew roughly where it was. “Claiming mind control might have worked for you given that the two men down in containment were almost certainly controlled.”

Harold shook his head. “The Carroll Institute has ways of detecting mental influence. Surface level or deeper and deeper inside. They’ll run the tests anyway, but I’m almost positive that I’m acting of my own free will.”

“They do?” Dyna glanced up, narrowing her eyes. “Then why didn’t the tests find anything wrong with me?”

Harold looked up. “Oh? Something wrong with your head, Dyna?”

“I—” Dyna’s jaw clamped shut as she pulled up to a stop light. Should she say anything? He might be acting friendly and explaining a lot, but…

Something about the situation set off a few alarm bells in Dyna’s mind. Why was he calmly explaining his reasoning. Especially after that long silence. Then he just started talking?

“Strange that it didn’t come up in the tests. Perhaps we just needed to look deeper… and deeper… and relax in that place far, far below… now.”

Dyna blinked.

Dyna blinked again.

Hypnotism? He was trying to hypnotize her? A few weeks ago, Dyna would have laughed at the idea that he could hypnotize anyone. Hypnosis had been a gimmick. A county fair act. A show for entertainment. But now? After having walked through the small home within her mind, she knew it was real. Perhaps those fairground shows were still fake, but Harold’s brand of hypnosis worked. He had been the one to put her under hypnosis before. That was how she found out about her faulty memories that started this whole mess.

And now, even as the light turned green, Dyna didn’t move her foot from the brakes. She wanted to. They needed to continue on to the arcade.

The muscles in her shoulders unwound. All the tension felt so far away. Dyna couldn’t remember a time where she had been more relaxed. The last day alone had been a nightmare. From the scare with Emerald showing up in her dormitory room to Ruby convincing her to run about in the Psychodynamics office complex, from discovering a possible spy to having to draw her gun and fire it, even if she hadn’t aimed at a person. Every bit of that had been building up without ever being released.

Until now.

“Moving your foot to the accelerator would just bring all that back. You don’t want that. Close your eyes and picture an ocean. Deep and blue, filled with gently swimming fish, drifting about in the deeper parts of the water and… reach into your jacket and take out your gun.”

Dyna blinked and stared down at the gun in her hands. Harold moved and rustled about in the back seat of the car, trying to get his hands out from behind his back by looping them underneath his legs. The confined space of the car didn’t make it easy for him.

“You might not comprehend my voice on a conscious level at this point. Deeper in your mind, you might understand. I don’t want to hurt people. But I can’t let myself be taken back to the institute. They are not kind people. I doubt I would come out with my mind intact. I’d rather give myself a lobotomy at that point.”

Harold removed the weight of the gun from her hands. A heavy weight off her shoulders.

“Step out of the car and… stand over on the sidewalk. Find a place you can relax and fall even deeper and deeper into that ocean… now.”

Dyna blinked and blinked again.

Cold November air gnawed at her cheeks and bit her nose. A lightning bolt of adrenaline pierced her heart and fried her brain as a bright white light flashed between her eyes. Dyna jumped back only to hit something hard and rough. One hand felt the bumpy brick of a building while she tried to block out the light with her other hand.

“Easy, easy,” a heavy voice said as the bright light lowered away from her face. A built silhouette, illuminated by flashing red and blue lights coming from a car behind him, stood in front of Dyna. “Can you tell me who you are?”

“What?” Dyna turned her head left and right, trying to spot where she was. The building she was up against was some kind of fuel station that had clearly seen better days. A few poorly implemented charging stations for electric vehicles out front looked more like a shock hazard than anything that would charge a car.

“This is Olivaw, the 8025 might be drugged. I spoke with the man who called it in. Says our woman stumbled out of a car that quickly drove off and then just stood there. She’s barely responsive.”

Dyna wasn’t sure what was going on. She had just been driving with… someone. Someone important. It felt like something she should remember easily simply because of how important it had been, but she couldn’t.

Which was a problem.

While Dyna couldn’t quite remember what she had been doing, she could remember that someone had messed with her memories. And now it had happened again. Far more obviously this time. She hadn’t noticed the other times her memory had been changed, but this one…

It probably wasn’t the same person. This was too sloppy.

With the light no longer shining directly into her eyes, Dyna’s hands roamed over her pockets. Her phone was there. So was the small circular feel of her mirror in her front pocket. But under her arm, she felt something mildly familiar. It didn’t let her put her arm flat against her side.

A gun. Or the holster for it. Guns were heavy. A lot heavier than they looked in movies. And right now, she could tell by weight alone that the holster had nothing in it.

Why did she have a gun on her?

Ruby. They had been out here following…

Harold. The traitor to the Carroll Institute.

Dyna pieced her memories back together quickly from there. The stake out at the Thai restaurant, seeing someone about to shoot him so Dyna shot first, finding him in the bathroom with Emerald’s help, then driving him away, trying to take him to a safe house. Something had happened on the way to the safe house. That bit, she was having trouble thinking about with any clarity. They had talked, she remembered that much. He said something about being disgruntled with Doctor Cross…

The specifics eluded her. The more she tried to remember them, the more a mild pain thumped just behind her right eyebrow.

“Where am I?”

“The corner of Clark and Cliff,” the officer said after a moment.

Street names, presumably. They meant nothing to Dyna. She didn’t know her way around Idaho Falls all that well and certainly didn’t know the names of most streets.

“Ma’am, dispatch is instructing me to escort you to the hospital. We can take a statement and—”

“No. I’m fine. I just… need to make a phone call.” She started for her phone, only for the officer to tense and take a step forward. Which, in turn, made Dyna freeze.

“I’m going to insist you keep your hands where I can see them. There have been multiple disturbances tonight involving a woman matching your description.”

Dyna winced. That… was completely understandable. If their positions were reversed, Dyna certainly wouldn’t want a potential crazed gunman to reach into any pockets. “Am I under arrest?”

“Not yet. Please come with me and we’ll get everything straightened out.”

Although she wanted to argue, Dyna held her tongue. Nothing she could say would make the situation any better. If she wound up searched, he would find the holster and would certainly arrest her at that point. She was a little surprised that he hadn’t decided to search her already, but then again, she didn’t know police protocols.

She needed to contact Emerald and Ruby. Maybe it wasn’t too late to catch Harold and figure out what he had done to her mind. But…

If she ignored the officer and went for her pockets, she could easily see herself winding up going to the hospital for entirely different reasons. Namely, because she would have a hole in her chest. Possibly multiple. Police shootings had been on the downturn since the accountability reform, but they were still perfectly able to use lethal force in certain situations.

Situations like the one she was in right now.

Nodding her head, hoping she would find an opportunity to at least send off a quick text, Dyna decided to go with him. If she did wind up arrested, she could only hope that the Carroll Institute might help out.

Though it was a very real possibility that they wouldn’t. Unlike last time, her life hadn’t been in danger. She had followed after some random facility member and then shot a gun in his general direction. Ruby had been there and Emerald had shown up. The latter seemed perfectly fine with capturing Harold despite Dyna having not had even a second to explain the situation. They were some kind of spies. Having them vouch for her would help… probably.

Following the officer to his marked police cruiser, Dyna started to feel a weight in her chest. A condemned woman walking toward the gallows. The institute would help her out. The more she thought about it, the more that had to be true. If only because she was an artificer that they didn’t want falling into the wrong hands.

They probably wouldn’t be happy.

He opened the door for her. The passenger-side door, not the backseat door. That felt like a good sign. She didn’t have handcuffs on and hadn’t been read her rights. So she was probably not even under arrest. Which might mean that the institute wouldn’t need to help her out.

One could hope.

The car’s interior had a large computer set up between the seats, slightly angled toward the driver seat. Most of the screen was just a map of the city, though there was scrolling text and faint chatter that was probably the police station dispatch set to low volume. There were a lot of buttons around as well—aside from those attached to the computer—that presumably controlled the lights, siren, and whatever else needed controlling in a police car.

Dyna paid them little mind. As soon as her door shut and the officer started walking around the car to the driver side, she pulled her mirror and her phone out of her pockets. She wasn’t quite sure what she would do if she saw something while driving or at the hospital, but having some advance warning about anyone watching her would let her plan.

Unfortunately, Dyna had to report her failure. She didn’t know where Harold was. She didn’t even know where she was. All she could tell Emerald was that she was alright and that Harold had gotten away. Perhaps she would be able to track him down. Maybe Beatrice could help.

For the time being, Dyna slumped back into the car seat and flipped open her mirror.

Dyna let out a hiss, twisting in her seat to meet the pale gray eyes of a man seated in the shadows of the rear seat. A man with machinery attached to the side of his head. Dark metal fused with the skin around his right eye and cheek before wrapping back around his skull. Two thick black cables emerged from the circuit board-like attachment, both disappearing somewhere beneath the high collar of his brown suit. One faint red light blinked in the dark where his ear should have been.

“Good evening, Dyna Graves,” he said, voice barely louder than a whisper. “Do not be alarmed. I work for an acquaintance of yours.”

Dyna narrowed her eyes. So far, not a single person’s perspective had appeared on her mirror who hadn’t intended someone harm. Either Dyna herself, Emerald, or Harold.

The police officer entered the car, moving to sit down like nothing was wrong at all.

“You’ve got to—” Dyna started, only to cut herself off.

The officer didn’t even glance toward her. His eyes stayed straight ahead as he buckled his seat belt. As soon as that was done, he placed both hands on the wheel.

“Drive,” the machine-faced man said.

The officer moved a hand, stiff and awkwardly, to shift the car out of park.

Dyna turned away, twisting in her seat to the door. She pulled the handle and shoved her shoulder into it. It didn’t budge. She could feel the lack of any mechanism in the door when pulling the handle. Soon enough, the chance to escape vanished unless she wanted to fling herself from a moving vehicle.

“Let me go.”

“In time,” the man in the back seat whispered. “First, we need to have a small chat.”

 

 

Three things happened in rapid succession following Dyna firing her pistol.

The first was the most obvious effect. Having aimed outside the Thai restaurant, the glass window shattered. Dyna had aimed up at the diner’s signboard. She figured that was the safest place to put a bullet. Too high and it would fly off into the night, potentially hitting someone unintentional far off in the distance. Too low and she could hit a customer over at the restaurant. Even lower than that, and the bullet could ricochet off the pavement and still hit someone. Thanks to Ruby, Dyna felt fairly confident in her aiming. As such, she wasn’t surprised when the lights in the signboard vomited a shower of sparks before going dark.

The second thing to happen occurred within the Thai restaurant. People started panicking. That, Dyna also expected. If she didn’t know with absolute certainty what she was doing at this very moment, she would probably also panic at the ear-splitting crack of a gunshot going off a few tables away, the window shattering, and the idea that some crazed gunman had gotten their hands on a gun despite the reforms a few years back.

The third thing involved Dyna’s target. Not what she aimed at, but the reason she fired in the first place.

Harold, across the street, jerked up and whipped his head around for about one second. After that second, it must have registered with him just what that noise had been. And, potentially, who it had been directed at. Dyna wasn’t sure if he actually saw her across the way or if his mind just started imagining the possibilities. Either way, the result was him flailing his arms like he had a particularly vicious mosquito after him as he dove for cover.

The gunman whose perspective came through the mirror tried to follow him with their scope. They didn’t succeed. When he dove to the ground, he went entirely out of their view, hiding behind a series of seats. The perspective turned to the side, but before Dyna could see what they were planning on doing, the mirror went dark.

Mission accomplished?

No… Objective accomplished?

Dyna wasn’t even sure about that.

Her actions saved Harold’s life, probably. At least for the moment. She honestly wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

And she still didn’t have time to think about it.

Dyna snatched Ruby’s phone and the mirror from the table. The former went into her pocket, though poked out awkwardly with the telescope attachment still stuck to it. The other, Dyna kept a tight grip on. It did work. She still didn’t know exactly when or how, but it worked.

More importantly, there was someone on the roof—probably the roof of the Thai restaurant—that might be coming after her now. The mirror could show their perspective. That would help. But Dyna didn’t know what to do or where the person was without them having eyes on… someone she was focused on. Maybe that was the trigger to activating the mirror?

She needed to meet up with Ruby. Dyna couldn’t see her anymore. There were no shadows moving about in the tinted windows of Harold’s car. Had she left it? Or was she hunkering down?

Dyna backed away from the shattered window, only for the mirror to light up again.

She had a split second to react to the perspective rushing toward her.

Dyna stepped aside. One step toward a table that had been knocked over as people tried to get away from her kept her just out of reach from someone trying to tackle her.

A full-on football tackle.

Dyna aimed her gun, only to realize that it was their waiter.

Without her in the way, Earl flew through the air and landed on his face. He hit hard and let out a groan.

“Sorry,” Dyna started, “I was just…” Just what? Shooting a gun in a public space? Trying to save the life of a traitorous slimebag? It wasn’t like she had time to explain anyway. The gunman—the real one, not her—could be coming down from the roof any moment now.

“Sorry,” Dyna said again before rushing to the door of the Thai restaurant. Sticking around was just asking for someone else to try to tackle her.

Dyna didn’t rush out into the street. Not knowing where the gunman was, they could be just about anywhere. They might still be on the roof, just unable to see anything that would activate Dyna’s now dormant artifact, or in the alley, or even a few streets over now trying to flee the location before they got caught.

Keeping close to the building to stay out of sight of anyone on the roof, Dyna hurried along until she was directly across from the small parking lot where she last saw Ruby.

Headlights flooded the street. Dyna tensed, grip tightening around both the mirror and her gun, until she realized that the headlights were coming from across the street. Harold’s car peeled out of the parking lot, crossed the street, and skidded to a stop just in front of Dyna.

“Get in!” Ruby shouted, barely audible with the windows closed.

Dyna didn’t hesitate. She pulled open the rear door and climbed inside as quickly as she could manage. Ruby slammed on the accelerator before Dyna even had the door closed.

“What happened? Are you alright?”

“We need to go back!”

“What? Why? Somebody shot at you.”

“I’m fine,” Dyna said. “I was the one who shot. I saw Harold hand over what looked like an artifact to someone. After, my mirror turned on and I saw someone taking aim at him through a scope from the roof. I figured me shooting would startle either him or the sniper and it worked, but I think they’re going to kill him!”

“So what? You said it yourself, he’s a traitor.”

“Yes,” Dyna said, “but… shouldn’t we figure out what he knows or what information he sold off? Make him stand trial? That was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw someone taking aim at him.” Ruby made a long, low grumbling noise as Dyna spoke. “And the artifact… If it is the Aztec calendar, Doctor Cross said it was extremely danger—”

Ruby let out a long groan. “Em and I spent six months tracking that thing down. Fine.”

The car continued down the road for just a few seconds before Ruby slammed on the brakes. It hadn’t even come to a full stop before she spun the wheel and hit the gas again. Dyna bounced around in the rear seat, having to grab hold of the passenger seat in front of her to try to stop herself. Throughout it all, she kept her grip on her mirror and gun.

In moments, they were rushing back down the street toward the diner and restaurant. People were slow to emerge from the restaurant even with Dyna’s departure, but there were a few people walking about outside, waving their arms and gesturing to the window as they probably told tall tales about how insane that crazy woman with the gun had been.

“I’ll handle the artifact. Send a text to Emerald—just tell her the street name and she’ll find us—and then find that traitor.”

“You’re leaving me?”

“I apparently have an artifact to track down. Again. And Emerald will be here literally instantly. Until she does appear, get inside and keep him away from windows until I or Emerald get to you. If he complains or doesn’t follow your orders, shoot him in the foot. It’s nearly impossible to kill someone by shooting them in the foot, so don’t worry. If he tries to attack you, shoot him center-mass. Several times.”

Dyna took a breath.

Her heart felt like it was trying to hammer its way out of her ribcage. It had only been a minute since she pulled out her gun and fired. Two at the most. Things were happening so fast.

And now she had to go find someone who probably wasn’t going to be at all happy to see her? Dyna was the one who said they needed to go back. She knew that. But…

Dyna took another breath. “Your phone,” she said, pulling it out of her pocket just in time for Ruby to skid the car to a stop in front of the diner’s main doors.

Ruby raised her eyebrows, looking a little less tense. “Glad I don’t have to explain why I lost that to Emerald,” she said, grabbing it, detaching the telescope, and slipping both parts into separate pockets of her jacket. A small pistol came out in the phone’s place. “Come on,” she said.

“I haven’t texted—”

The door slammed shut as Ruby left, rounded the car to the passenger side, and waved a hand for Dyna to join her.

Dyna hesitated, looking around both with the mirror and with her own eyes. There had just been a sniper around, and yet Ruby stood out in the open. She had mentioned that, right? It didn’t slip Ruby’s mind, right?

Finding no immediate cause for alarm, Dyna switched the mirror to the same hand she held the gun with. It was a bit awkward to hold up against the grip, but let her see its currently dark lenses and open the door at the same time. The moment the door was open, she pulled out her phone. Dyna wouldn’t claim that one handed texting was a specialty of hers, but she had a short message sent off to Emerald before they reached the door to the diner.

“He gave the artifact to someone dressed like an employee, right?”

“In a takeout box.”

“What did the guy look like?”

“I… took pictures?”

Ruby nodded. “Find your traitor.” With that said, she sprinted off toward the kitchen area of the diner.

Dyna took a good look around. The diner was less crowded than the Thai restaurant had been, and that hadn’t been all that crowded at all. A uniformed staff member stood behind a glass counter filled with pies, cookies, and other deserts, looking around like he wasn’t sure what to do. A small family sat at a corner table, watching out the window at the activity across the street. A few other customers sat around, either staring out the window or looking toward the side of the diner where Harold had been. Nobody was in any amount of panic.

Was Harold the only one to realize that the sound had been a gunshot? Being across the street and behind fairly thick glass, it had probably been muffled, but guns were loud. It couldn’t have been muffled that much.

Dyna turned to where Harold had been, keeping her gun down at her side and hopefully out of sight while still keeping it ready. He wasn’t up in the seats, of course. Dyna didn’t see him at all. With one of the employees having rushed after Ruby to, presumably, keep her from getting into trouble in the back, Dyna was free to walk across the diner floor. She kept well away from the windows. Although she trusted the mirror a little more than she had a few hours ago, she still didn’t want to take any chances.

If she couldn’t see the rooftop, whoever was on the rooftop wouldn’t be able to see or shoot her.

Hopefully.

Harold wasn’t at his table in the diner. He wasn’t hunkered down beneath it. Nor was he hiding around any of the nearby booths.

Where would he have gone?

If Dyna thought someone was shooting at her, she would have gotten as far from the windows as humanly possible. Harold wouldn’t have known that someone was on the roof. If he saw the shattered window across the road or if he saw Dyna holding a gun, he would believe the shooter was on level floor with him. That meant getting away sooner rather than sitting around and waiting for someone to show up.

Ruby had hijacked his car. He wouldn’t have known that without rushing out into the open, however.

Speaking from personal experience, Dyna would have rushed off into the back alley, heading as far from the noise as possible. Perhaps while trying to call up Beatrice again. Or Emerald. Wasn’t the woman supposed to be able to teleport? She should be here by now.

Dyna almost pulled out her phone to try one of the two of them—either for Beatrice to try tracking Harold down or just to find out where Emerald was—but her mirror lighting up made her jump to the side preemptively.

Except it wasn’t someone attacking her this time. Nor was it someone attacking anyone else.

Someone peeked, carefully and slowly, through a narrow crack in a door. They spotted Dyna and promptly slammed the door shut once more.

Dyna heard the door with her own ears. And before the mirror blanked once again, she caught sight of a sink and a toilet.

Her head whipped over to the restroom.

That would have been the proper angle for the perspective. Someone had looked at her, presumably with less than pleasant intent, from there. Given the skittish mannerisms, she doubted it was an assassin.

Hurrying to the bathroom, Dyna stopped in front of the door, keeping just to the side. Was Harold armed? She hadn’t seen any evidence of that, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. With him obviously under stress, barging in could wind up with her being shot before he even realized who it was. Or maybe he would instantly realize who it was and shoot anyway thinking that she was here to kill him.

“Here, try this.”

Dyna leaped at the pleasant tone behind her. She managed to twist in the air, raising her pistol on the way back down. Her finger tightened around the trigger before she could stop herself from shooting at the green-haired woman.

But by the time the bullet tore through the air, Emerald wasn’t there any more. The bullet ripped through an empty space before harmlessly hitting the painted brick wall not far from an empty booth.

“Decent reflexes. You would do better if you hadn’t jumped, though.”

Dyna whipped back around to find a smiling woman tossing a small, cylindrical grenade up and down in the air. “Emerald,” Dyna hissed. “What the fu—”

“Dyna,” Emerald started in the most admonishing voice Dyna had ever heard. “Here, toss this in there. I’ll handle the people.”

“Wha—”

Emerald tossed the grenade up in the air one more time, this time turning away without catching it. Dyna, hands full with a gun and mirror, fumbled with the heavy cylinder before managing to pin it to her chest with her mirror arm.

Meanwhile, Emerald called out to the diner. “Apologies, everyone. Don’t worry. Everything is under control.” She waved around a… badge? What kind of badge did she have that would explain this situation?

Probably not a real badge, given how quickly she hid it again.

“While everything is under control, I recommend everyone please depart in a calm and orderly fashion.”

Was it really that easy? Flash a fake badge around and everyone just up and files out? Given the ashen faces on the small family, they probably would have been leaving one way or another after a gun just went off—the second gunshot of the evening. Probably in a far greater panic than they were now too.

Really, Emerald didn’t even look all that trustworthy. She didn’t have a uniform or even the mildest of authoritative tones to her voice. Emerald was just a woman in a light green cardigan and simple dress. It looked more like she was on her way to church than anyone who should be waving around a badge.

Despite Dyna thinking that she wouldn’t trust Emerald in such a situation, it worked. Maybe her psychic ability was actually a bit of mind control.

“Well? Why haven’t you tossed that in yet?”

Dyna blinked and looked down at the grenade still pinned against her chest. “I don’t know how to use this.”

“Easy. Just pull the pin and toss.” To demonstrate, she grabbed the grenade back, pulled the pin, slammed her shoulder into the door, threw it inside, then grabbed hold of the handle and pulled the door shut. All in one smooth motion before Dyna could even try to stop her.

“I didn’t want to kill him!”

“Relax,” Emerald said despite the frantic hammering on the door. A thundering boom shook the walls. She gently shoved the door open, revealing a room filled with misty white smoke and Harold.

Harold wasn’t on his feet, but groaning on the floor with his hands clamped over his ears.

“Stun grenade. Mostly non-lethal. His ears will be ringing for a good ten minutes at least, he probably won’t walk straight for a bit, and he’ll be blind for the next ten seconds with some afterimages burned into his eyes for a few minutes longer.”

“I…”

“Zip ties?” she said, producing a few long and thick strips of plastic. Instead of tying him up herself, she held them out for Dyna. “Where’s Ruby?”

“He handed an artifact over to someone,” Dyna said, nodding down to Harold. “The Aztec calendar, I think it was? She’s tracking it down.”

Emerald’s eyes widened for just a moment before she nodded her head. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she wound the stem of her pocket watch.

“Wait!”

Emerald didn’t. The woman vanished, leaving Dyna with a groaning Harold and a small collection of zip ties. With a long groan, Dyna flicked the safety on her gun and slid it back into the holster under her jacket.

“Hands behind your back,” she said, kneeling with one large tie at the ready.

He didn’t comply. Dyna wasn’t even sure if he heard her. The smoke made her cough a bit as she stepped into the room, but he didn’t put up more than a token struggle as she dragged his arms behind his back. Rather than try to keep him still while she tried to figure out how best to tie his hand with one zip tie, she put one around each wrist like a tight bracelet then hooked both bracelets together with a third.

That should keep him. At least until Emerald or Ruby returned.

Now…

Now what? Dyna couldn’t relax yet. There was still that sniper out there. Probably more people than just that who wanted Harold dead before he could spill the beans on his conspirators. At least one person in the restaurant was a traitor too. Probably from the same group that wanted Harold dead. They might have fled with the artifact—probably had given that neither Emerald or Ruby had come back—but that didn’t mean that they were the only ones out there.

Just as Dyna wondered who might show up to finish the job, a loud beeping noise started up.

She tensed, only for a heavy deluge from the overhead sprinklers to crash down on top of her.

“Great. Lovely.” It took mere seconds for her to wind up completely soaked. The water wasn’t warm either. “Can you stand?” she shouted down at Harold. “We need to get you out of here.”

His car was the best option. It was the fastest way of removing themselves from this spot. The sniper might still be outside, but with the mirror, Dyna would have a heads up.

She could make it. They could just drive off aimlessly. Maybe toward the arcade? The long open stretch of road between the city and the institute didn’t sound like a good direction to go. Yes, the arcade would be best. She would be able to communicate where she was to Emerald and Ruby when they contacted her. The mirror would warn her of any approaching danger. And… that was it?

Nothing could go wrong.

Grabbing Harold by the back of his collar, Dyna hauled him to his feet.

She had a plan. Now she just needed to follow it.

 

 

 

Ruby stepped outside the station wagon, moved around back, and opened up the same weapon-filled case that Dyna had seen Emerald get into.

“I know you… forgot your gun,” Ruby said, reaching inside to pull out a small pistol. “We’ll have to train more. You’re still not comfortable carrying it around.”

“I don’t even have a permit or license or whatever,” Dyna said. It wasn’t a strong protest. There just wasn’t any point in arguing. With Ruby here and the case of weapons at her side, Dyna doubted she would be able to get away without a gun in hand.

“Fun fact: Idaho still doesn’t require any permits for possessing a rifle, shotgun, or handgun, if you can believe it,” she said, handing over the gun. With it, she handed over a black leather holster with several straps on it. “Concealed carry is a different story, but if you don’t get caught, it doesn’t matter. You wear this kind of like a backpack.”

“Ruby…”

“If this guy is meeting with someone suspicious, if his foil-wrapped suspicious object really is an artifact, you might thank me later.”

“I would much prefer if we just took a few pictures and delivered it back to the institute for them to handle,” Dyna said, taking off her coat before Ruby could do it for her. “And this is a public place. We can’t just start shooting.”

“I agree.”

Shivering in the cold air, Dyna blinked. “Really? I figured you would dash in guns blazing the moment anything suspicious happened.”

“Emerald would probably kill me for that. Besides, the Carroll Institute might want to feed this guy deliberately bad information or otherwise interrogate him themselves. This is an unsanctioned mission, so we have to tread lightly. Though recovering the artifact is a priority, if we see an opportunity.”

“Oh?” That… did make Dyna feel a little better.

This whole operation was her idea. She was the one to have brought it up. She was the one to worry over what a spy in the Carroll Institute might have meant. Ruby was just going along with her. Or, more accurately, taking those comments and worries and barreling forward, dragging Dyna along with her.

But the drive into Idaho Falls had given her time to think. Not a lot of time to think given how fast Ruby had been driving—one of only a dozen reasons why the drive had been terrifying—but enough time for Dyna’s doubts to creep back into the back of her mind. What was she doing here? She wasn’t trained to handle these kinds of situations. Not like Ruby or Emerald. She didn’t have a fancy pocket watch or Ruby’s choker-mounted ruby. All she had was a dumb mirror.

Shrugging her coat back on, and unable to lower her arms properly because of an uncomfortably heavy weight tucked under her arm, Dyna glanced down at the reflective glass of her compact mirror. She wasn’t sure it even worked. At least not on people who weren’t already locked up in the Psychodynamics Containment Cells. At the moment, all it showed off was her own face, wrinkled with the doubt in the back of her mind.

It was a bit ridiculous. Her doubts and worries were why she was here in the first place. Now her doubts and worries told her that she should really be about as far from Idaho Falls as physically possible.

“Come on,” Ruby said, moving up to the corner of the building they had pulled up to, denying Dyna any chance of fleeing. “Just try to ignore it. Pretend it doesn’t exist unless you need it.”

That absolutely wasn’t possible. Even if she could fully lower her arm to her side, Dyna couldn’t imagine forgetting about the gun. She had checked the safety three times before holstering it and she still wasn’t sure if it was on or not.

“Good. He’s still there.”

Dyna slowly and carefully peered around the side of the building. A restaurant serving Thai food.

Actually finding Harold hadn’t proved that difficult. The highway leading from the Carroll Institute to Idaho Falls also connected it to a tiny hovel of a city called Arco. It had mostly been a guess that Harold would head into Idaho Falls. Arco was technically closer, but the entire ‘city’ sat on a single square mile of land and had a population fewer in number than the staff and students of the Carroll Institute. There was nothing there.

So, when Ruby, driving with all lights off—another reason the trip into town had been terrifying—had seen another car’s tail lights ahead of them, she simply assumed that the vehicle belonged to Harold.

Keeping their distance until they got into town, she had been right. The electric car they followed eventually pulled up to a small family diner and Harold got out. Ruby had driven past a few extra times, just to be sure that he wasn’t leaving immediately.

The car was still across the street from the Thai place at the family diner. Dyna could see the back of his head, his distinctive bald spot giving him away, seated at a corner booth.

Ruby grabbed her wrist and dragged her around to the entrance of the Thai restaurant. She shoved Dyna inside. Ruby kept a hold of Dyna’s hand like she was worried that Dyna would run away. As much as Dyna wanted do, she wasn’t going to. In fact, she felt a bit hurt that Ruby apparently felt a need to anchor her in place.

Dyna did try to turn around to continue watching Harold in the place across the street, but someone clearing their throat had her looking back into the Thai restaurant.

A distinctly not Thai, or any variety of Asian, man in a black button-up shirt with a high collar, trimmed in red, stood with a few menus in hand. A name tag identified him as Earl. “Table for… two?” he asked.

“Uh…”

“Oh can we please get a window seat, mommy? Please?”

Dyna’s head whipped down to Ruby, only to find a some kind of changeling in her place. Based on appearance alone, it looked like Ruby, but the smile she wore, the earnest look in her eyes, and even the way she held herself was so utterly foreign that she could only be an alien shapeshifter.

Normally, Ruby only looked like a ten-year-old for a few minutes. As soon as she started talking, moving, or really just being, it became apparent that Ruby was not a ten-year-old. At least not any average one. She spoke more like an adult than a child, had a propensity for wrath, and the look in her eyes held far more difficulty and hardness than most adults.

The waiter just chuckled, apparently not seeing anything at all wrong with the skin-walker. “We have some window booths available,” he said, bending slightly to put himself more at Ruby’s level. “Just you and your mommy today?”

Dyna didn’t say a word. An action that apparently warranted a rough squeeze of her hand from Ruby.

“Daddy couldn’t come. He’s working on my birthday.” Ruby’s smile turned to the most heart-wrenching pout.

Dyna shuddered.

“Aww,” Earl cooed, “We’ll make sure you get a window seat to make up for it then, okay?”

“Yay!”

“Right this way,” the waiter said, turning toward the windows.

Ruby started following right away, projecting obvious excitement. Dyna followed a moment after, needing a rough yank from Ruby to get her feet working again.

She soon found herself seated in a window booth. One with a perfect view of the diner across the street. It was far too large of a table for just two people, but the restaurant only had a few other tables occupied, so it probably wasn’t a big issue to accommodate a poor little girl on her birthday.

“I’ll leave you with the menus for a moment to decide. Would you like anything to drink?”

“Water,” Ruby said.

When Dyna didn’t immediately respond, she kicked her foot against Dyna’s shin. Not hard. Not hard enough to hurt, anyway. Just a light tap.

“Water here too,” Dyna said with a nervous smile. “Thank you.”

“Be right out.”

As soon as he turned around, Ruby started humming, bouncing back and forth in her seat like a little girl.

Were it not for the fact that Harold was still across the street in the diner, Dyna might have thought that she had been conned into taking Ruby out to eat. That bald spot was him, right? With two panes of glass between them and a two-lane street, it was much more difficult to see him.

“What was that?” she asked in a hiss, leaning forward over the table.

“Couldn’t just let us get shoved into the back corner of the room,” Ruby said.

“Why are we here at all? Shouldn’t we be on the roof with binoculars or something.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “It’s cold outside,” she said, pulling out her phone. From her other pocket, she pulled out some kind of miniature telescope that she promptly clipped over the phone’s camera. Setting it on the table with the telescope up against the glass, she tapped a few buttons.

A slightly blurry view of the entire front window of the diner appeared. Ruby twisted the telescope a bit to clear it up.

“What if somebody sees?”

“Just tell them I like counting cars or something.”

“But—”

“It’ll be fine, you just need to improvise. I can’t do all the talking.”

“Ruby, you can’t just—”

A icy glass of water appeared in front of her. A second one joined the first, in front of Ruby.

“Oh? What have you got there?”

Dyna winced at the waiter’s voice. She looked up to find him looking down with obvious curiosity. “She likes counting cars?”

Earl did not look convinced. “Oh?”

“It’s autism,” Dyna said, scrambling for any explanation. The moment the words were out of her mouth, she grimaced again.

But that seemed to be enough for Earl. A look of understanding crossed his face. “I understand,” he said. “My older brother grew up with some challenges.”

Dyna glanced to Ruby, unsure at all what to say and even more uncomfortable than she had been a few minutes ago, which was saying something. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s part of who they are.”

“Yeah…”

“Anyway, did you need a little more time with the menus?”

“Uh, yes. Yes please.”

“Alright,” Earl said with an easy smile. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Take your time.”

As soon as he was gone, Dyna slumped. “I feel guilty.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, it’s just—”

“You didn’t hurt anyone and now we’re free to do whatever we want.” Ruby angled the camera slightly, scanning the entirety of the restaurant. “Good job.”

“I guess.”

“No sign of anyone meeting him,” Ruby said, “also, I recommend the pad kee mao.”

“The what?”

“Stir-fried noodles. Curry is good too.”

Dyna, tense and wound up, wasn’t sure that she had much of an appetite. Unfortunately, the waiter came back. Having not even glanced at the menu, Dyna took Ruby up on her suggestion while Ruby, again acting like a normal child, asked for curry and some kind of soup. With a smile, Earl took down their orders and left once more. Hopefully for longer than a minute or two this time.

“What if nobody shows up to meet him?”

“That’s bad for his innocence. Based on what you overheard, he should definitely be meeting with someone. If nobody shows up, it could mean that he is merely dropping off the stuff he stole, either leaving them behind for someone else to come by and take later on or the diner itself is a front. It, or maybe just one of its employees, could be the one expecting the package.”

“Or somebody noticed us,” Dyna said, watching as a small car drove down the street at a languid pace without stopping.

“That too. All it would take would be a psychic of particular talents to scan the minds of everyone in the area and find out what we’re all doing. Emerald trained me to avoid that kind of detection.” Ruby took her eyes off the phone, looking up to Dyna. “I doubt you can say the same.”

Dyna’s shoulders slumped. “The Carroll Institute teaches everyone to detect and even fight back against mental influences. But being detected at all?” She shook her head. “Should I even be here? Aren’t I compromising the mission?”

“Like I said, the mission is to determine whether or not this guy is a spy. And nobody showing up is a strong indicator that he is. A romantic partner wouldn’t care or even notice us sitting here.”

“Alright. Let me rephrase. Aren’t I putting us in danger? What if they decide to attack us?” Dyna lifted her eyes up to the roofs of the buildings across the street. The roofs had been where the last group of people wanting to harm her had ended up. It was dark out now. Anyone wearing the dark clothes that the last men had worn would be nearly invisible.

Uneasy feeling in her stomach, Dyna pulled out her mirror. It was some small relief that she only saw her own face, reflected normally and not through the perspectives of others. It would have been more of a relief if she knew how, why, or when the mirror’s anomalous abilities manifested.

Dyna spent the next dozen minutes glancing between the mirror, the roof, the streets, and Ruby’s cell phone. Their meals came, delivered by Earl, though Dyna only picked at hers. It wasn’t bad. Any other day and she might have enjoyed the noodles. But tonight?

She was too busy keeping her eyes peeled for any sign of movement.

“He’s eating on his own,” Ruby said.

Glancing down at the video feed on Ruby’s phone, Dyna frowned. A waiter in the diner delivered what looked like a stack of French toast. “If you’re meeting with someone, you normally wait for them.”

“I’d say that’s one strike against him.”

“Yeah…”

To Dyna, that almost completely confirmed that he was not meeting with someone romantically. And if he wasn’t meeting with someone romantically, what did that leave? A business meeting? An old friend? He would still have waited, right?

Perhaps he really was dropping something off?

“He hasn’t handed anything off to the waiter, has he?”

“Not that I’ve seen,” Ruby said, shaking her head. “But he’s been in there for about five minutes longer than we’ve been watching. He could have passed something off already.”

“Would he stick around if he already accomplished his objective?”

“It’s more suspicious to go into a diner and not eat than it is to stick around for an extra twenty minutes.”

“Seems like it would be better to spend as little time as possible around someplace suspicious. It draws more attention.”

“Maybe if they were meeting in a back alley or at some abandoned warehouse, but a diner?” Ruby shook her head. “He might also be here to pick something up. Maybe instructions leading to a different meeting place. If that’s the case, he might have left something in his car…” Standing, Ruby loudly announced to the entire restaurant, “Got to go to the potty, mommy!”

Absolutely and utterly mortified, Dyna stared at Ruby. The absolutely infuriating little girl gave her a wink before sprinting off, presumably in the direction of the restaurant’s restrooms. A few scattered chuckles from the other guests followed her out. Dyna turned her attention to her noodles, focusing intently on them even as she felt the rest of the room’s eyes on her.

The chuckles died off quickly enough. Dyna’s embarrassment quickly morphed into nervous tension as she realized what just happened.

Ruby had left her alone.

They were on a stakeout, watching a potentially dangerous spy in the hopes of catching him with even more dangerous people.

And Ruby left her alone.

The weight of the gun under Dyna’s arm felt even heavier all of a sudden. What if…

“Everything alright?”

Dyna glanced up to find Earl sliding into the seat across from her. He offered a smile.

It didn’t help much.

“Yeah, everything’s…” Dyna trailed off as movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. It made her tense at first, until she realized that it was moving away from her. A little figure crossed the road in the shadows between the streetlights. A little figure with a hood up, but with a few wisps of bright red hair poking out and managing to catch some light.

“Everything’s fine,” Dyna said, doubting she sounded like she was fine.

“Food not to your liking?”

“Oh, no, no. It’s fine. I’m just… distracted.”

Distracted by the figure stopping in front of the electric car, at the moment. Ruby glanced about once before pulling something out of her pockets. Dyna couldn’t see what and, with Earl seated across from her, she couldn’t try angling the cell phone camera over to get a better view.

“Are you allowed to sit down with customers like this?”

“It isn’t too busy right now. Not like it was an hour ago. I’ll be up and about in a few minutes. I just wanted to check on things. If I’m unwelcome…”

Dyna didn’t want to say that he wasn’t welcome, but at the same time, it probably wasn’t a good idea to talk to people at the moment. Right now, without Ruby, things felt far more tense than they had any right to be, even though nothing had really happened.

He apparently took her hesitance as confirmation, however, moving to stand. “Sorry. No harm in asking, right?”

Dyna blinked and slowly nodded her head. “Thanks, it’s just not a good time.”

“I’ll get the total ready for you then?”

Trying to avoid slumping her shoulders, Dyna sighed and pulled out a debit card. “You can just put it all on this. And take a thirty percent tip too.”

“No tips here,” Earl said.

“Oh. Well…”

“But I appreciate the sentiment. I’ll get everything squared away for you.”

Dyna nodded before looking back to the window. She quickly did a scan over everything, from the cars to the roofs to the phone, before freezing.

The phone, with its telescopic attachment, showed something a little interesting.

Harold, still sitting in his booth, was speaking to his own waiter. And during the conversation, he reached beneath the table and pulled up a small steel case, the likes of which Dyna had seen before. One nearly identical to the steel case that Emerald had been carrying around the day they met. With gloved hands, Harold pulled out a flat, circular disc wrapped in foil and slipped it into a styrofoam to-go box.

Dyna reached over to Ruby’s phone and started tapping on the photo button, taking several pictures over and over again.

That was it. Confirmed. Harold was a traitor. That had to be an artifact. Likely the Aztec calendar.

Dyna felt a bit of tension escape her shoulders.

Anger flooded in instead.

This was him, certainly. The one who had sold her out. The one who had contacted outside parties—Id—and told them who to look out for. The communications error that Walter had mentioned. Dyna’s psionic cascade might have alerted people to her existence, but they wouldn’t have known which psychic to look for without Harold giving them a call.

And now he was stealing an artifact? A whole artifact?

He couldn’t get away with that. The moment anyone noticed it was missing, they should be able to track down where it had last been. That would have to lead to Harold. Assuming Beatrice didn’t already know—Dyna couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t told anyone yet, but it must have something to do with her programming.

Perhaps Harold knew that he would soon be found out and decided to leave with something more valuable than mere redacted documents. If he was defecting right now…

Dyna sucked in a breath.

The mirror changed. The reflective lenses went dark, failing to reflect anything at all.

She hadn’t been trying to get it to change like every other time it had gone dark. This time, it changed all on its own.

That meant something was wrong.

Dyna’s head whipped around. Harold still didn’t look like he had noticed. He just sat there, unmoving in his booth in the diner. Ruby… Dyna couldn’t see the young girl. Presumably, she was still inside Harold’s car, looking for evidence. It didn’t look like anyone was watching her either. At least not from the street.

Turning her head, she scanned the restaurant, only to jump at seeing Earl standing just next to her seat.

“Something wrong?” he asked, handing her card over along with the receipt.

Dyna narrowed her eyes. “No… just wondering what is taking Ruby so long.”

Movement on the mirror caught her eye. She snapped her head back, ready to figure out just where the danger was, only to widen her eyes.

Much like in the car with Emerald, Dyna found herself looking through the zoomed-in view of a scope. Probably on a roof again, judging by the angle. Except it wasn’t aimed at her or even Ruby. The crosshairs traveled along the main window of the diner across the street, moving from person to person before settling on the back of Harold’s head.

A sniper?

The same people who were meeting him were trying to kill him?

It made sense. Rewarded as a traitor deserved. But…

Dyna didn’t have time to sit around and think about her choices. The sniper could squeeze the trigger at any moment.

Reaching into her coat, she withdrew the pistol that Ruby gave her, ignored the shout behind her as she aimed it at the window, and pulled the trigger.

 

 

“Come on,” Ruby said.

Lurking just around the corner, Emerald pressed the stem of her pocket watch. Pushing her shoulders off the wall, she walked past the open office, smiled at the way Ruby pulled Dyna along, and entered into an adjacent office. After hiding in the corner and ensuring that she wouldn’t be seen in the off-chance that Ruby started down the hall in the wrong direction, she restarted time.

“Shouldn’t we tell someone though?”

Yes, Dyna, yes you should, Emerald thought to herself.

“If we do, they’ll assign Emerald to the job. And she can keep her fat head out of it.”

Rude.

The conversation faded as the two moved down the hall. Emerald didn’t follow. She had heard enough to determine just what the two were up to with all their sneaking about and leaving her out of it. It was a bit odd that she had been left out of it in the first place. Emerald couldn’t quite puzzle out what she had done. Ruby, she understood. But it had been Dyna who had left her out of what Emerald presumed to be the initial conversation. Unless the two of them had been planning something for far longer.

It seemed that, for whatever reason, Dyna didn’t trust her. She would have to figure out why and apologize later on. For now, however, it didn’t really matter if Dyna didn’t trust her. Emerald would be able to do her job regardless.

She considered shadowing them out of the office complex, but decided against it. Emerald could catch up in an instant. For now, she stepped back into the now empty hall and into the office Ruby and Dyna had just vacated. Taking a seat at the terminal, Emerald pulled out a small drive only to realize that Ruby hadn’t relocked the computer. Getting a bad feeling, a few quick keystrokes brought up the command history.

Ruby had forgotten to cover her tracks. Or, because this was the Carroll Institute, she had simply gotten lazy.

Emerald made a mental note to reprimand her later. For now, it actually made her work easier. She could easily see what grep searches Ruby had performed and what files she had copied over to her drive. Rather than copy the files herself and leave even more traces of evidence behind, Emerald simply pulled out her phone and connected to the Carroll Institute Internal Database. Her security clearance was enough to view most everything available.

Except these, apparently. Incident report 50112-a basically consisted of a single word. Redacted. Its follow up, 50112-b, wasn’t much better. She checked through the related files, trying to glean context. Some of those did help. So did the search terms that Ruby used in the computers.

The general themes of the documents were Dyna and memories. Which generally fit with what Emerald had overheard while following the other two girls around. Dyna couldn’t remember something. Probably something big, if she was willing to sneak about to try to figure out what it was. Although Emerald hadn’t spent as much time around Dyna as Ruby had, she could tell that Dyna wasn’t the kind of person to snoop about for fun in her spare time. A bit opposite of Emerald. That meant that this had to be personally important.

After checking that the man whose office she was in, Pitrelli, did not have higher clearance than she did—he couldn’t even access the files to see how heavily redacted they were—Emerald went and truncated the history log, removed several traces of Ruby’s presence, flooded the server with file requests to maybe disguise the actual target of the searches, and finally installed a small rootkit containing poorly erased Chinese code. The last bit was ultimately harmless, but would hopefully throw anyone who investigated that deep for a loop.

Not that any of it was necessary. The Carroll Institute liked Emerald going about doing what she did. They encouraged it. It even said so in her file. The extra effort here was just good practice. Couldn’t let herself get lazy.

That really left just one loose end.

“So, is this guy they’re going after actually a spy?”

“Uncertain,” Beatrice said, voice coming in over the speakers set into the ceiling. “Harold Porter made a number of phone calls with timings I deem suspicious. These include prior to and following the incidents 50112-d, 50112-e, 50112-f, and 50112-g. The Beatrice Task Resolution Environment lacks sufficient privileges to observe the content of private phone calls without prior authorization. A ticket has been opened with the Carroll Institute Internal Affairs division.”

Meaning that Beatrice handed off her suspicions to humans and left it up to them to figure out the facts. That Beatrice listed his status as unknown meant they hadn’t come up with anything yet.

“Ticket number?”

“CI-IA-38321.”

“Thank you, Beatrice,” Emerald said, pulling up the relevant ticket on her phone. She quickly skimmed the details. Beatrice’s verbal report had been lacking a few details, such as potential forgery of Doctor Cross’ signature as well as unauthorized entry into the artifact vault. That alone should have sparked some red flags, but had been amended to the ticket after it had been opened. Whatever member of internal affairs had reviewed it likely ignored the addition or simply hadn’t yet seen it.

One major problem Beatrice presented was the sheer abundance of information she provided. Without an impractically large team, it was essentially impossible to respond to everything she requested. The fact that there were nearly forty thousand internal affairs tickets alone spoke to that absurd volume. How many had been opened by humans? Probably less than a thousand.

Walter, Emerald knew, liked the human element. Of course he would. But the human element just couldn’t handle Beatrice. In Emerald’s perfectly perfect opinion, Beatrice should be given permanently elevated privileges. Perhaps not up to the level of her antics in keeping Dyna out of hostile hands, but at least enough to take care of half the tickets she opened on her own.

Of course, those very limitations did prove useful now.

A quick few taps and Emerald had the Harold Porter issue assigned to herself. “You didn’t happen to open a ticket for Ruby and Dyna based on their actions today, did you?”

“I did.”

“Ticket numbers?”

“CI-IA-38994. CI-IA-38996.”

One for Dyna and one for Ruby. Emerald assigned both to herself and then marked them as resolved. That would keep anyone from noticing them while searching for unassigned or open tickets. She couldn’t simply delete them without throwing up a red flag, but that was fine. They would just get lost in the deluge and eventually buried so deep that nobody would ever notice them.

“Don’t worry about those two. I will handle any issues they cause.”

“Understood.”

“Now,” Emerald said, turning back to the list of files she had from Ruby’s search. “I don’t suppose you can tell me about this memory issue that Dyna seems to have?”

“Unable to comply. Clearance insufficient. This request has been logged.”

“Oh come now, Beatrice. I thought we were friends?”

“Appeals are futile. Clearance insufficient. This request has been logged.”

“Really? I don’t have high enough clearance to be your friend?”

“No.”

Emerald shot a glare up at the camera in the corner of the room before looking back down to her phone. While the main files were essentially unreadable, some of the others weren’t. Something big had happened about one year ago in Los Angeles that involved Dyna. It occurred just before Emerald and Ruby had been dispatched to Los Angeles for artifact recovery. Related?

She wasn’t sure. The metropolitan area down there was large enough and had so many people that it was impossible to tell. The timing was suspicious.

Beyond that one incident that Emerald couldn’t read, most of the files were entirely mundane. Dyna had worked with a great number of doctors and research associates in her short time at the institute. Several of those doctors had been memory specialists. There wasn’t anything strange about that—Dyna’s mental and medical history didn’t look particularly different from any other initiate at the institute.

So was it the large incident that Dyna couldn’t remember? Or was it something completely outside these reports?

Emerald wouldn’t know unless she asked.

Checking the time, Emerald cracked her neck back and forth. She slipped her phone back into her favorite green cardigan and stood, twisting her back until a series of snaps chained up her spine. “I suppose they’ve had enough of a head start,” she said. “What do you think?”

“Ruby and Dyna recently left the facility in an old station—”

“They touched my car?”

Emerald ensured that her pocket watch was wound and slammed her finger on the stem. There wasn’t much around to indicate that time had actually stopped. It wasn’t like the world turned black and white or any other obvious effect. The sudden stillness was normally enough.

Her phone and the terminal winking out, displaying nothing but darkness, was the only actual evidence at the moment.

Not that Emerald paid any attention to either. She was out the door in a sprint.

Sprinting wouldn’t actually get her there any faster. Emerald could casually walk, take a nap, pull a granola bar out of her pocket and eat it, and otherwise dawdle all she wanted and the clock wouldn’t advance until she allowed it to. Really, running would just wear her out.

But from her perspective, it was so slow.

Sometimes, Emerald wished that her artifact provided her with the ability to actually teleport, rather than merely the ability to appear to teleport to an outside observer. Not always. Stopping time gave her unparalleled information gathering opportunities, spying opportunities, the ability to stop and think over a situation before making a rash decision, the ability to read a book or sleep in an instant, and a dozen other advantages.

But right now? Simply being with her car instead of sprinting down the halls of Psychodynamics?

It was a tempting prospect.

Especially because she had to skid to a stop, restart time, and wait for the elevator.

Emerald normally took the stairs. Able to stop and rest whenever she wanted, it didn’t matter how many flights there were. Besides, stairs were far healthier and kept her in shape.

In what was certainly an OSHA violation and fire hazard, Psychodynamics did not have stairs. Not to the surface, anyway. There were a few maintenance tunnels, but none really designed for human traversal. Quite the contrary, they were actually hostile to people in both layout and in automated defenses. All in the name of keeping the artifacts and secrets secure from anyone who would try to invade the facility. Defenses wouldn’t matter while time was stopped, but the sealed doors were impenetrable.

“Where are they headed?” Emerald asked, trying to make the most of her real time in the elevator.

“Harold Porter left the facility, heading in the direction of Idaho Falls. Ruby and Dyna arrived too late to witness him leave, but left in the same direction.”

“I hope she keeps her headlights off until they get to the city.” Seeing the bright lights in his rear-view mirror would certainly alert him. It wasn’t like there was heavy traffic on the road between the Carroll Institute and the city. A car coming up behind him would obviously have come from the institute. “Has Harold made it to the city yet?”

“Unknown. Assuming he is following local traffic laws, no. That is an assumption.”

“I’m elevating your privileges for the current situation. Level two. Authorization code Green dash…” Emerald glanced at her pocket watch. “Four-eight-one-one.”

“Understood. Beatrice System has entered level two operational status.”

Emerald didn’t have the clearance to fully unleash the emergency protocols, but she could at least authorize a high enough level to access street cameras. “Find Harold. Determine his destination. Deliver the results to my phone the second you have them.”

“Understood.”

The elevator doors dinged open back on the surface level of the facility. Emerald didn’t bother stopping time just yet. There were two doors in her way that she would just have to drop back into real time to open. She waited until she stepped into a large room partially filled with vehicles of varying makes and models. Most were of the electric variety. Idaho was, on average, a bit slower to adopt electric vehicles than many other areas, but they were slowly getting there.

Of course, many employees and initiates were from elsewhere in America, both the Union of Southern States and the United States. The sample of vehicles present in the Carroll Institute’s parking structure were not indicative of Idaho as a whole.

Emerald scowled at the empty parking spot. Her parking spot. Her car. She had been a bit resistant to the idea of electric vehicles. The old station wagon served her well.

But it wasn’t there now.

A few splashes of synthetic oil marred the otherwise gray concrete.

“That little… I’m going to—”

Emerald cut herself off with a less intense frown. Having overheard Ruby and Dyna’s conversation, she had overheard the part questioning Emerald’s treatment of Ruby. Dyna didn’t know. Ruby’s explanation of her history had been lacking, to say the least.

When first discovered, Ruby had been a figurative monster. Her own parents broke down her mind to the point where few people would actually call her human. Even after the Carroll Institute rebooted her mind, she had still been a nightmare. Violence had been about the only language she understood.

Ruby’s rehabilitation had been a long and arduous process. Even for Emerald, who had really only been involved during the final stages. But…

The girl’s behavior had been far better in the last several months. The fact that Emerald didn’t mind leaving Ruby to wander alone and interact with other people without oversight was evidence of that.

Perhaps she was being a bit too harsh?

Emerald shook her head. That was something to consider later on. For now, she had a long walk ahead of her. Idaho Falls was a good forty miles away. Ruby and Dyna wouldn’t be that far away, but Emerald doubted she would be able to hitch a ride with them without them noticing.

Her job, at the moment, wasn’t to ‘stick her fat head’ into Ruby’s self-appointed mission of helping Dyna, but to ensure that they didn’t get into too much trouble. Getting noticed would just upset Ruby and probably further harm Dyna’s trust in her. Neither were acceptable outcomes, in Emerald’s opinion.

If all went well, Ruby and Dyna would carry out whatever they wanted to do without ever knowing about her presence.

In addition, getting eyes on Harold before he could get lost in the city would help. Beatrice should be able to find him, but he likely wouldn’t meet with someone suspicious if he didn’t have a plan for losing any tails, electronic or otherwise. If Emerald spotted him on the long road into the city, she could just start and stop time as needed to allow him to reach his destination while following him carefully and out of sight.

Yes, walking was, unfortunately, the best choice to accomplish both objectives.

Emerald wound her pocket watch with a sigh.

 

 

“You’re ruining my mission,” Ruby said with quite possibly the most terrifying pout that Dyna had ever seen.

Pitrelli’s office didn’t feel like the most secure location to discuss possible traitors to the Carroll Institute. It had no door, a large window, security cameras galore, and more photographs of mountains and rivers. The latter fact didn’t weaken the security of the situation, but did strengthen the theory that the decor in Harold’s office had come from the institute rather than any personal touches. Though Pitrelli’s office did have a bit more personal touch on the desk itself. A large framed picture of a man with a bushy mustache, a woman with long orange hair, and a tiny little barely-a-year-old baby.

Probably just a regular guy, looking to get by in the world.

“I didn’t even do anything.”

“And that is a large problem,” Ruby said, voice like ice. “You were supposed to be seated here, watching the numbers go by on the terminal. Instead you ran off and came back with all this unrelated garbage.”

“Look, I wasn’t— I thought we were asking him for help or at least using him to figure out where to get the information we wanted. I wasn’t prepared to… hack into his computer,” she whispered with a nervous glance up to the security camera. “You should have outlined the mission better.”

“Emerald always says that the best way to learn to swim is to have someone shove you off the side of a barge ten miles out to sea.”

“That sounds like the best way to learn how to drown,” Dyna grumbled.

Shaking her head, she looked over Ruby’s shoulder at the terminal screen. Bright green command line text scrolled up the screen at an unreadable pace. Presumably running a search for files related to Dyna’s memories. A third drive, one that Ruby had brought in, was plugged into the side of the machine. A faint red light blinked on its side.

When it became clear that Ruby, now spinning in the chair out of boredom, wasn’t going to say anything, Dyna asked, “So what are we going to do?”

“Do?” Ruby said without stopping. “Good question. First, we’re going to let this finish. Then we’re going to regroup at your dormitory. And then, we’ll have to come up with a proper consequence for your AWOL actions. Now quiet. I’m trying to think of something good. Emerald always turns her punishments into lessons…” She trailed off, humming to herself in thought.

“What about Harold?”

“Irrelevant. He’s outside the mission parameters. We’re here for your mental history.”

“But we can’t just… He’s… There’s no…”

Dyna wasn’t even sure what she wanted out of the situation.

Her first instinct was that they should at least inform someone of what she had discovered. Doctor Cross should know that his assistant was possibly a spy. Emerald would probably be able to capture him within five minutes. The Carroll Institute did have a security team that could probably apprehend him as well, maybe taking more time but probably with less bodily harm.

Yet, what if he was off to leak information to the press that the Carroll Institute was engaged in brainwashing of their psychics? None of the papers Dyna had flipped through were related to memories or brainwashing, but maybe the next batch of files would be. And if the Carroll Institute was actually messing with people’s minds—more than they advertised—then information going to competitors was… good?

Elbows on the desk and face in her hands, Dyna groaned. What if he was off to deliver information to Russia or China and it sparked another war? The last one had just calmed down, but tensions were still high. The report he was running off with might be the straw breaking the camel’s back.

And the artifact… What was he doing with the artifact? Taking it to storage? Or delivering it to people who probably shouldn’t be in possession of a portent of apocalypse.

“I’m just a normal person. What am I supposed to do?”

Ruby didn’t give a response, still spinning in the chair.

“We can’t just let him go, right? No matter what the institute has done, if another war starts, lots of people will die.”

“War?” Ruby’s spinning stopped with her feet slamming down on the ground. She raised one eyebrow. “You jump to a lot of conclusions, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Your half-overheard conversation could have been about anything. A foil wrapped disc? Could just be his lunch. And these?” Ruby pointed to the pair of drives on the desk. “We have a dozen of them back in Emerald’s stash. All with different things on them. Some have programs on them,” she said, pointing to the terminal. “Others, maybe not. Emerald claims one has nothing more than pictures of me acting like a normal kid, but I haven’t found it so I think she’s lying. Besides, I never act like everyone else unless I have to and that obviously doesn’t count.”

Dyna, blinking twice, almost opened her mouth and said that Ruby acted normal sometimes. During their little movie sessions, while she hadn’t been afraid of the horror, she had definitely done typical horror-watcher things, including shouting at the screen about how stupid the characters were acting.

Speaking her mind would probably not go appreciated, however. Besides that… “You aren’t a very normal person, are you? How… did you end up like this?” Dyna grimaced as soon as the words were out of her mouth. The last time she had asked about Ruby’s past, the girl had frozen up. “Sorry, that was rude,” she quickly said.

“Like I care,” Ruby said with a scoff, resuming her spinning once again. How she avoided getting dizzy, Dyna couldn’t begin to guess. Just watching her had Dyna feeling queasy. “I don’t even remember much anyway. Just flashes now and again.”

“You don’t remember…”

“Not like you,” Ruby said, spinning halting once more. Then she cocked her head to the side. “Or maybe exactly like you? When the institute found me, I was apparently a feral little monster. Completely unstoppable too,” she said, lightly grazing the ruby gemstone at her throat with one finger. “Therapy did nothing. Lacking options and needing me to not try to kill everyone anytime I saw another person, zap!” she shouted with two fingers pointed at her head.

“They just erased your memory?” Dyna said, chill running down her back. If they did it once, they could do it again. “How do you—”

“I remember bits and pieces. That me can stay dead.” Ruby looked up, meeting Dyna’s eyes. “You wouldn’t have liked her. You probably wouldn’t have survived her.”

“But—”

“I don’t like the institute,” Ruby said. “They’re annoying, overbearing, bossy, and sneaky. But I don’t dislike them because of what they did to me. They even told me what they did—which is why I think this mission is a level zero.”

“They… told you?”

“Yep. Not right away, they let me get used to things first, but they were quite helpful in that. So if they did do something to you, it was probably for a good reason. And they’ll probably tell you eventually. If they haven’t told you, it is probably because it wasn’t them,” Ruby said with a casual shrug. Pressing her foot against the floor, she started spinning again.

Hearing that actually made Dyna calm down somewhat. A tension between her shoulders, one that had probably been there for days now, slowly unwound. Not completely, but enough to let her lean back. Was what they had done to Ruby ethical? Dyna doubted she was qualified to answer. Did it sound evil? Not if Ruby’s account was correct.

It sounded more like they had been left with little choice. Either that or throw some feral version of Ruby into a padded cell.

Dyna would definitely not be relying wholly on the word of the person who admitted to having their memory modified. Emerald might know about Ruby’s past. Later on, she would have to ask.

For now, Dyna let her shoulders slump, feeling fairly good about her situation for the first time in a while.

“So I shouldn’t worry about what we might find and Harold probably isn’t a traitor.”

“Woah.” Ruby’s feet planted on the floor, stopping her rotation. “I didn’t say that. Who knows if he is a traitor.”

“But…” Dyna glanced down at the drives on the desk. “You said—”

“All I said was that if I attacked someone with as little evidence as you brought me, Emerald would have cut off my head again.”

“But you…” Dyna blinked. “Again? Wha—”

“She would scold me and admonish me for thinking I had anything at all and promptly send me back out to gather more information.”

“Wait, but—”

“Is your man a traitor? Maybe. I know the Carroll Institute has had problems with infiltrators in the past. Real infiltrators. Not us. Obviously. And for the record, I doubt that foil wrapped disc is his lunch. Emerald would just want me to consider all possibilities.”

“Ruby,” Dyna said, speaking carefully. “Does Emerald hurt you?”

“I can’t be hurt.”

“Maybe not… physically, but—”

Ruby’s eyes caught the light, flashing briefly as she locked onto Dyna. “I’m fine,” she ground out. “If I wasn’t, I would slit Emerald’s throat when she wasn’t expecting it.”

“That really doesn’t sound like a healthy outlet to your—”

“Just drop it.” Ruby stood. Her short height didn’t put her over Dyna even with the latter sitting, but she still radiated an intensity that Dyna wasn’t quite willing to argue with. “Understand? Focus on your problems. You have a traitor, some esper after you, and missing memories. Remember? Or are your memories so broken that you need me to remind you?”

Dyna nodded slowly. The conversation wasn’t over. Trying to continue it now, however, wouldn’t be productive. Not with the way Ruby was acting. Besides that, the younger girl was right.

Dyna had a lot of problems.

Clenching her fists, Dyna sat up. “Alright. Let’s remove some of those problems.”

There was nothing she could do about Id at the moment. Her memory problem, if caused by the Carroll Institute, would hopefully pop up on the terminal soon and either be removed as a problem or change the context of the problem. Either way, nothing to do about that for now either.

That left the traitor.

“A half-heard conversation, mysteriously wrapped object, and suspicious drive aren’t enough to confirm or deny any suspicions, right?”

Ruby, finding that the conversation wasn’t on her anymore, visibly settled as she retook her seat. The pose she adopted, a relaxed yet authoritative crossing of her legs and folding of her arms, would have looked more at home on Emerald from what Dyna had seen.

“Correct,” she said with a weighty nod of her small head.

Definitely emulating Emerald.

Dyna had no idea what to make of their relationship before and definitely had no idea what to make of it now. Did Ruby respect her or hate her? Both?

Shaking her head, Dyna kept her focus on the problem. She held up the drive she had pulled from Harold’s office. “Let’s just plug this in and see what is on it. If it is family photos, we can ignore it. If it is something like that,” Dyna said, waving at the terminal, “we know he is a problem.”

“Bad idea.”

“What? Why? It seems like the quickest way to find out.”

Ruby adopted a smug grin. She knew something Dyna didn’t and was obviously excited to share. “Photos or even classified documents don’t prove that he isn’t a spy. You might have picked up a drive he intended for people to find to throw them off the scent. Classified documents might just be part of his job. More importantly,” she said with a thumb pointed at the terminal screen. “If that drive is anything like one of ours, we don’t want it anywhere near something we care about. It could just steal information, or… Emerald has a few drives that fry whatever system they’re plugged into.”

Frowning, Dyna slowly set the drive back down onto the desk.

“So we need a computer we don’t care about?”

“Network isolated and nothing important on it. I don’t have anything handy, do you?”

“No.” Dyna tapped her finger against the desk. She did have a small laptop back in the dorm. It didn’t exactly have anything important on it. Mostly documents related to psychics and a small library of movies. But she used it for personal matters, purchasing goods, and other things that would identify her if something designed to steal information got onto it.

Besides that, it wasn’t a cheap laptop. The Carroll Institute paid her to be here, but not well enough to just throw away a computer.

“Then let me ask this,” Dyna said. “How would you figure out if he is a spy or not?”

“Follow him to wherever he is headed. If it is a dinner date, it still doesn’t prove he isn’t a spy, but it does reduce the chance a whole lot more than the contents of the drive, based on his half of the overheard conversation.”

Dyna’s eyes flicked to the terminal. More specifically, to the time in the corner. It had been fifteen minutes since she heard the conversation. Ten since she started her chat with Ruby. He hadn’t mentioned when his meeting was supposed to begin or where it would be, meaning that they would have to literally follow behind him on his way there.

“Great,” Ruby said, groaning. “Why did I have to say anything at all. It’s cold out there, you know?”

“If you’re vouching for the Carroll Institute, I’ll believe that they either didn’t mess with my head or they had a good reason for it. If it is the latter, I’ll definitely be confronting them. But we can’t just let someone sell out the people here. I have friends here, a roommate and Hendrix and… probably at least one other person I care about.”

“Convincing argument,” Ruby said, tone bland.

“Yeah, well, how about keeping a portent of apocalypse out of—”

Dyna didn’t get to finish. A light beep from the terminal accompanied a freezing of the scrolling text. Ruby turned to the screen and leaned forward. “Twenty-two documents found in line with my search. Want to read through them?”

“Yes. But later. My memories have probably been a problem for a while.” Not that she really knew. “Leaving them for another few hours can’t hurt. Harold might be handing over the Aztec calendar this evening. We’ll lose our chance. How are we even going to find him?”

Ruby didn’t say anything for a moment, choosing instead to pillage the desk. She pulled out a small roll of masking tape, tore a piece off, and stuck it to one of the drives. Using a pen, she wrote, H – Do Not Use. The other drive, the one Ruby had originally given Dyna—which differed only in its lack of a keyring—she put on a piece of tape but left blank. She then removed the drive from the terminal, put on a piece of tape, and wrote down Dyna.

She pocketed the first two drives before sliding the third over. “I wiped the drive. All that is on it now are your files. You can safely plug that into whatever computer you want.”

It felt hot between Dyna’s fingers. Both literally and figuratively. She glanced up, locked eyes on the red light of the security camera, then slipped the drive into her own pocket. “I’m going to get into so much trouble.”

Ruby rolled her eyes.

“So,” Dyna said, “how are we finding Harold?”

“Beatrice, find this Harold person.”

“Harold Porter is aboard the elevator, moving from Sector C Archives toward the Topside Parking Structure.”

“See? Glorified secretary.”

Dyna frowned, looking up. “She helped me—”

“Then it is because someone important told it to. Come on.”

“Wait… Beatrice, why is the camera in Harold’s office disabled?”

“Unknown. My records do not show deliberate tampering. I opened a maintenance ticket two weeks ago. There have been no developments since.”

“How does a maintenance request go ignored?”

“Unknown. I—”

“Come on,” Ruby said, grabbing Dyna’s wrist. “You can chat up the secretary later. If you want to catch your traitor, we need to move now.”

“Right.” Dyna took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and followed the younger girl out of the office. “Right. Shouldn’t we tell someone though?”

“If we do, they’ll assign Emerald to the job,” Ruby said with a scoff as they ran down the halls. “And this is still my mission. She can keep her fat head out of it.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good reason—”

“And you are supposed to follow my orders. Don’t think I’ve forgotten your failure earlier. You either keep up with me and follow my orders or I’ll hogtie you and throw you in the trunk.”

“Ruby—”

“I can do this,” Ruby said, seeming to talk more to herself for a moment. “I can do this. You’re looking down on me because of my age. They all do. But the institute messed with my mind. I’m not an immature child despite my looks. I know more than you. I’ll show you and them.”

Dyna opened her mouth to call that way of thinking immature, then hesitated. Ruby wouldn’t take that well. She certainly had problems. Maybe as many as Dyna herself, if not more. Despite her… abrasive attitude, Dyna didn’t dislike the girl. She didn’t know if she liked her, but their movie days had been fun and training with a gun hadn’t been the worst thing.

As they walked along the hall, Dyna decided on a softer way of phrasing her concerns.

“Wouldn’t it show them that they can trust you most if you did contact someone else? At least to tell Emerald about the change in the situation?”

“Trying to make me think its my own idea to call up Emerald?” Ruby snapped, looking over her shoulder with a glare. “Why not sneak in a bit of reverse psychology while you’re at it? I’ve been through lectures here too, you know.”

“I’m just saying that we should have someone competent with us. Not saying you aren’t competent,” Dyna said quickly before Ruby could whirl on her. “I’m saying I’m not. I’m not good backup for you.”

“You helped Emerald. That’s good enough for me.”

“I…” Dyna closed her eyes as they waited for the elevator door. “That was luck.”

“No such thing.”

“Yes, but—”

The elevator door dinged. Dyna rushed in hot on Ruby’s heels. Neither said a word in the voice activated lift, but the doors still closed the second they were inside and it started moving a second after. Beatrice, presumably, knew where they wanted to go.

Which just made the drive in Dyna’s pocket feel all the hotter. What was on it? Did the fact that files had been found mean anything? Or was that simply expected of an institution that delved so heavily into the mind?

“I’ll call her when we get there, okay?” Ruby snapped, hands slamming into her hips as she turned around. “If it isn’t a dinner date. She can catch up in an instant if needed. Does that make you feel better?”

Dyna let out a long sigh. “Much.”

“Good. Then quit complaining.”

“Thank you, Ruby.”

“Shut up.”

 

 

 

Dyna moved through the halls of Psychodynamics. The wood and brass walls and the marble tiles had a warm feeling to them. Not the cold, clinical decor of a research laboratory. She had to wonder if it was supposed to be comforting to the people walking through. Psychodynamics, and the Carroll Institute as a whole, delved heavily into the mind. Not just in terms of psychic abilities, but in mental health and psychology as well. They would know better than anyone how to decorate their buildings to achieve a specific response.

Perhaps it was her paranoia talking, but the whole place just felt a little more sinister than it had a few months ago. How much of the facilities, from the lecture halls to the dormitory rooms, were designed to elicit responses, feelings, or other mental states. Most of it, probably.

Of course, down here in Psychodynamics, Dyna wondered who the comforting decor was for. Probably not the artificers. There were only a handful of them and none seemed to spend much time inside. With that fact in mind, Dyna had to imagine that the comfort was aimed at the researchers and other personnel of the facility.

“Are you there yet?”

Dyna jumped out of her skin, one hand slamming into her ear like an insect had just crawled inside.

“Why are you shouting?” she hissed.

Ruby didn’t respond straight away, giving Dyna a moment to fuddle with the volume control of her earpiece. A tiny little bud with even tinier buttons.

Of course, when Ruby started talking again, she did so in a normal tone of voice. Combined with the lowered volume, Dyna couldn’t hear her at all. Apprehensive, Dyna slowly turned the volume back up just enough to hear.

“—keep you on your toes. Emerald always says that we need to be prepared for anything.”

“And that includes my supposed ally shouting into my ear?”

“Anything.”

“I doubt she meant it literally,” Dyna grumbled. “What did you want?”

“I asked if you were there yet.”

Dyna glanced around.

The Psychodynamics office complex wasn’t a large place. She had just walked through a door into a long hallway with several half-office half-cubicle rooms. They were fairly spacious work areas with decent lighting, mostly separated from the hall by a large glass window from the waist up. But they lacked doors, making them more of cubicles than proper offices.

Naturally, important people had fully enclosed offices. Dyna had seen the inside of Doctor Cross’ office, not far from where she currently was. A large room filled with all manner of gadgets and gizmos, only half of which Dyna had recognized. All of them, presumably, were devices related to the mind and psionics.

“I just arrived,” Dyna said, stepping further into the office complex, past a large glass cube of a meeting room right at the front and into the rows of office-cubicles. “What was the name again?”

“You’re looking for a Pitrelli. Not sure on the first name.”

Nodding, Dyna walked along. Next to each door, the offices all had small plaques stating the occupant’s name and their job title. Many were blank. Like most of Psychodynamics, the office complex seemed to have a certain vacancy to it. Another psychological trick? Or had they simply planned for an expansion in personnel that wasn’t currently there?

Dyna shook her head and focused.

Most of the names blurred by. She didn’t recognize many. Dyna had learned the names of the lower-level techs that she interacted with regularly, like Harold and Jenkins. Harold, as Cross’ assistant, had an office here. One with a proper door on it. The others? She wasn’t sure if they had offices here. Jenkins normally showed up in those silver suits, an attire which Dyna attributed to those relatively low on Psychodynamics’ totem pole. The ones saddled with the grunt work.

It took a switch down a second cubicle-lined hallway before she found the office. Giuseppe Pitrelli. According to the plaque, he was a memory specialist. Dyna wasn’t quite sure how Ruby found him, but if anyone in Psychodynamics had information on her head, it would be him.

Unfortunately, there was one small problem.

The office was dark. Lights out and terminal powered off, Pitrelli wasn’t in.

“He’s not here.”

“I know. It says here that he is on vacation.”

Dyna pressed her lips together, scowling at the empty air while wishing she was scowling at Ruby. “How are we supposed to get his help if he isn’t—”

“Help? When did I ever say we were getting his help?”

“What?”

“Go in, quick. Before anyone sees you.”

Dyna didn’t move save to glance up. Her eyes met with the glowing red ember beneath the five lenses of a hallway security camera. After maintaining eye contact for a full second, Dyna turned to the side, pressing her finger to her ear. “Ruby—”

“You aren’t moving.”

“What am I doing here?”

“You’re getting information. Get inside quick, then pull out that drive I gave you and plug it into the terminal. It will do the rest.”

Dyna looked at the computer through the glass window of the office, then up to another security camera. Turning around, she spotted another camera in the office on the opposite side of the hallway, then another camera down at the other end of the hallway.

Nodding slowly, Dyna turned back the way she had come and started walking.

“Wait, you’re going the wrong way.”

“There’s like ten cameras and they’re all staring directly at me,” Dyna whispered, trying not to panic as her pace increased.

She was going to turn the corner to find a hundred security guards lined up like football players, ready to tackle her to the ground.

She wanted to know. The truth was out there somewhere. But here and now? Absolutely not. There had to be some other way that didn’t involve hacking into a computer while being recorded by a department store’s entire collection of cameras. She had promised not to tell Emerald, but if this was the quality of Ruby’s infiltration suggestions…

“You can’t just run away at—”

“You can’t expect me to…” Hesitating, Dyna searched for the proper word. Unable to find it, she said, “You can’t expect me to you know what into the computers. Beatrice will have this place on lockdown the second I touch one of them.”

“I told you not to worry about that thing. It’s just a secretary.”

Dyna wasn’t sure if Ruby was downplaying Beatrice’s abilities or if she didn’t know. Having seen Beatrice in action first-hand, Dyna absolutely did not believe that Beatrice was just a secretary.

She had to remind herself that she hadn’t done anything. If anyone reviewed the security footage, or got an alert from Beatrice, Dyna could simply say that she had intended to visit a memory specialist for reasons completely unrelated to the Carroll Institute possibly modifying her memories. Finding him gone, she had turned and left. That would work.

Turning a corner, Dyna slammed into someone hard enough to send them both to the ground. A spike of panic shot through her, fearing that it was a security guard on his way to apprehend her. Mildly disoriented, Dyna scrambled to her feet.

Just before she turned and ran off, she realized that it was not a security guard at all.

“Harold?”

The research assistant sat on the floor, surrounded by a scattering of papers and one foil-covered disc.

“I am so sorry. Are you alright?”

“Dyna?” He looked up, narrowing his eyes. “What are you—”

Harold pressed his palm against the floor to help himself get back up, only to remove his hand with a hiss. Turning it over to examine the pain, he showed off a fairly light skinning of his hand. A bit of dirt and a few tiny lines of blood. It must have happened in the fall.

“I am so sorry,” Dyna said again. Bending, she started collecting the papers he had dropped. “Let me help you. Is there a medical area near?”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll just wash it off in the bathroom.”

“Are you sure? What if it gets infected?”

“The soap is antibacterial. What are they going to do in the infirmary? They’ll just wash it off there.”

“What about bandages?”

“It’s fine. Barely bleeding. It will probably stop before I even get to the bathroom.” Standing up with a little more care, Harold glanced down at the papers Dyna had gathered up. She was just about to reach for the silver disc when he, a little louder than necessary, said “Don’t!”

Dyna’s hand froze just above the foil covered disc. “What?”

“Don’t touch it,” he said, crouching down. Carefully, almost as if he was afraid to touch it, he inspected it, turning it over a few times before finally picking it up with his less injured hand. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sure people have warned you that some things in Psychodynamics are a bit more dangerous than others. Best to leave this one to me.”

“Oh…” An artifact then? Those seemed to be about the only thing people worried over here. Judging by its size and shape, it was probably that Aztec calendar that Cross had been inspecting the other day.

Harold tucked the artifact under his arm to free his hand, which he promptly used to start picking at his other hand.

“Please, let me make it up to you,” Dyna said with a wince, glancing down at the top document sitting atop the yellow folder she had picked up in an attempt to avoid looking at his wound. Some kind of incident report? A lot of it was unreadable. Not from dirt or any other consequence of the fall, but from thick black marker striking out words, numbers, and even an entire paragraph. She stared at that black marker a little longer than necessary before sucking in a breath and forcing her eyes up to see Harold inspecting his hand a little closer. “I’ll carry them to wherever you need them.”

“It’s fine. They’re just going to the archive. Nothing that needs to be done now.”

Dyna blinked, then blinked again. “Archive? I thought everything was digital.”

“There are hard copy backups of most important documents, both here and off-site. For now, just take those back to my office, would you? It’s just down the hall. Across from Doctor Cross’ office.”

“I know where that is.”

“Good,” he said, clenching his fist with a small grimace. “I’ll pick them up later. Try not to run around the halls too much. I can only imagine what would have happened had you knocked over Doctor Cross.”

Dyna winced, remembering the incident in the meditation room the first day she had met Cross. He had fallen, but didn’t seem too upset. Of course, at that point in time, he had been far more excited about the prospect of her psionics than he was today. “Sorry,” she said again.

“I’m going to go clean this up,” he said, nodding his head back down the hall to where the sector’s restrooms were.

With that, he turned and started walking off. Dyna had to assume that the documents he left in her hands weren’t actually all that important. Either that or he trusted her far, far too much. Harold was the disgruntled sort of worker. Dyna didn’t exactly know him well, but did know that every time Doctor Cross opened his mouth, Harold would end up with a scowl, rolling his eyes, or otherwise put-off by whatever the doctor had to say.

Especially when Doctor Cross forgot his name.

Somewhat calmer after that encounter turned out to be nothing to worry about—and especially after seeing no sign of security forces rushing at her—Dyna flipped through the folder of papers on her way back to Harold’s office. Incident reports, updates to artifact documents, and a personnel file so heavily blacked out that Dyna couldn’t understand why they would bother to keep a hard copy of the file. She didn’t read any of them closely; none were about her.

His office was in the nicer section of the complex. It sat just a short walk down the hall from Doctor Cross’ office, in the section where the offices actually had doors. The door had a small plaque. Harold Porter. Research associate. Despite having a door, the lock hadn’t been set. Dyna walked right in.

Although his office had a door and was in the nicer section of the office complex, it wasn’t all that special. Little more than a long desk with a terminal set into it and an accompanying chair. No long couch or bookshelves like Cross had. It did have a few pictures hung up, but they were the most generic vista-style shots of mountain ranges and prairies that Dyna had ever seen. She wondered if they came with the office and he had simply never bothered to replace them.

Shrugging her shoulders, Dyna set the folder down on his desk and turned to leave. In doing so, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye.

His terminal, much like his door, was not locked.

Dyna froze and slowly looked around the office again.

No camera. Privilege of his station? Or… No, wait. There was a camera. Dyna simply missed it on her first scan of the room because its bright red light wasn’t bright or red at the moment. It was powered off, much like the cameras in the room she had changed in after her initial incident down here in Psychodynamics.

Sabotage? Faulty wiring?

Dyna glanced at the terminal again. “Ruby?” she said, pressing her finger to her ear.

The other girl hadn’t said anything since Dyna bumped into Harold. She was probably upset about her plan being ruined. And, after waiting a moment, Dyna still didn’t receive a response. Scowl on her face, Dyna pulled out her phone to message the girl and tell her to get back on the line.

Before she got more than two words out, she heard footsteps coming up the hall.

Harold? Back already?

Dyna’s stomach tightened. There was nothing strange about her being here. He had asked her to be here. If he wondered about why she was still here, she could simply say that she found the pictures interesting and had gotten distracted.

But he might ensure that she left. He might lock his door. He might lock his terminal. This was an opportunity that had fallen into her lap. A far better opportunity than Ruby had come up with, in her opinion.

Dyna’s eyes darted about the room. There was a filing cabinet in one corner and next to it, a tall closet-like… well, it was a closet. A free standing closet, taller than she was and wide enough as well.

Was it the best decision? Absolutely not. She could explain her presence away right now. If he opened the closet, she would be unable to say anything.

But Dyna’s panicked, paranoid mind that didn’t particularly want to be caught in any position, saw it as the best opportunity to evade the situation. She rushed to the closet, opened it up, stepped inside, pressed herself against a few thick coats, and used the protruding inner magnet to pull the door shut.

She stopped moving and held her breath.

The office door clicked open a mere second after.

“—just a small delay,” Harold said. Talking on a phone? “Yes… Yes… I’ll make it in time, don’t worry. I need to do a quick check that all the files are here and I’ll head to the delivery point after… Yes. I understand. Cross won’t care or notice.”

He didn’t say anything else. Dyna heard a bit of rustling papers. It couldn’t have taken more than a minute, but Dyna felt like she sat in that closet for hours. Her nose itched, she needed to move her legs, something was poking into her back, and her heart hammered in her chest loud enough that she couldn’t believe that the man on the other side of the thin wood door couldn’t hear it.

The rustling of papers stopped. A few heavy footsteps moved away from the closet. Shortly after, the door clicked shut. Dyna waited until she couldn’t hear footsteps against the tile floor anymore, then waited another full five minutes.

At least she felt like she could breathe again.

What had that conversation been? It certainly didn’t sound like he had been taking documents to some archive. Cross wouldn’t know or care? Who was he meeting with?

Id jumped into Dyna’s mind. Not literally, not like she had in the detention center. But it was the first thing she thought of and, possibly, the worst thing she could think of.

Doctor Cross’ trusted research associate was working with the enemy?

No. It couldn’t be. That conversation had to be about something else. Office romance, perhaps? That would fit. He was meeting with someone else in Cross’ department for a little romantic rendezvous—after dropping off the files at the archives. That was something Cross wouldn’t care about.

Right?

But then… why did he have that artifact with him? Shouldn’t that be locked up in a vault somewhere? If it was the Aztec disc, and it was as dangerous as Cross implied, then Dyna really felt that a little foil wrapping around it wouldn’t be nearly enough protection from the outside world.

Despite trying to rationalize it, the tension in Dyna’s shoulders didn’t disappear. In fact, it only got worse. The very back of her neck stung like someone had jabbed her with a syringe filled with adrenaline.

Stepping out of the closet took a whole lot more courage than she thought it would take. There was no one outside, and yet her foot trembled until she had it firmly on the tile floor. Even then, she felt like she might fall over until she got her other foot on the floor.

Dyna looked around the office again. Empty. His office didn’t have a large window either, just a small one on the door. Someone walking by would have to deliberately look inside in order to see her. If they were doing that, they were probably coming in anyway and it would be too late.

Harold himself had sounded like he would be gone for a time.

That gave Dyna a moment. She quickly started looking around the office, both around the desk and in the closet and filing cabinet.

Dyna wasn’t looking for anything on her. No documents or secret memory alteration files. No, she was looking for photographs. Any photographs of a woman or man who might fit with her rendezvous theory.

She found nothing. Nothing but more generic pictures of mountains or creeks. The man might be in love with nature, but nature probably wasn’t calling him on his phone.

A chill ran down her spine and she rifled through his desk drawers. She pulled out a small black drive. Identical to the one Ruby had given her. The one that was supposed to ‘do everything else’ after plugging it into a terminal.

Did that mean it was some kind of hacking program? Not necessarily. It could just be some random portable drive that both Ruby and Harold had bought from the same place.

Did that possibility make Dyna feel at all reassured?

Not in the slightest.

Pulling out her phone, Dyna called Ruby’s number.

The girl picked up on the first ring.

“What do you want? I’m busy.”

“Ruby, I—”

“Here I am, sitting in Pitrelli’s office, doing work I assigned to you.”

“Ruby—”

“Didn’t you say you would follow my orders? Emerald always comes up with creative punishments. I don’t think I’m that creative, but I can—”

“Ruby! I think Harold is a traitor!”

The other side of the phone line went silent for a long moment before Ruby said, “Who the bleep is Harold?”