Author: Tower Curator

 

 

You felt it. The resealing of the one they called the entity. You remembered feeling normal once again. While that thing had been out and free, you took a peek into its mind. It wasn’t a conscious decision on your part. Simply a facet of your ability. Uncontrollable. You can fight it off, but that takes effort. Too much effort. In a constant barrage of endless minds pushing into your own, they will eventually start to slip through. It was simply inevitable. Why bother fighting in the first place.

You wish you had fought this one off.

Humans, fundamentally, were all the same. That was one thing you had learned since waking up one day with your ability. From the very base level of neurons firing between synapse nodes, transmitting electrochemical signals throughout the brain in a complex structural pattern that forms instinct, active thoughts, emotion, and memory… all the way to the actual content of those thoughts and emotions. The content of those memories and emotions might differ, but the structure was the same.

This Hatman was no man at all.

I never experienced something like that before. If my power worked on insects, perhaps an ant or a bee, maybe that would have been similar. But it didn’t. For a few minutes there, before I specifically forced the sensation out, I caught a glimpse of what it must have been like to be a machine. There had been no desire, no purpose. Just doing. No memories either. It lived entirely in the present. Unable to plan, unable to remember past experiences. If something angered it, it would remain angry until something calmed it. The fact that it could get angry at all felt off, even.

It surprised me that my power latched onto it in the first place. My power didn’t work on non-humans. The doctors said the structure of their brains was incompatible with my very human-shaped brain. Even simian minds were too different. It had been tested.

But he was supposedly a collection of stray thoughts given form. Human thoughts, presumably. That was apparently enough for my ability to count.

So for me to get this Hatman absorbed into my mind… it was a good thing I had undergone so much training in maintaining my sense of self through invasive overlays. If I hadn’t, there might be two of the Hatman wandering around. I had felt it, momentarily.

The Hatman sought out psionic energy. Specifically, psionic energy emitted by most psychics. Even having been inside its mind, I wasn’t sure if the psionic energy acted as a source of sustenance, being some amalgamation of thought, or if the Hatman merely found it enticing for other reasons. All I knew was its drive to pull sources of psionic energy over into a world where it was easier for thoughts to unravel, where it would… consume them.

Sapphire pulled his fingers back from the terminal keyboard, letting his body go slack in the chair. More than slack, really. Like he pulled out of his body. It was just there to act as an interface between his mind and the rest of reality. When not needed, it wasn’t worth the effort of trying to stick around. He just dragged the body along on a string so that it would be handy when he needed to do something.

Something like make a report. His mission had been to spy on the other two humans. Tartarus, they were called. And yet, his report barely mentioned them. At least so far. Their gear was sufficient protection against his power. The same could not be said for the other individuals present in the vehicle.

Sapphire didn’t turn his head or otherwise move his body. He didn’t need to. Something about his power gave him an innate awareness of all nearby consciousnesses. Even when he wasn’t being them, he was still cognizant of them. At the moment, there were a number of oddities.

Ruby, he knew. He spent a decent amount of time around her. Sapphire knew exactly what she thought of him, but as two of the Carroll Institute’s limited number of artificers, she had still been forced to interact with him on occasion. She was, at the moment, ignoring him. Not necessarily because she didn’t have a scathing quip lined up the moment his actions or inactions did something to annoy her, but because she was preoccupied.

It wasn’t often that Ruby found herself at a loss. She had self confidence in droves and she knew it. Her ability made her nearly impervious to harm. Social matters were lacking, a consequence of whatever her parents had done combined with the Carroll Institute resetting her mind. She was aware of that deficiency and had been working with Emerald—and now Dyna—to try to get better.

But now there was a new problem. Every time she looked around, she saw things. Little things. Her eyes couldn’t see through the walls of the truck, but as they drove down the interstate, she kept seeing movement out there. She didn’t know what they were or what they wanted. They unnerved her. Made all the worse because they didn’t seem like a problem that would go away with knives, bullets, or even her fists.

Ruby tried to ignore it. This little vacation had been a disaster. It all started with that bleeping bowling ball. From that moment onward, it had been one downward spiral of failure after failure. Putting on a strong front was about all she could do at this point. And yet, her gaze kept drifting over to the side, moving away from those whose opinions she actually cared about to that other thing in the room.

You push Ruby away with a mental frown. Your body remains still and effectively lifeless. It had a pulse and some minor synaptic activity. Some automatic process kept the lungs working, if barely.

The object of Ruby’s attentions was interesting to you as well, however. It… wasn’t human. Like the Hatman. Unlike the Hatman, it didn’t have any desire to consume human-born psionic energy, for sustenance or any other reason. If it did, you would have raised the alarm immediately. That was one major upside to an otherwise inconvenient ability. You always knew when someone nearby was a threat. Sometimes before the threat even knew.

You didn’t classify the other inhuman consciousness as a threat. Perhaps later, after it had time to adjust. Most of the time, it was occupying itself by exploring its body. Poking its face and even eyes. It didn’t seem to react the right way to the latter.

Normal people would feel pain from touching their eyes. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but I did. I didn’t feel that pain. It was strange, having a body. I couldn’t quite put it into words. Beings on the other side began fully formed, but not as a physical form. The only way to change was to… integrate other beings. I myself had integrated a number of others. I never counted. No one did, as far as I knew. We just… did. It was how we grew, how we learned…

How I knew bodies were supposed to feel pain.

I wasn’t actually sure where this body came from. I knew what I had been trying to do when I shoved into that field of stars. Having watched that man walk from one side to the other, I figured it must work in reverse. Yet I had not expected to get an actual physical body out of it. Was I like the one they called the Hatman now? He had a body, yet could still be seen on the other side.

No, the Hatman was a monster. Twisting us into… things. Draining us of everything that made us… us. I wasn’t like that. Probably.

Was I? I didn’t think so. At the very least, something I had integrated with gave me the ability to communicate properly. That was something none of us had ever observed in the Hatman. Communication was rare among us. If we wanted to know what another of us thought or knew, we often forcibly integrated them. There was no point in dragging it out through slower methods.

Could I still do that? I glanced around the moving room, trying to ignore the novelty of a room that moved in favor of focusing on the other beings around me. Most had no presence in the other side. The only one who did was the small one. I could probably integrate her… but I might be the one integrated in the end. Not to mention, I doubted any of the others around me would be happy with that action. I didn’t know what they would do, only that I wouldn’t like it.

Words would have to suffice.

Concerning, Sapphire noted as he forced his hands back to the keyboard to make a note. That one was definitely one he would be assigned to. If only to keep a watch on it. Integration, Sapphire learned from its time inside his head, didn’t exactly destroy other entities. It subjugated them, absorbed and, as the term stated, integrated them. The entity here had never been integrated, though he supposed no active entity had been. Simply because they wouldn’t exist as a separate entity if they lost such a voracious event.

Memories of a dark world of immaterial thought welled up in Sapphire. He had three distinct sources of those memories. One from the Hatman, who had really only been cognizant of its surroundings in an abstract manner. One from the less hostile entity, which was the clearest. And one from Ruby, who tinted her memories with expectations of reality.

Entities, as far as he could tell, spontaneously appeared over there, providing a fresh supply of integration subjects—and occasionally becoming integrators themselves. Maybe they were shadows of powerful psychics. Maybe something else entirely. That was a question for scientists and researchers. His job, at the moment, was to conduct a threat analysis.

Based on this entity’s thoughts of absorbing others—even if she decided against the idea at the moment—represented a threat. The Hatman, feeding on others, did not decide against it, obviously. That meant that any other entity from that world of thought would potentially instigate hostilities. It was simply their nature. If there were more spatial anomalies, as Dyna phrased it, more might emerge from that other world.

You looked around the trailer with your own eyes, leaving your body slack after typing out the latest segment to your report. You weren’t quite sure what you were looking for. A way to test something, perhaps. Something stuck with you, ever since the Hatman escaped its initial confinements and your mind took on its thought patterns.

The world itself felt… thinner than it had before. Ruby could see—or otherwise detect—entities on the other side. You couldn’t. But the Hatman had been able to force people and objects over into that other world. Erase them from reality and reconstitute them as beings of the mind. You had seen how he had done it to the weapon the opposing organization had used to subdue him. You had seen how he tried to do it to the woman wearing protective gear.

Reaching out with his actual hands, Sapphire pulled a pen from a holder in the wall. It was a simple pen. An average ball-point blue pen encased in a shell of fiberglass and gold-colored metal. A label on the side held the Carroll Institute’s logo and name, along with a phone number and email address. An ordinary sight around the institute. Inside the mobile trailer, there were probably a dozen identical pens.

Sapphire closed his hands around it and thought back to what he had learned and observed from the Hatman. It just took a push. A little twist to squeeze it through the thin barrier between the physical and the mind. When he opened his hands again, the pen wasn’t there.

“Facility Alert: Unknown psionic waveform collapse detected.”

Everyone in the room tensed at Beatrice’s announcement. The soldiers shifted, weapons already at the ready. Doctor Teeth, unwilling to remove his protective gear at the moment, twisted and looked about as if he might be able to spot what happened. Dyna and Ruby both drew weapons and started scanning the environment as well. Even the entity and the injured boy, though far more subdued, started looking around with narrowed eyes.

Matt knew. He saw that strange boy in the far corner of the truck fiddling with a pen. Then… It was a bit hard to believe, even for himself, but he saw that pen turn into a ghost. It sounded insane. It probably was. A pen turned into a ghost? Even after having had a few things explained to him, he was so lost and confused about everything that had gone on that he didn’t even know where to start in unraveling it all.

All he knew for certain was that the Hatman was being dealt with. By professionals. At least, these people looked far more professional than the people in the other truck. They had proper tools and doctors, their truck was far larger and fancier, and they had more people. Including people with some guns. If all else failed and they had to run again, guns did work to slow down the Hatman.

Matt wasn’t sure if he should say something though. He wasn’t a professional. And that boy in the corner, who he was fairly certain had floated into the seat, creeped him out. The way he moved wasn’t right. And his eyes didn’t focus on anything in particular.

The others in the room didn’t seem to like him either. Two of them seemed to notice the ghost pen, though. The other strange woman who all the people here were just calling ‘entity’ at the moment, and the little girl with red hair who Matt was sure he had killed with a trap he couldn’t even remember placing… yet here she was. They both had ghosts overlaid on top of them, which was probably how they noticed.

I remained where I was, barely moving, ignoring Ruby’s words. It was possible that the announcement wasn’t about me, but the timing was too coincidental. I probably deserved all Ruby’s ire. Experimenting like that was going to get me written up. Not to mention thrown into a testing chamber where I would do nothing but push things through the worlds for weeks on end.

And yet, I stared at my empty hands. Some psychic abilities came easily to me. Any time my mind took an imprint of another psychic’s mind, I knew how to use their power. At least for a time. Be it illusion projection, clairvoyance, or alternate methods of mind reading or even mind control. Artificer abilities didn’t work. Perhaps I could force them to work if I had the artifacts, but touching artifacts other than my own burned. A purely psychosomatic burning, but it caused pain nonetheless.

There were some abilities that were strange to me, and unusable despite my best efforts. Two of those abilities were sitting in the room with me.

Ruby’s power gave her a perfect and acute knowledge of every aspect of her own body. Anything that she considered her. It fed into her artifact’s ability to repair her body as if they had been tailored to work together. Knowing what I knew about her past and parents, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. Nevertheless, it didn’t work for me. It didn’t give me perfect knowledge of my body and it didn’t give me knowledge of her body. It was just a blank spot.

The other ability I had no capacity to use… wasn’t fully classified or understood. The Carroll Institute was, understandably, hesitant to put too much focus on it for fear that its owner would use it against them.

A fear that Sapphire agreed with, based on what he saw in her mind. If she thought they did something to her whether or not it was true, it was entirely possible, likely even, that she would act with hostility. His input in the matter had shaped some of the policy.

There was another fear that she might accidentally simply erase reality itself. Sapphire doubted that one, though couldn’t deny that it was possible, just unlikely. Having been inside her mind, he knew that her sense of self and knowledge of how the world was supposed to work was fairly concrete. Still, it had a few of the administrators contemplating simply killing her to eliminate the threat.

They were held back by another faction that worried that her death would destroy reality in much the same way.

Sapphire had no input for that group.

Class X Will Imposition. That was what it said in the most classified of documents. Sapphire didn’t technically have access to them, but nothing could be kept secret from him for long. Walter knew. Thus Sapphire knew. Walter knew that Sapphire knew, but he also knew that Sapphire wouldn’t spread it around. Besides Walter, Sapphire was pretty sure that knowledge of the true power of Dyna Graves was restricted to only the highest echelons of the Carroll Institute’s administrators.

Everything odd about her had been explained away through other means. Generally artifacts. The psionic cascade that first brought her to Sapphire’s attention? Anomalous artifact activity—possibly artifact cross-contamination during the compatibility tests. Emerald failing for the first time in her life? Enemy artifact usage. So on and so forth. Every single thing had an official explanation. Sometimes, those official explanations were even the actual explanations.

You didn’t glance over to Dyna T. Graves. Still, you were aware of her. You were always aware. She didn’t think she was a reality warper. Every strange thing she had experienced was simply how the world worked for her, thus there was never anything deeper to cause her to question too much. In fact, she was starting to get an idea that her power was that of artifact creation.

If she thought that hard enough, would it become true? Would she lose her Will Imposition?

You weren’t sure about that.

But now, having interfaced with two separate inhuman entities, there was another question on your mind.

Reaching forward to the keyboard once again, you typed out a coded message into your report that only the intended recipient would be able to decipher.

Is Dyna Graves human?

 

 

Dyna didn’t actually need the guards to strip in order to get their protective gear. She should have expected it, but they brought spares. Although they were a common sight around the Carroll Institute—especially down in Psychodynamics—Dyna had never worn the insulating equipment before. It wasn’t just like pulling on a pair of pants and throwing on a shirt.

The silvery fabric didn’t bend easily. Not because of whatever it was made from, but because of how thick the material was. It felt like wearing an extremely heavy winter coat. Except somehow worse. Then there was a large backpack that had to be hooked into various parts of the suits. Lacking air holes or other breathing filters in the mask, Dyna had to wear a full-face mask underneath the larger silver hood. Air got pulled in through the tanks on the back, filtered and processed, and then delivered through a small hose up to the mask.

Ado’s suit, much thinner and obviously easier to move in, looked more like a long raincoat that could just be thrown over the top of regular clothes. While Dyna hadn’t seen her don it, it simply couldn’t have anything like the backpack. There just wasn’t room.

Even under normal circumstances, Dyna would have preferred Ado’s version. Trying to get into a bulky and heavy suit that required the assistance of the two other people was an ordeal even before factoring in the Hatman. As it was, Dyna had to stop, equip one component, then break into a run again—made harder with each added piece of the suit—and loop around the trailers to give herself some time to equip the next piece.

Doctor Teeth wanted to load everyone up and move, but Dyna said no. Once they got him on the phone, Walter had agreed. That would give the Hatman a chance to disappear. Then they would have to track him down all over again without knowing who his target might be. Right now, he was after Dyna. Even one of the guards shooting him hadn’t changed that. But put too much distance between them and he might look for closer targets.

Finally, after several loops around the parking lot, the two technicians helped Dyna tug on the silvery gloves. They were about the only dexterous part of the Level S Psionic Insulation Suit, designed for both scientists and guards to operate their respective tools.

It was time.

Two warning drones echoed over the speakers. “Attention all non-security team personnel: Evacuate Mobile Medical Sciences Laboratory immediately.”

Despite the announcement, Dyna was mostly sure that it already had been evacuated. Doctor Teeth had moved up into the command trailer along with everyone else. It was, at the moment, completely sealed off. The only people outside were two guards who had been taking shots at the Hatman’s knees whenever he looked like he would catch up before Dyna was ready to move, Ruby, who had her finger tight over the trigger for the disruptor but had yet to actually use it, and the two technicians who had been helping Dyna.

There should still be two guards watching over Grafton, but…

“Attention security personnel: An emergency evacuation of the Mobile Psionic Isolation Chamber has been issued. Code Kilo. India. Lima. Seven.” The announcement paused, only to start again after three brief warning tones. “Warning: Hostile psychic type: Transmitter-Controller now active in local area. Maintain cognizance.”

Being outside the trailer, Dyna didn’t actually get to see the chamber opening up. Shortly after the announcement, however, both the remaining guards emerged from the medical trailer with Grafton laid down on a gurney. Unconscious because of the sedatives. They pushed him out, moving well clear of the trailer. Under other circumstances, Ado and Maple might have come out to see him. Now, however, both were too busy.

Dyna wasn’t sure what Tartarus was working on. They hadn’t communicated anything. The back of their truck was still open, however. Every time Dyna stopped to put on a new piece of gear, she glanced over. They were both fine, though it was a bit harder to tell now. Maple had joined Ado in wearing one of the full suits. Presumably, they were working on something that might help the situation. Dyna wasn’t sure what that was, but this plan didn’t need them. If it failed, or if the Hatman didn’t stay contained in the isolation chamber, maybe they would have something else as a backup.

“Ruby? Are you ready?”

The protective suits had their own headset communicators, which also picked up regular old sound from outside the suit. Otherwise, things would be too muffled to hear clearly.

Ruby did not wear one of the suits. At least not in full. They… apparently didn’t have one in her size. The suits were one-size-fits-all, but all did not include actual children. The gear Ruby did have on was limited to the Tartarus mask, silver boots, and one of the upper portions of the suit. Which, on her, did look rather like an oversized heavy coat.

She gave Dyna a nod of her head, but without glancing over. Ruby had the last line of defense against the Hatman, should he suddenly develop a complete immunity to bullets taking out his knees. They didn’t know how many times the disruptor would fire while still remaining effective, so she had to be sparing in actually using it.

“The Mobile Medical Sciences Laboratory has been cleared of personnel,” Beatrice said over Dyna’s headset.

“Great,” Dyna said, turning slightly to watch as the Hatman rounded the side of the trailer. That more than anything else demonstrated his lack of humanity or even greater sapience. He acted more like robot unable to break from his programming.

Though, knowing Beatrice, perhaps that was a bit of an insulting comparison.

Except, this time, he did break from his relentless pursuit. He stopped cold upon rounding the corner. His head swept over the parking lot, moving straight past Dyna without pause, only to stop on Ruby. But he didn’t stay staring in her direction for long. He kept going, looking to Grafton before turning his whole body to look toward Tartarus.

“He stopped?” Dyna said, scowling. She reached over to the small table the technicians had wheeled out to carry the suit’s parts. Grabbing her gun, glad the suit gloves let her hold it without fumbling around, she took aim.

When the Hatman took a step toward Ruby, Dyna flipped the safety and squeezed the trigger.

The Hatman jerked back, stopped, and looked around again. His line of sight had to have crossed over Dyna, and yet he simply looked back to Ruby after a moment.

“It’s the suit, isn’t it?” Dyna asked, realizing just why he had never gone after the guards despite them opening fire as well. “The suit is too good, so he can’t see me?”

“Observed behavior matches hypothesis.”

That… ruined the whole plan.

Dyna, gun in one hand, used the other to peel back the silver fabric around her wrist. Simple strips of silver-colored velcro held most of the separate parts of the suit closed. There was some around her collar, waist, boots, and gloves.

Just showing skin wasn’t quite enough. Raising her gun and shooting again, this time with the thick sleeve of her suit pushed up, did get the Hatman to stop and look in her direction.

“Alright,” Dyna said, backing up now that he was after her again. “Guess we’re doing it like this.”

“You can’t,” Ruby hissed. “He’ll get you.”

“He didn’t get Ado and her suit is a whole lot more open than this one little spot on my arm.”

“But—”

“Just be ready.”

“If I have to drag your ass back to this side of the world…”

That, Dyna figured, would just make them even. But she didn’t say it. Dyna knew Ruby well enough at this point to know the signs of frustration and irritation. The younger girl wasn’t happy. Not in the slightest. Between Grafton being freed and getting caught by the Hatman in the first place, Ruby probably wouldn’t take light-hearted quips all that well.

Besides, Dyna had to move. The Hatman approached her, once again ignoring the others in favor of Dyna. Backing up quick enough to maintain distance but slow enough to make sure that the Hatman didn’t lose her again, Dyna retreated up the ramp leading into the medical trailer.

It was empty. All the fold-out tables had been put back into place, leaving the walls flat and unobstructed. Dyna wasn’t sure what happened to the dismembered arm. Maybe it had been put into a container for later study.

The back of the trailer, once a curved wall of dark metal with only a tiny viewing window, had been opened up. The front door looked like it slid around the rest of the cylindrical chamber. Inside, there was a simple seat. Not fancy at all. It looked like it had next to no padding. The back, armrests, and legs of the chair all were some kind of metal. Both armrests and the front legs had thick metal shackles built into them. A metal harness, much like that of a roller coaster ride, looked like it would lower to further clamp down on any unfortunate inmate contained within.

Dyna stepped into the chamber and immediately felt a… stillness. The door hadn’t closed around her or anything. Yet, it felt like walking into a room with an excess of soundproof foam on the walls. Except instead of affecting her ears, it was a stillness of the mind.

Uncomfortable, but harmless. And a bit odd. She would have thought that the suit would have deafened her mind. But maybe it was one-way insulating. Psionic emissions could escape but not enter? Or maybe the isolation chamber was just that much stronger than the suit.

That was good. It meant the Hatman would have an even harder time escaping.

Whatever the case, entering the isolation chamber made the Hatman stall again. He made it up into the trailer, but paused two steps in. His face, features scribbled out, aimed in her direction and yet it didn’t feel like he was looking at her.

Dyna stepped back outside the isolation chamber, tugging open the gap between her glove and her sleeve again. “Hey!” she called.

That got him to face her properly. The Hatman took two steps and lunged. Black trails of permanent marker followed his hands as he attacked.

Dyna pulled up her gun and shot him in the leg. Just as he had every time the guards shot at him, he stumbled. Stepping to the side, Dyna let him stumble past her. As he did so, she tugged the glove back closed, sealing her suit once again.

With only mild trepidation, Dyna shoved the Hatman from behind.

Phase-wandering entity or not, her hands impacted against his back and sent him forward into the isolation chamber.

“Ruby!”

“Move.” Ruby’s voice came from behind Dyna, back toward the entrance of the trailer.

Dyna wasted no time in pressing herself up against the wall of the trailer.

Unlike the last time one of the disruptor guns had gone off in vaguely her direction, Dyna felt nothing. The suit sufficiently shielded her from the wave of nausea. The Hatman wasn’t so lucky. Although insulating, the chamber still had its door open, allowing the disruptor’s invisible wave in.

He promptly collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

Dyna rushed forward once again, doubting that the effect would last for long. This wasn’t the larger disruptor, after all. It probably wasn’t calibrated properly either.

The Hatman wasn’t properly in the chair, but Dyna still grabbed his wrist and wrenched it around to the manacle attached to the armrest.

“Shackle Lock Left Arm: Engaged.”

She had to twist his other arm out from under his body to get in position. He was already starting to stir. Not attack, not yet, but there was a bit more resistance in pulling it around than there would have been from an unconscious body.

“Shackle Lock Right Arm: Engaged.”

The metal bindings closed automatically once Dyna pressed it down into place.

He was facing her now. Sort of. With his head hanging slack, all Dyna could really see was his hat. She was tempted to just tear it off. It should have been soaked from being inside the water tank, but it wasn’t. None of him was.

Further proof of his inhumanity.

Unfortunately, he was stirring more and more. No time to investigate. Not to mention, Ado had not removed the hat when putting him into their containment tank. It could be part of him. If that was the case, it would remain right where it was. With him now in the custody of the Carroll Institute, scientists would surely figure out every little detail about him.

Dyna bent down, grabbing his shoe to twist his foot into position.

“Shackle Lock Right Leg: Engaged.”

“Dyna!”

While moving to grab the left leg, the Hatman kicked out. The shined shoe struck Dyna straight in the face. A crack spread through the aluminized glass in front of her face as she fell backwards.

Ruby rushed forward. Dyna could hear the footsteps. Dyna had to twist and raise her arms to stop Ruby before she got too close. “I’m fine! Just jostled. Don’t touch him.”

Despite the crack, she could still see the Hatman. The inner mask wasn’t damaged. She wasn’t sure if it had some protective elements to it as well or if the crack was just cosmetic.

Though, it couldn’t have been purely cosmetic.

Ruby used the disruptor again. This time, Dyna could feel it. Faint, barely there. More of a breath from across the room than a wave of dizziness. Still, it made Dyna lick her dry lips.

The Hatman wouldn’t be able to get through, would he? She could call up one of the other guards. Get them to do this in her place. Shouldn’t they be doing this anyway?

The Hatman was limp in the chair again. Dyna decided not to rely on others. They could probably do the job just fine, but she was here now. She just had to get his foot into the manacle and everything would be over with.

Wrenching herself forward, having to put far more weight into sitting up than she was used to, Dyna lunged for the Hatman’s leg. She gripped it, slid it over, and slammed it into position.

“Shackle Lock Left Leg: Engaged. Attention: Please stand clear of the Mobile Psionic Isolation Chamber.”

Dyna, half seated on the ground, scooted back as quickly as she could.

“Mobile Psionic Isolation Chamber closing. Stand clear. Stand clear.”

A motor whirred somewhere in the walls of the trailer. In moments, the heavy metal door hissed shut, sealing the Hatman into the isolation chamber. A moment of silence passed before either Dyna or Ruby said anything.

“You don’t see any of those… things about to free him again, do you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good,” Dyna said, relaxing slightly. “Help me up.”

It took a bit of work to get back to her feet. The suit and especially backpack were heavy and Ruby wasn’t that large. But Dyna eventually made it. She approached the glass porthole of the Isolation chamber.

The Hatman sat inside, perfectly still. He wasn’t thrashing against the restraints or otherwise trying to escape. The permanent marker of a face was calm and unmoving.

Ruby slammed her foot into the metal door hard enough that anyone else would have had to worry about broken toes. She just let out a grunt. “Bastard.”

Dyna didn’t bother admonishing her for her language. She could agree with the sentiment. With her actual memories of her first encounter with the Hatman gone, she didn’t have what probably should have been a fairly primal fear or revulsion of him. But he attacked Ruby. Made her disappear. If he had been able to erase Dyna’s phone, she might not have realized until too late. In addition, she knew that he had messed with her memories. Several times, in fact. That was absolutely unforgivable.

And he wasn’t the only one. Someone else had presumably erased a much larger portion of her mind, if that painted-out book had been any indication. Hopefully picking apart the Hatman would give her some clue. The way he erased memories felt similar enough.

Until then…

“Beatrice, let everyone know that we’re ready to move the vehicles to prevent the… other people from freeing the Hatman again. Ruby, maybe talk to that other entity about how we can more permanently stop them?”

Ruby nodded, then paused. “Are you alright?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Dyna asked, then stopped and tried to shake her head, only to fail completely. “Actually, no. Help me out of this thing.”

 

 

 

Dyna didn’t hesitate to leap into motion. She also didn’t hesitate to leap into the truck. Given that the Hatman seemed dangerous only in close range, it might have seemed like a foolish decision, but there was something inside she needed.

She rushed past the disruptors mounted on the wall. It was tempting to grab one and swing it around, but the disruptor wouldn’t do her any good if she stood around staring at empty space, wondering why she had grabbed it in the first place. That was a sure way to wind up just like Ruby had outside the hospital. No, Dyna moved past the disruptors and past Ado, heading straight for Maple.

Or, more accurately, the rack of protective masks hanging from the wall between him and the terminal.

Dyna grabbed one and pressed it to her face as fast as she could.

Just in time to hear glass falling to pieces behind her and a rush of water—or whatever had been in that tank—spilling out over the back of the truck.

Whirling around, Dyna couldn’t help the relief she felt at being able to see the Hatman. If she hadn’t put the mask on in time, she probably would have ended up just standing around, staring with a blank expression on her face. Much like Ruby was doing at the moment.

“Ruby!” Dyna said, grabbing another mask from the wall. Throwing it with an underhand toss, she called out at the same time, “Put that—”

The mask didn’t reach its intended target.

The Hatman’s permanent marker-covered face, formerly dormant, burst into a flurry of activity. His fist shot out from the opening in the broken glass. It looked like he meant to strike at Ado, but he inadvertently knocked the flying mask out of the air. It hit the ground, emitting a series of sparks.

At the same time, Ado backpedaled, dodging the Hatman’s swipe. Apparently deciding the tank was a lost cause, she turned her back to the Hatman in order to take the large disruptor off its mount on the wall.

Dyna wasn’t sure how intelligent the Hatman was. The entity didn’t act intelligent. He didn’t speak and he moved in a way that felt… off. Obviously inhuman. Certainly nothing like the other entity that was over in the Carroll Institute trailer. That one was off as well, but still more human than the Hatman.

However, there must have been some glimmer of intelligence underneath that wide brim of his. Dyna figured he would simply lash out at the closest target—Ado—or maybe turn his attention to one of his previous targets—either Dyna, Ruby, or Matt. Rather, he used his tall stature to reach over the top of Ado as he stepped out of the broken containment tank.

His hand clasped around the large disruptor. A blur of permanent marker scribbled it out of existence. Ado stumbled, weight suddenly gone. She bumped a shoulder into the Hatman as a result.

He didn’t budge. His hands dropped down to Ado’s shoulders. He slammed her into the wall of the truck, pinning her there. There was one more disruptor up on the wall, but it was now stuck underneath Ado’s body.

She wasn’t disappearing like the gun had. Her protective suit must have been doing its job. Either that or the Hatman wanted to torment her.

Dislike of her aside, Dyna wasn’t going to let that happen if she could help it. If nothing else, she needed Ado to get Ruby back to normal. It would probably be difficult to accomplish that if she wound up phase-shifted.

There was only one more spare mask on the wall. Dyna took it and tossed it behind the Hatman’s back. Ruby snatched it out of the air without any trouble. Although she had a confused look on her face, she put it up to her face.

The change in posture was abrupt. She went from wary, guarded, and uncertain to aggressive in the blink of an eye. With her knife appearing in her hand, she looked ready to jump onto the Hatman’s back and start stabbing him repeatedly in the neck. Unfortunately, that would probably wind up with her phase-shifted again. She lacked Ado’s protective suit.

“Ruby,” Dyna said quickly before anyone could make any rash decisions. “The disruptor I left with the technician. Can you get it?”

Ruby hesitated. She took a half step forward, looked down at her knife, and apparently came to the same conclusion that Dyna had. With a curt nod of her head, she wordlessly turned on her heel and started sprinting back toward the Carroll Institute trailers.

Which, now that Dyna was paying attention, looked like they had sealed shut. Neither of the entrances were open. The guards were still outside, all aiming their guns toward Tartarus’ truck. Thankfully, none were firing.

With Ruby rushing back to hopefully get a weapon that would work on the Hatman, that left Dyna, a pinned Ado, and a seemingly frozen-where-he-stood Maple. All in a small confined area with a monster capable of removing them from reality at little more than a touch.

The truck had a side door. Closed at the moment, but Dyna slammed her fist into the button that would open it. Then she grabbed the keyboard from the terminal. It was wired, but a quick wrench pulled it loose.

Dyna promptly threw the keyboard at the Hatman. It hit his back and harmlessly fell to the ground.

It did get him to turn his head.

“Hey, remember me?” Dyna grabbed the trackball mouse. It didn’t come free as easily as the keyboard had, but the trackball fell right into Dyna’s hand. She flung it, managing to pelt the Hatman right between the eyes.

The ball never hit the ground. Black permanent marker scribbled it out of existence on its way down.

“He’s looking this way,” Maple said with a tremor in his voice.

“Out the door.” Dyna practically shoved Maple out the side opening of the truck. “Quick.”

To his credit, Maple found his motivation to unfreeze from his spot against the wall. Unfortunately, that motivation came in the form of the Hatman dropping Ado and turning fully on them.

Dyna hopped out of the truck and broke into a full-on sprint, leaving Maple behind. The Hatman wasn’t fast, but that was no reason to sit around waiting just outside his reach when she didn’t have to.

She pulled out her pistol as she ran. Matt said they worked to slow him down. Ruby wasn’t back with the disruptor yet. Even when she did arrive with it, they didn’t have a way to put him down for any length of time. Not with the large disruptor having disappeared to who-knew where. Even if they did incapacitate the Hatman, it wasn’t like they had a place to store him.

Not unless Doctor Teeth had been correct and the psionic isolation chamber, currently occupied by Grafton, would work. It probably could. The Hatman was a bundle of psionic energy. If they could isolate that from the rest of the world, then he would be effectively contained.

But without the disruptor knocking him out…

Could she lure him inside? He was after her at the moment. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed that. Maple had sprinted off toward the school building while Dyna was headed perpendicular to that, running out into the parking lot.

Stopping, Dyna pivoted and raised her gun. Her mind was running through possibilities. Most of which involved her getting into a corner she couldn’t easily escape from just to get the Hatman into that psionic isolation chamber. She needed to know just how well a gun could stop him. To what effect. How long he would be distracted or incapacitated…

Flicking her thumb over the safety of her USP, she looked down the sights. Small glowing green dots. She didn’t have her ear protection on, but couldn’t help that at the moment. Finger over the trigger, she squeezed out three quick rounds.

If the Hatman teleported them away, it wasn’t obvious. Based on the disruptor and trackball, it took some time to do so, meaning he would wind up hit regardless.

And he did get hit. One struck straight in his center-mass. The .45 ACP bullet would have shattered the sternum on any normal person, sending bone shards and bullet fragments into vital organs. Another hit him just up and to the right. It probably would have punctured his lung, assuming it didn’t just shatter his ribs into his lung. She couldn’t tell where the third hit in the dim light. Either his shoulder or, possibly, straight over his shoulder. Regardless, the first two shots should have been more than enough to put down anyone.

The Hatman did stagger. He stopped his slow advance completely, jerking to a stop. But he didn’t go down. He didn’t collapse to his knees. After a tense fifteen seconds, he took one small step. Then another. In short time, he was moving again.

It didn’t slow him down enough. And Matt had been fending him off with a shotgun and a few home-made traps? Even if the Hatman never sprinted after him, his tenacity made Matt’s extended evasion all the more impressive.

Dyna flicked her eyes to the side. The guards were all taking aim, but hadn’t fired yet. It was possible they considered Maple still in their line of fire. He needed to veer off to the side to shield himself behind the truck. Or perhaps they had orders, were waiting on orders, or simply thought that Dyna could handle it on her own, being an artificer.

The mirror in her pocket might as well have been a paper weight. It wasn’t very heavy, so it wouldn’t have been good even at that small task. All Dyna really had was a few months of training with Emerald and Ruby. Which, to be fair, had been fairly intensive, but…

Didn’t really apply to the current situation.

Rather than pull out her mirror, Dyna pulled out her phone and quickly dialed a number.

“This is Beatrice.”

“Grafton’s cell in the trailer, could it hold the Hatman?” She needed to make sure that the final step of her plan would actually work before she started on step one.

“Unknown. No test data exists.”

Dyna continued to back away from the Hatman. Her initial sprint had put a good space between them, but with her walking backward and him power walking toward her, he was slowly closing that distance. “You must have some idea,” she said. “A guess or estimate or whatever you want to call it.”

Three clicking noises echoed over the phone line, followed by some garbled voices that were all saying something different, yet all spoke with Beatrice’s voice. The odd moment ended as quickly as it came and Beatrice’s voice came over the phone loud and clear once again. “Observation: The Hatman transfers people and objects to unknown. Observation: The Hatman was unable to transfer shielded protective equipment and the human contained within. Hypothesis: Psionic Isolation Chamber sufficient to contain the Hatman. Warning: Unknown anomaly caused containment breach. The Psionic Isolation Chamber is more robust than Tartarus’ glass containment unit, but may not withstand such assaults.”

So it was viable. At least they had some solution. But Beatrice brought up a good point. “The other entity is still in there with Teeth, right? Can you get me in communication.”

“One moment, please… Connected.”

“Entity?” Dyna said.

“What was that?” The voice was distant at first, then became clear as if someone had moved a microphone over in the middle of her question.

“It’s Dyna. Question I need answered as quickly as possible: I thought you and the… others didn’t like the Hatman? Why would they free him from his cell and how do we stop them from doing that again?”

“The Hatman is free?” She did not sound happy. “Is that what the commotion is about?”

“Ruby saw someone on the other side getting close to the Hatman, then the glass broke, now he’s chasing after me.” Ruby, Dyna noted, was only just now getting the guards to admit her into the trailers. That meant she should soon have the disruptor.

Dyna was a little surprised that Ado hadn’t popped out with the other one. With how hard the Hatman shoved her into the wall, it could easily be too damaged to be operational. Or maybe she was trying to recalibrate it to function like the larger disruptor.

Or maybe she was injured.

Too many possibilities. Dyna was putting her money on Ruby at this point.

“I see,” the entity said over Dyna’s phone. “It is possible they didn’t realize he was trapped. Or it is possible they were one of his.”

“His?”

“The ones he takes in and…” Dyna could almost hear a shudder. “He makes them think like he does. They have no thoughts of their own. Not after he is done with them. It is why we don’t like him. If he wanted, he could do the same to us.”

“He ignores you though?”

“There is something about the people out here. They are more… tangible? Having a body is strange. Normally, it is just us and our thoughts. I assume that fact makes the people out here more attractive to him, though I do not know why or how he selects his targets. Perhaps there is a use for them. I normally try to keep away from him.”

Mildly interesting. Mostly irrelevant. “How do we stop it from happening again?”

“Fend them off?”

“Do you have a suggestion as to how?”

“I might be able to. But your friend is likely more suited to the task of violence.”

“Ruby?”

“If she could see them, I’m sure I could teach her how to interact with them. At least once I figure it out myself.”

“How long will that take?”

“A while, but interference can be delayed. The other side, as you put it, is reliant on the thoughts of the many. The buildings? People see them, internalize them, and they form over there. This vehicle may have started to form, but I doubt it is fully substantial—and thus intractable—over there.”

“So we capture him then keep on the move until you figure out how to best defend against his… minions?” That was a plan Dyna could work with. “Any ideas on how to get him into a small chamber without getting us all phase shifted?”

The entity just laughed. “Good luck with that,” she said, voice carrying a note of finality.

“Beatrice?” Dyna said. She didn’t have any other immediate questions for the entity and if the entity didn’t have any ideas on how to contain the Hatman, she didn’t have time to chit-chat. “Thoughts on getting the Hatman in the isolation chamber?”

“Physical, unshielded contact required for the Hatman to submit unknown transfer.”

“Yes, I know that—”

“Find shielding.”

Dyna blinked, then it hit her. She felt like smacking herself in the face. It was so obvious, especially after having seen Ado not disappear in front of her eyes.

Shifting back into a sprint, Dyna turned toward the Carroll Institute vehicle. Ruby was on her way out with the disruptor, but Dyna had a different target in mind.

“Hey,” she shouted to the nearest guard. “I need your clothes!”

 

 

Dyna stared at the… she honestly wasn’t sure what to call it. It looked like a person. It had all the person-y things. Hair, hands, a face. The face especially. At this point in time, Dyna had only one other example of an entity. That of the Hatman. While his facial features—or lack thereof—could be the result of a psychic power, it didn’t feel that way at all. The rest of his mannerisms were distinctly inhuman. And he couldn’t speak.

“Don’t touch me,” the entity said, swatting away Doctor Teeth’s attempt at placing a wire-ridden metal colander over her head. Snow-like static encompassed her hand as she made contact, but nothing else seemed to happen as a result of that.

Rather, everything that the entity touched, including the floor under her feet, caused a little burst of static to cover her.

“Oh please,” Teeth said, now wearing his full suit once again. He pulled back and glanced up to Dyna. “Artificer, ensure the subject cooperates.”

Dyna pressed her lips further into a frown. She had the disruptor, but it wasn’t aimed at the entity. As far as she was concerned, the entity was cooperating. She was peacefully standing about, had let Doctor Teeth wave tools over her, and was really only protesting physical contact. Were Dyna in her position, she would have a great number of complaints.

The physical contact was understandable too. Dyna wasn’t sure if it was painful, but those bursts of static whenever something touched her did cause small seizures that couldn’t be comfortable.

“What’s your name?” Dyna asked.

There was still something about her. A familiarity that Dyna couldn’t quite place. A name might help, if she recognized it. Even if she didn’t, it would give her something else to use to refer to the entity. At the moment, she had no idea how to refer to the entity and was jumping all over the place within her mind.

Not to mention, she felt a name might even the playing field. The entity knew her name somehow. Whether by overhearing, psychic power, or if that vague familiarity was something more concrete, a name to refer to it in return would go a long way.

The entity didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes, constantly covered in the snow that occasionally wracked the rest of her body, flicked over Dyna’s shoulder.

Keeping the entity in view just in case she needed to act, Dyna followed her line of sight.

Ruby leaned against the wall of the medical trailer. She had her knife out. In rhythmic timing, she flipped it up in the air, caught it by the blade, then flipped it back up again. All without even looking at the knife. Her eyes were locked on their guest.

The flipping of the knife stopped when Dyna let out a long sigh. With a slight shake of her head, Dyna turned back to the entity and forced a smile. “I’m Dyna.”

“Of course you are,” she said, crossing her arms.

“Are you… Do you have a name?”

The entity didn’t say anything. She simply stared, snow in her eyes making Dyna uncomfortable.

“Do you know how you got here? Where you came from?”

“Noosphere.”

Doctor Teeth sucked in a breath. Dyna did her best to ignore him. “The philosophical concept of a sphere of thought enveloping the Earth—”

“It’s what it is called. I don’t know anything else.”

Dyna nodded her head, not sure what to think about that at all. The Noosphere was an old concept. At least a hundred years older than she was. A few of the classes at the Carroll Institute—mostly those that discussed the Advent of Psionic Potential—covered it, though only in the briefest terms. She was pretty sure it was supposed to be a thought experiment or philosophical pondering. Not an actual place where things and people—or whatever entities were—could exist.

It was possible that whoever had named the place had merely used the concept as a name. In fact, Dyna was leaning toward that being the answer. And that was in spite of Doctor Teeth rushing over to a terminal, obviously typing in Noosphere to refresh himself on the subject.

“And the spatial anomaly—the high school stage where you got here—that was some kind of portal between here and there?”

“That thing that you captured has been here before. We’ve been watching. It walks between here and there at will, but leaves behind… traces we watch. Then that man appeared and disappeared. I thought: What if I can go too?”

Talking about Maple, probably, when he stumbled through. It seemed much easier for him to step back and forth, but maybe he damaged it on his way. Of slightly more interest to Dyna in particular, especially with regards to Ruby, was something else she mentioned. “We?”

The entity fell silent again. For a moment, Dyna thought she wasn’t going to respond at all, but then she looked up. “The others. We don’t like each other, but you can’t exist alone over there. Not like here,” she said, giving a content sigh. “I don’t even know what you’re thinking.”

“Well, I want to learn—”

“That wasn’t an invitation. I like being alone. It’s… nice.”

Doctor Teeth spun around, stepping closer to the entity. “You’re in constant psychic link with other beings in the Noosphere?”

“Not currently. That isn’t how things work here. Things are… strange.” Unfolding her arms, she looked down at her hand. First her palm, then she turned it over and examined the back of her hand. She paid special attention to her nails, which had the same static effect over them as her eyes. “Though I’m not sure if I’m all the way here. It feels strange. But maybe that’s just how this place works. I don’t know.”

Dyna opened her mouth to ask another question, but stopped.

Ruby spoke in a voice unrealistically quiet for her. “You aren’t.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re not real. You aren’t here in the real world.”

“I don’t think I would be talking—”

“You aren’t,” Ruby said, pushing off from her spot against the wall. She marched over, pointing her knife straight toward the entity. Dyna shifted, holding an arm out, but Ruby stopped before getting anywhere near. “I saw you. I saw you over there, before they brought me back. But you were supposedly already here? I saw you. I didn’t see Dyna or anyone else. Just you.”

Static-filled eyes turned to the side to look directly at Ruby.

The movement made Ruby—fearless little Ruby—flinch.

“You… aren’t all here either, are you?”

It was a simple question asked in the most innocuous of tones. Yet it had Dyna whipping her head around.

Ruby looked fine. She didn’t have static or permanent marker or anything else obscuring any of her features. Her skin looked normal, her eyes looked normal, her hair looked normal. Her stance and posture were familiar and completely normal for her.

And yet, it almost looked like she had been smacked. She took a step back, withdrawing the knife. Her eyes widened ever so slightly before narrowing once again.

“Teeth!” Dyna snapped. “Would you please give Ruby an examin—”

“I’m fine.”

“You just took a step back!”

“That has nothing to do with anything,” Ruby said through grit teeth. “I just…”

“Um..?”

Dyna looked away from Ruby, the entity, and Doctor Teeth to find Matt propping himself up on his medical bed. “Yes?”

“I… I wasn’t sure if I should mention this, but those two have… ghosts following them around,” Matt said, pointing between Ruby and the entity. “But they aren’t like the normal ghosts I see. More like shadows?”

Dyna stood, forgetting the entity entirely as she turned to Ruby.

“I’m fine,” Ruby said again, barely moving her lips from their unhappy curl. “Just… aftereffects. That is the thing you have to worry about.” Ruby pointed her knife straight toward the entity.

“I have done nothing.”

Teeth shrugged. “You did throw a grown woman several feet. Quite impressive with your stature.”

“I thought about what I wanted and it happened. Nothing—”

“Teeth, would you please focus on Ruby?”

Reflective piece of glass in front of his face obscured his eyes, but he did manage to turn his head away from the entity. “I am not sure what you wish for me to do,” he said simply. “All this—” He waved his hands vaguely about. “—is new to us. Even newer than most psionic phenomena. I don’t have a machine that measures whether or not someone is half into the Noosphere. I don’t have a machine to pull them the rest of the way over.”

“Then we—”

Two light announcement tones sounded over the interior audio system. “Attention please. Confirmed release authorization for CI-PRI-6567.”

“Excellent,” Teeth said, looking from the ceiling down to the containment unit at the back of the truck. “Now we can get back to Psychodynamics and take measurements with proper equipment.”

“What? No.” Dyna moved, stepping around the entity to put herself between Teeth and the two guards standing outside Grafton’s chamber. “Ruby is not back to normal, Beatrice. Tartarus has not fulfilled their end of the deal.”

“Understood. Please wait.”

Dyna let out a small sigh, only to realize that three people were glaring at her now. Ruby, she could understand. After all, Ruby was fine. Ignoring her protests and treating her like she didn’t know better was something that would get under her skin, but… Well, she could be mad all she wanted as long as she was alright.

Doctor Teeth’s glare was hidden behind his protective gear, but his posture was obviously unhappy. He was likely just upset that she was delaying his return to the Carroll Institute. Understandable as well, though frankly, Dyna wished they had sent a different doctor. One a little more interested in the people here who needed his help and a little less interested in psychic phenomena. However, Dyna also knew the kind of place the institute was. A regular medical doctor probably would never be put in charge of things. The people who rose to prominent positions were people like Doctor Cross.

People who obsessed over their fields of interest.

The guards behind Dyna hadn’t moved, thankfully. They would be waiting for Beatrice. Matt, though less intensely than he had been at the start, was still sneaking glances at the entity and Ruby. The other two medical technicians had gotten their protective gear back on as well. Dyna couldn’t see their faces and their body language was less obvious than Teeth’s.

The last person glaring had Dyna putting on a confused frown. “What?” she asked.

The entity blinked. Tiny bursts of static rippled down her cheeks in time with her blink. “Everyone around me is upset with you. Should I not be as well?”

“No?”

“Oh.”

Teeth immediately lost interest in looking at Dyna and turned his attention to the entity. “Did you come to that conclusion through situational context clues or psionic abilities such as emotion or mind reading?”

“I don’t understand the difference.”

“Fantastic. I wish I could get proper readings, but ambient psionic energy is too much in this area and filtering it is difficult with how much it is fluctuating.” He grabbed the metal colander again. “If you would just cooperate—”

“Don’t touch me.”

“But—”

“You two try not to kill each other,” Dyna said. “And don’t let Grafton out. Ruby, let’s go talk to Tartarus again and see if they have any ideas.”

“I’m—”

“Fine, yes. But you could be fine-er.”

Ruby grunted, but didn’t say anything else.

At least not before Teeth cut in, waving the colander at the entity. “You’re leaving me alone with it?”

Dyna gave a pointed look to the two guards and two technicians before looking back to Teeth. “She’s been cooperative thus far.”

“It refuses to wear the psychotronic scanner.”

“Yes, well, I don’t blame her. Those things pull out bits of my hair every time I have to wear one,” Dyna said, turning to the trailer’s exit. Before she reached it, she handed off the disruptor to one of the technicians.

Doctor Teeth was right. They didn’t know anything about the entity. Not its motivations nor its capabilities. And she didn’t know if the guards could hurt it with their guns. The Hatman looked human—mostly—and had been slowed down by bullets according to Matt, but not killed by them. The disruptors definitely worked.

Besides that, if it wasn’t in her hands, she wouldn’t be pressured to return it.

Ruby followed Dyna without complaint. Despite her earlier protests, Dyna imagined that she really did want to get fully back to normal. Whatever part of her had been left behind—whatever part of her occasionally glanced off into the distance as if she spotted something—was probably bothering her as well.

Dyna paused at the ramp and glanced back. “One more question,” Dyna said. “How did you know my name?” That was bothering her. Maybe it was mind reading as Teeth suggested. But if it wasn’t, Dyna wanted to know.

The entity, however, simply cocked her head to the side. “You told us last time we met.”

Dyna met the entity’s eyes. Something obviously inhuman might very well be able to lie without reservation, but… It didn’t feel like that here. So she simply nodded her head and stepped out of the trailer.

“You met that thing before?” Ruby asked, rushing up alongside Dyna.

“Not that I can remember,” Dyna said. “But we already know my memory isn’t the best. Besides, she used a plural us and we. The rest of the discussion used a singular I except when talking about other things like it. Other entities. It could be that she heard it from someone or something else.”

“You’ve met other entities before?”

“No.” Dyna’s eyes flicked over to the Tartarus truck and the cylinder within. “Just the Hatman. But my memories…”

“That’s really irritating.”

“Try being me.”

Ruby let out a snort, then fell silent.

In the absence of having the new entity with them, it seemed as if Tartarus had moved on to examining the old entity. The Hatman. At least half of them were. Maple was up inside the Truck now, far in the back and nursing the back of his head with a bag filled with ice. Dyna wasn’t sure where he got the ice, but it was entirely possible that one of the little cubbyholes in the truck was a freezer.

Ado fiddled with a control panel beside the tank. It honestly made Dyna a bit wary, making her wonder if they weren’t planning on releasing the Hatman if they didn’t get their way. Or maybe she was trying to figure out why there was a bright yellow light flashing. It hadn’t been doing that before.

“Hey!”

Ado stiffened and turned slowly. “Our equipment?”

“Dyna,” Ruby said softly. It was a bit of an odd tone coming from her, but not an urgent tone, so Dyna didn’t glance back.

She had negotiations to get to. It seemed like someone else should be doing that. But that seemed par for the course with everything else that had been going on. “Still in use,” Dyna said, then quickly changed the subject. “The order came through. Grafton has been cleared for release.”

Ado looked around for just a moment, goggle-and-mask-covered face angling toward the Carroll Institute trailers, before looking back to Dyna. “But?”

“Ruby isn’t all the way fixed. Two separate peo—tests have confirmed that some part of Ruby is still phase-shifted.”

“Dyna?”

This time, Dyna did glance back. Ruby was staring off vaguely toward the school building.

“They’re closer now.”

“They—Entities?”

Ruby nodded slowly. “I don’t see them well. I didn’t see them well when I was… phase shifted? Whatever. But I can still tell. They’re here. Climbing all over this truck. It was only half-there when I was there, but that might have changed by now. I don’t know.”

Maple let out a small peep and started glancing around.

“Are they… attacking?”

“Not us. They’re ignoring us. I think… I think they want the Hatman, one is close to him, reaching—”

Ruby cut herself off, stumbling back.

At the same time, the bright yellow light turned red and the sound of an angry alarm clock pulsed over the truck’s speakers.

Maple moved back, bumping into the wall of the truck.

Ado moved forward, grabbing hold of the control panel.

She didn’t even get to push a single button before the glass directly in front of the Hatman’s face cracked. It started with just a tiny little sliver, but quickly spread out, blossoming into a wide spiderweb.

“Ah shi—”

 

 

 

“What are you talking about? We can’t…” Ruby trailed off, shaking her head. “That’s against orders.”

“That’s your problem? I didn’t think you would be one to adhere to rules like that. You hate rules. You are the real Ruby, right?”

“Of course I am.” She snapped. As soon as her glare died, she crossed her arms, adopting a fierce scowl. “I hate a lot of things. Emerald acting like she’s better than me. My efforts going to waste. Stupid hats. And bleeping Sapphire. Why the fuc—”

“Ruby. Hush…”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was here?”

“I wasn’t hushing your swearing this time,” Dyna said, looking around worriedly. The two of there were standing outside, around the back of the Carroll Institute’s mobile command center. It separated them from Tartarus, but it wasn’t like they were in an enclosed room with soundproofed walls or anything. “Nobody is supposed to know he’s here.”

“You sure screwed that one up,” Ruby hissed. “I walked right into his floating ass. And I’m going to kick that floating ass all the way back to the institute if he so much as looks at me.”

“Nobody else is supposed to know,” Dyna whispered back. “You’re fine. I think. I’m pretty sure. Probably?” She hadn’t exactly gotten the okay to that effect, but… it just made sense that Ruby would be able to know about him. It wasn’t like any of the guards had blocked the way between the command hub and the medical trailer. “He’s trying to read their minds or something. I don’t know exactly how his powers work. But that isn’t why we’re back here. I wanted to—”

Ruby let out a hefty sigh. The varying levels of anger she had demonstrated so far during their conversation fled. Dyna didn’t think it was her putting on her acting face; the way she kept her arms crossed as she glared off into the distance meant she was still upset.

“Grafton goes free. If Walter says so, then that’s what is going to happen. We can’t just ruin that. I can’t ruin anything else. I can’t.”

Dyna pressed her lips together, staring down at Ruby. She had to admit that she was disappointed. And surprised. For someone perfectly willing to sneak in and infiltrate the Carroll Institute, a little sabotage—or simply taking the institute’s truck and leaving without freeing Grafton—was an unexpected holdup. But then, perhaps she had known that nothing she was doing to the institute was worth them getting upset over. The same wasn’t true here. Walter made a deal and as much as Dyna personally didn’t like Tartarus, the same wasn’t necessarily true for the Carroll Institute as a whole.

As Dyna stared, she watched Ruby jump as if something startled her. Ruby immediately dropped into a guarded stance. One hand went to her hoodie pocket where Dyna knew she normally kept her gun. The other quickly snatched up a switchblade from… Dyna wasn’t actually sure where she pulled that one from.

Whatever the case, her sudden alarm set Dyna off as well. Having a pistol still, Dyna drew it and readied it, though she kept her finger off the trigger as she looked around.

Her eyes scanned over the school. The dark windows—what few weren’t boarded up—held no movement. No snipers sat on the roof anywhere that she could see. The grounds were empty too. And yet, Ruby just stared off toward the hallway between the auditorium and the main entrance.

“You see something?” Dyna asked, wondering what might be out there.

Had Tartarus sent their own reinforcements, who might now be spying on them? That seemed the most likely answer, except for the bit Maple said about them not having all that many employees. Of course, he very well could have been lying. Dyna didn’t trust them either way.

But Ruby just slowly tore her eyes away from the school building and shook her head. “Let’s move back to the other side of the truck. Where there is a bit more light.”

Dyna raised an eyebrow, but Ruby was already stalking off around the front of the institute’s truck. After taking one last glance in the direction that Ruby had looked and finding nothing, Dyna followed after her.

Though she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do now. Just let Grafton go, she supposed. She could try something on her own, but without Ruby’s support, she probably wouldn’t do anything. And it wasn’t like she wanted to kill him. Just… severely inconvenience Tartarus.

Maybe she could just slash their tires on the way out.

That was just petty.

But…

Ruby, around the side of the trailer, leaned up against it not far from the two guards standing at the stairs. She took a few slow breaths, apparently calming herself.

Dyna wanted to ask again if Ruby was alright. It certainly didn’t look like she was. But now that they were back around other people, Dyna doubted Ruby would answer. And by the looks of her, dragging her back off alone was probably out of the question.

Something spooked her. Something probably while phased. Probably something to do with that arm.

Living shadows attacking her? Was that what she had said?

Dyna cast a look around, failed to find any shadows moving in ways she would define as strange, and eventually settled her gaze on Tartarus. Maple still stood about, seemingly trying to emulate the Carroll Institute guards with his disruptor. Ado, apparently having realized that Grafton wouldn’t be released immediately, had gone back to inspecting the possibly-entity possibly-living-shadow being with a variety of tools.

After a quick glance at Ruby, Dyna decided to head over to Tartarus. Maybe to find some small petty inconvenience she could cause them. Maybe…

“Did you figure anything out?”

Ado’s arms paused. Her head, still hidden, angled up for just a moment. “Where is Grafton?”

“I guess we need authorization to release him and someone is dragging their feet,” Dyna said. The one good thing the administrators had ever done, as far as Dyna could tell. It was minor, but it was an inconvenience. It also forced Dyna to be around Tartarus for longer, which would have been a downside if she hadn’t suddenly developed an interest in figuring out a little more about what Ruby had gotten herself into when the Hatman nabbed her. “If we didn’t intend to release him, I imagine we would have left already.”

“You don’t sound too happy,” Maple said.

Dyna didn’t bother giving him a response. “What about her?” she asked, nodding down.

“Our business together is at an end,” Ado said, resuming her inspection. “Or it will be shortly, once Grafton is free.”

“Surely you can tell me a little. Preliminary results of whatever scans you’ve been running? What is she? Not human, I presume. But she looks human—”

“Miss Graves. Our collaboration is at an end.”

Dyna clamped her mouth shut with a clack of her teeth. She stared… glared at Ado. After a long moment of nothing, she turned to look at Maple. While Ado was deliberately ignoring her as she went about her task, Maple wasn’t doing quite such a good job at the aloof disinterest. He wasn’t looking at Dyna, but rather at just about everything else, making it fairly obvious what his actual focus was. With his face hidden behind his mask, he should have been able to just stare in one direction.

His discomfort wouldn’t have been more obvious if he tried.

Dyna had half a mind to just turn and walk off. Leave them to their stewing until Grafton got out. Ado was right. Their collaboration was at an end. There was no need for further fraternization. Whatever petty irritation she could cause would hardly be worth the effort.

And yet, turning, Dyna caught sight of Ruby. The younger girl had not followed Dyna over. She stayed close to the Carroll Institute guards with her knife out in hand. A part of Dyna thought she was trying to subtly threaten Maple or Ado, but that thought faded as Dyna realized just where she was staring. It was subtle, but the lights around the trailers let her see Ruby’s eyes clearly and the distance wasn’t so great as to make it impossible to follow Ruby’s line of sight.

She wasn’t staring at Dyna, Ado, or Maple. She wasn’t even glaring at the Hatman despite him having been the one who personally wronged her. No. Her eyes were on the body of the unconscious woman slash entity. And as a wrack of static crossing over the entity’s body, Ruby jumped ever so slightly. If Dyna hadn’t known her as well as she did, she probably would have missed it.

Even still, it was as alien an expression on the young girl as her false smiles when she put on her acting mask.

Lips pressed together, Dyna turned back to Ado and Maple.

“What do you want?” Dyna asked. “Aside from Grafton.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not signing up with you either. I’m…” Dyna stopped. She didn’t exactly have much else to offer. They were trying to recruit her, so she had figured that they would be a little more open in the first place. That was obviously not the case. She wasn’t sure if she had just exhausted their goodwill for the moment or if she had somehow upset them beyond the delay in getting Grafton back.

Dyna’s fingers found a hard circular object in one of her pockets. She had barely thought about her mirror in the last few hours. It just wasn’t useful. It wasn’t something she would mind losing, despite what it meant and how it had brought her here, inadvertently.

But she couldn’t lose it. Especially not deliberately. Walter would be disappointed at best. It would show that she couldn’t be trusted with a valuable object like an artifact. Maybe that she couldn’t be trusted at all.

Slowly, she pulled it out of her pocket. She flipped it open and glanced down at the two mirrored surfaces. Neither were mirrored at the moment. There were a lot of people around. A lot of people with her in their field of vision. Ado, Maple, Ruby, and all the guards that were standing around. Since it started exhibiting signs of being an actual artifact and not that in-between state of becoming an artifact, Dyna had been able to control what it showed a little better. With barely a thought in the back of her mind, she could flip between viewpoints like she was changing channels on a television.

“You are interested in artifacts too right?” They tried to steal one. It wasn’t exactly a large leap in logic. “You don’t get to keep it,” Dyna said, voice firm. “But maybe you want scans or whatever until Grafton is free? And in the mean time, tell me about her. What is she? Where did she come from? Are… Are there more of her?”

Dyna kept flipping through perspectives as she waited for a response. Ado hadn’t said anything just yet, but she hadn’t stonewalled her with the line about their collaboration ending. She had stopped scanning the entity, giving Dyna some hope that she was interested in the prospect of analyzing the artifact.

It was probably going to get Dyna into a bit of hot water. Definitely not nearly as big a pool of it as if she had just handed it over. She could probably argue that she was just doing as she had been ordered to and was using her available resources to gather information on Tartarus.

“I think,” Ado started slowly, pausing as if to carefully consider her words. “Your proposal is agreeable.”

“Good. Great.” Dyna wasn’t exactly happy doing the opposite of her plan to inconvenience Tartarus, but if she learned something that might put Ruby at ease, that would be ideal. “Let’s get started then,” she said, planting a foot on the little ladder-like steps that were designed to help someone into the back of the truck.

As she climbed up, an extra channel became available to Dyna. An extra perspective for her mirror to display. She immediately flipped to it with barely a thought and found herself looking up-ward at the ceiling of the truck.

The perspective lowered slowly, drifting down until Dyna was dead in the center of the mirror.

At the same time, the entity on the floor had tilted her head up. Both Maple and Ado were focused on me. Distracted. Only for a moment, but that moment was long enough.

The entity swept her arms out, leaving a trail of dark shadow behind her fingertips as she grabbed hold of Ado’s legs. That more than anything else confirmed to Dyna that this wasn’t just some random person who had gotten trapped in a phase-shifted state. Ruby certainly wasn’t leaving behind trails of smoke as she moved about.

Ado let out a small yelp as her legs were shoved out from under her. She put out her hands to catch herself, but landed directly on top of the entity anyway, pinning her.

Maple unleashed his disruptor at the same moment. Just standing off to the side, Dyna felt it. The entity must have felt it too, but unlike the previous times, she didn’t fall unconscious.

Ado’s protective suit must have shielded her, at least somewhat.

As soon as Maple triggered the disruptor and the entity came out of it unscathed, the entity used far more strength than a human would have possessed to throw Ado off her. And right into Maple. The force of a colleague hitting him sent them both to the ground outside the truck.

The entity started to stand, only to freeze.

Dyna had not been idle. This situation wasn’t quite like any of her training scenarios, but it was close that she hadn’t frozen.

Aiming the much larger wall-mounted disruptor at the entity did the trick. She stilled, half crouched. Static still rolled across her body. Especially around her legs where Maple’s disruptor had hit without any of Ado’s body for protection. It didn’t seem to affect her ability to move, but the black and white snowy particles cascaded over her torn clothes chaotically.

Dyna started to squeeze the trigger, only to stop just before she could move the small slat of metal.

She had been about to trade scans of her artifact for information on the entity. But why take that bad trade when she could get information straight from the source?

“You can talk,” Dyna said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

Movement behind Dyna made her take one single quick glance over her shoulder.

The Carroll Institute’s guards were not idle. They readied their weapons, aiming straight over toward the truck. Ruby was moving with her blade out. Ado was getting off Maple, but the disruptor looked broken. The whole front had snapped off.

Dyna snapped her eyes back to the entity. She hadn’t moved. Thankfully. Dyna’s finger had been tight around the trigger and she probably would have pulled it purely out of reflex if she felt anything or even caught the entity moving from the corner of her eye.

Taking a step, Dyna moved over, placing herself directly between the entity and the open rear of the truck. She didn’t want any accidents.

Hopefully the Carroll Institute guards wouldn’t fire anyway. Not with three people near their target who could get hurt by a stray bullet. And Ruby.

Ruby wouldn’t be hurt by stray bullets, but she was also a danger on her own. Dyna had seen the looks she had been giving the entity. Not to mention, she knew Ruby. The younger girl was probably perfectly primed to vault into the back of the truck and start stabbing before anything could be said.

Dyna took another step to the side, putting herself more between Ruby and the entity than anything else.

“That was self defense, right? In retaliation for Maple attacking you.” Though it was a question, Dyna wasn’t asking so much as telling. And telling quick. “The Carroll Institute isn’t going to let these people kidnap someone who has obviously done nothing wrong. Since you can talk, why not come have a chat with us peacefully.” Dyna waited a moment, then nodded her head toward the tank containing the Hatman. “Unless you want to end up like that.”

The entity looked over at Dyna’s motion. Her eyes widened and the tension in her shoulders lessened, albeit only slightly. A wave of static crossed over her entire body as she tore her eyes away.

“Doesn’t seem like I have much choice,” she said, putting on a smile that didn’t meet her eyes. “Let’s chat. Dyna.”

Dyna blinked at her own name. Had the entity overheard it? She must have.

Not reacting beyond the blink, Dyna motioned. “Back at the other trailer,” she said.

“Sure.”

Slowly, without making sudden moves, the entity moved past Dyna. At no point did she try to attack. Ruby glowered at her, knife gripped tight in her fingers. Ado and Maple, back on their feet, backed away when she hopped out of the truck. Poor Maple had a hand pressed to his back and he didn’t quite walk straight. That didn’t stop him from moving much further back than Ado.

Dyna started to follow, only to realize that she wouldn’t be going very far with the large disruptor. Hanging it back on its rack, she quickly exchanged it for the smaller version that she had used earlier. “I’m borrowing this really quick.”

“That’s proprietary—”

“Situation has changed. Consider it official government requisition of civilian resources.”

“That isn’t legal,” Ado mumbled, but she stepped back and didn’t try to get in Dyna’s way as she moved to follow the entity.

Dyna didn’t really think it was legal. But it was probably an inconvenience for Tartarus. And if she forgot to bring it back after borrowing it, well, that would just be more inconvenient.

 

 

Dyna wasn’t happy with her temporary allies. To be fair, at no point in their brief cooperation had Dyna been happy with them. At most, she had been relieved when they showed up at the hospital. Then maybe relieved again when they said they could help Ruby get back to normal. Her displeasure hadn’t come from anything that they had actually done. That might come across as a bit unfair, but Dyna didn’t care. They worked with Id, that earned them some ire.

But now?

“You shot her.”

Maple glanced over, face hidden behind the mask, and shrugged. “Why do you think we’re holding these things? For fun?”

“In case she’s a danger,” Dyna said.

“Exactly.” Maple nodded his head as if that response justified his actions.

“She just sat up and looked around.”

“Exactly. Someone knocked unconscious doesn’t just sit up. She was probably going to… I don’t know, make our heads explode.”

“Make our heads explode? You think she would have done that when she first appeared.”

“Not head explosions,” Maple said, quickly changing his mind. “Absolutely no head explosions. It was probably something innocuous and hardly worth mentioning… I… I don’t know what to say to you. I’m not Id.”

Dyna shot him a glare. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t try to be like Id. Not exactly my favorite person.”

“Whatever. Point is, we’re safe. Don’t ask me what she would have done,” Maple said, vaguely gesturing toward the terminal. “They’re the experts.”

Ado sat in the chair. She had hardly turned around, not even acknowledging the commotion. The suit she wore must have protected her from the disruptor. With Maple having stood outside the truck and firing into it, she would have been in a direct line of fire. Yet she hadn’t even wobbled. She had ignored the woman’s still twitching body as she approached Dyna, told her to speak into small small radio-like box to talk to Ruby, and then moved back to the terminal.

Doctor Darq, having appeared on one of the terminal screens, was somewhat less willing to ignore the goings on. “Mister Maple made the correct decision, faced with an unknown entity,” he said with steepled fingers. “The disruptor shouldn’t cause long-term damage to anything organic. It merely jumbles up the—”

“Darq,” Ado said, “the waveform analysis from the speaker box?”

Although a notion of annoyance crossed Darq’s features at the interruption, he nodded his head. “Sending it over now.” Despite his words, he didn’t move. Still, one of the other terminal’s screens changed, showing off a display that looked like the visual representation of an audio spectrogram. “Pay special attention to 3:35.”

“An odd spike. Cause?”

“Three guesses. First two don’t count.”

Ado turned her seat, looking back. Although Dyna couldn’t see her eyes, her head fairly obviously started out looking at the Hatman in his tank, then moved down to the woman, before settling on Dyna herself. “I suppose I have my guesses,” she said, turning back. “Is it going to be a problem?”

“Problem? Hardly! It likely saved us a good hour of trial and error. Not to mention the ancillary data extracted points to some fascinating possibilities with regards to—”

“Unrelated to the topic at hand.”

Darq pressed his lips together, unmoving at his desk on the other side of the screen. “This all would be far simpler if you simply told—”

“Unrelated to the topic. Remember Id’s orders.”

Darq sighed. “Very well,” he said. “But I will be bringing this up with the chief director. If you wish to make actual progress—”

“Unrelated.”

“I wish you would stop that.”

Ado shrugged, stood, and turned back toward Dyna. Bending slightly, she held out the small black box that Dyna had used to talk to Ruby. It had a few buttons on the front and a small LCD screen that displayed a few numbers. “Instruct your friend to stand a short distance from the truck, away from anyone else.”

Dyna accepted the speaker box, looking down at the empty harness. When she had first freed herself, Ruby had looked like she was about to run off. But since firing the disruptor, she had stayed close to the truck and had not budged since. The only movement she managed, or at least the only movement that Dyna could see through the movement of the Harness, was her turning around. Presumably looking around.

Sometimes she would jump slightly, quickly looking one way then another. No matter how much Dyna tried, she couldn’t ever see anything in the directions Ruby face.

It made her a little uneasy.

“Ruby?” Dyna asked, pressing the button helpfully labeled as Transmit. “Can you hear me?”

The harness popped up a bit, possibly startled, and then quickly hopped up and down three more times. From that, Dyna assumed that Ruby could hear her.

The speaker box seemed to only work one way.

“Good. Ado needs you to move…” Dyna trailed off. She glanced up, finding Ado fiddling with the knobs and dials on the side of the much larger disruptor gun. “Where, exactly?”

“Just away from the truck. I do not want sensitive equipment possibly damaged by the disruptor.”

“You’re going to shoot Ruby?”

“Disrupt. Not shoot. It should be harmless. Think of it as disrupting the entity’s power over her.”

Dyna nodded slowly. She should probably stop thinking of the disruptors as guns. With the odd cylinder on top and the nozzle at the front, they didn’t look anything like a proper gun. The only real similarity was the trigger. Even that was something electronic, rather than mechanically connected to a firing mechanism.

Disrupt.

Right.

They wouldn’t try to hurt Ruby at this point, especially not with the guards from the Carroll Institute standing just a short distance away.

Worries abated, Dyna held up the speaker box again. “Ruby, take ten steps to your two-o’clock,” she said.

The harness turned a bit to the left and then started pacing forward, only to stop no more than five steps ahead. It was an abrupt stop. Like she meant to continue, but didn’t.

“Could be that she isn’t perceiving distances correctly,” Ado said. Lowering the large disruptor, she took aim. “Should be far enough. Stand back, please.”

Dyna had her mouth open to argue that Ruby had clearly stopped early for some other reason. At Ado’s command, however, Dyna took a few quick steps back and out of the line of fire, not wanting to be anywhere near the disruptor’s area of effect when it went off.

And it went off quick. Ado didn’t hesitate in pulling the trigger.

Ruby rippled into existence in the midst of falling backward toward the truck, one arm looking like it was shielding her face. Her other hand tightly gripped one of her longer knives. She was facing the wrong way though, away from the truck.

Dyna wanted to rush toward her with the intention of giving her a hug. The knife had her hesitating. But she still took a few steps forward, only to skid to a stop as something else plopped down a short distance away from Ruby.

An arm. A human arm. The rest of whatever body it might have been attached to wasn’t following it into existence, leaving the arm severed just above the elbow. It twitched, fingers splaying out before dragging against the asphalt as they contracted. Dyna thought it was just a death spasm—or some other errant muscular seizure—but then it repeated the motion.

The hand stretched forward, dug into the ground underneath it, and dragged itself forward.

It didn’t stop after just one or two crawls. It kept going.

Ruby didn’t move. She lowered her one hand, but just stared at it now. She didn’t make a move to attack, pin it down, or even flee further backwards.

Dyna, a few months ago, might have freaked out. Or screamed. Now? She had seen Ruby and Emerald sparring before. She had seen worse injuries than a dismembered arm. Dyna didn’t want to touch it with her bare hands, but she did move up and lightly pin it down with her shoe. Not hard enough to injure it, just in case it wasn’t an enemy, but enough to keep it from scurrying about.

That seemed to break Ruby out of her haze. She slowly followed Dyna’s leg up until she reached her face. Ruby’s eyes lit up for just a moment before she looked off to the side. “Took you long enough.”

“It’s good to see you again too.” Dyna glanced down at the still squirming arm. A small pool of blood trailed behind where it had crawled. Not as much as Dyna would have expected in an arm, but, well… “Can you explain this?”

“I…” Ruby looked back down. “I don’t know what the bleep is going on,” she said after a moment of silence. “I’ve had a very confusing day, you know. I can’t believe you disappeared on me like that.”

“I disappeared on you?”

“Well you certainly—”

“Our agreement,” Ado said, standing at the rear edge of the truck. “We have fulfilled our end.”

Dyna shot her a dirty look. It had only been a few hours. Less than a day. But with everything that had been going on, it felt like it had been weeks since Dyna last saw Ruby. And now here Ado was, interrupting? Not that Dyna disagreed exactly. The sooner they were gone, the better.

Ignoring Ado for just a moment, Dyna crouched down. “Are you alright? Nothing left behind?”

Her ruby was there, still in her throat. She had all her fingers and presumably all her toes—her feet were hidden under shoes. Really, Ruby looked none the worse for wear. At least not aside from a few tears in her hoodie and dirt splotches sticking to her pants. It was possible she had been cut or otherwise injured, especially in those tears, but had since healed herself.

Then there was the arm. It obviously wasn’t Ruby’s as she wasn’t missing an arm, but…

“I’m fine,” Ruby ground out. She glanced back to Ado, then looked around and spotted the Carroll Institute vehicle. Putting on a scowl, she nodded her head back toward Tartarus’ truck. “What’s with them? That’s those people from the other organization, right?”

“Long story short: Walter made an agreement. They had technology to bring you back. We have to give them Grafton in turn.”

Ruby nodded slowly as Dyna explained. Maybe such details happened regularly enough that it didn’t surprise her. It wasn’t until she mentioned Grafton’s name that Ruby’s eyes widened.

“The mind controller with the junk attached to his head?”

“Yeah, he’s—”

“No. No. No. No. That was my capture. He’s my prisoner. I got him. You can’t just let him go and make it like I didn’t do anything at all!”

“You didn’t not do…” Dyna shook her head. “You did do something,” she said, rephrasing.

Ruby ground her teeth together. Dyna could hear it even from a few steps away. “Walter did this?”

“He was on my phone, talking to Tartarus. I was right there.”

“Is this punishment?”

“What?” Dyna blinked. “No, nothing like that I don’t think. Tartarus saw an opportunity to get something out of the situation. They held cards and Walter likely wanted to make sure they played them properly. If there was more reasoning behind it, you would have to ask him.”

“I will,” Ruby snapped.

Dyna started to move forward, maybe to try to give her just a little hug. The moment she took her foot off the arm, it twisted, clamping down around her ankle. With a slight yelp, Dyna stomped her other foot down on it. That was enough to get it to let her go.

Ruby leaned forward. With a blur of her arm, the black blade of her long knife pierced straight through the hand, pinning it down against the asphalt. It struggled some, but didn’t manage to dislodge the blade.

“What is this thing?” Dyna asked, staring down at the arm.

“I don’t know. There were…” Ruby trailed off, glancing behind her for a moment. Ado still stood, staring in their direction, though her eyes were hidden behind her goggles. “There were things wherever I was,” Ruby said, voice now a whisper. “Not nice things. Right before… this, one of them tried reaching out to me. I don’t think it was attacking, but I am sure glad to be back before it got closer.”

“You didn’t think you could fight it? Or heal if it hurt you?” Dyna looked down at the arm. “It’s just a regular hand, if oddly animate despite being detached from a body. Presumably, some poor person is at best freaking out about losing their arm. At worst, they’ve probably bled to death.”

“You don’t understand. These things weren’t people.”

“More Hatman… men? Hatmans?”

Ruby shot Dyna a look. “They didn’t look human at all. No skin. No… muscle or bone either. More like moving shadows. I don’t know why the arm looks human now, but I don’t believe for a bleeping minute that it is really a human arm.”

“Most human arms don’t keep moving after being separated from the rest of the body,” Dyna said. It felt obvious to state that, but relevant all the same. “There is a doctor here from the institute who would love to take a look at it. He wanted to look at…”

Dyna’s eyes widened as she looked up. Ado still stood at the edge of the truck. Despite hiding her eyes behind her goggles and the rest of her face behind the mask and helmet she wore, Dyna could tell that she was glaring. To her side, standing down on the ground, Maple had his head angled in Dyna’s direction. The disruptor he held, however, was still pointed at the girl. The entity?

Whatever it was, it hadn’t moved since last being disrupted.

Dyna let out a small sigh. Maybe Maple had been right to trigger the disruptor when the woman moved. Dyna was still certain that the… being had tried to warn them of the Hatman, but at the time, Dyna had figured that she was another of the Hatman’s victims. Someone who had been physically around when Maple stepped through the anomaly, maybe realized that she could step through in the other direction, and then tried it slightly less successfully.

Gripping the dismembered arm by the wrist, Dyna wrenched the knife out of the ground. It immediately tried to grab at her, but once up in the air, it had absolutely no real leverage.

“Come on,” Dyna said. Louder, she addressed Ado. “We’ll go see what the procedure is for releasing Grafton.”

Immediately, Ruby started grinding her teeth again. It was good that she could fix any damage she caused, otherwise whatever dentist she would have to see would likely have a few choice words for her.

“I don’t like it either,” Dyna whispered. “Not much choice.”

“We could just not. Maybe capture him after releasing him.”

“I think that would go against the spirit of the agreement. Maybe the literal wording too.”

Ruby scowled, but didn’t say another word as they walked up to the Carroll Institute’s rear trailer.

Matt was on the mobile bed still, which was now attached to the wall. The bandages around his leg were gone, revealing a few dark black threads holding his leg together. Given how much blood he had lost, it really didn’t look that bad. Then again, Dyna had no idea what the surgeons had done to him. They could easily have done an emergency patch job just to get him to stop bleeding while leaving the rest of his leg starved for blood.

She supposed that was what the two assistants were investigating as they hovered over him.

Doctor Teeth, however, stood away, not even looking at Matt. His attention was focused on some monitors set into the opposite walls. Monitors that were displaying a zoomed-in feed of the truck, the possible entity in particular.

Hands clasped behind his back, he didn’t even turn as he spoke. “Did it speak when it sat up?”

“No. It just looked around,” Dyna said. “Then Maple shot—disrupted it.”

“Shame. I would like to get it into our containment as soon as—” Doctor Teeth let out a high pitched squeak as he turned around. The collected and serious demeanor he had presented thus far vanished in an instant. Taking a few stumbling steps backward, he pointed. “What is that?”

“An arm,” Dyna said, waving with it. Not too much, however. It was moving around enough on its own. Holding it as far as she could from her body still left the bloody stump a bit too close. The clothes she was wearing would probably need to be burned. “Appeared when Ruby did. It’s also bleeding and keeps trying to grab me, so if you have any boxes to put it—”

“Grab you?”

Dyna pointed to the fingers. “That isn’t me moving them. It’s been like this for five… maybe ten minutes now?”

His eyes, already wide, widened further. Without taking those wide eyes off the arm, he pulled out a second table from the walls. Not a bed like what Matt was on, but a smooth table. “Quickly, place it down,” he said, taking several steps back once the table had been set up. “And strap it in if you don’t mind. Tight, please.”

With a half shrug, Dyna followed his orders. There were thick black straps on the table. Presumably for restraining someone uncooperative. The table was far larger than just the arm, but that didn’t seem to matter to Doctor Teeth. As soon as Dyna stepped back, he moved forward, dragging some tool with a coiled cord down from the ceiling to hover over the arm.

“Ruby is back too,” Dyna said after a moment. With a bit of a frown, she added, “Tartarus wants Grafton.”

“That’s nice,” Teeth said, not looking away.

“Shouldn’t you… examine her or something?”

“I’m fine,” Ruby said.

“Sounds like she’s fine,” Teeth said, tone utterly distracted. “Beatrice, see about informing Walter. In the mean time, any suggestions about this arm?”

“Notifications sent. Scans from the arm appear consistent with our long-range scans of the second entity.”

“Wonderful. Wonderful. Even if we cannot get that, we aren’t walking away with nothing.”

Dyna glanced over at the psionic isolation chamber at the back of the truck. Ruby was at her side. Matt was safe. The Hatman was locked up.

But she still didn’t like the idea of letting Grafton go any more than Ruby did. She glanced down to find Ruby’s red eyes boring a hole in the chamber, wondering if there was any kind of plan they could come up with that didn’t upset everyone. At least everyone she cared about upsetting.

 

 

Ruby’s neck itched. Her legs itched. Her body felt wrong, which wasn’t something she had ever felt before. She had often heard of people feeling uncomfortable in their own skin. She had honestly thought that was just a phrase people used. A long-winded way of saying they were uncomfortable. And maybe that was true.

But at the moment, Ruby didn’t feel like her skin fit properly. It was too tight for her bones. Or maybe too loose. It wasn’t easy to tell.

It was a recent development.

Ruby wasn’t entirely sure what had happened in the last several hours. She suspected several things, but just had no way of confirming anything. It had all been so… chaotic.

It started with the hospital. Leaving it, specifically. Ruby ran out of the building alongside Dyna and her wounded friend. Except, once outside, Dyna started shouting at her. Yelling at her to shoot. Ruby hadn’t known why Dyna was telling her to shoot. Dyna was not a deceitful person. Neither was she violent. Ruby felt she had a decent buildup of her personality in mind. Between that and the utter urgency in her voice, Ruby had pulled the trigger.

In retrospect, that had been the absolute worst decision she could have made from a rational point of view. Something Emerald and Walter would both have yelled at her for. Dyna could have been mentally compromised. Ruby certainly had been mentally compromised given that she couldn’t remember why she had her gun out at all. Opening fire in a situation like that could have seen her shooting down innocents. No matter what people thought of her, no matter how violent they thought she was, Ruby would never shoot random people. Not without good reason.

Looking around her current situation, Ruby adopted a deep scowl.

Ruby wasn’t sure where she was at the moment. Outside a building of some sort. A school, maybe—Ruby had never attended mundane school. The institute saw to her education. There were letters on the wall and over the main doors, but despite being literate, Ruby couldn’t make out what they were trying to say. Or if they were in any of the three languages she could speak.

She hovered off the ground, suspended in the middle of the air by some kind of harness. It was like parachuting, except instead of falling for a few minutes, she had been ‘falling’ for hours now. While she wasn’t moving at the moment, her ‘fall’ had been horizontal, along roads, up until the last hour or so.

Thus, Ruby discovered that it was possible for her body to become uncomfortable from something other than fatal injuries.

In retro-retrospect, she shouldn’t have hesitated.

Shooting the Hatman before he appeared and grabbed hold of her gun might have prevented this situation.

Glaring at the unmoving form of the Hatman, seemingly suspended in the air in a similar manner to Ruby, she wished she hadn’t dropped her gun when he grabbed her. It might not do any good. She was fairly certain that one of her shots had hit him, but it hadn’t slowed him down any as he chased her across the town. But now? Floating in the air in front of her?

She would shoot him until her magazine ran empty without hesitation.

Ruby had a knife. A few, actually, hidden around her person. She had considered throwing one or all of them at him. But they were potentially her only real weapons at the moment. And here in this… place, she might need them.

In this strange world.

It looked mostly normal, aside from her being unable to read anything, but every so often, Ruby would spot something simply wrong. Maybe it was a mirror reflecting people and cars that she couldn’t see. Maybe it was a storefront window pane that looked into a desert landscape.

The lighting was strange as well. It was odd, like everything was constantly lit. Despite there being no light source—not even a sun or moon—she could see. And yet, it was like everything had a cloak of shadows draped over it.

The worst of all were the things out there. Actual living things hiding in the shimmering shadows of this world that seemed to be in a perpetual twilight. None had approached her, not even after whatever method of transportation she had been put into slowed to a stop. But she still saw them. Silhouettes creeping about beyond the edges of buildings. Slight movements in the corners of her eyes.

Ruby wasn’t sure what they were. Humans? Probably not. More entities? She didn’t know enough. That was the domain of the doctors and scientists.

Ruby looked down at the Hatman’s feet, narrowing her eyes.

Something was hovering off the ground. From having been in the same spot, Ruby figured it was resting on the same thing that had been moving her around. A vehicle of some sort. But this thing was certainly not human.

More like something had heard about the idea of what a human was and tried to recreate it. Its face was blank, eyes dark holes leading into its skull. The thin line it had for a mouth stretched too far in either direction, yet didn’t look as if it could actually open. It was a painterly brush stroke across the surface of a featureless mask. Its arms and body, wispy shadows as if they were hidden behind a pane of frosted glass, shuddered and twitched every so often. It didn’t have hands or feet, as far as Ruby could tell. Just limbs that tapered off into nothing.

Ruby didn’t like it. It was probably one of the things she kept seeing.

But every time it shuddered and twitched, it… faded. It wasn’t a quick process, but if it continued, it would entirely disappear.

Hopefully.

The Hatman had caused enough problems. Walter didn’t even know what to do with it and Walter knew more than anyone. Having another thing like it running around?

Not good for anyone. Least of all Ruby.

Ruby liked simple things. Things that stopped moving when you put bullets into them. These entities…

They could go die.

Ruby let out a lip-rumbling sigh. Although the appearance of the Hatman and later the unknown entity had startled her and made her worry that she had been found, there didn’t seem to be any danger. If she had to guess, she was inside some Carroll Institute machine, one that had been driving around looking for the Hatman. And they obviously found him and figured out how to kill him, for he wasn’t moving.

That left her… bored.

A strange version of the world with strange things moving around should have kept her tense, but at this point, she would already have been jumped if something was going to attack. That left her wondering how long she would be sitting around like this.

From the way she pivoted when she kicked her legs, she could tell that she was anchored to something right around her shoulders. There was nothing there as far as she could see, but her eyes clearly couldn’t see everything that was going on.

She should probably be doing something.

Investigating or exploring. Something. Anything that might help. She had already failed in her objectives. Maybe Dyna succeeded on her own. Maybe not. But Ruby hadn’t been a part of it. Whether or not the mission was a failure was up in the air. Whether or not Ruby was a failure was more certain. She had been upset over it at first. Her first real solo assignment—or at least senior assignment—and she went and flubbed it up.

Hung up and left with nothing to do but think had drained most of the anger and left her feeling… well, drained. Ruby didn’t feel physical exhaustion the same way other people did. But mental exhaustion?

The least she could do would be to bring back some information. Observations of this strange world she now found herself in and maybe even of the figures moving in the shadows and in the corners of her eyes. Maybe a little intel for the docs to pick over would lessen the magnitude of her failure.

With the Hatman and his strange abilities seemingly nullified, she couldn’t even say that there was obvious danger about.

Ruby kicked her legs forward with a bit more force than an idle swing would give. She could feel something hooked up around her shoulders. It was a strange sensation in that she couldn’t actually see it. Or feel it, for that matter. Stretching her arm back, it passed through everything with little resistance. It took massively complex illusions to make someone think their hands weren’t smacking into something solid. Or an artifact.

Ruby swung again, trying to figure out if she was just hooked on something or actually fastened and secured. The fact that she could swing likely meant the former. The harness had buckles on it. She could technically remove it at any time. It wasn’t likely to be something the institute wanted.

Of course, they probably wouldn’t want her running around either.

Ruby wondered what they would prefer. Knowledge about this strange place or a still test subject for whatever they were likely to try. Assuming they were trying to bring her back.

Actually, if they were going to do that, they probably would have taken her back to the institute proper. There were facilities there that this random parking lot couldn’t possibly have.

The part of the harness around her waist hit something solid. Ruby couldn’t see what, but knocking into it again gave her something to use for leverage. She used it to swing forward again, further than before. And promptly started flailing her arms as she fell through the air.

Ruby landed directly on top of the non-human floating prone in the air. She tensed, immediately regretting not being more careful, only to relax somewhat as the being didn’t move aside from the initial jostling any body would make after being body slammed. Not wanting to push it, however, Ruby immediately set to rolling off the body. Then she kept rolling over some surface her legs dangled through that she couldn’t see until she reached the edge. She fell a few feet, hitting the actual ground.

Something grabbed at her harness almost immediately. Hands, presumably trying to help her up. Ruby tried to swat them away, but not being able to actually touch whatever it was left her swatting at thin air.

At least they mostly stopped once Ruby was properly standing. Of course, they stopped trying to pick her up and started trying to lead her around. Ruby undid one of the more obvious buckles at her chest, just as a threat. Keep trying to shove her around and she would… well, it probably wasn’t a good idea to just disappear, but the implications were there.

The pushing promptly stopped, though not necessarily because of Ruby’s threat.

The faceless figure sat up. Its head twisted. The eyeless gaps stared straight at Ruby before turning their attention to something that Ruby couldn’t see.

It didn’t get a chance to do anything else. A nauseating wave roiled the air, coming from somewhere right next to where Ruby was.

Ruby’s artifact flared, keeping her steady on her feet and physically sound against the strange effect. The figure didn’t react nearly as well. It shuddered, twisted, and promptly collapsed back down.

But this time, it didn’t collapse down onto nothingness. There was something there. A solid surface. In the rippling air, more appeared. Glass formed into existence around the Hatman, equipment appeared in the air on the opposite wall, and a terminal flickered into being at the far end. The terminal didn’t stay for long, disappearing in a similar flicker, but the rest stuck around.

Ruby, as soon as she was sure that there wouldn’t be a repeat of whatever happened, slowly approached what was obviously the rear of some kind of truck. Testing, she placed her hand down on the surface.

It was solid.

Whatever happened brought part of the vehicle into view for Ruby.

A similar thing had happened earlier. When she had first been tackled with the harness, a nauseating, roiling wave passed over her that time too. She had been almost positive that Dyna had popped into existence for just a moment before vanishing again.

Some natural phenomena? Not likely. That same wave had almost certainly sent the Hatman to the ground earlier. A weapon.

The entirety of the truck had not come into her slice of the world, which gave Ruby a clear view of the area beyond the truck bed.

Those things she saw were still out there. Some had been in the line of fire of that thing. Where most tried their best to avoid her direct gaze, only flighting about in the corners of her vision, she clearly spotted two lying on the ground. Ruby started to move around the parts of the truck she could see, only for something to grab hold of her harness and keep her from moving forward.

Which might have been a good thing.

A moment of silence passed. Barely long enough for Ruby to tug against whatever invisible hand had stopped her.

A sharp, screeching cry, one of the few sounds Ruby had heard since encountering the Hatman, echoed through the air.

In an instant, dozens of the shadowy figures collapsed upon the two downed beings in the distance. Ripping and tearing, the figures attacked the two. It lasted a blink of the eye. In moments, the figures swept out, moving like no human could, merging again with the shadows at the edge of her vision.

There was nothing left of the two fallen things. Not even scraps of cloth or… whatever they were made from.

Ruby took a slow step backward. Nothing had so far approached her. Not as she flew through the streets attached to what she now knew was a truck. Not now after whatever happened had happened. She could heal from most every injury. In the interest of not murdering her, the Carroll Institute hadn’t tried to figure out the full limits of her ability, but Ruby, being the owner of the ability, had a feeling it would take another artifact to kill her. Something that negatively interacted with her artifact.

Even still, she did not want to get torn apart like that.

Exploration, even in the name of atoning for failing her mission, did not sound nearly as appealing as it had a few minutes ago.

And one of those things was here in front of her. On the truck bed. Probably able to be seen by whoever had used that weapon.

Why hadn’t the creatures attacked it? Because of Ruby’s presence?

That was the only thing she could think of.

Was it going to attack?

She eyed it, unsure of its capabilities or intentions.

“██by.”

Ruby twisted, turning to an empty space beside the truck.

“Ruby? ███ █ou he██ me?”

“Dyna?”

“███ sure ██ ██ working…”

“Hold pl████,” another voice said, this one coming from up in the truck. “Okay. T█y now.”

“Ruby? Can you █ear me?”

“Yes,” Ruby said, moving closer to where she thought the voice was coming from. “Dyna?”

“I don’t hear her.”

“That disruptor fire may have █amaged my equipment. Please refrain ████ doing so again.”

“That was Maple, not me.” Dyna sounded angry.

“█████ heard. ███ everything is for ███.”

“Ruby, if you ca█ hear me, don’t move. Actually, no. If ███ can hear me, can you hop up and down three times?”

Ruby promptly complied.

“Good. Good. She ███d me. Ado is trying ████thing to get you normal.”

Ruby, despite herself, let out a small sigh of relief. Someone was trying to get her back. Dyna and… Ado? Wasn’t that the Tartarus goon?

Ruby shook her head. At the moment, she didn’t really care.

Maybe it was just her imagination, but it felt like the shadows were inching closer toward her.

“Tell that…” Ruby started, only to trail off. If she couldn’t be heard, she was wasting her breath. Instead, she just bounced up and down three times. Looking around, watching the shadows move in the distance, Ruby quietly added, “Please hurry.”

 

 

 

Walter could have warned her. She wasn’t sure that it would have helped, but at least she would have beeen able to mentally prepare. Sapphire was… Dyna didn’t want to say anything rude as she didn’t really know him, but…

Sapphire’s head lolled to one side. His blue eyes didn’t look at Dyna or at the two obvious technicians working on various consoles and terminals. His lips didn’t quite move and yet words formed in the air—not in Dyna’s mind—as he spoke.

“My presence isn’t known outside these walls.” “No one knows me.” “No one will know of me.”

“You’re supposed to be a secret?”

“Tell no one.”

“Okay,” Dyna said, readily agreeing with the single sentence that at least sounded like it had come from Sapphire’s general direction, even if his mouth hadn’t moved. “So you’ve come to support, but you’re not allowed to leave?”

“Support comes in many forms.” “We listen. Or try to. There…” “Is there anybody out there?”

Dyna blinked, trying to parse the… She honestly wasn’t sure if that was a cryptic statement or just Sapphire doing his best to explain. But as she was trying to think, it hit her.

Sapphire was classified as a mind reader. His power had an odd effect on himself where he, for brief instances, would basically be another person. So Walter could very well have sent him for the express purpose of mind reading Ado or Maple. To glean a bit more on their organization and technology. Unfortunately…

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” she said. “They’ve got these masks that block psionic energy. I tried to convince Maple to remove his, and he wouldn’t. Ado did remove her goggles,” Dyna said, thinking back with a hum. “But has since replaced them and added a full protective suit. Maybe I could try again?”

Sapphire sat—or maybe floated—without moving. He simply stared off into space, leaving Dyna shifting awkwardly. Just Dyna opened her mouth, his head snapped up. “Is there… anybody out there?” he asked again, voice coming from Dyna’s left.

“No. They’re wearing protective gear. I just said that.”

His head slumped back down. Dyna took a moment to glance about the room. Although much fancier, it really wasn’t all that different from the Tartarus truck. There were terminals and computers and measuring devices and portable tools hanging from racks. The two scientists, both wearing silver suits, were pointedly ignoring both Dyna and Sapphire. They had just spent half a day stuck in a relatively small space with him.

Dyna wasn’t sure that she could have done it.

Then again, there was a door in the back. Maybe they had left him here on his own and only came over after entering the city. Was there anyone else in charge?

“There are regular doctors here, right? The medical kind?” she asked, mostly looking toward Sapphire but raising her voice to address the whole room. “I’ve got a friend with a leg injury who probably needs it looked at again. Oh and I’ve got… anomalous materials in need of containment.”

“Attention please,” Beatrice said after a few announcement tones. “Please deposit anomalous materials into the Anomalous Materials Portable Psionic Insulation Chamber. To your left.”

One of the techs moved as Beatrice spoke, sliding open a panel on the wall to reveal a steel-sided box quite similar to the one Dyna had seen Emerald carrying the day they met. He pulled it out of a receptacle set into the wall, scanned it underneath a simple barcode scanner, then opened it for Dyna.

Removing the plastic heart from her pocket, Dyna frowned at it for a long moment. Was it really anything? It just felt so… unceremonious to get rid of it like this. Doctor Cross would probably be disappointed that she hadn’t created a new artifact. There just hadn’t been time. Since that phone call, things had been so busy. And then this popped up on Tartarus’ scanners, only it didn’t feel like an artifact. It didn’t feel like anything at all.

Maybe the scientists would figure something out. With that thought, Dyna dropped it into the container. The tech didn’t say a word as he closed it, scanned it again, and replaced it in the wall. A large spinning wheel, the kind found on vault doors, sealed that section of the room off automatically.

“Containment secured.”

Dyna quickly looked up to the corner of the room and found a security camera—one with five lenses behind a clear dome of glass. A bright red light underneath tracked Dyna’s minor movements, watching her as she shifted away from Sapphire.

“Beatrice?” In her shock at seeing Sapphire, Dyna had nearly forgotten that Beatrice had been the one to call her toward the trailer in the first place. “Is there a medical doctor here?”

“You may find Doctor Teeth in the Mobile Medical Sciences Laboratory. Beyond the door near Sapphire.”

“Excellen… Is Teeth his real name?”

“I am not permitted to divulge that information at this time.”

To Dyna, that meant probably not, but she shrugged. “Missed his calling as a dentist. I’ll… chat later, Sapphire,” Dyna said as she moved past him toward the rear compartment.

Sliding the door open, Dyna paused.

The rear trailer must have extended its walls while she was talking. It had a lot of space. More than she would have expected. While the front compartment looked like a computer laboratory with some scientific equipment on the side, this rear area was obviously a hospital. Or modeled after one. Some tables could fold out from the walls. There was a sink and possibly a toilet behind a small protruding door. EKG meters, blood pressure devices, and other light triage tools were hanging off racks. Dyna spotted some of the more esoteric equipment as well, things the Carroll Institute used to examine psychics.

Another two guards, wearing silver suits, stood at the rear wielding rifles. Three other men stood around the room, none of whom were armed. One stood near the back, looking at a display panel. Both the other two were in the middle of long, full stretches. Which just further confirmed Dyna’s notion that the walls had recently pushed out.

“Doctor… Teeth?” she asked.

The silver suited man furthest back turned toward her. The mirrored pane on his suit helmet didn’t let her see his face, but he raised a hand in greeting. “Just one moment. I am ensuring that the sedatives are having no ill effect on our guest,” he said, looking back to the panel.

“Guest?”

The far wall, between the two guards, held a glass pane. At first, Dyna had thought it was a window. The only window in the entire place. It was circular and small. Maybe the size of someone’s head, maybe a little bigger. With thick bolts holding it to the wall, it looked kind of like a porthole on a boat. But, stepping a little closer, the other side wasn’t the outside world at all.

Someone’s face was illuminated by faint blue lights than ran around the other side of the window. Someone Dyna recognized.

“Grafton is here?” Dyna asked with a hiss.

Even knowing he was being traded for Tartarus assisting with Ruby, Dyna wouldn’t have expected him to be brought out before Ruby actually got fixed. Him being here… probably wasn’t that much of a risk given that neither Maple or Ado had weapons. The former was a bit of a coward and probably wouldn’t try to rush in to free him. The latter… would probably just fix Ruby.

At this point, there wasn’t much reason to go out of their way to antagonize the Carroll Institute. Not unless they couldn’t fix Ruby. Even then, even with only a few guards, they probably wouldn’t be making off with Grafton if the Carroll Institute didn’t want them to.

“He is here. Obviously. Walter made a deal. The administrators agreed with his actions. Or so it seems,” Doctor Teeth said, turning fully to face Dyna. “Now you had an injury, correct? I did read the briefing before shipping out.”

“Not me. A friend.”

“Oh, yes, yes. This Matthew person. Where is he?”

“The announcement said only I should approach.”

“Oh, yes, yes… Beatrice? Can I get this stuffy thing off? I can’t even think with it on.”

“Ambient randi levels are high, but non-threatening toward mental or physical wellbeing. Class Three personnel may remove protective equipment.”

Doctor Teeth immediately peeled off the flexible silver helmet, tugging at the collar of the suit. The outer layer was like a dome of silver. Underneath, he wore a full-face mask that looked a lot like what a firefighter might wear when headed into a burning building. He quickly started stripping right there along with the two unarmed suit wearers in the trailer. Both guards standing outside Grafton’s psionic isolation chamber remained still, not taking off their protective gear.

Outside the protective gear, Doctor Teeth was a scrub-wearing older man with thin, silvery hair. Silver in the old-age way, not dyed as Dyna’s was. With a round, faintly wrinkled face, he had an immediately trustworthy air about him. Though Dyna wasn’t necessarily one to trust someone off appearance alone, he was here with the institute.

She wasn’t sure if the scrub-like outfit he had on simply something to be worn underneath the suits or if it was related to his profession. Both of the other two… assistants, Dyna presumed given their obvious deference to Doctor Teeth, were wearing identical clothes.

“Now then, that’s better isn’t it?” he said, donning a rectangular pair of glasses. Once they were settled into place, he waved a hand toward the other two. “I and my colleagues here are, combined, qualified to diagnose and treat mundane maladies and injuries. We were briefed on the injured subject, but so long as the hospital doctors knew what they were doing, there probably isn’t too much to concern yourself over.

“Beyond that, I specifically am a researcher in psionic energy waveforms and… well… I would like a chance to examine this so-called entity if at all possible. That is the reason I volunteered for this assignment.”

“Tartarus has it locked up in an oversized test tube. Out in their truck. I’m not sure how much they’re willing to share,” Dyna said with a sigh. “I don’t know how much I can help either. They’re wary around me. Always interrupting each other when they start straying from ‘safe’ topics.”

“But the entity is a safe topic.”

“Well… yes, but—”

“Excellent,” Doctor Teeth said, beaming a bright smile that showed off nearly immaculate teeth. He turned slightly, looking toward his assistants. “Then let us fetch the principal subject and ensure he is doing alright. While we’re at it, you can point out to me this entity.”

“I doubt you’ll need me to do that. It’s kind of obvious once…” Dyna trailed off.

Doctor Teeth wasn’t even paying attention to her. He moved over to the wall, pulled a heavy-looking lever, and stood back.

A gurney, much like the one Matt had been in when they fled the hospital, folded out from the wall. The two assistants took hold of it, but waited as a panel slid aside not far ahead of them. A cold breeze wafted in through the open panel, which just kept widening into a proper door. A ramp extended out, stretching far more than the small steps at the other trailer. It met the ground at a shallow angle, providing an easy method of getting the gurney up and down the high trailer.

As the two assistants navigated the gurney and Doctor Teeth moved to follow, Dyna paused, looking to the back of the trailer. “What about Grafton?”

“Who? Oh.” Teeth shrugged. “His vitals will be fine—the chamber monitors and regulates everything automatically. I’m just here in case of emergencies.”

Dyna was far more concerned with him escaping, but… he was apparently drugged and guarded. Not to mention that the chamber he was in probably couldn’t be opened from the inside. The suits would keep Grafton from waking up and mind controlling them into setting him free. Beatrice was presumably watching closely, though she might not be able to do much but sound an alarm depending on how annoying the so-called administrators were being.

Besides all that, there really wasn’t much reason to escape. So long as Tartarus followed through on helping Ruby, he was already being set free. No matter how much Dyna didn’t like that idea.

Grafton was a powerful mind-controller with augmentations that might or might not still be broken. Even if they were, Ado was right there. She could probably fix them up in minutes. Probably improving them while she was at it.

By the time she looked away from Grafton’s containment unit, Teeth and the assistants were already halfway across the parking lot. She hurried to catch up, figuring there should be at least one armed person around. Even if it wasn’t her job, she had a vested interest in ensuring Ruby and Matt didn’t come to any harm.

Any further harm.

“Bring out the injured,” Teeth called out, voice several notches louder than it really needed to be.

Everyone was just where Dyna had left them. No sudden attempts at running off with Ruby and Matt and the static entity. Maple stood stiff and straight just outside the truck, barely moving. Probably still worried about the two men with guns standing outside the first trailer—who were actually four now that Dyna looked. Someone else with a gun stood by the front of the Carroll Institute’s semi-truck cab and another stood at the newly deployed ramp. The latter two must have come from the cab. It was certainly large enough for a driver, passenger, and then two others in a rear bench.

“Is this her then?” Teeth said as he neared the truck, looking directly at the static entity. “I thought we were tending to a he, but I suppose—”

Teeth cut himself off with a startled hop in the air as a wave of static cascaded down the girl’s body. Once both his feet were back on the ground, he shifted in obvious unease, throwing a glance to his assistants. Neither of whom looked particularly enthused.

“This… is the entity?” he said slowly, now wary. His teeth were not showing. “I thought it was contained.”

Ado, utterly unflappable in her tone, tapped her knuckles on the glass tube. “This entity is contained. This one,” she said, nudging the girl with her silver boot, “is new.”

“Careful. Don’t kick her,” Dyna said.

Only for everyone present to turn toward her.

“What? Entity or not, I’m pretty sure she tried to help us. You heard her,” Dyna said, looking toward Maple. “Before you shot her.”

“I… Maybe. But—”

“Regardless,” Ado continued. “These scans must be made so we can properly calibrate our equipment. We lack a second containment unit, but it does seem to exhibit extremely negative reactions to disruptor waves. Properly attuned to its being, we may be able to ensure it stays inert long enough for us to properly contain it.”

“If…” Doctor Teeth started slowly. “If containment is required for our safety and you lack the means, it is possible that we inadvertently brought along a suitable alternative.”

“To the best of my knowledge, the Carroll Institute has never encountered entities before this week. I would be surprised if you have something that can contain entities.”

“It wasn’t designed to contain such things, but psionic energy is psionic energy.”

Ado offered a small nod, agreeing to that point.

“It is occupied at the moment, but things can be rearranged.”

Dyna whipped her head over to Teeth. “What? No. Absolutely not.”

“Come now,” Teeth said, turning. “Do you want to try to fight an angry bundle of psionic energy, taking the form of a human? Or would you prefer a regular old human?”

“The psionic energy,” Dyna answered instantly. “Of the two options, one tried to help, the other tried to kill me. Or at least mind control me. And put a whole airport in danger doing so,” she hissed.

“He’s going to be free sooner or later.”

“He is going to stay right where he is,” Dyna said. “And will not move an inch until Ruby is back to normal.”

She wasn’t sure if she had any authority here. She was an artificer. That came with some status. But this was probably akin to a military operation and Dyna was no general. She could call up Walter and maybe get his agreement. That would work.

But he didn’t argue. His teeth clacked shut as he glared.

He wanted the girl. Probably to study.

No… definitely to study.

But Dyna had other priorities.

“Matt is the one you are going to help right now,” she said, pointing into the truck when Teeth didn’t argue for a moment more. “The one with the leg injury. Matt, these people are doctors. Maybe not the most conventional doctors, but they have assured me that they are qualified to tend to injuries. So come out and let them take a look.”

Before anyone could argue, Dyna looked up to Ado. She couldn’t see any of Ado, but the same wasn’t true in reverse. Ado could definitely see Dyna’s expression.

“You,” Dyna said, “quit waving that thing around.”

“But—”

“No buts. Maple and I can keep a disruptor pointed at the girl. It worked well enough the first time. It will work again. You just focus on fixing Ruby. The sooner you do, the sooner we can all part ways and pretend like none of this ever happened.”

Dyna expected some flak from someone. Maybe Teeth. Maybe Ado.

Instead, it was like everyone reached a silent agreement to simply comply. Ado waved her scanner over the girl one last time, checking the results, before hanging it up on a rack and returning to her terminal. Teeth, watching her give in, sighed and looked further back into the truck.

“Matt, is it? Can you move forward to the gurney or do you need assistance?”

“I can move,” Matt said, followed by him getting to his hands and knees and crawling over to the waiting bed.

Dyna felt like someone should have helped him—or at least opened the side door so he didn’t have to crawl so far—but was too busy maintaining her glare at Teeth to do anything about it herself. He made it over in short time regardless. Once in the bed, Teeth and the assistants took him away without further comment. Dyna had half a mind to go after them, just to ensure that they didn’t do anything to him, but didn’t think they actually would. He was just a regular person with some minor psychic ability. Hardly worth getting upset over when compared to psionic entities.

Besides, Dyna had already promised to hold one of the disruptor guns up to the girl’s head.

“Well,” Maple said softly. “Think you made them mad.”

“I just want this to be done with,” Dyna said, pulling down the disruptor she had used against the Hatman. Something… felt wrong. The Hatman was unmoving and so was the girl. It was probably just her imagination.

She wasn’t going to get caught unawares.

“On that, I think I can agree.”

 

 

“Yes, Sir. It seems contained at the moment.”

“Good,” Walter said. “I expected a call sooner.”

“You said to call when I was alone. Things have been hectic.”

“I understand. Ruby?”

Dyna glanced over toward the truck. They were still at the high school. Still parked out front. In the thirty minutes since the Hatman’s capture, he hadn’t moved. Not even a slight twitch or jerky motion in the permanent marker covering his face. Ado hadn’t explained anything about how the containment tube actually kept him contained, but Dyna suspected that it was sedatives. Or perhaps some kind of constant psionic disruption that worked like sedatives to a being like the Hatman.

“Ruby is… unchanged. Still intangible.” She had updated him on that much via text messages. “Ado was supposed to be looking into finding a solution for that, but… there has been one additional complication.”

“Oh?”

“Some… being emerged from a… Ado called it a spatial anomaly. Honestly, I’m a bit out of my depth here.”

“My team will be arriving before long. They can assist from there. But until then, describe what happened?”

“Some hole in the world. Not a physical pit that someone could jump through, but… something broken. Maple walked into it and back out without apparent harm. Something else must have spotted him because that something came through shortly after, disrupting the hole on its way out. Ado and Maple are currently consulting with Doctor Darq and… Id about what to do with it. They only have one containment tube, so no way to lock it up. Because of that, they are a bit on edge, not sure if this thing is going to wake up and attack them or not.”

“And this new entity?”

“Takes the form of a woman in ragged clothes. Looks like she stepped out of an old television having connection issues. Constant ravages of static ripple across her body. She… There is something familiar about her. I’m not sure what. I don’t think she is any missing friend of mine, but I might not know because of my memories.” Dyna paused a moment before adding. “Oh yeah, and she spoke. Tried to warn us of the Hatman’s presence. Did warn us, I suppose.”

“Odd. Did you detect anything in your mind? Could it be a mental effect? Broadcasting familiarity to get you to lower your guard?”

“I… Maybe? I was wearing the protective mask Tartarus provided. It is off right now to keep them from listening in, but… the Hatman’s memory alteration didn’t make it through the mask.”

“Just something to be aware of. The Carroll Institute’s team will be there shortly. Try to keep Tartarus from going anywhere or relocating the entities. We want a look at them. It is hard to believe the institute has missed something like entities for years since the Advent, but… Working in this field, little surprises me anymore.”

“I don’t think they’re planning on moving anytime soon. I can show the team the spatial anomaly as well, though there might not be much left.”

“Whatever data we acquire is data we didn’t have before.”

“Point taken,” Dyna said with a shrug. “I’ll—”

“How are you holding up?”

“Me? I… I’m fine?”

“Truly?”

“I mean… A lot has been happening. Some of it has freaked me out, true. But—and maybe this is just me talking after the danger has passed—none of it has been Emerald popping up out of nowhere during a training exercise. I know that is just training and Emerald wouldn’t actually do… whatever the Hatman might have done, but…” Dyna shrugged despite him not being able to see. “The Hatman freaked me out when I first realized we encountered him. With the masks from Tartarus letting us see and remember him, he just isn’t that scary.”

Walter left a long silence on his end of the call. When he did speak, he hummed in understanding. “That is why we have such training,” he said. “But I would like to schedule you for an extra therapy session a week for the next month. Objections?”

Dyna frowned, but shook her head. “Not really. I mean, I’m going to be seeing the doctors anyway, right?”

“True.”

“If that’s all, I’ll… Wait! I almost forgot.” Dyna’s finger went down to her pocket where she traced over a lump. Ado and Maple might have forgotten about it with the new arrival. Dyna almost had. Dropping her voice to a scarce whisper, just in case Tartarus had fancy listening devices around their truck, she said, “I might have found an artifact.”

“Might?”

“Well… Tartarus had these sensors and a heart appeared on one of them. I have it in my pocket at the moment, but I didn’t and still don’t feel calm in its presence like I did with the other artifacts. So I’m not sure. It’s definitely something strange though.”

“We’ll have to investigate,” Walter said. “Our team should have an artifact containment unit on hand to keep it safe until we can get it back to Psychodynamics.”

“How soon will they be here?”

“One moment,” Walter said, voice going softer as he leaned away from his phone. He came back shortly. “They’ve entered the city and are currently navigating toward the high school. Fifteen to thirty minutes, barring unexpected issues.”

“Good. I’ll try to keep Tartarus from leaving then.”

“I’ll be in contact upon their arrival, I presume,” Walter said.

The call ended immediately after, leaving Dyna to drop her arm to her side and pocket the phone. She took a breath and put the protective mask over her face once again. She wasn’t sure that it was really necessary at the moment. Having tested it, Dyna could still see and remember the Hatman inside his containment tube. But she still took a wary glance around, looking for anything that might have been out of place.

Neither Maple or Ado looked panicked or even mildly alarmed, however, so Dyna figured there wasn’t much to be worried about.

Back at the truck, Ado stood over the prone form of their static-like guest, waving a whole variety of instruments then checking the readings on her terminal. Maple, standing outside the truck itself, had similar instruments that he was waving over himself.

“Something wrong?” Dyna asked him.

“Just making sure I didn’t pick up any cross-dimensional diseases from carrying the girl… or… whatever psychic equivalents there might be. I don’t know. This isn’t my field of specialty.”

“You really don’t seem like the kind of person who should be working with an organization like Tartarus.”

“No kidding,” he said. His tone of voice the verbal equivalent to a sarcastic teen’s eye-roll. “Id is helping me with a problem I have. But I swear, this is the last time I do field work. I swear…”

Dyna opened her mouth. Maybe to try to convince him to quit working for Id, some promise that the Carroll Institute could help him better than she could with their funding and official nature or maybe just that Id was kind of a giant bag of dirt not only for invading other people’s minds but also because of her sending her employees into situations they were drastically uncomfortable with. But she couldn’t quite find the words. As Maple continued scanning himself, Dyna found herself donning a frown behind her mask.

She wasn’t too pleased with the institute at this particular moment in time. Granted, there was no way anyone but the most powerful precogs could have known that the Hatman would be here, but their support had still been lacking. At the very least, the administrators could have unleashed Beatrice. That would have solved at least some of the complications.

Besides that, Maple clearly knew of the Carroll Institute and, more specifically, their Psychodynamics division. If he thought they could help, he probably would have gone to them already. Without knowing more about whatever problem he had, Dyna couldn’t begin to make false promises.

Her attentions turned aside, moving past Ado—who she doubted would be convinced of any traitorous notions—to the final member of the small group. At least, the final member of the group who wasn’t at least partially out of phase with the rest of reality.

Hopping up onto the back of the truck, Dyna took a seat with her legs dangling off the back.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, repeating the same question Walter had just asked of her.

Matt, leaned up against the wall and keeping his eyes anywhere but on the Hatman’s containment tube, shook his head ever so slightly. “Fine. Painkillers are starting to wear off again.”

Dyna glanced down to his leg, hidden under the same hospital gown he had been wearing before. “There are some actual doctors on their way here,” she said softly. “They shouldn’t be too long.”

He looked up, looking directly at Dyna. “What are—” he started, before dropping his gaze. “You don’t look like I remember.”

“I dyed my hair,” she said, running her fingers through it. It felt… unpleasant. She had been running around, sweating and stressed, and had only used cheap motel products when she last showered.

“It’s not that. You’re different somehow. I…” He shook his head, glancing aside. “I don’t know. I’ve hardly been around people for I don’t even know how long. Ever since he started coming after me.”

He had it rough. Constantly moving from place to place, hardly any social interaction, and a monster chasing after him. The Carroll Institute was filled with therapists. He could get help with them.

Dyna decided to focus more on the first part of what he said. “It’s been a long time. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a psychic too. Kind of. Maybe.” Dyna shrugged. “I’ve had training in… uh… self defense. You… I assume have changed a lot too. Your hair is the same, but…”

“But?”

Dyna frowned. Both their faces were hidden behind masks, so he wouldn’t be able to see it. But something had been on Dyna’s mind for a while now. Namely, she didn’t have many memories of her childhood. Part of that was certainly the Hatman’s doing. There had been that other book as well. Maybe more besides—thus far, nobody the institute had brought in had been able to send her back to that sanctuary through hypnosis like Harold had managed.

She couldn’t remember much about Matt. Most of what she remembered was less something from her memory and more a vague confirmation after having seen the picture from her mother and the reports from the institute.

Dyna looked over to the woman on the other side of the truck. Ado stood over her, waving some tool with a long rod and a small disc on the end. It looked like a metal detector, but probably wasn’t.

“Do you recognize her from anywhere?” Dyna asked.

Matt looked over and, after a moment of staring, shook his head. “Should I?”

“I don’t know. I feel like she’s familiar to me, but… I thought I was recognizing her from one of the pictures you had hanging up in the closet of the house we found you in.”

“The house? The… oh. Oh god…” His hand smacked into the silver mask, knocking it slightly askew. “The kid you were with, I… I don’t even know where that—”

“It’s fine. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“But—”

“She’s fine. Or was fine.” Dyna pointed up to the harness—poor Ruby was still hanging up. The harness was swinging back and forth as if Ruby were kicking her legs. Not in an attempt to escape, but just out of boredom. “That’s her. She was at the hospital too, I think, but the Hatman might have made you forget that.”

“I saw her face,” Matt said, sounding utterly horrified. “She didn’t have a face.”

“It wasn’t as bad as it looked?” Dyna said. She probably shouldn’t mention artifacts, although it seemed a bit late to keep secrets with everything that had gone on. “It’s hard to explain, but she is perfectly fine right now. Or she would be if Ado got around to doing her job.” Dyna raised her voice with the last sentence, shooting a quick look over to Ado.

The chief engineer didn’t even pause her metal detecting. “The chamber is performing its own scans on the contained entity,” she said. “There is little for me to do before it is finished.”

“In any case, Ruby is fine,” Dyna said, looking back to Matt. In an attempt to get him to think about something different, she pointed over to the woman. “What about her? Anything?”

Matt didn’t answer for a long time. He just sat there, hands rubbing together in an nervous tic. Eventually, he shook his head again. “I don’t think so. I memorized every single one of the ghosts’ faces. Hers doesn’t look familiar.”

“Maybe I’m imagining things,” Dyna said, shaking her head.

“What’s wrong with her?”

Dyna didn’t have an answer to that.

Ado, on the other hand, looked over. “That, Mister Quincy, is what we are trying to determine.”

Narrowing her eyes, Dyna glared at Ado. “How do you know his name? How does she know your name?”

“Wasn’t I supposed to say?”

Dyna shook her head. “These people aren’t good people,” she hissed in a whisper. Probably a useless whisper. The headset in the mask could pick up even quiet noises. “They kidnap people and invade their minds and all kinds of nasty things like that.”

“But… then why are—”

“I quite resent that sentiment,” Ado said. “We are certainly no worse than those you work for.”

“Excuse me?”

“Or do you think Grafton is being given a fair trial? Incarcerated in a secret government facility.” Ado spoke without interrupting her scanning. She didn’t look up. She didn’t even angle her head away from the girl on the floor of the truck. “Do you suppose he got a single phone call or option to contact a legal representative?”

“That’s… You can’t just put a mind controller in a court room. He’d get the judge and jury—”

“Do you suppose he would ever have seen the light of day again were it not for Id brokering the deal she made?”

Dyna pressed her lips together, glaring. But she didn’t open her mouth.

She didn’t have an answer.

She was spared from having to try to answer by the sound of a large vehicle rolling up to the school.

Where the truck Tartarus used was a small affair, the kind of thing any regular person might rent for a day to move a few larger belongings from one property to another, the vehicle that rolled up was massive. It was the size of two full freight cars, connected by an articulating gangway connection, and pulled by a semi-truck. The two trailers had panels on the sides, lit by a strip of lights along the bottom side. It looked like the panels would pop out, similar to the dining area or bed space of an RV.

The general color scheme matched that of Psychodynamics. It lacked any wood furnishings, but the predominantly white body was accented with gold. The small lights along the bottom lit up the simple brain logo of the Carroll Institute, along with the name of the institute and a slogan. Tomorrow’s Minds, Today.

Dyna always thought it was a bit cheesy.

It pulled up along the rear of the Tartarus truck, using the wide and empty parking lot to maneuver. The wheels stopped with a loud hiss from the brakes.

“We… uh…” Maple shifted in obvious discomfort as one of the side doors opened, lowering his scanning tool slowly. “We don’t have to worry about getting captured, right? I mean, I don’t want to be here very much, but if the alternative is bunking with Grafton…”

He trailed off as several of the silver suited men, a common sight down in Psychodynamics, stepped out from the open door. Two, armed with assault rifles, immediately moved to flank the open door. Dyna took it as a mildly good sign that they didn’t point their guns toward anyone present. She was far, far to exhausted to entertain the idea of a fight breaking out here.

Not that it would be much of a fight. Near as she could tell, neither Maple or Ado carried guns. Actual guns. The disruptors didn’t count.

“Those suits are disgustingly bulky and likely not nearly as effective as they could be.”

“Id will probably be upset if you try upgrading their tech level.”

“Yes, but I could—”

“Ado,” Maple interrupted, not quite glancing back over his shoulder. “Maybe you could put your devices down? Don’t want them to think we’ve got weapons while they’ve got their guns out.”

“They’re posturing. They aren’t going to do anything. It’s all just a show.”

“Show or not, those don’t look like prop weapons to me. I would really prefer if you—”

Two familiar incoming-announcement tones played over external speakers. “Attention please. Dyna Graves, please report to the Mobile Psychodynamics Command Center. All others maintain a distance of ten meters.”

“Well,” Dyna said. “I’ll be back shortly.” Turning to Matt, she glanced between him and Ado. “Don’t let them kidnap you or anything.”

Ado let out a small harrumph as Dyna hopped off the back of the truck. After thinking twice, Dyna stopped heading toward the Carroll Institute vehicle, turned back to the truck, and removed her mask and headset. She even left the flashlight behind. Everything that Tartarus had given her just might have some kind of recording tools hidden into it. As the owner of the Spymaster’s Mirror, useless though it was, Dyna was aware of such things.

The guards didn’t move much at all as Dyna approached the much larger trailer. It was possible that she knew them under all that protective gear, but it was just as likely that they had merely been briefed and given pictures. Or maybe they just knew her from around the institute. Either way, they didn’t react up until Dyna reached the truck, at which point the one on the left just nodded his head toward her.

Stepping up the few extended steps to get into the trailer, Dyna paused at the threshold. She wasn’t surprised at all to find the interior nearly indistinguishable from the laboratories at the Carroll Institute. It was filled with equipment and fancy to the point of being a questionable use of taxpayer money.

What really made her stop was the person not quite sitting in a chair.

“I—” “We—” “—have been sent to assist.”

“Oh…” Dyna started, forcing a smile. “Hello Sapphire.”

 

 

 

As Dyna pulled the trigger on the disruptor, sending the Hatman into a full-powered spasm, two things stood out to her.

The first regarded the Hatman himself. He was angry, obviously. That much should probably be expected given the situation last time she had been around him. Being locked down by the disruptor gun had not made him pleased. But the most important part was that he seemed angry with her.

He was here in the auditorium and he was looking at Dyna. Unless something had happened back in the truck without a word coming through their comms, both Ruby and Matt were still there. They were there and he was here.

He had switched targets?

Dyna was the obvious target. The one he would likely be angry with based on their last encounter. While she believed that he was after her, there was a slight chance at another possibility.

Backpedaling, Dyna moved around the stage toward the stairs that Maple had used to get up. She kept the Hatman in full view, not wanting to turn her back to him for even an instant. Dyna’s other thought involved the one who appeared, that she had used the spatial anomaly to escape from the Hatman, thus incurring his anger. It was possible that she was his actual target of the moment.

The anomaly on the stage was still shimmering like shards of glass, but the one who had forced her way from it was crumpled up in a ball, shuddering and spasming much like the Hatman.

“You shot her?”

“She’s a monster,” Maple said, waving the disruptor.

Dyna pressed her lips together. She couldn’t exactly deny what it looked like. But of the two otherworldly beings in the room, only one of them had tried to speak. Only one of them wasn’t getting back to their feet.

“Ado?”

“Monitoring the situation. Readings are confused. I am not sure if the disruptor fired by Mister Maple disrupted the anomaly or if the new being disrupted it on their way out. Either way, it seems to be dissipating.”

“Damn.” So much for putting Ruby through it. Would there be others? “I’m more concerned about the Hatman. I thought you were scanning for him?”

“Readings spiked just a few seconds ago. I was about to warn you, but you discovered the problem for yourself.”

Dyna bit back several sarcastic responses to that and focused on the problem at hand. “What of Doctor Darq? Has he gotten back to us with how we can contain the Hatman?”

“Yes.”

“He has?” Dyna asked, genuinely surprised.

“I am working on making the adjustments required to the containment system at this time. Or was before this conversation began.”

“Good. Great.” Dyna took a breath, backing away as the Hatman got to his feet. She didn’t fire right away again. Not now that she knew what a limited capacity they had for the full-power shots. She had been a bit too trigger happy back at the warehouse. “We’ll lure him back to the truck.”

Besides, they needed him moving.

“We?” Maple said.

Dyna couldn’t shoot him a glare without looking away from the Hatman.

“There are external doors to the auditorium,” Ado said. “I can see one from the truck. I imagine there is another on the other side. Please vacate the premises as soon as possible.”

“Maple,” Dyna said, watching as the Hatman’s head turned to focus solely on her. Its neck twisted, bending in a way that no human could manage. It was definitely after her and not the static-like woman. “Grab her,” she said, motioning with the gun, “and get her back to the truck.”

“Me?”

“Unless you want to try to distract the Hatman.”

Dyna, still backing up, caught Maple throwing a glance toward the Hatman before looking back to the ragged woman.

“I’ll get the static entity,” he said.

The Hatman cut off any response Dyna might have had for Maple. Though still experiencing mild spasms, it lunged toward her with its hand fully extended. He was still a good distance away. Not even out of the aisle. The lunge looked more like something he should do if his target was right in front of him.

Dyna still took a few hurried steps backward, moving alongside the stage. After the Hatman lunged a second time, no longer walking normally but creeping out like the monster he was, she took her eyes off him for just an instant. Long enough to glance back and confirm that Ado had been correct. There was a door to the auditorium. Maybe a fire exit. Maybe an entrance for parents or whoever would come to see the drama team put on a play.

The distance must have been a bit too much. Or maybe the Hatman just focused on whatever target was closest. Whatever the case, the Hatman slowly turned away from Dyna, focusing on the stage.

Maple stood over the woman, looking down with obvious uncertainty in his posture. Dyna couldn’t blame him. She wasn’t sure how she would pick someone up that didn’t look at all stable.

But she couldn’t just let the Hatman focus on someone else.

Taking so many steps backward left Dyna almost tripping over a loose plank. A short bit of wood that might have come from the armrest of one of the seats.

Keeping the disruptor at the ready, just in case she needed to put him down for a few moments, Dyna knelt and picked up the armrest. It wasn’t heavy. A piece of plywood with some fancy lacquer and sanding to make it look a little finer than it actually was.

Throwing it, tossing it with a spin, it smacked into the Hatman’s shoulder. It actually hit him. Which shouldn’t have surprised her as much as it did, but there were a lot of weird things going on. The way Ruby barely existed, the door that had been shut in reality but apparently open somewhere else, and the way she was fairly certain that Ruby had shot at the Hatman to no apparent effect.

It probably meant that hitting him with her car would have worked.

Lost regrets aside, Dyna waited for the Hatman to fully right himself. When he did, he didn’t turn to her. He placed his hands on the edge of the stage like he was about to climb up.

“Hey!” Dyna shouted, taking a few steps forward. She didn’t have any other planks handy, but she did have a few of Ado’s masks. “You remember me?” she said, flinging one of her spare masks. “You better remember me! You stared at me but left me behind. You’re going to regret that, bastard.”

Dyna wasn’t sure if it was the mask, the step forward, or the shouting, but something did it. The Hatman turned slowly, head swiveling at an angle. His face, momentarily hidden beneath the brim of his hat, twisted into a scribbled snarl. His hand swiped out toward Dyna, long trails of permanent marker trailing behind each of his fingers.

Skipping backward, Dyna barely avoided his grasp. Something about his arm reached out further than he should have been able to. She felt… something. A tingle in the back of her mind that she couldn’t quite place. The fact that it managed to reach through the protective mask churned her stomach. But she could still see the Hatman. Maple and the static-person were still on stage. Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to affect her.

At least not yet.

The Hatman’s interest in Maple and the static-person vanished entirely as he took step after step toward Dyna. She backpedaled, maintaining distance but not rushing. If she got too far away, she was worried he might turn back to the others.

Dyna’s back hit the wall.

The door would be a short distance to the right. Just five steps. Behind the Hatman, Maple had scooped up their unexpected guest in a haphazard fireman’s carry. Though it didn’t look that stable. Every time the static-like shimmers crossed her body, Maple stiffened. Probably thinking that he was about to be attacked. But, though their eyes didn’t meet, Maple still looked to her and offered a small nod of his head. He hopped off the stage behind the Hatman and hurried out the same way that they had entered.

“Ado, I hope you’re ready,” Dyna said, rushing over to the door once she was sure that the Hatman wasn’t going to turn and chase Maple. “I’m coming out.”

“I am readying equipment. Take your time. I mean it, at least a few minutes.”

Dyna doubted she had a few minutes. Not without expending the disruptor gun. And that could be done outside and in line of sight to Ado’s more powerful version that was attached to the truck. Dyna was saving her gun for an emergency.

The door thankfully opened. Dyna had expected it to. It wasn’t labeled as an emergency exit, but did have the push handle bar that meant it probably didn’t lock from the inside.

Although the door opened, Dyna didn’t rush out. She didn’t want to get closer to the Hatman, but letting him out of her sight might mean he would turn and chase after Maple.

Tense and watching, Dyna waited until the Hatman was practically on top of her before ducking under his arms and slipping out into the chilly night air.

Ado stood outside the truck. The large human-sized tank of liquid could apparently move along rails, for it was out of the truck and slowly lowering itself down next to Ado. Matt was awake and had apparently been charged with their safety, holding the larger disruptor gun in his hands as he sat on the edge of the truck, legs bent off to the side. Though it was a strange implement, he held the disruptor with confidence. As expected of someone used to fighting off the Hatman with a shotgun.

Both wore protective headgear. In Matt’s case, his was the same standard mask that Dyna and Maple had on. Ado, on the other hand, had replaced or augmented her goggles with a full-head helmet. Her costume change didn’t stop there. Sporting a slimmer version of the Psychodynamics silver protective suit, the only way that Dyna could even tell that it was her was process of elimination. Matt was in the truck. Ruby was intangible. Maple had gone the other way and was probably still running through the school’s halls.

“What’s the plan?” Dyna shouted.

Ado jerked. A moment after, Dyna heard an irritated voice over her headset. “I can hear you just fine.”

“Great! Then you can answer my question,” Dyna said, backing up across what was probably a parking lot for school buses.

The Hatman was following. He… felt a lot less dangerous now. Out in the open, Dyna would be hard pressed to wind up cornered. He just wasn’t that fast, even angered as he was. And the masks removed his biggest threat. That of his utter imperceptibility. Knowing where he was made it practically trivial to avoid him.

Though with the way the cylindrical tank was lowering to the ground—the bottom was coming out from under it so that it might rest horizontally—the truck probably couldn’t be moved in a hurry. At least not without damaging the equipment.

“The plan,” Ado said far too slowly for Dyna’s liking, “is simple. I have just completed the tuning of the psionic entity disruptor.” She waved toward the weapon Matt held. “Lead him closer, we’ll fire. Assuming all goes well, the entity will be rendered inert. Temporarily, but it should be long enough to contain it,” she said, now waving down to the tank.

Now horizontal, the tank rotated so that its back was upward. Unlike the curved glass front, the back was flat and covered in all manner of machinery. A seam split across the back, opening the container of liquid to the world.

Dyna eyed it for a moment, wary of getting too close, before double-checking on the position of the Hatman. He was out of the school’s auditorium, moving directly toward Dyna. Despite his proximity, Dyna felt little danger. She had a nearly full powered disruptor and Matt had the one hooked to the truck. Both of them together should be able to stop him in his tracks long enough to get the truck moving again. Maple would be out sometime soon as well with his own disruptor.

“Containment silo prepared,” Ado said as the back of the tank finished opening. She stepped aside, taking the disruptor from Matt, who handed over without complaint. “Please move closer so that we might properly disrupt the entity.”

Dyna didn’t need to be told twice. Mostly because she was already moving in their direction. Closer to the truck, when the overgrown brush that might have once been nice greenery turned to asphalt, Dyna veered off. If she kept running straight, she would be directly between the Hatman and the truck. And she had no intention of getting disrupted herself.

Ado’s disruptor did not follow Dyna’s movements, thankfully, but remained trained on the Hatman. She adjusted the knobs on the side of the gun as she aimed. One went two clicks forward. Another went a few clicks back.

“You said you had this calibrated.”

“Last minute adjustments to ensure everything goes smoothly. My visor is far more intricate than much of the vehicle’s equipment,” she said, still clicking the dials.

The Hatman stopped abruptly just a dozen feet from the rear of the truck. Maybe he sensed his former target in Matt. Or maybe Ruby was yelling at him in a way that only he could perceive. It could be that he realized Ado had been the one to fire the final disruptor blast back at the warehouse. Whatever the case, he stopped, turned away from Dyna to face the truck, and took a single step.

Ado clearly decided that was far enough. Whether or not her calibrations were finished, she pulled the trigger.

Unlike the previous times, there was no spasm or seizure. The Hatman took one additional step, but was utterly unable to put even a modicum of weight on that foot. He toppled forward, face slamming into the ground. His hat’s brim bent upward against the asphalt, but didn’t come off.

Dyna didn’t move, watching the Hatman but unable to see even a finger of his twitching. Ado was much the same, keeping the disruptor at the ready.

Matt was the first to speak.

“Is that it? It’s over?”

“It feels too easy,” Dyna said.

Ado’s grip on the gun tightened. “It was not too easy,” she insisted. “Everything went as expected. This is what happens when you plan properly. And to answer your question,” she continued before anyone could speak, “no. It is not over. We must contain it.”

“We? You’re the one in the full-body protective suit.” Dyna glanced back to the Hatman. “How long is he going to be like that?”

“A minute or two.”

Dyna blinked. “Then you better hurry up and quit standing there.”

Ado hesitated, but nodded her head. Beaconing Dyna, she handed the corded disruptor over. “If the entity so much as twitches, fire, please.”

“At you both?”

“I should be protected.”

“Well I can certainly do that. Hurry.”

“Yes.” Taking a breath, Ado slowly approached the downed Hatman. Using her foot, she nudged him only to get no response. Taking that as a good sign, she bent and grabbed one of his arms.

Hauling him back, dragging him along the ground, Ado stopped next to the tank. It wasn’t water, Dyna decided. She didn’t know what it was filled with, but it looked more gel-like and smelled strongly of hand sanitizer. Despite Ado saying only a minute, she managed to heave the Hatman up and over the bottom edge of the tank, dragging him through the gel-like substance until his head reached the far end.

As soon as the tips of his boots were slowly sinking into the gel, Ado reached up into the truck and pulled down on a red-handled lever. The back of the tank slammed shut in far more haste than it had opened with. Only once the tank started righting itself did Ado seem to relax.

“That’s it then?”

“That’s it,” Ado confirmed.

“It’s not going to escape? Phase-wandering through the tank’s walls?”

“No,” Ado answered instantly. “Absolutely no chance. This isn’t the only such entity contained in this manner. According to Doctor Darq, there has never been a successful escape of a properly contained entity.”

“Good,” Dyna said, watching the tank.

The Hatman slumped forward as the tank fully righted itself, still suspended in the gel. His chin tucked down into his chest, face hidden behind the wide brim of his hat. Dyna made no attempt to catch a glimpse of it.

She simply stood, watching as the tank lifted up on its rails, slid back into the truck, and anchored itself into place.

Matt, Dyna noted, had a glisten of tears in his eyes. Probably relieved. Dyna was relieved as well. Though lacking most memories from her first encounter with the Hatman, they were now one step closer to getting Ruby back to normal. Once that was done, maybe she would finally be able to get a bit of rest. Until then…

“Is it safe to come out?” Maple said over their headsets.

Until then, they did still have one other unexpected guest to deal with.