Author: Tower Curator

 

 

“Maple?”

Dyna didn’t move. She looked around the auditorium, worried for just a moment that the Hatman had come up behind her and phase-shifted her off into wherever. But no, there was no one around. No Hatman looming over her, staring with that scribbled-out face. She felt no different than she had a few moments ago and nothing looked different.

With the obvious exception of Maple’s sudden absence.

Whatever happened, it hadn’t happened to her.

“Ado?” Dyna bit her lip, waiting.

There wasn’t an immediate response. Had something happened out at the truck as well? Surely this hadn’t been planned. It was possible that they might want to ditch her for some reason, maybe to flee with Ruby for experiments or just to use her as bait for something. Dyna might not trust Tartarus, but she couldn’t believe that Maple had been at all fake. He had been nervous and scared just walking through this place. If that had been a lie, he was a better actor than Ruby.

“Ado?” Dyna tried again. “Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

Dyna let out a breath. “Okay. Maple just—”

“I am aware of the issue and am attempting to determine what just happened.”

Busy. She was just busy. Dyna could empathize after having had Ruby disappear from under her nose. This was different though. Unless the mask was providing protection, that was. But this time, Dyna could remember that Maple had been right here and had disappeared.

“Approach the stage, please.”

“Uh…”

“I am remotely recalibrating your sensor to provide me with better readings of the area. If you would please—”

Ado cut off abruptly. It wasn’t difficult to see why.

Maple stood on the stage, back near the stairs that led up to it. The man’s face was still hidden behind the mask, but his hands gripped the disruptor gun hard enough to turn the color of his knuckles. He whipped his head back and forth, frantically looking around, only to stop on Dyna.

“Wh—Where did you go?”

Dyna opened her mouth, hesitated, then slowly answered his question. “I didn’t move,” she said. Her feet hadn’t budged since he disappeared.

“No. You left me. I was…”

“She isn’t lying,” Ado said, cutting in. “Can you hear me, Maple?”

“Yes, I—”

“I’m bringing Doctor—”

“Darq here!” The chipper voice of Doctor Darq overwrote Ado’s in Dyna’s earpiece. “And what a spatial anomaly. I must say, I’ve only encountered three such anomalies in my time here. One of which is right up in the Psionic Engineering and Replication Division. Tell me, Mister Maple, how do you feel?”

“What?”

“Inside-out, perhaps? Or maybe outside-in? You still retain normative knowledge of basic numerology, correct? One plus one still equals two and three comes after four, right?”

“I don’t know what… three after four? That’s not—”

“Good. Glad you noticed. The odds of you being a psychic doppelgänger have dropped by seven percent.”

“Darq,” Maple hissed, “I swear I’m going to—”

“No time for that I’m afraid. Dyna Graves,” Darq stopped.

“Yes?” Dyna said, slightly startled at being addressed.

“If you would be so kind as to advance toward the spatial anomaly.”

“I’d rather not, if it is all the same to you.”

“The spatial anomaly is likely a concentration of lingering psionic energy, unbound to a person or an object such as an artifact. Given its similarity to the entity’s psionic signature, it may be a remnant it left behind. If it is, then it is likely keyed into the same phase your friend now occupies. With Mister Maple having transitioned between phases with no apparent ill effects, it may prove to be an alternate method of bringing your friend back to our reality.”

Dyna straightened her back, paying a bit more attention now than she had been during Darq’s questioning of Maple. “It can get Ruby back?”

“Think of it like a doorway. We’re on one side. Ruby is on the other. I just need to run some frequency analysis. Mister Maple’s equipment may be compromised due to his unauthorized phase traversal—”

“It’s not like I meant to,” Maple grumbled.

Darq continued talking as if nobody had interrupted him. “Your mask is equipped with a number of psionic sensors. If you could get right to the border of the anomaly, all parties involved should benefit. Especially your friend. Wouldn’t want any fractal instabilities to make themselves manifest and collapse the doorway while she’s trying to go through it, would we?”

“Alright,” Dyna said, nodding her head. It sounded good. The problem with paranoia was that it meant she really couldn’t trust these people at all. “Except how about we don’t.”

“Don’t help your friend?”

“There are more masks in the truck. We’ll go back, grab one of them, then toss it into the anomaly. I stay well away. Maple doesn’t have to put himself into any more danger. You get your readings. A much better idea for… all parties involved.”

“That would delay our results.”

“If the anomaly isn’t stable enough to wait for a trip to the truck, it isn’t stable enough to put Ruby through. If the Hatman shows up while you’re going over your readings, we can always drive around for a few hours and come back later. If the doorway collapses, we’ll still have the original plan to fall back on.”

“I’d rather have things sooner.”

“I’d rather have things safer. I’m sure Maple would agree.”

“Yes,” Maple said, nodding his head. “I definitely agree. Let’s be as safe as possible.”

Even if he hadn’t agreed, Dyna still wouldn’t be following along with Darq’s suggestion. This wasn’t a democracy. If they wanted her to do something like that when there were obviously better alternatives readily available, they would have to be a whole lot more convincing.

Dyna turned and started back out of the auditorium.

“Wait for me,” Maple called. “Don’t leave me again!”

Dyna paused, looking back just long enough for him to catch up to her. After which, she broke into a light jog. Nothing that would tire her out if she needed the energy all of a sudden, but enough to get her back to the truck a little faster. “I didn’t leave you the first time.”

“Yes,” Maple said between steps. He matched her pace, obviously not wanting to be alone in a haunted school again. “But you disappeared.”

“You disappeared. Into some other phase… What was it like?”

“I was terrified. I was standing there, talking to myself. You weren’t responding. Ado wasn’t responding. I look over and you’re just gone. Thought you ran off or… worse.”

Dyna shook her head. “I meant, what was the other world like?”

“Oh. Right. Uh… normal?”

“Normal?”

“I mean, it looked the same. Seats, abandoned stage, curtains torn, so on and so on. I didn’t see anything weird in there. No entity, if that is what you’re asking.”

“Was it all… warped? Twisted? Like the worst funhouse mirror you’ve ever seen?”

“No. Just… an empty auditorium. I didn’t exactly explore the place. As soon as I walked back, you came back.”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” Dyna said.

“You know what I mean.”

They slowed down at the entrance to the school. There wasn’t much debris in the halls, but the entrance had a bunch of garbage all over the floor. Dyna didn’t want to trip over a bit of the front door and slice her arm open on a bit of jagged metal.

The truck was just ahead. A short walkway and overgrown grassy area separated them. Ado was already up at the back, holding out a pair of the silvery masks in one hand and a small silvery sphere in the other. “The masks are not inexpensive,” Ado said. “If you would put this through first,” she said, motioning to the sphere, “I would appreciate it.”

Dyna had half a mind to just toss both masks and the sphere in, just to cost Id a little extra, but dismissed the idea almost immediately. Despite not personally liking any of them on principle alone, they were helping. Even if it was for a price.

Looping the masks around her arm to keep her hands free for the flashlight and gun, she handed the orb off to Maple to deal with.

“That everything?”

“We’re lacking in more specialized equipment. If this anomaly is unstable, we don’t have the equipment to stabilize it. We’ll have to determine whether or not to risk putting someone through it.”

“It was stable enough for Maple. I’m more concerned with whether or not it goes to the same place where Ruby is,” Dyna said, looking over to the harness. “Should we take her in as well?”

“Should it become necessary to flee, doing so may delay us.”

“It might speed things up should we determine that the doorway is usable.”

Ado nodded, not disagreeing with the point. “That may be the case. It is up to you.”

Dyna bit her lip. There wasn’t really a good answer. There was one way everything would work out, but potentially a dozen ways of varying degrees of intensity where they wouldn’t. “We’ll hurry,” Dyna said. “But make sure everything is ready to work as fast as possible.”

“Understood. Would you like me to hold onto the piece of the anatomy dummy?”

Dyna narrowed her eyes. The mask hid her face, keeping her suspicion out of view. Tartarus probably had a way to contain it and keep any side effects away from the general populace—or just everyone present—but she had a feeling that if she handed it over, it would disappear, never to be seen again.

“Let’s focus on the anomaly first.”

Ado nodded and immediately turned back into the truck.

Dyna had expected a little bit more resistance. At least one word of argument. But Ado was already stepping over Matt and taking a seat at her terminal. Looking over to Maple, Dyna gave him a quick nod. “Let’s go.”

He let out a deep sigh, but, not wanting to be left behind, followed right behind Dyna as she broke into a jog.

They rushed back to the auditorium. Nothing changed between their visits. Maple’s scanner still showed that there was something strange about the stage, though neither of them could actually see anything. There was no evidence of some doorway, no shimmering or twisting fields. It made Dyna wonder if this place had been abandoned by those without homes because of the anomaly.

If a small community had formed, but people started disappearing into the anomaly, it would probably spook everyone else.

“First, carry the sphere on stage,” Ado said. “Slowly. Do not enter the anomaly’s area of effect. Merely approach.”

Maple, holding the sphere, gave Dyna a look like he wanted her to take over.

Dyna just waved him up onto the stage.

“It’s your friend.”

“It’s your job.”

Maple sighed, stepping toward the stairs. “It’s really not.” Climbing the stairs, he held the sphere out as far as he could possibly reach, angling his body to stretch his arm away from the rest of his body. He slowly inched across the stage. One tiny step at a time.

Dyna kept a close eye on him. She hadn’t really been paying attention the first time. Had he disappeared all at once, or gradually like he had walked through an actual door? He certainly wasn’t going to accidentally pass through it at this pace, but just in case, Dyna didn’t even blink.

“Stop,” Ado said.

Maple froze. He even sucked in a breath then held it like even breathing would put him over some invisible boundary.

“The anomaly should begin approximately one meter ahead of your current position.”

“My position or the device’s position?”

“The device.”

Dyna lowered her eyes down to the floor of the stage. It was a bit hard to gauge distance in the air, but she could count a few floorboards ahead. Not knowing exactly how far a meter was without a measuring device didn’t matter much. It still gave her a rough estimate of the edge of the anomaly. Just a small bit off-center from the middle point of the stage.

“Closer, if you will.”

Even hidden behind his mask, Maple visibly swallowed. Dyna hadn’t thought it was possible, but he started taking even tinier steps. Not even picking up his feet, just sliding them across the floor.

“Stop.”

Maple froze again.

At Ado’s command, he continued. And paused. Continued. Paused. All barely moving more than an inch each time. Ado was presumably gathering readings.

Dyna’s gaze started to drift. This felt like it was taking too long. Maple was barely moving; it probably would have been better had she taken the sphere. But, because of her position down in the aisle, Dyna could watch the entire stage. As Maple kept inching across, she started noticing something.

Movement.

Sweeping her flashlight across the stage, Dyna didn’t see anything, but the moment she pointed the beam of light downward, she caught a glimpse of it again. Just faint shimmers in the corner of her eyes on the opposite side of the stage from Maple. Every time she tried to stare at it directly, it vanished entirely.

Some kind of ghost-like thing? Similar to what Matt saw? Dyna was fairly certain that she didn’t have his ability to see ghosts and, without Ado’s goggles, she was mostly sure that she shouldn’t be seeing them through other means. Then again, they were standing in front of some portal to an alternate phase of the world. If there was anywhere where something odd would happen, it would definitely be right here.

The more she tried to focus at the center of the stage to better see through the edges of her vision, the more certain she was that something was going on. At first, she thought the silhouette was a mirror of Maple. Arm outstretched and pushing through the other side of the anomaly. Like a refraction or reflection.

But that wasn’t quite right. The stance and posture was all wrong. It was pushing through with two hands, not just one outstretched. The way it leaned forward like there was a thin membrane it was trying to break through didn’t match Maple either.

“Something’s up,” Dyna said, readying the disruptor, worried that the Hatman was coming here.

Except the Hatman had never done something like this before. As far as Dyna understood it, the phase-wandering entity could… wander phases. At will. Not at some specific location like this.

Her warning call caused Maple to jump back in alarm, dropping the sphere as he readied his own disruptor.

The sensor ball slowly rolled across the stage, passing into where the anomaly should have started. But it didn’t disappear. It rolled, slowing with friction, until it came to a stop right where Dyna saw the ghostly silhouette. Now looking directly at the area, she couldn’t see any outline or transparent form.

And yet, something nudged the sphere. Just a slight kick.

With the sound of shattering glass, the world broke. Fractured facets twisted and split like panels of a broken mirror, suspended in the air by strings. Amid it all, a figure appeared. Not an entire person, not all at once. As the panels spun in the air, bits and pieces of the person appeared and disappeared as if only some of the fractured world could properly reflect them.

Dyna raised the disruptor, finger already squeezing down on the trigger. They didn’t need some other entity complicating matters while the Hatman was still around. This one was a woman, wearing clothes far more ragged than the Hatman. They looked about five sizes too small, made to fit through a combination of several rips and tears in the fabric and a thin, almost anorexic body.

Its body wasn’t stable either. While the shards in the air were fading into nothingness, its body was still covered in them, reflecting the world at points while allowing sight through to the entity at other points. The entire creature looked like it walked out of a glitched-out television.

And yet, Dyna’s trigger finger stilled.

Its face, though winking in and out with the shimmering facets, was visible. And something, some small primal part of Dyna’s brain, thought she recognized that face, framed by a matting of messy black hair. She couldn’t place it. No name jumped to her mind. But it made her hesitate just long enough for the person to raise their arm, pointing back over Dyna’s shoulder.

“██’s comi██,” it said, voice just slightly off. Out of tune with the rest of the world. Out of phase with the rest of the world.

And yet, despite the static, Dyna understood fully.

She turned, rounding on her heel without hesitation.

The Hatman stood at the far end of the aisle, blocking the doors Dyna and Maple had entered through. His face, an angry, furious mess of scribbled permanent marker, twisted and broke. It stretched, looking like a child’s drawing of a monster.

Dyna pulled her trigger.

At the same time, something screamed out from behind Dyna.

Indecipherable static filled her ears.

“████████████”

 

 

Dyna stepped out of the truck and looked around. The odd readings from the truck apparently brought them here.

A larger building with two wings splitting off from a main structure. The bricks were worn, windows were broken, and a pillar out front looked like it had been hit by a car—hopefully it wasn’t load-bearing. Faded lettering above the main entrance identified the structure as a high school. Exactly what its name had been was lost to a fairly impressive yet incomplete mural of graffiti.

“Ahem. Ahem. Dyna, can you hear me?”

Dyna jolted, hopping a few inches into the air before she settled down.

Maple, stepping out of the truck at her side, let out a loud snort.

She shot him a glare, not that he could see with the brushed silver mask over her face.

Tartarus had offered some of their equipment for this, for which Dyna was mildly thankful. No, she was extremely thankful. And a bit surprised. If this wasn’t the Hatman and was some kind of artifact instantiation event—or whatever the Carroll Institute had called it—she wouldn’t have thought they would have let her go investigate. They would have come up with some excuse to secure the artifact for themselves.

Did that mean this really was related to the Hatman? Dyna doubted it. They probably just knew that such an excuse wouldn’t fly.

She and Maple were nearly identically equipped. Both wore one of the protective masks, carried a disruptor gun, and carried some kind of monitoring device. The latter item was a small rectangular screen that fit in the palm of the hand with two antennas sticking up. Turning left or right changed the indicator on the screen, allowing it to direct her forward toward the school. Or, more accurately, toward the source of the signal.

A brief glance at Maple’s device showed the same indicator as hers. Tartarus probably wasn’t trying to juke her by giving her a fake or one tuned to different signals.

“Ahem.” Ado cleared her throat again. “Alright. How about now? Can you hear me?”

“Yes. I hear you. I heard you the first time.”

“Oh? Was your microphone not working? I couldn’t hear your response.”

“Yeah sure,” Dyna grumbled, looking away from Maple. For how much he had complained about being sent out here, it sure looked like he was feeling much better. Or maybe it was just his tense nerves making him laugh. Dyna decided to just ignore him. “It’s fixed now.”

“Good. And Mister Maple?”

“Audio check is good on my end.”

“Excellent,” Ado said. “This is unknown territory, so please take care.”

Ado was staying in the truck. She should be safe there. Not only did she have the larger disruptor gun, but she could apparently control the truck’s autopilot from her terminal in the back if necessary.

Someone needed to watch over Matt and Ruby. Dyna might have been able to do that, but doing so would have left her just sitting around, not knowing how to use the terminal back there to keep an eye on what Tartarus was up to while they were given free access to whatever the source of the signal was.

So Dyna had insisted on going out. If it was the Hatman, she could deal with him. She had already seen the disruptor guns work on him. The ones she and Maple had were freshly charged up, ready to incapacitate him for at least a few minutes. Plenty of time to run back to the truck. The mask should protect her from the Hatman’s memory modification, letting her see him. At least, the silver mask Ado had worn had let her see him while Dyna had the goggles.

She considered asking for the goggles again. Two things stopped her. First, the nausea. She wouldn’t get anywhere if she had to deal with that again. Secondly, Dyna had taken them with the intention to use them to find Ruby. Ado had already proved that the regular masks worked on the Hatman.

“So we doing this or just going to stand around all night?”

Maple let out a long groan, good humor fleeing with the noise. “Don’t remind me,” he said.

Dyna clicked on a heavy-duty flashlight, walking forward.

“Hey, wait,” Maple said, hurrying to catch up to her. “Don’t just leave me behind like that.”

“I was three steps ahead of you.”

“And that is plenty far enough,” he said, clicking on his own flashlight. While Dyna kept hers on the path ahead of her to keep from tripping over any stray debris, Maple swept his beam over the whole front of the school. “This is like something out of my nightmares.”

“Scared?”

“Aren’t you? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this movie before. Old haunted school and a few gullible idiots convinced to go inside… Ghosts kill them all.”

Dyna shrugged. She couldn’t exactly disagree, having seen that movie herself, but… “It’s not like there are actual ghosts.”

“We’re investigating a psychic manifestation of the collective unconsciousness that makes people vanish into some other-world nonsense. And you don’t believe in ghosts? Or at least something ghost-like that—”

Ado’s voice over their earpieces interrupted Maple. “I would suggest that you cease this line of thought. There are no ghosts,” she said, voice insistent and firm.

Maple jolted slightly, turning his mask directly toward Dyna. “Ahhh… Damn it,” he hissed.

Dyna just pressed her lips together. These people from Tartarus were awfully careful about what they said around her. One of them usually interrupted the other when they started saying something they shouldn’t. But that seemed an odd thing to interrupt.

Did that…

Did that mean ghosts were real? Maybe not as in literal spirits of the dead, but some kind of psychic remnant of a person? Or, as Matt apparently saw, people out of phase with the rest of humanity.

Shaking her head, Dyna tried to focus on the task at hand. Namely, figuring out what was in this school that had popped up on the truck’s sensors.

The doors, once large glass panes surrounded by windows, had been boarded up since the school’s closing. But the damage to the pillar out in front of the entrance had been more recent and it looked like whatever vehicle had rammed into the pillar had gone a bit further and knocked out part of the front entrance.

Which was handy for them. They didn’t have to try to break in. They just had to step over some broken bits of metal and plywood.

The main entryway was a large hall, it split off into two smaller hallways, each leading down to the wings of the school where the classrooms presumably were. It looked like a gymnasium was further ahead in the central section. The cafeteria was essentially part of the same main hall. They hadn’t cleared out the tables and chairs in the time since the school’s closing. With a few abandoned blankets set on top, it looked like people had used this place for shelter at some point in the past. No one was here now, however.

At least, not here. “I imagine we’re more likely to run into homeless that have made this into their home over ghosts.”

“Good imagination,” Maple said quickly. “Maybe. Do these hypothetical homeless people have guns? Because I don’t have body armor.”

Dyna blinked twice, looking to him. She didn’t know why she bothered. The mask blocked his face. “What?”

At the same time as Dyna spoke, Ado cut in. “Please remain focused on the task at hand. It would not be wise to linger here longer than necessary.”

With one last lingering glance at Maple, Dyna looked down to the sensor device. Ado was right. It was best to keep on the move. They were just here to… maybe find a weakness in the Hatman? Or, more likely, find an artifact. If she could find a moment to break away from Maple, calling Walter would be a good idea. She had already texted him about securing Ruby along with a brief description of the disruptor guns and their effect on the Hatman, but she had yet to find an opportunity for a private call.

Perhaps there would be an opportunity here in this school. His satellites might have detected something in the area that would confirm that this really was an artifact. Maybe he could clue her in on what to look for.

The Aztec calendar, when released from its shielding, had caused an effect on a whole airport. But not all artifacts were that powerful on their own. Worse, they weren’t generally obvious at all. If she hadn’t known that the Aztec calendar was an artifact beforehand, and that it was definitely the thing causing the pain to the people, she probably would have walked right past it without a second thought.

She angled herself left, then right, then finally pointed back to the left wing of the school. Dyna did have an advantage with regards to locating actual artifacts. Where Emerald could smell them, Dyna entered into an emotional calm state. If that happened here, then there definitely was an artifact around.

“Left wing of the school,” Dyna said aloud.

“Mine says the same.”

“Good.”

Dyna waited just a moment, somewhat expecting Maple to take the lead. When it became obvious he had absolutely no intention of going first, Dyna rolled her eyes and started down the hallway.

“Careful,” Maple said. “We don’t know what’s down there.”

“We also don’t have time to sit around. If this is the Hatman’s lair when he isn’t kidnapping people…”

“Still no readings that would indicate the entity’s presence,” Ado said over the headset.

“Yeah.” Dyna still didn’t believe this actually was related to him.

“Don’t leave me behind. Please.”

“Then keep up.” Whatever this was, Dyna still didn’t want to sit around. The Hatman was surely chasing them, after all.

The hallway led past a number of larger classrooms. They didn’t look like standard classes. More like specialized rooms. One of them had probably been a computer lab, though no computers remained on the desks. Another looked more like a science lab with lots of standing tables, each with a sink. Dyna had taken an introduction to chemistry class during her high school days. There hadn’t been many choices at her school; it had either been that, an extra computer class, home economics, or art.

A few doors down, Dyna paused. She angled herself left and right, watching the readings from the little scanning device.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s coming from in here,” Dyna said, peering through the window of the door with her flashlight. The room beyond was a bit closer to a standard classroom. It must have been for health classes. Posters for fitness, CPR, anti-smoking, and proper dietary nutrition were still on the walls.

Maple looked down at his own scanner, his slowly shaking head visible in the corner of Dyna’s eye. “I don’t think so. It should still be down the hall if I’m reading this right.”

Dyna looked away from the health classroom. Sure enough, his scanner didn’t match the readings on her own. Holding them side by side, his was obviously different now. Maybe it had always been different. She hadn’t compared them directly until now.

“They should be identical,” Ado said. “I calibrated them myself.”

“Well they’re not.”

“Odd. Best divide yourselves to cover both possibilities with all haste.”

“Split up?” Maple said, utterly appalled.

“I agree with Maple entirely,” Dyna said. Despite her earlier thoughts about finding a moment to call Walter, it really didn’t feel like a good idea at present. “We’re already walking through a horror movie, as he put it. I might not be a genius, but I refuse to be a horror protagonist.”

Maple visibly relaxed, letting out a small sigh. “Good. This room first, then?”

Dyna nodded. The handle didn’t turn, but the door still pushed open. Someone must have broken it at some point. She stepped inside. Finding nothing obviously dangerous, she continued for a few more steps.

Maple followed behind her, though far more apprehensive. He put his scanner into his jacket pocket to hold the disruptor with both hands and didn’t move more than a step into the room.

Id must have been really short on help if she was sending someone like Maple out into the field. He clearly wasn’t suited to this kind of work. Dyna wasn’t entirely sure that she was either, but she didn’t have much choice. Not with Ruby in trouble. Not with Matt being hunted.

And at least she had gone through some training with Emerald and Ruby. A few months ago and she probably would have been cowering in the back of the truck.

“Watch the door?” Dyna said.

“Right. On it,” he said, turning. He didn’t leave the room, he just stood in the doorway, looking left then right then back to the left.

Dyna readied her own weapon, just in case, but doubted that the Hatman would be ducked down and hiding behind the larger teacher’s desk. There really weren’t any other hiding places in the room.

Following the scanner, Dyna approached the large desk. The scanner could be pointing to something on the other side of the wall, but… No.

A body was on the floor on the other side of the desk. Dyna jolted at the sight, only to realize that something was wrong with the body. It didn’t have arms, for one. Nor legs. The head stared straight up with its face half missing and most of its internal organs were spilled out on the floor.

It wasn’t real. An anatomy dummy.

Dyna let out a small sigh, then knelt, waving the scanner over it.

The signal was definitely coming from the body. Was it an artifact? Dyna didn’t feel calm at all, but maybe that was the fault of the mask. She considered removing it to test, but that would leave her vulnerable to the Hatman if he did show up.

She couldn’t take the risk. The scanner would have to suffice for now.

Rummaging through lungs, a liver, and a large panel of intestines, Dyna eventually paused on the heart. The scanner peaked with the heart when she held it near. That had to be it.

“Figures,” Dyna mumbled. An artifact wouldn’t be just a kidney or gallbladder. They just weren’t important enough. It would either be the brain or the heart. And the brain was missing.

The next question was whether or not she should actually touch it. If it bound with her, she would have to undergo decoupling again. She couldn’t just leave it here. Or worse, let Tartarus take it. That didn’t really leave much choice.

Dyna didn’t have any protective containers or even tin foil to wrap it with at the moment, but hopefully it wouldn’t be as powerful as the Aztec calendar. Slipping it into her pocket, Dyna stood and headed back to Maple.

Worried that startling him might see her on the receiving end of a disruptor blast, Dyna lightly cleared her throat. He still jolted, looking back, but thankfully never pointed the weapon in her direction.

“Found an anatomy dummy,” she said. “It was giving readings, but I didn’t find anything strange. Grabbed a piece of it for a more in-depth analysis later, but maybe my scanner is just broken.”

There wasn’t much point lying. These masks had to have cameras in them. Ado was probably watching their every move. She would know that Dyna had taken some of it.

At this point, her hope was that the team Walter had sent would get here sooner rather than later. They would probably have a way to contain an artifact. Until then, Dyna would have to keep it out of their hands as much as possible.

“One of those things with all the organs on display? I… I shouldn’t have said anything about this being from a horror movie. We’re actually going to run into ghosts, aren’t we.” He sounded resigned, like it was an inevitability.

Dyna just shook her head. “It wasn’t possessed if that is what you’re asking. Come on. Your scanner is still pointing down the hall? Mine is just maxed out now.”

Maybe if whatever they found was big enough, everyone would forget about the artifact for just long enough to get it to the people from Psychodynamics.

After one more sigh, Maple nodded his head. He pulled out his scanner again and waved it around. “Mine seems fine.”

“Lead the way.”

“Great.”

After a moment of hesitation, he nodded his head and started down the hallway once again.

They made it all the way to the end of the hall where a pair of large doors opened up to a large semi-circular auditorium. A small corridor led past two raised sets of seats for an audience toward a large flat stage. Rags that might have once been curtains clung to the top of the sage, but most of the curtains were missing. Probably having been repurposed into blankets for the people who moved into this place after its closure.

Dyna had to wonder where they were now. Had they moved on? Or had something happened to them?

How did normal artifacts get created? Where had the heart come from? Dyna would have suspected that artifacts needed at least one person nearby given that they had something to do with psychic energy, which was generated from people. But if there were no people here, maybe it had been around for a while. This other signal that they were following might have covered it up.

Maple stopped at the stage, looking down at the scanner. “This seems to be it,” he said.

“What is it? There’s nothing here.” The stage was empty save for a few bits of broken wood, metal, and cloth—maybe debris left by whoever tore down the stage curtains. “In the back, maybe?”

Shaking his head, he walked along the stage, eyes down at the scanner. He stopped at the end, then walked across to the other side where a small set of stairs allowed people up onto the stage proper. “I think its just right here, maybe around the center?” Stepping up the stairs, Maple started to cross the stage.

Dyna blinked. A knot formed in her stomach.

“Maple? Maple?”

She looked left and right. She brought a hand to her mask, just to ensure that it was still there.

Maple was gone. Vanished. One step, he had been walking across the stage.

The next, nothing.

 

 

Sleep wasn’t easy to come by. There was too much going on to fall asleep. And yet, there wasn’t much for Dyna to do to help the situation. Doctor Darq was going through data. They had hoisted Ruby up and further secured her with additional harnesses, mostly to keep her from dragging on the ground. The poor girl must have been so confused. Matt had fallen asleep, but with the aid of painkillers and sleep aids.

Dyna wasn’t quite willing to turn to drugs just yet. While she felt she needed some sleep, she felt it was a bit more important that she remain alert. The Hatman had not been happy with their escape. Assuming it could be happy or sad.

That idea that it could pop up at practically any time, potentially without them even noticing, had Dyna far too tense for sleep. A problem that Ado apparently did not share. The chief engineer simply announced her intention to get some rest, leaned back in the terminal chair, and apparently fell asleep. With her goggles still on, Dyna couldn’t tell for sure that she was sleeping, but the change in her breathing and her utter stillness left Dyna fairly confident that she wasn’t lying.

After an hour of failing to get even a small semblance of rest, Dyna found herself startled to full alertness when she felt the truck slowing down. It had done that several times, mostly for stop signs or red lights. This time was different. They were pulling into a parking lot.

“Why are we stopping?” Dyna asked, leaning over the terminals to try to see where they were.

Ado didn’t respond. Neither did anyone else. Dyna tried poking Ado to get her awake, but the woman didn’t even budge. Before Dyna could try again, she watched as Maple hopped out of the front of the truck and bolted away from it like there was a bomb ready to go. Dyna turned and hit the open door button for the truck’s side door, hopped out, and rushed after him toward a small convenience store.

“Hey!”

Maple looked back, still wearing the silver mask. Dyna faltered. She hadn’t put her mask back on after handing the goggles back to Ado. She didn’t have any protection at all. Not even the treated aluminum foil. She wasn’t sure where that was. Probably some corner of the truck. It was just a flimsy piece of foil—she hadn’t been paying much attention to it while trying to get Matt into the truck. It might have even fallen off back then.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Caffeine,” Maple said, turning again. He hurried right up to the automatic doors, didn’t stop as they opened, and rushed through straight toward the store’s drink section.

With a glance back at the open side door of the truck, Dyna rushed after him. The Hatman couldn’t be here yet. They had been driving for hours and the Hatman always moved slowly, never faster than a steady walk. Except for the time he appeared in front of the hospital. But Dyna was still hoping that Ruby had simply missed him walking up.

“If I’m going to be driving all night, I can’t be falling asleep at the wheel,” Maple said, pulling cans of energy drinks off the shelves. “Sure, the truck is self-driving for the most part, but if something strange happens… It’s just a regular self-driving AI. It won’t swerve to avoid a psychic entity.”

“Hitting him wouldn’t hurt him?” Dyna asked. She had suspected that earlier.

“I’m less worried about what happens to the entity and more worried that the entity will pass through the truck, make contact with us, and do whatever it did to your friend.”

Dyna shuddered, suddenly beyond glad that she hadn’t tried to hit the Hatman.

Watching him load up his arms with can after can, Dyna grabbed a few as well, along with a bag of trail mix. She hadn’t eaten anything all day. Seeing food right in front of her was making her hungry.

Tossing her food onto the pile of his cans did earn her a look. The mask made the type of look impossible to discern, but Dyna could guess that Maple wasn’t too impressed.

“Checkout will be faster,” she said as the cashier started scanning each individual item, apparently unconcerned with the mask.

“Sure.”

He didn’t sound impressed, but didn’t complain as he pressed his card into the chip reader.

As soon as they were paid for, Dyna grabbed her things and headed back toward the truck. Nothing had changed, thankfully. Ado was still asleep in her chair, as was Matt. Ruby’s filled harnesses still hung from the ceiling. Dyna almost got in, only to change her mind at the last minute. After closing the truck’s side door, she headed around to the truck’s cab and climbed into the passenger seat.

Having got himself inside while she was closing the door, Maple jolted at her appearance. As soon as he saw who it was, he visible calmed, but that only lasted for a moment before he tensed again. “What are you doing?”

“Everyone else is asleep. I don’t know how Ado can just lean back and close her eyes at a time like this, but I think I would rather be with someone else who isn’t sleeping at the moment.”

“That is… incredibly unnecessary. Just wake her up?”

“Are you going to drive or are we going to sit here until the Hatman comes?”

Maple’s hands gripped the wheel. There was a whole terminal up here in the front, spread out across the dashboard and even in front of the passenger seat. When she wanted to, Ado could probably work as effectively from here as she could from the rear terminal.

“Well?”

Maple took an audible breath and pressed his foot to the accelerator.

The truck got on its way. After navigating out to a main road, Maple pressed a few buttons to engage the automatic driving. Once it fully took control, he leaned back in the seat and pulled out one of the energy drinks. But he hesitated before actually opening it.

“I can’t drink with you here.”

“Why not?”

“My mask…”

“The Hatman’s powers don’t seem to work through glass. How were you planning on eating without me here?”

“It isn’t the entity. It’s you.”

“I’ve already seen your face. We met already, remember? Out in the suburbs?”

Maple shifted in his seat. “It’s… company policy? I’m not supposed to remove protective equipment in the presence of known psychics.”

Dyna snorted, turning to look out the window. “I’m really not much of a psychic,” she said, pulling out the mirror. It was really her only claim to psionic power and she hadn’t even tried to use it while looking for Ruby. It just didn’t… do enough.

Hearing a snort, Dyna glanced back to find Maple had put his drink back down.

“Well fine,” Dyna said. “I’ll keep you awake with a little conversation. Besides, it’ll save you from kidney stones.”

“Please don’t even think that. I’m healthy. I don’t normally drink energy drinks. I don’t even drink soda or coffee. Just water for me, thank you.”

Dyna glanced down at the drink she had purchased. Not soda. Not coffee either. But also not water. A sports drink, probably loaded with sugar. Dyna was tempted to look at the ingredient list, but self-conscious now, she tried to play it off with a shrug of her shoulders. “Suit yourself.”

“I’d like to suit myself by drinking all these energy drinks.”

“I’m not stopping you. I even promise not to use my psychic powers if you remove your mask.”

Maple looked over and just stared, making Dyna more and more uncomfortable until she finally turned her focus on the street outside the window. This had been a bad idea. She should have gone back into the back of the truck. What if Matt woke up? Or if something happened to Ruby?

Why wasn’t there a door leading back to the rear of the truck? That was the real question. It wasn’t like the truck was pulling a trailer; the two sides shared a wall.

Now she was stuck until they stopped again.

“Where are we going anyway?”

“Nowhere.”

“What?”

“We’re just driving around Casper. Keeping on the move to avoid the entity, but hopefully keeping it from leaving as well. Doctor Darq worried that it might completely change targets if they got too far away from it, leaving us having to figure out where it has gone.”

“That’s… good.” Under other circumstances, Dyna might have been tempted to run away. Leave the Hatman to Tartarus.

With Ruby in trouble, Dyna couldn’t run away. She might not be able to do much to help directly, but she could support them until they fixed Ruby. And, perhaps more importantly, she couldn’t just leave Ruby in their hands. Helpful though they had been so far, Dyna still trusted these people about as far as she could throw them.

Her gun, holstered at her hip, had the safety on, but a round still chambered from earlier. It was ready to use just in case. Dyna hoped she wouldn’t need to, but these people had technically kidnapped her once already. Even though she got away, that just set a bad precedent.

The conversation lulled back into awkward silence. Dyna slowly snacked on her trail mix, wondering if she should ask something or if he would rather just sit in silence. Until she remembered that she was supposed to be keeping him awake.

And if he was tired, he might let slip some information that he wouldn’t normally offer.

“You do this often?” Dyna asked.

“Do…”

“Chase around phase-shifting entities.”

“No. Never. First time and I really don’t even think I should be here.”

Dyna raised an eyebrow, but he wasn’t even looking her direction. “Your card said you are a logistical director. Is that just a cover or—”

“No. I shouldn’t be here, but…” He trailed off, glancing over for just a moment before shaking his head with a sigh. “We have five people working at Tartarus and Id wanted this investigated so—”

“Only five?”

“There were supposed to be more, but I understand we have you to thank for some of our crew’s incarceration.”

Dyna shook her head. “Ruby was the one who caught Grafton… But what about all those people? You had like twenty people in that fake storage facility thing.”

“What? Oh… Oh. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”

“What happened to them?”

Maple didn’t respond. He just stared straight ahead, looking rather stiff. His shoulders tensed like he was worried Dyna might do something. After a few moments of no response, she just sighed and went back to her trail mix. So much for that line of questioning. There were other things she wanted to ask, about both Tartarus and Id, but it was probably best to let him let his guard down before she actually opened her mouth.

So instead of continuing to talk, Dyna looked over the terminals arrayed around the passenger seat. Most looked like touch-screens, though there was a keyboard that could be slid out from under the dashboard. Surprisingly enough, none of them looked to be locked. They were open, displaying readings from various sensors around the truck. Much like the ones in the rear, there were feeds from the external cameras as well.

A part of her wondered if there were all kinds of secret documents stored here, but the rest of her doubted it. Some secret organization like Tartarus wouldn’t just leave things around in case the truck was captured by the Carroll Institute or other organization. Then again, Tartarus was apparently a much smaller organization than Dyna originally thought. They might not have a proper information security team.

Of course, the moment Dyna reached out to swipe one of the camera feeds away and see what else she could find, Maple reached over and swatted at her wrist.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“Just uh… checking?”

“Well don’t. Everything is set up just the way I like it.”

So he said, but as he pulled his hand back, he stopped at one of the screens. One with a pulsing circle prominently displayed among shuffling numbers. It looked like a music player’s visualization, growing and shrinking along with the beat, with some parts stretching out further than others. Hesitating for just a second, Maple wrenched the screen further toward him.

“You’re… not doing anything, are you?”

“What would I be doing?”

“Oh no.”

Dyna tensed, growing worried. She looked over the other screens. First the cameras, trying to spot anything that didn’t look like it should be there. Finding no sign of the Hatman, she looked around to the other graphs. But she didn’t know what they all meant. Most were just measuring various types of psionic energy around the truck. Those were just the familiar ones, Ambient Randi Levels, for instance. The ones labeled the same as readings she had seen around the Carroll Institute. A good half of the graphs were completely alien to her, apparently measuring such things as Incarnation per Metis, Ambient Cypher Rating, and World Exploits.

All of which had seemed roughly normal before, but were now slowly creeping up. Rolling graphs let her clearly see how steady they had been only a few minutes ago compared to where they were now.

Something was happening. Something that worried Maple.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Nothing to worry about. Don’t worry about anything.”

“Liar.” Dyna could hear the tension in his voice. “Is it the Hatman?”

“Look. There are a lot of things here. I don’t even know what they all do or mean. I’m the logistics person. Id needs something? I figure out how to get it. That’s my job. All this?” He shook his head. “Seriously reconsidering my life’s choices right now.”

“Life’s choices… Is it that bad?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I was just trying to say.” Maple reached over and pressed down on the center screen, which pulled up a small camera feed of the rear of the truck, one centered on Ado.

Everything looked just how Dyna left it. Ado had her head tilted back, still in apparent sleep. Matt had a few blankets on the floor behind her. Ruby’s harness still hung from the rack on the wall.

“Ado!” Maple shouted. “Wake up!”

Despite not responding at all to Dyna physically trying to wake her up, the shout was apparently enough. Ado’s tilted back head dropped forward until she was facing the camera. She let out one massive yawn, then nodded her head. The lights around her goggles shifted from faint cycling through colors to a series of rapid pulsing.

Even having worn the goggles, Dyna had no idea what they were for. It was entirely possible that Dyna hadn’t seen anything remotely similar to what Ado was seeing.

“Something is up with the sensors. Please tell me it is nothing. Please tell Dyna it is nothing.”

Ado’s head tilted slightly. “Is it nothing?”

“You tell me.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Ado said, immediately tilting her head back again.

“Ado! We would prefer a little more reassurance. Maybe actually look at the sensors before sleeping?”

With a small groan, Ado leaned forward again, this time hunching forward as her fingers rapidly tapped against various keys. Having seen the terminals back there, Dyna felt that was more for show than anything else. The screens back there displayed graphs every time Dyna had looked at them. But when she finished typing, Ado stared straight down at the keys for just a moment.

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“Oh.” Ado looked up to the camera. “It’s nothing.”

“That’s such a lie,” Dyna hissed. “What’s going on?”

“Mhm. Hmm…” Ado sighed. “It is nothing major,” she said, speaking slowly as if she were taking a great deal of care in selecting her words. “There are signs of the entity nearby. It is doubtful that it caught up to us through non-anomalous means—”

“The Hatman can teleport.”

“You saw this?”

“Well… no. Ruby said that he wasn’t there, then he—”

“We have seen no evidence that the entity possesses such abilities. Please refrain from conjecture. Your friend was likely mistaken.”

Dyna doubted Ruby would make such a mistake. She was far more experienced in these types of things than Dyna was and would have been paying attention. Then again, this was something that she had never encountered before. It was entirely possible that it had done something else entirely that had merely looked like teleportation.

“In any case, the readings do not indicate anything to be alarmed over. Merely that it was nearby at some point in the recent past. Perhaps while hunting down your other friend. We should turn back and investigate.”

“Investigate?” Maple said, jolting somewhat. “Now?”

“Our goal here is investigation and ultimate containment of the entity. Traces of it should be analyzed.”

Maple looked over to Dyna, face unreadable behind the mask. After a slight nod, he leaned back in his seat, taking over from the automated driver for a few moments while he readjusted his course.

“Not much actual driving to do,” he said with a nervous chuckle.

“Just keep us moving,” Ado said. “Alert me when you’ve found the area with the highest readings.” Apparently unconcerned with the still rising graphs, she leaned her head back against her seat, stretched an arm forward, and shut off the camera.

Something felt off to Dyna. Something about the way they acted. Dyna wasn’t quite sure what. The numbers on the graphs must have meant something, but she didn’t know enough to know what was wrong. Judging by the way Maple wouldn’t even look over in her direction now that the talk was over, they were lying. From her time at the institute, Dyna knew a little about regular old fashioned psychology. In her inexpert opinion, it looked like he had a guilty conscience.

Something was off, but nothing that would put them in danger? If the Hatman were here, they would hopefully let her know. That meant that it was something else. Maybe an artifact appeared or another psychic was in the area.

Dyna pressed a hand to the gun in her pocket, just to make sure it was still there.

Once more, she didn’t trust them.

 

 

 

Beneath the brim of the wide hat, the scribbled marks obscuring the Hatman’s face spasmed as Dyna pulled the trigger. They stretched and shrank, spun and twisted. Every instant, they redrew themselves, scribbling over his face with a far more frantic urgency. Despite the rapid motion, Dyna still could not see what was beneath the veil.

Or perhaps she couldn’t remember what his face looked like. The goggles she wore did seem to stop him from erasing her conscious memory of his very existence, but she was kind of glad that it didn’t work on his actual face. If he was going to such lengths to hide it, it probably wasn’t anything she wanted to look at anyway.

Not that she cared in this particular moment. Dyna wasn’t sure why she cared so much about his face. Really, all she wanted was for him to not be anywhere near her.

Dyna couldn’t allow herself to get caught.

Not because whatever the Hatman had planned for his victims was surely horrifying and nightmarish, though it certainly was, but because that would mean her only immediate source of help would come from Tartarus.

She was getting enough help from them already. Falling further into their debt… They were already exchanging Grafton for helping Ruby. Dyna didn’t want to know what Id would ask for if Walter had to go to the infuriating woman for more help.

Dyna pulled the disruptor gun’s trigger.

Again and again.

Each pull sent convulsions, twitches, and jerks through the squiggly felt marker streaks. More importantly, each pull locked the Hatman in place. He wasn’t falling down anymore, but he wasn’t coming closer either. Each pull of the trigger stopped him for only a few seconds, but that was enough to take a step backward.

The ghostly entity that was Ruby wasn’t sitting still. Dyna didn’t know if Ruby could perceive her, but she definitely could perceive the Hatman. With the harness on Ruby, Dyna could see the younger girl far better than the transparent ghostly form from before. Ruby still wasn’t tangible, but the harness was doing something. She was slightly more opaque.

And she was trying to get Dyna away. Accidentally or on purpose, Dyna wasn’t sure. Ruby’s arms passed straight through Dyna, but the harness did not. The straps pushed Dyna back, forcing her into a stumbling backpedal to avoid tripping to the ground.

Unfortunately, Ruby was pushing her the wrong away. They were moving away from the Hatman, which was good, but also away from the truck.

Grabbing hold of the harness, Dyna yanked Ruby back. She didn’t stop there. Firing one last blast from the weakened disruptor gun, Dyna pulled Ruby along, moving around the Hatman and back toward the truck. Ruby, thankfully, didn’t fight their change in momentum. Once they got around the Hatman, Ruby ended up leading the way, charging forward ahead of Dyna.

Dyna wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline, her using Ruby as a guide, or if she was simply getting used to them, but the goggles didn’t make her immediately want to throw up despite practically running. A good part of it might have been her focus on the truck. Their destination. Safety?

Ado stood in the back of the truck, holding another disruptor gun. One quite a bit larger than the one Dyna had, though this one was hooked up to the side of the truck with a thick black cable. She had it aimed right at Dyna and Ruby.

“Duck, please,” Ado said.

Realizing that, if Ado was aiming at her, it must mean that the Hatman was right behind her, Dyna didn’t hesitate in grabbing hold of Ruby’s harness and tackling the currently ethereal girl to the ground.

A wave rolled over Dyna. She felt it tingling in her mind, triggering the training she had gotten at the institute. Before she could try to do anything with that training, her mind seized up. She barely managed to lean away from the harness and Ruby before emptying the contents of her stomach onto the dusty lot. Luckily, with how hectic the day had been, she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Little more than liquid came out.

Despite vomiting, Dyna managed to look back.

Ado hadn’t been aiming for her, which was a suspicion that flashed through Dyna’s mind for a brief moment when she felt that wave. One she was glad to have evidence to debase.

The Hatman was still there, just on her feet, but he wasn’t standing any longer. It wasn’t that he had adapted to the gun. As Dyna suspected, her disruptor must have been out of charge. With Ado’s hooked up to the truck, it could probably fire at full power for far longer, if not indefinitely.

Nausea from the disruptor subsiding and adrenaline spiking, Dyna got back to her feet, dragging Ruby along with her. Though she still couldn’t see her, she could definitely tell that Ruby had been affected by the disruptor as well. Where before, Ruby had been spry and rushing forward on her own, now Dyna practically had to force her along.

Dyna now had a new goal in life: She did not want to be on the receiving end of a direct hit from those disruptor weapons. It hadn’t been pleasant on the periphery, she doubted a direct hit would be any better.

Rather than fire a second shot of the disruptor right away, Ado started fiddling with the knobs and buttons on the side of the gun. The same ones that she had told Dyna to avoid messing with. Once done, she took aim again.

This time, Dyna did not want to get anywhere close to its area of effect. Dragging Ruby, Dyna veered off to the side, still headed toward the truck, but hopefully putting herself far enough away from the blast that neither of them would be hit.

Ado fired again. There wasn’t any sound or indication that she did so aside from a slight tensing of the muscles in her fingers and the Hatman’s reaction.

The Hatman, still on the ground from the first shot, let out the first noise that Dyna had heard from him.

A loud, piercing shriek. One of far higher pitch than she would have expected. Almost like the noise an opera singer might hit when going for the high note.

Dyna didn’t look back. She grabbed Ruby and, glad she hadn’t been affected by the disruptor, rushed the last few feet to the truck. Grabbing hold of Ruby’s harness, she did her best to shove Ruby into the back. Ado hung up the gun and then bent to help.

It was awkward, somewhat. Ruby’s translucent legs dangled through the floor. For whatever reason, it didn’t seem like she could physically interact with the truck despite having not fallen through the world itself just a few moments ago. Which probably had something to do with the way the door of the warehouse had been closed for Dyna but open in her view through the goggles. Though, in that light, it was strange that the truck was there both with the goggles and without. Then again, Ruby wasn’t there with the goggles. The goggles let Dyna see something, but Ruby existed just a step away from that.

Maybe.

That was too much to think about at the moment.

Especially when Ado reached up to her ear and said, “Drive.”

Dyna wasn’t even in the truck yet. She jumped, getting her upper body in, but her own legs were still dangling out the back when the truck started forward. One arm swung wildly, looking for anything to grab hold of to anchor herself inside.

Matt’s hand clasped onto her wrist. Despite his injuries, he did his best to pull back, hauling Dyna up and further into the truck.

The truck circled around in the empty lot, driving clear of the Hatman by quite a distance as it turned back the way it had come. Only once they were out and on a proper street did Dyna finally feel like she could breathe. Her palms were covered in sweat. Trembling tension ran through every muscle. She felt like she was going to throw up again.

But they were away.

The Hatman would probably chase them, but in the truck, he wouldn’t be able to catch them. Not unless he could teleport directly inside. A possibility that Dyna didn’t even want to think about.

“Thanks,” she mumbled. Looking away from Matt and to Ado, Dyna glared. “Did you have to start moving before I was even in the truck?”

The woman didn’t even glance toward Dyna. She hung the disruptor gun up on a rack on the truck’s wall, keeping one hand tightly gripped to a small handle. “Would you have preferred to stay in close proximity to the entity?” As she spoke, she hit a button, closing the rear door to the truck. Only once the door had fully lowered did she actually let go of the handle and take a step back toward the terminal at the opposite end of the truck.

“I would prefer to not wind up left behind,” Dyna said, letting out a small sigh. “Are we safe?”

“I certainly hope so.” Ado didn’t make it all the way to the terminal. The truck took a harsh turn, forcing her to grab a hold of a rack. After the truck straightened out, however, Ado did not continue toward the terminal. She opened up a glass door on the rack she had used for support and pulled out a handheld device. A long silvery rod on the end of a polymer handle, connected by a thin wire to a small rectangular box with a digital screen on the front.

She hurried back to where Ruby…

Ruby’s harness squirmed on the floor of the truck, wiggling and thrashing. With the translucency, Dyna could tell that her legs were still dangling through the bottom of the truck as if it didn’t exist at all. From her perspective, she must be whizzing through the air at fifty miles an hour with nothing around her. Anyone else, and Dyna would have worried about their feet skimming along the ground. Dyna was still worried for Ruby, but at least she could heal road rash.

Dyna pushed the goggles up onto her forehead, letting her see… nothing.

The translucent form of Ruby simply wasn’t there. The harness was. It still moved back and forth, filled out like someone was wearing it. But nobody was there.

“Can you see her?”

“No,” Ado said, shoving the silver rod right into where Ruby’s head was. Not that Ruby seemed to notice.

At the same time, Matt said, “Yes? It’s a ghost, but more real.”

“Likely a consequence of the harness and its attempts to tether her,” Ado said, looking down at the screen of the tool she was using. “I should like to examine you later. If I can devise a method to replicate your natural ability, it could greatly assist our endeavors against the entity.”

“You can do that?” Dyna said.

“Of course. My specialty is replicating or enhancing psychic powers with technology. I devised all the…” She trailed off. Despite the silver face obscuring mask, Dyna could tell she was frowning. “I devised all the non-entity specific technology we use. Which sadly is not the majority these days.”

“So this truck—”

“Almost nothing is my own.”

“Who built it?”

“I don’t know.”

“But—”

“It is a complex situation and one I am not willing to discuss. Drop the subject, please.”

Dyna pressed her lips together. So much for gleaning a little information. She probably shouldn’t be digging while they were working together, especially not while Ruby was in trouble and it was looking like only they would be able to help her, but Dyna was incredibly interested in the subject. It wasn’t even that Walter had told her to gather information before coming down here.

Replicating psychic powers?

That illusion projecting device that Id had used in the self-storage facility had probably been Ado’s invention. That had created illusions that Melanie could have made, but had been a machine rather than a person. The masks that obviously had some kind of psionic shielding in them were probably her creation as well. Maybe even Grafton’s prosthetics? Despite examining him, the Carroll Institute wasn’t sure what they did or how they did it… at least not as far as Dyna had heard. Granted, she wasn’t told everything, but she had asked about it.

What else could she make? Mind control devices? Clairvoyance devices? Precognition devices? Precogs and clairvoyants were notoriously finicky, so what would a machine replicating their effects look like? Finicky as well? Or would she be able to iron out all the oddities?

A loud beep from the device Ado was using interrupted Dyna’s thoughts.

“Good news,” Ado said. “The psionic readings from this area are on par with a standard human. Waveform analysis—”

“Is she going to be alright?” Dyna wasn’t a scientist. Ado could spout off as much jargon as she wanted. Dyna lacked the necessary background to make much use of it. She cared about the end result.

Perhaps that was the wrong sort of thinking. Thus far, she had been surrounded by scientists and doctors. People who had spent perhaps not their lives given how long it had been since the Advent of Psionic Potential, but at least the better part of a decade researching and investigating. Dyna didn’t think she was an idiot, but next to actual doctors, she certainly wasn’t ever the smartest person in any given room.

If she did advance her knowledge, would it help her?

Probably. Especially if she ended up out on her own like this where she didn’t have Doctor Cross or Walter handily available.

But if she could learn a thing or two from Ado… she could already make artifacts. Why not make her own psychic powers while she was at it?

Of course, she doubted such a thing would be possible overnight. Or even within the span of a year or two. She couldn’t just download a copy of Ado’s engineering expertise.

For now, she just wanted to know if Ruby was going to be alright.

And Ado’s long pause wasn’t encouraging.

“Well? What’s the problem?”

“Might I have my property returned?”

Dyna’s hand moved up to the goggles. She hesitated. Last time she had encountered Id’s crew, they had been trying to steal an artifact. If she had just turned these goggles into an artifact, just handing it over… But no. It had taken weeks to turn the mirror into a proper artifact. Before that time, it had returned no appreciable readings. The same was probably true here.

Besides, she had said that Ado could have them back.

After one last glance through them, checking that the transparent Ruby was still where she was, Dyna pulled them off and held them out for Ado to take.

The chief engineer wasted no time donning them, tossing her discarded silver mask onto a hook on the wall. Dyna bit her lip, waiting, wondering if Ado would say anything about changed vision or differences because of it being an artifact.

She didn’t even wrinkle her nose.

Another artifact that only worked for Dyna?

“Well?”

Ado still didn’t say anything, she simply looked down at the harness and the screen in her hand.

“I believe your friend is stable. Though I do not believe it would be wise to leave her in her current state for an extended period of time.”

“You said you were scanning the Hatman while he was around us. Did that give you the data you needed to help her?”

“Not likely. I will send the data off to Doctor Darq for processing. With that, we will be able to calibrate our equipment to capture and contain the entity. From there, I will be able to extrapolate the necessary information.”

“How long will that take?”

“I don’t…” Ado paused. She raised her eyebrows as if a thought just occurred to her. “One day. Doctor Darq works in… curious ways. He will be hasty.”

Dyna nodded. “And how long will it take to calibrate the equipment?”

“Not long.”

“Show me?”

“Excuse me?”

“Show me how the equipment works, what to do, how to calibrate it… I want to be able to do it myself if necessary.”

Ado twisted the corner of her lips into a frown. “Unnecessary, I assure you.”

Dyna narrowed her eyes. “I insist,” Dyna said. “If we’re going to be working together—”

“It isn’t my decision. Proprietary Tartarus technology is already being shared with outsiders.”

“Then call Id and get her approval.”

“You think she’ll give it?”

Dyna, still pretty sure that Id wanted to recruit her, shrugged. “Never know until you ask.”

“Well I—”

A sharp intake of breath pulled both their attentions over to Matt. He had both hands clamped around his leg.

“Sorry,” he said through clenched teeth. “I think the strain of pulling you in messed me up again. Either that or the painkillers are wearing off.”

Dyna looked back to Ado. “Do you have anything for him?”

“That wasn’t part of any agreement.”

Nodding, Dyna looked back to Matt. “Tell her she can’t look at your psychic power unless she helps you.”

“That,” Ado said with a little more urgency than she normally used, “is to help you as well. To help your friend—”

“Oh like that’s all you’ll use it for. You’re going to take the data and examine it for years, figuring out every possible use for it, none of which will be related to this issue right now. I spend eighteen hours of the day around people like you,” Dyna said, easily able to picture Doctor Cross in Ado’s position. “I know how you think.”

Ado didn’t say a word, simply pressing her lips together.

“Call Id,” Dyna said. “She’ll tell you.”

“So certain.”

 

 

“We are approaching our target.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call her a target,” Dyna said, pushing the goggles back up to her forehead. She shuddered. It took a moment to reorient.

It was odd, somehow. She honestly couldn’t tell if the goggles were naturally nauseating or if it was something she was doing. It had taken a few weeks of regular usage for the mirror to go from mundane to artifact according to Doctor Cross—all the tests had come back negative until after the night she used it to track down Grafton—but it had still worked just hours after she got it.

Whether or not Dyna was doing anything was even more confusing when she looked over to Ado. The woman, now with the silver mask on in place of the goggles, didn’t actually seem all that impacted by her apparent blindness. She might just not be as blind as her milky eyes would indicate, or perhaps the mask had similar features to the goggles, or… perhaps she got around her blindness in a more esoteric manner. For all Dyna knew, she could be a clairvoyant that saw what her eyes would naturally see, effectively eliminating her disability. The only thing that Dyna could objectively observe was that she still worked at the terminal, though she might have slowed down a small bit.

Dyna got to her feet and stepped away from Matt—who had gone back to trying to get some sleep—only to have to stop and grab a hold of a small pipe as the truck took a corner a bit too fast for comfort.

“The target is still on the move, unfortunately.”

“That’s fine,” Dyna said. “Just get us close enough that we should have sight on Ruby.”

“That might be hard to determine. She might enter a building or be hidden behind a fence.”

“Just close enough,” Dyna said again as she looked over the terminal screens. “Where are we?”

The buildings here were old and clearly in need of maintenance. Most, on either side of a fairly dusty road, were of a warehouse style. Several that they passed had overgrowths of trees and shrubberies, making them look about as abandoned as much of the rest of Casper. One lot was filled with old cars. A junkyard of some kind.

“A bit north of the hospital,” Ado said. “There should be a railroad on the opposite side of the buildings to our left.”

Dyna looked up to one of the monitors, watching as the lot of cars turned into a series of shotgun shacks. Between each house, Dyna could make out a clearing with a series of rails with some more warehouse-style buildings past that. Judging by how the rails were nice and clear of debris and foliage, Dyna assumed that they were still in use.

The truck turned again, forcing Dyna to shift her stance to keep from falling over. The truck turned into the parking lot of a building that looked like a horizontal cylinder—an aircraft hangar? There wasn’t a runway around, so probably not, but Dyna wasn’t sure what else it would be for.

Past the hangar, the truck slowed to a stop. Not because they reached their destination, but because a chain link fence was blocking their way.

“How far past the fence?”

“Not sure. But not far. We’ll find a way around.”

“Let me out here.”

Ado didn’t hesitate. She pressed a finger to her ear and spoke softly to the driver, then stood and pressed a button on the wall. The side door of the truck slid aside. Dyna hopped out and just about started sprinting for the fence, only for Ado to call out to her. “Wait. Take this,” she said, holding out a small device.

The basic shape was that of a gun, though having become familiar with guns, Dyna knew it wasn’t. Black and red, it was polymer with a large coil of wire hanging down below where the barrel should have been. Instead of a barrel, it had a gold pipe, the end of which had no hole, just a small red light amid a gold cap. There was something kind of like a scope attached on top, except it had no sight and its angle aimed directly down, maybe an inch in front of where the ‘barrel’ ended. Even if it had lenses, it wouldn’t have made for a very good scope. A number of knobs and buttons lined the side of the gun.

“Do not touch the settings, please,” Ado said, holding the handle out toward Dyna. “It is a psionic disruptor. Psychics do not like it pointed their way. At its current settings, it should incapacitate the target long enough to secure it.”

“Her,” Dyna said, taking it from Ado. It was heavy. Heavier than a pistol even, and they were already heavier than they looked. A lot of the weight came from the scope-like cylinder on the top. “Will it work on the Hatman?”

“That was our hope, yes.”

“Not instilling a lot of confidence here.”

“Apologies. This is the first time we’ve done something like this.”

Dyna blinked. From the way they talked, especially Darq, Dyna would have guessed that they had been around for a while. She almost asked, but they were wasting time. Ruby was probably still running even now. They probably just meant the first time capturing a Class Two Phase-Wandering entity. “Just aim and pull the trigger?”

“Yes.”

“Can do,” Dyna said, turning away.

She left Ado and the truck behind, reached the chain link fence, and started climbing up and over. It was a good thing there wasn’t any barbed wire along the top. Hopping down the other side, she advanced into a dirt-covered lot. One that clearly hadn’t seen much use lately. There were no tire tracks or footprints apart from her own.

Would Ruby leave footprints in her current state? Based on some of what Ado had said, Dyna supposed it depended on just how she had been phase-shifted. Class One would leave traces behind. Class Two wouldn’t. The Hatman was Class Two, but they weren’t sure whether his targets were as well.

Stopping at the rough center of the lot, Dyna stopped. Firming her stomach, she pulled down the goggles.

The world twisted and distorted. A dizzying sensation made her want to take them back off again, but with an effort of will, Dyna forced herself to look around.

Scanning the horizon for Ruby wasn’t easy. The horizon wasn’t a straight line with the goggles on. Her stomach flipped a few times as she turned. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t continue. Clenching her jaw, Dyna looked down as she reached up for the goggles.

Before she actually lifted them up, however, she noticed something. Footprints. Footprints that continued forward, ahead of her own feet.

Lifting the goggles, in spite of the surroundings being the same dusty lot, there were no footprints.

Putting the goggles back on, Dyna tried to figure out which way they were headed. Not an easy task with how the world distorted, but Dyna was fairly certain that they curved around a few old empty truck beds and toward a metal-sided warehouse.

Sliding the goggles back to her forehead—moving while wearing them would surely lead to uncontrolled vomiting—Dyna rushed around the same empty truck beds and to a closed door. It had been painted white at one time, but the paint chipped off around the edges. The metal had since rusted.

The handle didn’t budge. Dyna threw her shoulder into the door, but the rust wasn’t so bad as to ruin the door’s integrity. She just about started running around to find a different way in, only to realize that Ruby probably hadn’t been able to get in either. That meant she went somewhere else?

Using the goggles, Dyna looked back out to the lot. The footsteps, moving just along her own, came right up to the door. She turned, trying to figure out where they had gone after, only to blink and look back to the door.

Or, more accurately, the doorway. The door was still there, but it was fully open. Maybe pried open? It was hard to tell for certain with the warping of the goggles, but there was damage to the door’s frame right around where the locks were.

Slowly, Dyna reached out a hand.

Her fingers hit the cold metal of the rusted door. It was still closed.

Of course. The goggles, if they worked the way she wanted, let her see into some alternate reality. They didn’t transport her to that reality.

“Ruby!” Dyna called out, slamming her fist against the door that she couldn’t see with the goggles on. It was probably useless. If Ruby could hear her, she wouldn’t need to stun her or whatever the psionic disruptor did. But maybe she could hear something. Some small glimmer, much like what Matt apparently heard.

Dyna would have thought that something done in one version of the world would affect the other. How else would there be buildings and cars? Then again, Ruby had presumably taken her clothes and equipment with her. Not to mention her body. If phase-shifting was purely mental, they wouldn’t have a hard time finding Ruby at all. Maybe phase-shifted world and the real world did affect each other in some way that Dyna wasn’t able to understand or perceive. She wasn’t a scientist after all.

Dyna turned to try to find a way around—an alternate entrance or footprints showing Ruby had left the building.

Instead, she stopped immediately, sucking in a breath.

Goggles on, she could see a tall figure in dark clothes, striding toward her from just beyond the abandoned truck beds. A figure in a wide-brimmed hat.

Chasing her? Or chasing Ruby? Dyna’s hands tightened around the handle of the disruptor gun. Would it work? Ado hadn’t seemed all that confident. What was its range? Did the Hatman need to be right in front of her? Or would it hit him now? She should have asked. How many times could she use it before it needed to be reloaded or recharged or whatever needed to be done to it? She should have asked. Why hadn’t she asked for a fancy ear-piece that would let her ask these questions now?

Cursing her foolish haste to find Ruby, Dyna edged along the building, away from the Hatman. If there was one good thing about him, it was that he wasn’t fast. But she couldn’t move quickly either. Not with the goggles on. She could try taking them off, but what if she just forgot that the Hatman was around and then stood waiting for him like some kind of idiot?

Glancing back, Dyna scowled. The Hatman didn’t move fast, but at this pace, it would be fast enough.

Dyna just about removed her goggles, but had an idea at the last moment. Pulling out her phone, she typed a few quick words into her notepad app.

Holding her phone in front of her face, Dyna pushed the goggles up to her forehead and…

Looked at a confusing message written on her phone.

“Run straight ahead,” she read, “or he will get you?”

Tension ripped at her stomach. She had been looking for Ruby. Found her, even, though only footsteps so far. But run? Dyna couldn’t remember typing that. Looking around, she didn’t see anything. That didn’t stop her from taking the advice. It was her notepad. The notepad filled with her own trusted words. Reminders and memories. Bits and pieces of information that she occasionally read through just to see if she had forgotten something.

And apparently she had forgotten something.

Dyna broke into a run, sprinting away as fast as she could manage alongside the old warehouse building toward the railroad tracks. Hopefully far from wherever the Hatman was.

Barreling past the warehouse, Dyna slid to a stop in the dirt. She remembered what she had come here for. Ruby. If Ruby and the Hatman were both here, the latter must have changed his target. Unless the entity was clever enough to assume that his actual target, Matt, would be coming here as well. Either way, Dyna couldn’t just leave Ruby to his machinations.

Having put some distance between her and the Hatman, Dyna donned the goggles once more.

Dyna looked through the twisted world once more. She spotted the Hatman immediately, distinct as he was. Surprisingly enough, he wasn’t headed directly for her, but toward the warehouse.

“Ruby!” Dyna couldn’t see the younger girl, but if the Hatman could sense her, she had to be around somewhere.

Gritting her teeth, Dyna raised the disruptor gun. The Hatman wasn’t paying attention to her. There wouldn’t be a better opportunity to test out the gun’s range and reach. Aiming, however, wasn’t easy. There were no indicators on the gun, the scope-like pipe wasn’t an actual scope, and looking through the goggles made everything… dizzying.

Dyna had been trained. Emerald and Ruby took her out to the shooting range nearly every day. At least they had over the last few months, before Emerald left to track down that artifact. The disruptor wasn’t exactly a gun, but it was close enough.

She aimed as best she could and squeezed the trigger.

Dyna expected something to happen. Some noise or a jolt of recoil. Even a light flashing to indicate that gun actually fired. A button on a television remote would make a light blink. The disruptor didn’t even do that much.

The Hatman, on the other hand, collapsed. Instantly. Like a puppet with its strings cut. A small cloud of dust kicked up into the air around him. Not enough to obscure the Hatman, but enough to get caught in the light wind.

Tense, finger still hovering over the trigger, Dyna stared and waited. She kept aiming, kept watching, but slowly started to feel herself relax. It was a disbelieving sort of relaxation. Dyna didn’t have a clue what the disruptor did beyond the very brief explanation that Ado had given her, but it was…

It was too easy. That was it? One shot and the Hatman, some monstrous entity that wasn’t even human, went down? It couldn’t be that easy. Dyna just couldn’t believe it.

Sure enough, the Hatman’s hand slammed into the ground. His fingers dug into the dusty lot as he started pushing himself back up. The wide brim of his hat tilted upward, revealing the scribbling marks constantly obscuring his face. Even Ado’s goggles didn’t let her see past the permanent marker covering his eyes and mouth. And yet, Dyna could tell, the Hatman was not happy with her.

Not happy at all.

Standing fully, he brushed a hand down his long coat, dusting himself off. Except, none of the dust actually stuck to his clothes. Dyna, despite having not fallen and rolled around in the dirt, had a thin film coating her. Yet the Hatman’s dark clothes and wide-brimmed hat were immaculate.

He took a step. Not toward the warehouse, but toward Dyna.

Dyna pulled the disruptor’s trigger.

The Hatman staggered, went limp, and fell backward. But this time, he started getting up almost immediately. Just a brief pause, almost more of a mental hesitation than physical impairment, before he planted his hand on the ground.

Was he adapting? Or was the gun just not fully charged? Dyna didn’t know.

She fired again before he got fully to his feet.

He collapsed, but didn’t even pause in pushing himself back up.

“Ruby! You’ve got to hear me, right?” Dyna wouldn’t be able to keep the Hatman down forever. She couldn’t move well with the goggles distorting everything; seeking out Ruby wasn’t as easy as she had been hoping for. With the Hatman here…

The Tartarus truck turned around the side of the warehouse. They must have found a way through the fence. That was…

Not good. Dyna hadn’t found Ruby yet. At this point, they would have to leave. Try again another time. Leave Ruby to handle the Hatman on her own.

The truck kicked up a curtain of dust as it drove right past the Hatman. Maple didn’t swerve toward or away from the entity. Though Dyna could see the brushed silver mask on him through the window, he must not have been able to perceive the entity.

The goggles did work then. Maybe they always worked and Dyna wasn’t doing anything. Or maybe it was her power. Dyna didn’t know. She didn’t care at this moment.

The truck pulled up to Dyna, slowing to a stop with Maple rolling down the window of the driver’s door. “You find her?” he called out.

“No. And the Hatman is right next to the wall over there,” Dyna said, pointing with the gun.

Maple jolted, jumping in his seat. He looked in the side mirror before leaning fully out the window to see around the side of the truck. “I don’t see anything.”

“He’s there,” Dyna said as she pulled the trigger.

It stopped the Hatman from moving for a few seconds, but didn’t send him back down into the dirt.

“Get in! We’ll find her later.”

“I can’t just leave her,” Dyna shouted back. “She’s here, somewhere. So close. Maybe inside the building.”

“The one the entity is guarding?” Maple’s voice sounded higher pitched now than it had when he stopped to talk by the car. Nervous? Scared?

Dyna could empathize. Being able to see the Hatman should have made it better. At least she knew where he was and what he was doing. Every time she caught a glimpse of his face beneath the brim of his hat, however, her stomach clenched and flipped. But she couldn’t just run away because she was scared. Not if it meant leaving Ruby out for the monster to get.

She had to find her.

“Do you guys have another of these guns?” Dyna asked as she pulled the trigger again. “I think this one is running out of batteries.”

“Talk to Ado,” Maple said. “Hurry, please. Darq said that coming into contact with the entity wouldn’t be good for my health.”

Dyna didn’t bother with a response. She hurried around to the back of the truck, keeping her goggles on but using the truck itself as something to lean against. The side door was on the wrong side and wouldn’t let her keep shooting at the Hatman. At the moment, despite how little of an effect it was having, the gun was probably the only thing keeping him from getting all of them.

Likely using the cameras to tell where she was headed, Ado already had the rear door lifting up.

“Got any other fancy guns? This one isn’t working much anymore.”

“Unfortunately not,” Ado said, walking to the rear of the truck without any problem despite lacking her goggles.

“Can we contain the Hatman?”

“The Portable Metaphysical Entity Snare is not calibrated. We are acquiring proximity data through our psychtrometer, but additional work must be done to properly apply the data to the snare. I warned you that we were not prepared for dealing with the entity.”

“Then have you got any other bright—”

“There…”

Dyna looked down from Ado to where Matt had propped himself up on his elbows. He was staring out the back of the truck.

“Yes, the Hatman is here,” Dyna said, turning and firing another… whatever the disruptor fired.

“No, over there. A ghost.”

Blinking, Dyna whipped her head back fast enough to give herself whiplash. Fighting through the wave of nausea, she turned again, following Matt’s pointing arm. He pointed toward a second warehouse, just past another metal fence. Dyna squinted through the warped world, not seeing anything at first. A cloud of dust caught in the wind changed that.

There, between the fence and Dyna, was a small silhouette of a person. Transparent. Barely visible, casting a strange shadow on the ground. Definitely ghost-like. But also definitely there.

“How do we get Ruby?”

“As a physical being and not a psychic manifest—”

“I don’t care about the explanation,” Dyna said, firing at the Hatman again. “Just get her. She’s there!”

Through the twisted world, Dyna managed to catch a glimpse of Ado’s face without turning around. She looked almost offended with a deep grimace on her lips. Like not being able to explain her technology physically pained her.

Still, she turned around, moving further into the truck. Pulling something off a rack on the wall, she brought it back to the rear of the truck. “This harness is a tether, you need to—”

“Get it around her. Got it.”

It was fairly obvious. It looked like a climbing harness, though without the leg straps. A large black and white sphere was hooked in around the chest area, one with a glowing red light in the center.

Grabbing it right out of Ado’s hands, Dyna took a few steps.

And she faltered.

There wasn’t anything to hold onto. No wall to lean on, no railing. Not even any lines on the ground to help guide her through her twisted perspective.

Dyna forced herself to take another few steps. Ruby was still there. The gun was supposed to keep her from running away while attaching this harness, but Dyna couldn’t use it now. If something went wrong, if the harness didn’t work, Ruby would be incapacitated, left to the mercy of the Hatman.

Dyna had to move on her own. She grit her teeth, and tightened the muscles in her stomach, not willing to remove the goggles with the Hatman and Ruby both here. She would forget about the former and potentially not even see the silhouette of the latter.

Foot after foot, step after step. Squinting to try to avoid vomiting, Dyna put one foot in front of the other. Faster and faster until she broke into a run.

She didn’t stop when she reached the silhouette. Ruby would normally have never let herself be tackled, but she must not have been able to see Dyna approaching with the harness stretched out in front of her. Or if she could, she was too busy focusing on the Hatman, probably wondering why he had fallen and couldn’t get up. Assuming she could see him.

Tackling Ruby to the ground was a strange affair. Except where the harness touched, Dyna couldn’t actually interact with her. Her hand passed right through the transparent ghost. Using the harness as something like a net, Dyna struggled to loop it around her. Ruby quickly started to fight her off, but must have realized what was going on. Her struggles changed to attempts at helping.

“Dyna!” Matt shouted from the truck. “The Hatman!”

Sucking in a breath, Dyna looked up.

The Hatman had gotten to his feet. He stood three steps away, looming over Dyna.

Eyes widening, Dyna reached for the disruptor gun and raised it up as the Hatman stretched a hand out toward her.

She squeezed the trigger.

 

 

“You’re probably very confused,” Dyna said, keeping her volume down to a minimum.

Still in the back of the truck, driving back toward the hospital now, Dyna had to wonder if that was even a good idea. She wanted Ruby somewhere safe, but the hospital was surely surrounded with police at this point. Someone must have seen her get into the back of the large white truck with Matt, either with their own eyes or through the screen of a security camera. The Tartarus van was fairly distinctive.

Having had a few moments to get better settled in the truck, Dyna had pulled down a white protective suit that looked an awful lot like a hooded onesie. It wasn’t much, but it did give Matt something to lay down on that wasn’t the cheap plywood of the truck bed. The way they had tossed him inside had probably given him some extra slivers.

“We’re with… I mean, I’m with an organization that studies and researches psychics and psychic activity. These other people are from a similar organization that I don’t particularly like, but it seems as if we’re working together for the moment. Does that make sense? Are you… alright?”

Matt was awake now. Definitely awake. He was flat on his back, but looking at her with alert eyes. At the moment, those eyes looked about ready to cry.

“Is it over?”

“No. The Hatman is still out there for now. We’re going to change that once we get my friend back.”

“Your friend… I… I thought I—” Matt squeezed his eyes shut. Balling a fist, he pressed it to his forehead.

It took Dyna a moment to realize what he was upset about. “No, no no. It’s okay. You got lucky. It’s hard to explain, but Ruby is… not easy to kill? She’s a psychic whose ability lets her heal herself. She’s fine. Or she was when I last remember her. She was at the hospital… I think. You might have seen her there when we were getting you out, but then…”

Darq told them an awful lot about what the Hatman was from a technical perspective. He had apparently sent over extra information to the Carroll Institute that had not been part of the conversation. But he hadn’t said what the Hatman practically was.

“What do you know about the Hatman? How did you find out about him? When did he start coming after you? Do you know… Do you know what he does to people he takes?”

The latter question was the most important for Dyna. At least at the moment. From Darq, Dyna knew about the phase-shifting nonsense. But what did he do after that? Surely he phase-shifted someone for a reason. Maybe to eat them? Hunt them down for sport in his own little world? And related to that, how did he select his targets? Was there a reason for it, or was it purely random? Ruby was probably just a target of opportunity—or she had accidentally gotten captured while he was going after Matt—but knowing how he picked his targets could provide a clue on why he took them.

“I… I think I’m psychic,” Matt said, still with his eyes closed and his hand on his forehead. “I see people. People that other people can’t see. It started out with… we had a friend when we were friends. One who disappeared.”

“Yes. Six people went to that water park. Only five of us left.”

“You remember her?” Matt asked, trying to lean forward.

Dyna pressed him back down. It didn’t take much force. Just a hand to his chest. He was still injured. She genuinely didn’t know if he was alright to even be awake. He would probably not be nearly so talkative once the painkillers wore off. The bandages around his leg should probably be changed at some point.

Perhaps one of the Tartarus people had some medical knowledge. Walter was sending support, which included some medical doctors, but they weren’t here yet.

“Not really,” Dyna said, hoping that they would be able to deal with whatever problems there were when they arrived. “Bits and pieces. I remember someone else with us at the water park and the Hatman taking her away. But that’s it. I can’t even remember her name.”

“I saw her sometimes when I was a child. Just brief glimpses, usually of her screaming for help. No one else remembered her. Even after tracking down pictures of us together, they just shrugged their shoulders and went on with their day. Like they couldn’t even think about her for any extended period of time. Then I started seeing other people. Others crying out for help.

“I was just a kid. I didn’t know what to do or how to help. Toward the end of middle school, they slowed down. Then stopped coming. And then… I started seeing him.”

“The Hatman.”

Matt nodded his head. “Just in my dreams at first. Then in the corners of my eyes. I tried telling people. They took me to therapists and my family tried moving. But he was still there. My parents divorced and mom dumped me with my dad. Didn’t even want me. A year later, he just…” He swallowed a lump in his throat. “He left me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I got over it.”

Dyna pressed her lips together and nodded her head. “So he started coming after you?”

“A year ago. Maybe two? Hard keeping track of the days,” he said with a snort as if it were a joke.

Dyna wasn’t laughing.

“Thought I was just dead. I was living at a shelter when he walked in through the front doors—”

“You could see him? Remember him?”

“Kind of. Like the ghosts—”

“Ghosts?” Dyna blinked, then realized. “Oh. Like Jen.”

“I don’t know if they’re actually dead, but that’s what I called them when I was little.”

They weren’t dead. Or Ruby wasn’t, at least. Not yet. Not if she could help it.

After a long period of silence, Dyna gave him a light prompt. “So the Hatman came in?”

“Oh. Sorry. Head is foggy.”

“That’s probably the anesthetics.”

Matt hummed in a non-committal acknowledgment. “I knew the moment I saw him that he was after me. I just sat there, frozen. But—I don’t know if it was by accident or if someone else saw him, but one of the others at the shelter wound up hitting him with a food tray. He stumbled. That was enough. I knew he could be fought. I ran away. Been running and fighting ever since. He shows up once every month or so. Sooner if I stay somewhere he found me before.”

That was potentially useful information. If they needed to lure the Hatman out, taking Matt back to one of his places would be best. But it wasn’t the information Dyna wanted to know right now. “So you don’t know what happens to the people he catches?”

“They turn into ghosts,” Matt said, matter-of-factly.

Phase-shifted. Probably. Imperceptible to normal people according to Darq, but Matt’s psychic ability must let him at least glimpse them.

“Do the ghosts talk to you?”

“Not like we’re talking. Sometimes they say things. Mostly shouts for help, screams, or crying. I don’t think they like being ghosts.”

There could be dozens of people out there, phase-shifted like Ruby was now, living in some parallel universe. Trapped in some parallel universe.

If Tartarus really could analyze and reverse the Hatman’s power, maybe they could go around rescuing all those people. Assuming they were still out there. Dyna still worried that the Hatman wasn’t done with his targets after simply phase-shifting them. The fact that Matt seemed to have stopped seeing the ghosts probably wasn’t a good sign.

Would he be able to see Ruby?

Dyna bit her lip and looked down at her mirror.

Ever since finishing the discussion with Darq, Dyna had been trying to get the perspective of either the Hatman or Ruby to show up. Maybe to help locate them, but mostly because she wanted to know that Ruby was safe. Thus far, the most she had managed were black lenses. It was possible that the Hatman, being an inhuman entity, either didn’t have a perspective that could appear on the lenses or that he couldn’t act as a beacon for Ruby’s perspective.

Once again, Dyna was struck with just how useless the mirror was. There hadn’t been time to look for alternatives with the Hatman out and on the prowl.

Dyna took a quick look around the back of the truck. Tartarus had been trying to steal that apocalyptic artifact from the Carroll Institute. Did they have any other artifacts handy?

If they did, they weren’t obviously displayed.

With a short sigh, Dyna looked over to the opposite end of the truck where the monitors were set up. Ado wasn’t actively using the terminal at the moment, just monitoring what was going on. Dyna’s phone sat next to the keyboard, connected by a thin wire.

“We should be there by now,” Dyna mumbled. From the moment they got into the truck, it had been heading away from the hospital. At the end of the conversation with Darq, however, they had turned around. There were no windows in the back of the truck, so Dyna couldn’t tell for sure where they were, but it felt like they had been driving for roughly the same amount of time both ways.

Standing, Dyna gave Matt a light pat on his shoulder. “Sit tight.”

“Not like I’m going to be walking out of here.”

Dyna offered him a smile, hoping that was a joke. If it was, that was a good sign. Having good spirits despite injuring his leg probably wasn’t that hard. It was the first time he was with other people in a good long while by the sound of things. People who believed him about the Hatman and said that they could do something about it? Dyna would be ecstatic in his position.

Leaving him behind, she approached Ado from behind. Dyna quickly scanned over the monitors. Most were obviously monitoring ambient psionic energy. The depths of Psychodynamics had similar monitoring equipment. Though, unless Tartarus used different measurements, Dyna felt the numbers were a bit high. The Carroll Institute was filled with psychics, so Dyna assumed that the numbers there would be higher than elsewhere, but the charts in front of here were almost equal to what she usually saw around the institute.

Was the Hatman just that big of a psionic energy source? Dyna had to wonder why the satellite that picked up the artifact in Korea didn’t register the Hatman. Not being a scientist, Dyna couldn’t say for sure, but her only real guess was that artifacts emitted a different wavelength of psionic energy that the satellites were tuned into.

Of more immediate interest to Dyna were the images from cameras on the exterior of the truck.

They were driving down a two-lane road, though the amount of traffic at this point in the afternoon wasn’t enough to justify so much space. Knowing the sorry state of Casper’s population, Dyna doubted that it was ever that busy. Unfortunately, knowing next to nothing about Casper’s roads, Dyna had no clue where they actually were.

Ado glanced back over her shoulder. “Something wrong?”

“I should be asking you that. Where are we? You’re not trying something—”

“Please,” Ado said, turning back to the screens. “Id has already secured the release of our colleague. Jeopardizing that by kidnapping you? I’m sure the Carroll Institute would pay billions to get you back, but reneging on our deal would just show that we cannot be trusted. I imagine their little illegal army would be kicking down our doors rather than sending a briefcase of cash.”

“Illegal army?”

“You don’t think the government approved sending a little girl like your partner into combat. Do you?”

“I… yes. It is a bit strange. I figured there were extenuating circumstances.”

Ado hummed, then shrugged. “Try not to think about it too much. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.” She reached forward and dragged a map to the main screen. “Your friend is on the move. On foot, judging by speed. We’ll catch up shortly.”

“Will we be able to see her on the cameras?”

“Possibly. Possibly not. The entity is a Class Two, meaning it is capable of hiding its own physical presence as well as psionic presence in what Doctor Darq called its phase-shifting ability. I do not know if it can affect its victims in a similar manner.”

“If we can’t see her, how do we get her. Can she see us? I assume not or she would have jumped into the truck with us.”

“Correct. She’s phase-shifted to us. We’re phase-shifted to her. Our perceptions are out of alignment.”

“Is the tracker accurate enough to pinpoint her position?”

“No. We will have to rely on other equipment.”

“Matt might be able to see her,” Dyna said, looking back to the other end of the truck. “Maybe. It didn’t sound like his ability is very consistent.”

“Really?” Ado looked back, turning her chair around to see him. “Interesting knowledge. I will have to examine him and see if I can replicate the effect with more reliable technology.”

“How long will that take?”

“A few days,” Ado said, turning around again. “Maybe weeks, depending on complexity.”

“Too long. Is that how long it is going to take to get Ruby back to normal?”

“Not quite. We’re a little more prepared for that simply because Doctor Darq has been tracking this entity for some time. We have more data about it than an unknown esper. Perhaps a few days after capturing and analyzing the entity.”

“Good.” At least, Dyna hoped it was good. Days still felt like a long time to leave Ruby in some imperceptible state, but it was better than weeks. “So how do we find Ruby?”

Ado didn’t say anything. She adjusted her rectangular goggles then looked away from Dyna and to the screens. “While she is moving? It may be difficult. If she were stationary, we could use the tracker to triangulate her position relatively accurately. From there, we can use the same equipment we were planning on using on the entity to detain her. We’ll transfer her to a safe location while we collect the entity itself.”

“She’s Ruby. If she’s running, she could never stop. Fatigue doesn’t mean anything to her. We could be following her for days before she takes a break. We’re getting Ruby now.” Dyna wasn’t just going to leave her out there. If she had to, she would force herself to figure out how her ability worked just to make an artifact capable of detecting her.

And… actually…

That didn’t sound like that bad of an idea. Based on what little she knew of her own ability, Dyna didn’t think it would be that difficult either. An artifact needed themes.

Something that let people see things that were hard to see? Glasses could do that. Maybe a telescope, magnifying glass, or even just a camera. The theme would fit. Then her ability… would do the rest?

Dyna took another look around the truck, this time with a more specific target in mind. There were cameras. Obviously. The cameras on the outside of the truck were probably not the only ones. There were no interior displays on the screens, but if Tartarus was anything like Psychodynamics, there would be cameras everywhere.

Would those work? When the idea initially occurred to her, Dyna had pictured something more along the lines of a hand-held camera. They wouldn’t exactly be portable either. Would it matter if she just pulled one down? There was already a camera lens on her mirror, but that wasn’t working.

Maybe cameras were the wrong direction.

Dyna continued looking around, but she didn’t see anything that stuck out to her. There had also been that feeling back in the artifact selection room. That feeling of wrongness and unpleasant being that she had felt with the mirror and the other false artifact. She didn’t feel anything like that now, but then again, almost everything she touched wasn’t an artifact and yet she didn’t get those bad feelings everywhere.

Closing her eyes and her mirror, she tried to focus. Just like she had done when selecting the mirror, she tried to feel for some strange psionic energy. Doctor Cross had said that artificers all perceived artifacts in different ways. Emerald, Dyna knew, smelled artifacts, as strange as that sounded. Dyna was fairly certain that she felt calm around artifacts.

Dyna didn’t feel calm right now. Although there wasn’t any immediate danger, she had been tense and coiled up for basically the entire day. Especially ever since encountering the Hatman at Matt’s hiding place.

But that was good, right? Dyna wasn’t looking for an artifact. She was looking to create one capable of finding Ruby.

She wasn’t feeling bad either, however. Did that matter? Dyna didn’t know enough. The mirror had felt bad, but maybe that meant that they just had poor compatibility with each other. The mirror had become an artifact despite that, but it wasn’t a very good one. Maybe something that didn’t feel horrible would work better?

A three-tone repeating alarm made Dyna open her eyes. One of the graphs on the terminal was flashing red and the warning of increased psionic energy on the inside of the silver mask had returned. She opened her mouth to ask Ado what was going on, only to find the woman leaning away in the chair about as far as she could manage without actually leaving the seat.

“What’s wrong?”

“Psionic energy spike,” Ado said through grit teeth. “Are you alright?”

“Fine. Are you?”

“Perfect.”

“Really?”

“Please don’t doubt my words.”

“Okay…” Dyna said, staring at those strange lenses of Ado’s goggles.

Staring at her, it hit Dyna.

Those were perfect.

The goggles clearly let her see things that other people couldn’t see. Dyna didn’t know what, but the theme was already there.

“Your goggles,” Dyna said, reaching up to remove the silver mask despite the warning flashing on the screens warning her against doing just that. “Trade me.”

“These don’t have the protective—”

“I don’t care. And don’t tell me what the goggles do. It might be easier like that.” Dyna held out the mask. “Just trade me.”

Ado gnawed a bit of skin right off her dry lips, then reached up and pulled her goggles off.

She had dull, milky eyes. Blind?

The goggles clearly helped her see somehow then. Dyna felt a bit bad taking them from her when she obviously needed them, but that only reinforced her feeling that they would work. Ado could have them back after.

Dyna slid the strap over her hair and pulled the lenses down over her eyes.

“Woah…” Dyna stumbled, grabbing onto Ado’s chair to keep her balance. She could see, but… Everything was distorted. Formerly straight lines twisted and… Dyna could see through Ado. Not like comic-book X-Ray vision, but more like light simply bent around her on its way to Dyna’s eyes.

Turning her head, Dyna just about threw up. The sudden wave of nausea forced her to push the goggles up to her forehead.

“Please don’t break them. They were difficult to manufacture.”

Breathing, sucking in air in an attempt to center herself, Dyna nodded. “I’ll try,” she managed. “But I think these might work. Just get us close to Ruby.”

“Work?”

“Don’t talk about them,” Dyna said. “Sorry, but please don’t mention them anymore.”

With the mirror, Doctor Cross had told her that it was some secret spy gadget. After, it had turned into something capable of showing off other people’s perspectives. If he had told her that it was something else, the artifact might have ended up doing something else entirely. At least, what was how Dyna felt at the moment.

If Ado talked more about the goggles, she worried that that would influence what they did.

Assuming this all worked, of course.

The goggles… definitely did something. Dyna wasn’t quite sure what that was. Something. Something useful, hopefully.

 

 

 

Dyna didn’t wait for the nonsense of secret handshake numbers. The second Walter answered his phone, she shouted into the receiver, “Do you have a way of tracking Ruby?”

“Tracking?”

“Some chip implanted in her phone or… skin or something. You’ve got to have something, right?” Dyna asked. She switched the phone to speaker mode so that she could go back to scrolling through her notes and emails to herself. “Ruby was supposed to be here. She wasn’t supposed to leave my side for any reason.

“I remember her being on this trip with me. We were at the hotel and… stuff. But she’s gone. I can’t… I can’t remember what happened to her or when she disappeared. That means something messed with my head again and I’m pretty sure that something is the Hatman.”

“Dyna—”

“I was at the hospital, trying to figure out how to get Matt out. The Hatman showed up, standing there watching us on the security cameras. I saw it on… a phone. Ruby’s phone? It had to have been, because it wasn’t my phone and nobody else would have that. So Ruby was there. The Hatman came and… I got away. He got Ruby. He must have grabbed her. That’s the only thing I can think of.”

“We do have a way of tracking Ruby, Dyna. Several in fact. I have the team pulling them up now. But I need you to remain calm.”

“Calm? Ruby’s been captured by some inhuman monster that messed with my memories and makes people disappear.” Dyna slammed her palm against her forehead and started rubbing. “And now she’s gone. Disappeared—”

“Dyna—”

“He’s right.”

Dyna looked up at the new voice to find one of the terminal screens now angled toward her. The person on the screen hid their face behind the same type of brushed silver mask that Dyna had on, but her wafting black hair betrayed her identity immediately.

“Id.”

“Hello again, Dyna. We really should meet under more pleasant circumstances one of these days.”

“Pass,” Dyna said.

Walter’s deep voice didn’t carry quite as well over the phone, but Dyna could still detect a tinge of annoyance when he spoke. “You are… not alone.”

“Tartarus showed up. If I had been trying to get Matt into the car on my own, the Hatman probably would have caught up. I can’t exactly say I’m ungrateful, but if they had showed up earlier…”

“Dyna, please,” Id said. “We’re not your enemies. At least not at this moment. And your wallowing in self-deprecation and despair is actively harming your own goals. You can’t think that it is impossible to rescue your friend. Because it isn’t. It is possible to find her again.”

That made Dyna sit up fully. She didn’t trust Tartarus in the slightest, but Walter had already admitted that the Carroll Institute knew nothing about the Hatman. Tartarus obviously did. If Id said that Ruby hadn’t just disappeared forever, that did give Dyna some small amount of hope.

“Two of our trackers failed,” Walter said, “but one other just came back online. Ruby is alive. Both well-trained and nearly impossible to kill, I have confidence in her ability to survive.”

“See?” Id said. “Now, in the interest of pursuing our goals—”

“What are your goals, exactly?”

Id’s hair flowed behind her, the only movement she made for several moments. “Tartarus exists to contain threats. Threats such as your Hatman. I shall not elaborate further.”

Something about the way she spoke struck Dyna as odd. In all her previous encounters with Id, the woman had spoken with obtuse yet flowing speech. This felt… stiff. Like she was being forced to speak.

Before Dyna could think any further on the subject, Id stepped aside, allowing someone else to step onto the screen. A younger man with wavy brown hair, a light-blue laboratory coat, and a polka-dot bow tie. He smiled and waved while Id introduced him.

“This is Doctor Dark—”

“With a q.”

“Yes,” Id said, sounding more exasperated at the non-sequitur than Dyna had heard before. “Doctor Dark is Tartarus’ expert in entities such as your Hatman.”

“Indeed I am,” Dark said. “And what a pleasure it is to meet you all. The illustrious Walter, of course, everyone knows—”

“How?”

“Though forgive me for saying that I am quite glad to not be meeting you face-to-face. And Dyna Graves, I have been most interested in meeting you for a… long… time.”

“Ugh.”

Great. Just what Dyna always wanted. Another nutjob wanting to talk to her. Id was more than enough. The worst part was that Id seemed to agree. Her face was entirely hidden behind the mask, but her stance shifted, leaning away from him.

“There is, unfortunately, one small request I have in return for our assistance in recovering your ally,” Id said after a moment of awkward silence.

“Of course,” Walter said, tone flat.

“You are currently holding captive, quite illegally, I might add, allies of ours. Grafton and Porter. I would ask for their release.”

Dyna opened her mouth then immediately clamped it shut. Harold Porter disappeared as far as Dyna knew. Or rather, she thought he ran off to work for Id. Unless Walter had been lying, or unless he had since been captured and Dyna hadn’t heard about it, Harold wasn’t at the Carroll Institute.

But actually saying so was something that she should probably absolutely not do. That was something Walter could handle.

And, after a long moment of silence, Walter said, “No deal.”

Dyna immediately grimaced. Saying no was probably the right answer, not dealing with this organization that could easily betray them, but that meant that she would probably be trying to rescue Ruby on her own. A few months of learning how to shoot guns and fight a little, along with some additional psychic resistance training, did not feel like nearly enough preparation to figure out how to rescue Ruby from a literal monster.

“Come now, be reasonable.”

“Mister Porter possesses significant knowledge of proprietary procedures, protocols, and classified material.”

“Your mind technicians haven’t stripped him of that valuable information yet?” Id asked, cocking her head to one side. “Just Grafton then. One-for-one. Surely an artificer of Ruby’s prowess is worth releasing a mere mind controller?”

“That… is more reasonable.”

“Excellent. Then we have an accord. Tartarus will assist in recovering your operative from the entity. In exchange, Grafton will be allowed free. No tracking or recapturing him the moment he leaves his cell, naturally.”

“Arrangements will be made if and only if we recover Ruby or her artifact.”

Dyna opened her mouth, about to protest leaving her friend behind in exchange for a stupid trinket, only to snap it shut once again. Ruby was her artifact. She had said so herself. Rescuing one meant rescuing the other.

“Excellent. Doctor Dark, you are free to share knowledge of the entity. And only the entity. If you’ll excuse me,” Id said, “I have unrelated work to attend to.”

“I wish there were more time for pleasantries,” Doctor Dark said, stepping forward as Id moved off the screen, “but we have work to do. I understand the situation has developed into something of an emergency for you, so I shall do my best to assist.”

Still smiling, he clasped his hands together. And then he just stood there. Still. Unmoving. He didn’t even blink. In fact, the entire time Id and Walter had been talking, he… hadn’t moved. Had he? Dyna had been focusing on the conversation.

Ado, who had been silently watching the screen with her arms folded over her chest, rolled her head on her neck. Her eyes were still hidden by the strange goggles, but Dyna could easily imagine her rolling her eyes. “You’re doing it again.”

“Oh.” Dark blinked. “My deepest apologies. I was merely captivated. So, the Class Two Phase-Wandering entity, apparent colloquial identity: Hatman. It has actually been on my radar for a while now, but only recently did the manpower to track it down become available. Quite a bothersome entity to track as well. Phase-Wandering, in this case, refers to its tendency to not exist in what is generally accepted as reality. It certainly does exist out there at times, but not all the time,” he said with a small chuckle.

Dyna bit her lip. She drummed her fingers against her thigh. The scientists and lecturers at the Carroll Institute, and even regular schooling before that, often loved to talk about their subjects. They were passionate about their work and, in many cases, viewed themselves as leading experts in the field. Which was probably not untrue. Even if someone knew very little, psionics as a whole were just so new that just about anyone who researched the subject could be considered an expert.

This Doctor Dark had the exact same tone as the Carroll Institute’s scientists. As, apparently, Tartarus’ expert in entities, that should probably be expected. But a lecture was all well and good when sitting in a school or the school-like environment of the Carroll Institute.

Here and now?

With Ruby missing and the Hatman potentially still after Matt?

She didn’t have time to pull out her notebook and start jotting down highlights of the lecture.

“Doctor Dark, what do—”

“Dark. With a q.”

“What?”

“My name is spelled with a q,” he said with a smile and casual laugh. “Don’t worry, everyone gets it wrong the first time.”

Dyna shook her head. She really didn’t care if he spelled his name with a stupid emoji. “What does the Hatman do with the people he… touches? Kidnaps? How do we get Ruby back?”

Darq’s smile slipped slightly, but only for a moment. “For your first question, unfortunately, I don’t know. As I mentioned, manpower has been limited up until recently. My current hypothesis is that the entity relocates individuals outside the cognitive spectrum of reality. Your companion still exists, but not in any way perceivable by standard humans and, likely, most psychics. She could even be sitting right next to you, watching this conversation.”

Dyna, sitting on the truck floor between some machinery attached to the walls, snapped her head around, slowly reaching out with an arm to maybe touch what she couldn’t perceive. Matt was on the floor next to her. Awake, she noted, though he was just sitting there. Listening in without trying to draw too much attention to himself? Or maybe still somewhat ill from the anesthetics. Whatever the case, Dyna paid him little mind as she reached around.

If Ruby were here, Dyna figured that she would be close by. Somewhere well within arm’s reach. If Dyna couldn’t touch her, then she either wasn’t here or couldn’t be touched. Or maybe Dyna couldn’t remember touching her. That seemed like a thing that could happen with the Hatman’s ability to erase specific memories.

Ado also turned to look around the truck. The woman didn’t reach out and try to touch anything, but she did reach up to the side of her goggles and press a few buttons. Her right lens, the one divided into four differently colored boxes, flashed through several more colors.

“Likely not, however,” Darq said. “I imagine being phase-shifted in such a manner would be… jarring to the mind and body. I doubt she would be in any state to interact with much of anything. Assuming someone shifted in such a manner can even perceive us.”

“You could have started with that,” Ado said, returning the lenses to their original green and yellow colors.

Dyna, scowling as well, looked back to the screen. “So how do we perceive her? And get her back to normal?”

“First, you must physically find her. Your tracking device should assist with that, provided it remains operational. Then… we will need to contain the entity. Chief Engineer Ado is quite accomplished, capable of creating devices even I have trouble believing exist. Studying the entity should provide data necessary to manufacture a device capable of reversing what the entity did.”

“I doubt it will be quite so simple,” Ado said despite her nodding along with what Darq was saying, “but I have created far more complex devices.” She glanced over toward Dyna for just a moment, then nodded her head. “Yes. This should be relatively simple.”

“That’s…” Dyna let out a small sigh. A relief? Probably, though Dyna wasn’t so sure she was ready to breathe easy just yet. This was all assuming that the Hatman did this phase-shift thing to Ruby and then immediately ignored her. Ruby might not be easy to hurt, but a literal monster could probably come up with some creative ways of harming her. “So we track down Ruby first. Get her someplace safe, even if we can’t interact with her? We can do that with Walter’s tracking device. Then how do we track down the Hatman?”

“That might be a little more troublesome of a task,” Darq admitted.

Ado took over. “Our technology allows us to monitor a wide area for anomalies. It is, unfortunately, not very precise. I am working on it, but…”

“So we don’t have a way of finding him.”

That was literally half the plan. Find Ruby. Find the Hatman.

So far, Dyna had run into the Hatman three separate times over the past day. That was a high number, but it wasn’t anything about her that had been the cause of that. Slowly, she looked over to Matt.

He didn’t move his head, but his eyes met hers. They stared at each other for a moment before he closed his eyes.

The Hatman had been after him. Apparently for quite a while. Would it still be after him now that it had gotten a hold of Ruby? Dyna didn’t know. It seemed absurd that it would just decide to give up after potentially years. Maybe even from all the way back in middle school—though without having had a chance to talk to him yet, Dyna wasn’t sure if the Hatman had started chasing Matt back then or if he had simply remembered and found the Hatman after him later on.

It was a better bet than anything else they had, apparently. Unless Ado or Walter could come up with some other way of tracking the Hatman, using Matt as bait could be their only real option.

Could she convince him to help? Did he have a choice?

Now that he was awake and not trying to kill her, sitting him down for a conversation sounded like a good idea. This all had to be beyond overwhelming, assuming he was cognizant enough to understand the flow of conversation and what was going on. He might have even been drifting in and out of the conversation, not even getting the full thing.

Looking back to the screen, and the phone in her hands where Walter had been conspicuously silent throughout, Dyna said, “Let’s start with Ruby. Get her someplace safe. Away from the Hatman.” Looking back to Matt, she added, “We can work on the other issue as we go.”

Walter did speak up this time. A simple, “I concur. I can have Ruby’s tracking data redirected to Dyna’s device. Get her secure and safe and I will follow through with Id’s request.”

“I’m sure Id will be pleased to hear that. As a gesture of good will, I shall send over my full thesis on this particular entity. She did say I was free to share such information, after all. And it has been so long since others have read my work. I would love to know your thoughts afterwards.”

“Make no mistake,” Walter said, “this interaction does not make us friends or allies. This is a business decision.”

“No reason to not be pleasant about it.”

“Mhm. Dyna, your phone will ask you to install an application shortly. It will lead you to Ruby. Work with Tartarus, but try to avoid topics of interest to the Carroll Institute. Your priorities: Recover Ruby. Assist Tartarus in containing the entity. Keep yourself safe. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Good. The next time you find yourself in a private location, contact me again.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The line went dead the second Dyna responded. A moment later, her phone vibrated. Just as Walter had said, it was asking her to install something. Dyna accepted.

“So untrusting,” Darq said with a sad shake of his head. “I for one will relish the opportunity to work with you.”

“I just want Ruby back.”

“Of course. Of course. And, as Id so eloquently put it, we are here to assist in that endeavor. Shall we get started? Your phone now has the tracking information, correct? If you would be so kind as to hand that over to the chief engineer, we can redirect your transit immediately.”

Dyna didn’t hesitate. She didn’t exactly like handing over her phone, but Beatrice was probably monitoring it. Phones didn’t just randomly ask to install applications, after all. If worse came to worst, the institute would probably provide a new phone. In fact, they would probably do that anyway. Just being in the truck was probably compromising enough as it was.

If it got her to Ruby faster, Dyna was more than willing to let them keep it.

 

 

“What’s taking them so long? The city is tiny. You can get anywhere in ten minutes or less.”

“Easy,” Ruby said. “They probably want that guy to get us.”

“They want to recruit me.”

“Then they’re cowards.”

“Maybe,” Dyna said. They hadn’t exactly felt like cowards over the phone, even explaining several things about the Hatman without too much prompting. They had even asked where he was the first time around, presumably with the intention of going after him. So when Dyna had called them back and told them where the Hatman was, and they said they would be on their way, she hadn’t really doubted it.

A quick flick of her eyes to the clock on the wall made her scowl. Twenty minutes? They should have been here ten minutes ago.

“Hatman still outside?”

“Hasn’t moved. What’s he waiting for?”

“Don’t tempt it. But… there are more people here. Maybe he’s scanning the entire building or whatever.”

“What if he finds a better target than this guy?” Ruby said, pointing her thumb at the bed over her shoulder. The PACU had a few chairs. Apparently, while they didn’t really want people in the room who weren’t patients or staff, it was common enough that they had seats ready for people wanting to stick by their loved ones’ sides.

Dyna pressed her lips together, looking from Matt to the other patient in the room then to the nurse. “I don’t think we can help that. If we try to evacuate the place… well, people will probably die just from the hospital suspending their work. Then the Hatman might nab someone in the chaos anyway. We need to get Matt out of here and hope he is still after him.”

“He’s too close to the car. If the hats don’t work…”

“I know.”

Dyna’s foot tapped against the floor as she stared at her phone, wondering if she should call Tartarus back again to find out where they were. Or perhaps Walter again. He was aware of the situation, but had little advice beyond their plan being sound enough for what it was. Calling him would be little more than a comfort move. He would surely call first if he had any new information or updates regarding phase-wandering entities.

Ruby disturbed the silence with a short yet sharp intake of breath. “Well, we’re out of time.”

“What do you mean?”

She flipped her phone over, showing off a certain security feed. The same hallway they had left behind when leaving the sterilization room. She barely got a glimpse of someone rushing into one of the rooms before the hallway was empty once more.

“I’d give us five minutes before the technician manages to explain the situation and they call the police,” Ruby whispered. “Maybe five more minutes before we’re under siege.”

“So it’s either police or the Hatman…”

“If we’re jailed, Walter will be able to get us out, but he won’t be happy.”

“Strangely enough,” Dyna said with a faint sigh. “I’m more worried about the Hatman. If we get jailed, I doubt bars will save us from him. And we won’t be able to save Matt.”

“Total mission failure.” Ruby clenched a fist. “Unacceptable. We have to go now.”

Matt was still unconscious. Dyna wasn’t sure how long that was going to last, but he couldn’t walk even if he was awake. “They aren’t going to let us just wheel him out of here.”

“They aren’t going to have a choice,” Ruby said, hand going to the pocket of her scrubs.

“So we just pull guns on everyone. Great. This is going to go well.”

“Come on. We’ll take an ambulance out of here. They’ll be closer than the car.”

“Kidnapping, assault, battery. Why not add a little grand theft auto to the day.”

Ruby stood and started looking around the bed. “Are you going to sit there complaining or are you going to help me figure out how to move this thing?”

Dyna got to her feet. She didn’t want to brag, but she had been in more than her fair share of gurneys before. Mostly at the institute before or after various tests. This bed wasn’t quite as simple as those, being far more comfortable for longer term care with an integrated IV hook, but it was essentially just a fancy gurney. Finding the brakes took just a few seconds.

The moment they started wheeling, the nurse at the counter stood up. “Hey, you can’t—”

“We can,” Ruby said. From behind, pushing the gurney, Dyna couldn’t see the gun. But she could see the nurse’s face.

She couldn’t help but grimace as he slowly sat back down.

“Just sit tight. We’re not here for you.”

“We’re sorry about this.”

“And you quit apologizing.”

Dyna shot Ruby a glare. “You don’t have to act like a bad guy. They’re just trying to do their jobs.”

“And I’m trying to do mine.”

Dyna groaned as they rushed down the halls at unsafe speeds. If somebody or some other gurney appeared in front of them, stopping would be a problem. “Don’t we have like a FBI badge to flash to people to get them to do what we want?”

“That’s not how the FBI actually work. They don’t get to do whatever they want.”

“Yes but someone like that nurse would still sit down if we flashed a badge instead of a gun. And same with that sterilization technician. Then we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do about it now.”

“Nothing,” Dyna snapped. “It’s not you I’m mad at. But I’m going to have a long talk with Walter when we get back.”

Dyna wasn’t so much upset with Ruby as she was with him. Or maybe not him, but the organization as a whole. The Carroll Institute was a government entity, wasn’t it? Dyna might not be some secret operative like Emerald and Ruby were, but Ruby at the very least should have some kind of badge that she could use in place of a gun. People would probably ignore a ten-year-old wielding a government badge, but… something.

Were Emerald and Ruby sent off around the world with absolutely no support at all?

What kind of an organization was Walter running, anyway?

Or was it the mysterious administrators? Dyna already had a bone to pick with them about Beatrice and her restrictions. If Beatrice were unrestricted, she could probably intercept all phone calls to the police and relieve that source of pressure at the very least.

Someone was at fault for this situation. Despite the gun in her hand, Dyna was pretty sure it wasn’t her fault. Yes, it probably wasn’t easy to plan for insane childhood friends and phase-wandering entities, but some things could be resolved simply by some people in authority figuring things out.

Frustrated, Dyna swerved the gurney down the hall leading to the emergency room entrance.

“The Hatman is moving,” Ruby called from where she was trying to help steer the gurney from the front.

“Of course he is! Tin foil hat!”

Dyna didn’t stop pushing the gurney, but Ruby let go, moved around, and jumped up on the side. High enough now, she took off the spare hat and placed it on Dyna’s head. “These better work or I’m going to be having even more words with Walter! Why don’t we have protective gear in the car?”

“You’re really upset.”

“The last time we did something like this, it was unsanctioned, we were spying on our own organization, and had no support. So why is it the same now?”

“We had Emerald.”

“Perfect. We have even less support.”

“It’s how it always is,” Ruby said with a casual shrug. “Out of the way!”

A pair of scrub-wearing doctors looked up from a tablet. Dyna could see their eyes widen and had to wonder just what was going through their heads. A little girl in matching scrubs, wielding a gun while wearing a tin foil hat, rushed alongside a gurney with an obviously comatose patient. The one pushing the gurney had a tin foil hat as well. Dyna couldn’t imagine she looked too pleasant at the moment.

Simple inertia physics meant that they couldn’t just stand there, something they obviously realized as they split, pressing themselves up against either wall while the gurney rushed past. Dyna counted on their bewilderment to keep them from grabbing at her as she made it to the emergency room lobby.

With Ruby’s help, they skidded to the side and angled toward the doors.

Dyna pulled back, dragging the gurney to a stop.

The Hatman, plainly visible through the doors, stood outside the hospital in the parking lot.

“What now? A different exit?”

“He can teleport,” Dyna said. “And then we run the risk of running into someone who might actually try to stop us.”

“So charging straight at him? Think he’s immune to bullets?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“We’ve got to do something. He’s getting closer.”

He was. Walking forward, he moved at a fairly sedate pace, yet there wasn’t much distance left between them. As long as his pace remained steady, he would reach the doors in only a minute. Dyna stared at that face, visible now at this distance, that she couldn’t see. The scribbled marks of a permanent pen brought with it such a feeling of dread and impending doom.

If he so much as touched any of them, Dyna had a feeling that they would just disappear, never to be seen again.

“Guns… slow it.”

Dyna blinked at the weak voice. Looking down, her eyes widened when she saw Matt gripping the gurney’s railing. “You’re awake,” she said, more out of surprise than anything else.

“Wish I wasn’t.”

“Guns work on it?”

“Not forever. It keeps coming… and coming… and coming… and—”

“Of course they work,” Dyna said, realization hitting her. She should have noticed earlier. “Of course they work or all those traps in the house would have been for nothing.”

“Good enough for me,” Ruby said. She racked the slide of her gun back, chambering a round. Dyna was a bit surprised it hadn’t already been ready to fire, but not even Ruby wanted to hurt a bunch of innocent people in the hospital.

“I don’t see any ambulances outside the door. The car is to the left,” Dyna said. “If we can stop him long enough, we can get to it.”

“Let’s go before he gets closer and blocks us in.”

“Hold on tight,” Dyna said, putting her weight behind the gurney once again.

Ruby left the front of the gurney, rushing straight to the door with her weapon at the ready. As soon as Ruby reached the sliding doors, something changed.

The doors slid open and Dyna felt it. Deep in the back of her mind. A tingle of mental influence. With direct line of sight, the Hatman was trying to do something. Dyna couldn’t quite tell what, only that it wasn’t working. Not wholly. She could still remember the Hatman. He was outside the hospital. He was still coming for them.

But she couldn’t see him anymore.

Pushing the gurney, Dyna didn’t have the concentration to spare to try to stop whatever it was.

“He’s still there.”

Ruby’s face scrunched up into a look of concentration. The gun in her hands wavered back and forth.

“Ruby! He’s still there. Shoot where we saw him.”

The look of concentration didn’t leave Ruby’s face, but she did add grinding teeth and a wrinkled nose. She picked a fixed point, steadied her aim, and squeezed the trigger.

Dyna grimaced at the noise. She didn’t have her ear protection on. The people in the lobby had already been ducking and taking cover, but now they were screaming too. Ruby firing off three more shots didn’t help matters. Though Dyna was more worried for the people driving out on the street on the other side of the parking lot. There weren’t many people or cars, but if someone got killed…

The noise and alarm didn’t stop Dyna. There wasn’t time to stop. She had to keep moving. Unable to see the Hatman, unable to tell if he had even been hit, she couldn’t tell if he was getting closer or not. As soon as the gurney hit the sidewalk outside the hospital, Dyna swung it off to the side, heading straight toward where they had parked their car.

Something obstructed her view of the car. A large moving van with three red hexagons painted on the side barreled through the parking lot, sounding its horn in one long, constant noise. The front windows weren’t tinted, giving her a clear view of someone behind the wheel. Probably one of the two people she had seen before, but with the brushed nickel-colored full face mask, Dyna couldn’t tell which.

The truck slammed on its brakes, making a high pitched squealing whine for a few seconds before it finally stopped alongside Dyna. Despite looking like a moving truck, a side panel slid aside. The woman stood on the other side. Instead of a silver mask, she wore large rectangular goggles. One lens was divided into four differently colored squares. The other had some kind of scrolling graph. Little red, yellow, and green lights blinked on and off along the sides of the goggles, going back around the woman’s ears.

She jumped out of the truck the moment it stopped, holding out a brushed silver mask just like the one the driver wore. Just like the one Id had been wearing the last time Dyna saw the woman.

“Quickly. Put this on,” she said, shoving it into Dyna’s hands.

“What—”

The woman didn’t bother to explain. She immediately turned to the gurney and dragged it to the opening in the truck. “Unless you wish to face it alone,” she said, trying to shove Matt from his bed and into the truck. He either fell unconscious again or just lacked the strength to move his own body. His head lolled off to the side as she grabbed his arms to try to heave him over her shoulder. “Are you going to stand there or are you going to help?”

Dyna didn’t trust them. She didn’t trust them at all. But between humans who probably wanted to recruit her or some inhuman entity obviously hostile to her and her friend, Dyna didn’t take long to make her decision.

The mask used thick leather straps to hold it in place. She quickly pulled it over her head. Despite not having any holes for eyes, Dyna could see. Some kind of VR headset-like screens and lenses displayed the outside world. The corners of her vision were filled with bars and graphs that she didn’t know how to read. One clear warning, front and center of the screen, flashed red text at her. Warning: Extreme psionic energy emissions detected. Do not remove protective equipment. If the Hatman really was just a bundle of psychic power given form, she could easily believe that. The mask was a bit loose. There was presumably a way of tightening the straps for a more snug fit, but Dyna didn’t sit around to fiddle with it.

Putting a foot on a small step, she climbed up into the truck and immediately grabbed hold of Matt’s arms. With the woman helping to push, they dragged him into the back of the truck. His eyes were open and looking around, but he just flopped down onto the floor without any resistance the moment Dyna let go. It was probably still the anesthetic slowly wearing off.

The woman used the same step that Dyna used to get into the truck. She hadn’t even closed the door before it started moving, speeding off as fast as such a large truck would allow. Closing the door looked like a struggle, at least until the truck slowed to make a turn. As soon as it sealed into place, Dyna let out a sigh.

They did it. They got away. She and Matt and…

Dyna blinked and looked around.

The interior of the truck looked like any random laboratory inside Psychodynamics. A bit more… grungy. Psychodynamics and the Carroll Institute as a whole had a generally clean aesthetic that they maintained throughout all its various laboratories and offices. This truck, much like the glimpse of Id’s organization that she had gotten the night they tried to steal the Aztec artifact, looked far more industrial.

Still, there were recognizable bits and pieces. The terminal most obviously. The woman took a seat in front of a dozen screens, each of which displayed footage of the truck’s exterior or bars, graphs, scrolling text, and more information that Dyna felt too exhausted to try to figure out.

Thick cables hung from the ceiling, running from the terminal to various machines. One looked like a miniaturized MRI or CT scanner. Another was clearly something to be worn over one’s head. The most peculiar thing was a large cylindrical tank of liquid. Just the right size for a person. Similar devices had been in Id’s workshop, though those had contained floating brains. This one was just empty.

Waiting.

Dyna tried to ignore it. She kept her gun in her hand and chambered a round. If these people thought they were going to shove her in there…

The woman heard the noise of the gun. Looking up from one of the terminal screens, she slowly raised her hands.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” she said, speaking slow and clear, though it was marred ever so slightly by that accent that Dyna still couldn’t place.

“Yeah, well, you and your friends haven’t been so friendly in the past.”

“Our purpose at this moment is solely to contain the entity.”

“Great job so far,” Dyna said, not even needing to try to put the sarcasm in her voice.

“We were not prepared for an encounter with the entity. It was decided that keeping you out of its hands was a higher priority than containment at this time.”

Dyna pressed her lips together. Thanks was the proper response. Instead, she said, “Could have showed up earlier.”

“I could apologize, but I wouldn’t mean it. I could explain the delay, but I do not wish to do so. It is bothersome, unnecessary to our current objective, and likely to be taken as a falsehood with you acting as you are.”

That sounded honest, but Dyna couldn’t fault the woman. She probably wouldn’t believe whatever they said. Not right now. “Where are we going?”

“Relocating the mobile headquarters to a more defensible position within the city’s suburbs while we reevaluate how to progress with our primary goal.”

“If you are lying—”

“I imagine that would be foolish at the moment.”

Dyna nodded. “I’m going to make a phone call.”

“Feel free. Am I allowed to lower my arms?”

After a moment of thought, Dyna nodded again. “Don’t make any sudden movements.”

“I’ll just be working at the terminal,” the woman said, slowly lowering her hands. Her lethargic movements came to a stop the moment her fingers touched the keyboard. Dyna tensed, but the woman was just typing. With her eyes still hidden by the odd goggles, Dyna couldn’t tell exactly where she was looking, but it felt like she was so absorbed in her work that she wasn’t even noticing the world around her anymore.

After watching for a long moment to make sure that she wasn’t trying anything suspicious, Dyna pulled out her phone. She looked down at it and simply stared.

Something was… wrong. Missing?

Matt was here, hardly moving but alive. The woman was almost certainly the one who introduced herself over the phone as Chief Engineer Ado. And…

Dyna scrolled down her contacts list with a frown on her face. Her thumb froze when she got to a certain name. Her finger hovered over it, steady at first, yet slowly gaining a tremble.

Something was missing. Something… disappeared.

“Ruby!” she shouted.

 

 

“I can’t believe this.”

“I can’t believe we’re here,” Dyna said, peering out the small window in the door. “What if somebody comes?”

“Then we tie them up and gag them. More importantly… Why?”

“You’ve been complaining the entire time. It’s not that bad.”

Ruby stood over a counter, carefully applying a solution of likely caustic chemicals to a flat sheet of aluminum foil. It was thick and sticky. More of a gel than a runny liquid. Ruby had an overlarge mask on and thick gloves. The equipment hadn’t been hard to find around here.

The hospital sterilization department, responsible for the sterilization and cleaning of medical equipment and tools for repeat usage, had everything that they needed to follow Walter’s instructions for makeshift psionic shielding. Well, mostly everything. The aluminum foil and a few other necessary ingredients had come from the local retail store, which was just across the street.

All in all, it took less than thirty minutes to scrounge everything up. After that, it took an elevator trip down into the hospital basement. Dyna had thought getting into the sterilization department would have been harder than it was, requiring disguises and sneaking about, but in reality, they just walked. The basement contained the building’s lab, where patients were directed for blood work among other doctor-ordered procedures. So a few people walking about, looking like they knew where they were going, had been enough to slip through.

“Are you almost done?”

Dyna was still worried. In the halls, they could have simply acted like they got turned around in the maze-like corridors. Here? If a sterilization technician walked in, they would have no such excuses.

“The goo needs to bond with the foil. I can’t believe we’re actually going to wear foil hats. This is absurd.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Scrubs make people invisible in hospitals. These things? We’re not going to be able to go anywhere without everyone staring at us.”

“Hopefully we won’t need to go anywhere. Just the lobby,” Dyna said as she glanced down at Ruby’s phone.

A dozen feeds from security cameras displayed various parts of the hospital. Thus far, there had been no sign of the Hatman. The neighborhoods where he had last been was quite a distance from the hospital. Dyna wasn’t sure exactly how long it would take to walk the route. Ten minutes by car, especially rushing above the speed limit to get Matt here faster, could be an hour or more. Or, if the Hatman took a direct route and hopped fences, it could be twenty minutes.

There was still no guarantee that he would even show up on cameras.

But one of the camera feeds did show a better view of the hallway outside the sterilization room.

“Someone’s coming,” Dyna said, moving away from the door’s window to hide just behind it.

Maybe they would just walk past.

She could hope.

Ruby didn’t even bother trying to hide. She focused entirely on her task, spreading around the gel into a thin layer using a bit of cardstock.

Dyna held her breath, watching the phone. It wasn’t the first time someone had come down the hall. Four others had simply walked past, none the wiser to the intruders in the sterilization room.

She squeezed her eyes shut in dread as the woman turned to the door. The handle rattled as the woman stuck her key into it. Dyna hoped for just a moment that Ruby’s picking of the lock had ruined it, but her hopes amounted to nothing as the woman pushed into the room.

Her light hum cut off abruptly as she spotted Ruby at the counter. “Hey! You can’t—”

As soon as she stepped into the room, Dyna pushed the door shut behind her. “I’m really sorry about this,” Dyna said, moving to fully place herself in front of the now closed door.

The woman whirled around, showing off an identification badge pinned to her hip that identified her as Kassandra King. She opened her mouth, probably to argue, maybe to shout. Whatever it would have been, it died on her lips when she saw the gun in Dyna’s hand.

“Really, really sorry. We’re just borrowing the lab to make some psychic shielding. Please sit down on the floor,” Dyna said, motioning with the gun.

The safety was on, there was no round chambered, and her finger wasn’t even on the trigger. She had no intention of shooting the woman even if attacked. Ruby would probably be a little more violent, but luckily, the woman, eyes now wide and glistening with tears that stung at Dyna’s heart, slowly lowered herself to the ground.

Ruby, on the other hand, let out a loud mocking snort. “Should have just said that we’re making drugs. It’s more believable, raises less questions, and doesn’t get uncomfortable questions directed toward White.”

“Yeah… well…” Dyna shrugged. “We’ll be gone soon and then you can get back to sterilizing endoscopes or whatever it is you do here.”

“Like hell,” Ruby said, not looking up from the foil. “Like I said, we’re tying her up. Can’t have her calling the cops before we get out of here.”

“Maybe you should focus a little more on finishing the foil and a little less on talking, Red.”

“I don’t see you helping, Temp.”

“Temp?”

“Better than Onyx.”

“I… don’t disagree,” Dyna said with a small sigh. “But wouldn’t it be Black or something like that? Onyx gemstones are black, aren’t they?”

“I guess,” Ruby said with a shrug. “It is really just for identity protection. Your name will be redacted from all official documents and Onyx will be used to refer to you instead. The colors thing is to keep even those out of unsecured communication channels, but it’s really dumb. Like… Ruby? Red? Why not call me Quincy or something completely separate from my name. Stupid.”

“So… Ruby is just to keep your actual name hidden? What is your actual name, if you don’t mind me asking?” Dyna said, then looked down at the woman staring at them. “If… uh, we can talk about that now.”

Ruby’s motions stilled, stopping the spreading of the thin film of gel. It only lasted a brief instant. With a shake of her head, she quickly resumed. “I don’t have one. Whatever name I might have had died with the old version of myself. I’m Ruby.”

“Oh. Right.” Dyna grimaced. Ruby couldn’t remember her past. The Carroll Institute had rebooted her mind in an attempt to… rehabilitate her? Dyna had heard the story before.

She still wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it.

But Ruby seemed happy. Or happy enough. Or maybe just not bothered by it.

“I think I’m done,” Ruby said, setting down the glass jar. “Just needs to dry—or cure, I don’t really know the difference—but the early parts I did are already dry, so it shouldn’t take long. Then…” Letting out a groan, she sighed. “Then we make tin foil hats.”

“You people are insane.”

Dyna looked down at King and couldn’t even make an attempt at disagreeing. “Yeah…”

Ruby, on the other hand, whirled on her. “We’re not, you haven’t even met Sapphire. He’s insane. Not us.” Grabbing a rubber hose from one of the baskets, she pushed the woman down, eliciting a yelp.

“Ruby!”

“What? We have to tie her up,” she said, looping the thin yellow hose around the woman’s arms. “I wish I had my handcuffs.”

“You don’t have to be so violent. She’s not going to resist. Are you?” Dyna said with what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

“Fuck you.”

The smile slipped. “Yeah, I… sorry.”

“Quit apologizing,” Ruby snapped, now tying the hose to the leg of the table. It looked bolted down, so she probably wasn’t going to be able to move the table to escape. “This isn’t going to hold her for long. We should really—”

“We’re not shooting her.”

“That would make too much noise. I was going to say find some sleeping gas.”

“I’m not a licensed anesthesiologist or even an unlicensed anesthesiologist. We’d probably kill her.”

“I could figure it out. I know the human body better than anyone.”

The woman tried to say something, but Ruby used the opportunity of her open mouth to shove a wadded up mask into her mouth. She promptly tried to gag, but a bit of stretchy blue medical tape wrapped around her head kept her from spitting out the mask.

“Count yourself lucky,” Ruby said, tearing off the end of the tape. “Duct tape hurts when it comes off. This won’t.”

Dyna winced at the now obviously sobbing woman. This did not feel good in the slightest. Necessary though the hats might be to avoid the Hatman’s ability, there had to have been a better way.

Tearing her eyes away from King, Dyna looked over to the two sheets of foil. “Are they ready?”

“Probably.”

“Let’s just get out of here. How long has Matt been in surgery? How long do surgeries like that take?”

“No idea. Let’s find a doctor.”

“Hats first,” Dyna said. She didn’t think Ruby would deliberately forget about it, but the way Ruby groaned definitely introduced an air of uncertainty to the notion.

Ruby turned back to the sheets of foil and first ran a gloved finger over the top. She looked at her fingers, rubbed them together, and shrugged to herself. Taking off her gloves, she repeated the action. “My fingers aren’t burning, so I guess that’s a good sign.”

Taking off her safety goggles and mask, she picked up the sheet of foil and promptly mashed it down around her head. Every crinkling noise of the sheet made her grimace, but she kept at it until it stayed mostly in place. It ended up not as a twisted foil hat with a pointed top, but more as a dome of wrinkled metal.

“Don’t even say one word,” she said, holding out the other foil sheet for Dyna to take. “You’ve got to do it too.”

Under other circumstances, Dyna might have laughed. Both at Ruby’s appearance and at the way she was acting. The muted crying of their guest ruined the levity of the situation. She exchanged the phone for the foil, letting Ruby keep an eye out for the Hatman, and copied the way Ruby mashed it down on her head.

“Is this really going to work?”

“It was your dumb idea.”

“Yeah… I was just thinking that Id’s crew had full face masks and the institute has those full suits. This seems—”

“Dumb. Let’s just go. You—” Ruby spun to face the woman, pointing a finger as she did so.

Dyna grabbed her hand before she could say anything. “We’re sorry. We’re really not here to hurt anyone. In fact, we’re here to stop someone from hurting people. We—”

“She’s already made up her mind about us. We’re the bad guys.” Ruby snatched her hand back and looked down at her phone. “Hall’s clear. Let’s try to avoid as many people as possible.” Pulling the door open, she stormed out into the hall.

“Sorry,” Dyna said one more time before rushing out after her.

“I’ll hold your hat while you talk to the receptionist. We should get out of here before that girl manages to get loose. And before we have to put these stupid hats to the test. I can…” Ruby clenched her teeth. She slammed her finger into the elevator call button. “I can act like a child while you’re talking.”

Dyna looked down at her small back with a slight frown. Ruby had acted like a child without any prompting or complaints at the restaurant while spying on Harold. She must really hate the hats. They were silly, yes, but Dyna wasn’t sure if they warranted quite so much vitriol. People would stare, but it wasn’t like they were ever going to come back here again. No sense worrying about what people thought.

Anyone who mattered would know what the hats were for. Everyone else…

They stepped into the elevator. Ruby quickly hit the main floor button. With a shrug, Dyna removed her hat and plopped it down on top of Ruby’s. Ruby didn’t even glance back.

Dropping her hand on Ruby’s head did make Dyna think of something.

“Should your foil go around your artifact?”

“What?”

“You said most of you is in the artifact. Wouldn’t the foil around the artifact be better than around your head?”

“I…” Ruby looked back, genuinely confused for a long moment. “I don’t know. But when the institute wants to take scans, they still hook things up to my head. So…” She shrugged.

The elevator doors opened before the conversation could continue. It didn’t open into the lobby, but it was close enough that they could hear the low drone of muted conversations coming from down the hall.

Ruby changed. Shifted. The way she carried herself, her posture and stance all twisted into something alien. Much like the restaurant in Idaho Falls, Ruby was no longer the hardened artificer, but a little girl happy to wear a dumb little hat. She literally skipped out of the elevator, dragging Dyna along by the hand.

There wasn’t a single sign of the angry girl from just a few seconds before.

Dyna quickly found herself dragged right up to the reception desk. She tried to offer the man behind the counter a smile, but wasn’t nearly as good an actor as Ruby was. Holding someone hostage, even for a good reason, left a nauseating knot in her stomach. Thankfully, she was here about someone severely injured. Any odd mannerisms would probably wind up attributed to that.

“How can I help you?” the receptionist asked.

“Hi, yes, I’d just like to check on the status of a patient. Matthew Quincy. He came in with a messed-up leg from a lawn mower accident and they rushed him into surgery. That was just over an hour ago. I haven’t heard anything since.”

“These things can take time, but I’ll see if I can’t pull up any updates.”

“Thank you.”

“Ah. It seems he was just transferred to the post-anesthesia care unit.”

“Is that good?”

Maybe they would be able to run away before anything happened. Even if Matt wasn’t officially released, they could probably still sneak him out somehow.

“It means he is out of surgery and stable, but is being monitored by our capable nursing staff to ensure that there are no lingering complications from the anesthetics. He might not be awake yet or he could be groggy, experiencing vomiting and nausea, and other perfectly normal side-effects.”

If he was unconscious, that might even be for the best. Then he wouldn’t be able to fight back if he was still paranoid of other people.

Besides that. They were on two completely separate time limits. The first was the sterilization technician. As soon as she got loose—which would probably happen sooner rather than later—there would be trouble. And then there was the Hatman. Dyna wasn’t sure when he would be here. It might be two hours. It might be two minutes. Whenever it ended up being, she was certain that he would be here.

“Can we see him?”

“We prefer if family and friends stay—”

“Mommy, mommy!” Ruby said, tugging at Dyna’s sleeve. She held up her phone.

To anyone else, it might have looked like a little girl was showing off a game or maybe something she found on the internet. Cat pictures, perhaps.

Dyna stared down at security camera footage. The view looked out over one of the parking lots, aimed toward the main street. A man stood on the sidewalk. He wasn’t walking or even moving, just staring toward the hospital building. People drove past on the street beyond without pausing. Two people walking down the same sidewalk moved out of the way as they stepped around him, but didn’t even look at him despite his strange attire and wide hat.

“That’s… nice,” Dyna said, certain her tone sounded beyond strained. “Don’t interrupt though. It isn’t polite.”

The Hatman was here. He wasn’t coming in just yet. Much like he had done outside the house, he was just staring. But that probably wouldn’t last and this time, Dyna doubted he would just turn down the street and continue on his way.

He was checking. Using whatever senses he had to locate his target.

They were out of time.

“Sorry,” Dyna said, ripping her eyes away from the phone. “We really need to see him. As soon as possible. Just to… be sure? Check on him?”

The receptionist hesitated. He pressed his lips together, but slowly glanced to the hall. “That way,” he said, pointing down the same hall that Dyna and Ruby had just come from. “Take a right at the end and follow that until you see the PACU sign on the left. You’ll end up in front of a small nurse station. They should be able to direct you from there.”

Dyna didn’t wait for more information. “Thank you,” she called back over her shoulder. This time, she was the one dragging Ruby along.

As soon as they turned the corner the receptionist indicated, Ruby snatched her hand back. “He just appeared there,” she said. “One moment nothing on the sidewalk. The next, he was there.”

“Great. So we can add teleporting to his list of abilities.”

“Let’s not. He has too many already.”

“He’s not human. He’s… PACU, here,” Dyna said, skidding to a stop next to a sign on the wall.

A large closed door blocked the path, one large enough for stretchers to get through. She pushed into it and immediately spotted a nurse at a much smaller desk.

“Matthew Quincy? Leg injury?” she said, rushing up to the counter, only to realize that the room had several beds in it, two of which were occupied.

Matt’s frankly disgusting mop of hair stood out. He was in one of the beds, hooked up to a fluid bag and few machines monitoring his vitals. He was, as the receptionist suggested, still unconscious.

“What now?” Ruby whispered. “Run him outside?”

“Has the Hatman moved?”

“No.”

“I don’t like it. What is he waiting for?”

“Maybe for us to come out.”

Dyna ground her teeth together. She didn’t like this. Him just appearing here then not coming in after his target. There was something missing. Maybe a rule that this inhuman entity had to operate under. Things like that cropped up in stories all the time and if he really was manifested from some group thinking, then it wouldn’t be a strange assumption to make.

“We need to get out of here.”

“Yeah. No argument there.”

“We need to distract the Hatman while we get Matt to the car.”

“You are not going out there alone. I’ll do.”

“No. Neither of us need to.” Dyna pulled a certain business card from her pocket. “Our friends wanted to try capturing him? If he is just going to stand there… No sense putting ourselves in danger.”

 

 

Dyna’s knee bounced up and down in nervous tension as she sat in the Wyoming Medical Center’s emergency room waiting area. Part of that nervousness came from uncertainty over Matt’s state. Was he going to live? Had he lost too much blood? Ruby seemed optimistic. With her natural power, a form of clairvoyance, providing her a constant and perfect picture of her own biology, she knew the human body better than most. So her word held weight.

The doctors hadn’t said anything one way or another. Just that they were getting Matt into emergency surgery in an attempt to stabilize him.

A low hum somewhere overhead had Dyna jumping out of her chair. She spun around in the waiting room, fruitlessly looking for the other source of her nervous tension.

“It’s just the air conditioning,” Ruby said.

The younger girl had changed out of her bloodied clothes. In a stroke of foolishness, they had left their suitcases back in the motel. Thankfully, the hospital staff had been more than willing to lend out a navy-blue set of scrubs. They were a bit large for Ruby. Especially the legs, which she had to roll up several times just to avoid tripping.

And she wasn’t wrong. As soon as Dyna felt the breeze from the vent above her, she slowly sank back down into her chair.

“He could be here, right now. Watching us,” Dyna said with another glance around.

There were a few other people here. Someone wearing a mask, coughing on the regular. Another person looked like they had dozed off. One clearly worried parent kept looking up anytime a doctor walked by, only to slump over in defeat when they didn’t approach her.

Nobody around wore a hat, let alone one with a wide brim.

“We’ve got eyes on the entrance. It’s a large glass door. We should be able to see him before he has direct line of sight on us to activate his power.”

“Unless someone opens the door, giving him the opportunity. Or if he comes through any one of the many other entrances the hospital surely has. Or if that’s not how his powers work at all.” Dyna glanced down at her mirror again.

The mirror was perfectly normal at the moment. The artifact didn’t seem to work on him after he activated his powers to turn invisible, but it had gone dark the first time he showed up in the area of Matt’s original house, so she was hoping that it would be at least a little useful in detecting him early.

Not that they could really do anything about it. Not until Matt got out of surgery. Even then, Dyna wasn’t quite sure what the plan would be. The doctors probably wouldn’t release him so soon, but Dyna doubted that Ruby would give them much choice. And in this particular instance, Dyna figured she would be right there alongside her.

In the last few hours, Dyna decided she didn’t much care for this little vacation. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be anywhere nearby. Without any real memories of the Hatman, she didn’t have any kind of childhood-induced trauma of him. And yet, she couldn’t stop this visceral fear that had been building up ever since first seeing him.

Encountering Id’s crew hadn’t helped matters. In fact, they just made it sound like he wasn’t human at all.

“We don’t have a clue how this guy works or even what his abilities are.”

“No. Not really. Just observations.” Ruby said tapping at her phone. “This might help.” She had hardly taken her eyes off it since entering the hospital. Now was no exception. She wasn’t even watching the sliding glass doors that the Hatman might approach from.

Dyna tore her eyes off the glass doors to glance down at Ruby’s phone, only to blink twice.

“Is that here?”

The screen of Ruby’s phone was broken up into a dozen smaller squares, each a video feed. Most displayed parking lots or sidewalks, but some were of clearly interior hallways. Down in the bottom left, Dyna spotted a familiar sight. She slowly raised a hand and waved it back and forth. There was a slight delay of a few seconds, but her movements on the screen slowly repeated her actions.

“Walter pulled some strings. Got Beatrice some emergency permissions. Apparently the stupid secretary can’t see what she’s doing, but can feed my phone the local security footage. No idea if our friend will show up on camera, but I figure its better than nothing. Like you said, there are more than just the one entrance.”

“That’s… yeah. Good.” Was it a relief? Maybe a little.

It would be more of a relief if they knew better just what they were dealing with.

Dyna’s fingers drifted to her pocket. She felt the stiff outline of a card through the fabric.

Someone knew something. Or at least knew something more than she did.

And she already had permission to contact them. Walter had said so before she even started this trip. If Id or one of her affiliates tried to contact her, she was free to investigate so long as she didn’t literally join them.

Walter didn’t need to worry about that. The idea of joining up with Id provoked a feeling of nausea in Dyna. The stupid woman had messed with her head. Dyna wasn’t about to forgive that. But using them? That seemed far more acceptable.

Dyna stood from her seat.

“Where are you going?”

“Just to make a phone call. I’m not leaving the room,” Dyna said, pointing to a slightly more isolated corner of the room. One away from the other patients and the reception desk. “I’ll still keep an eye on the parking lot through the doors.”

Ruby narrowed her eyes for a moment before nodding her head. She slowly settled back down into the seat. “Alright. Be careful. Take what they say with a grain of salt.”

Of course she would figure it out. “I’m not about to take their word on anything.”

“You might have to. Just be aware that they’ll probably try to manipulate you. It happens.”

“Oh?”

“Em and I have had to work with other organizations in the past. One day we’re enemies, the next we’re friends. Back to enemies the day after. It’s all irritating.”

“I don’t think I’m about to be Id’s friend. Even temporarily. I’m just… engaging in corporate espionage?”

Ruby shrugged. “I’ll shout if I see anything.”

“Same,” Dyna said as she walked off a short distance away. After ensuring that she still had a decent line of sight on the parking lot through the main doors, she pulled out the little black business card. Dialing in the numbers, Dyna took a breath and hit the call button.

The other side didn’t pick up right away. After a dozen rings, they didn’t pick up at all. Dyna found herself listening to voicemail. She hung up before it actually asked her to leave a message. With a scowl on her face, she hit the redial button.

She wasn’t in much of a mood to play phone tag. Not to mention, they might not have time.

Did the Hatman get around everywhere by walking? Or did he have a car he could take. Would he know they were at the hospital or did he have to do something first to learn where someone was, like how Walter and his team of locators needed some information to figure out where Matt was?

It took one more redial before Dyna’s call connected. When it did, it first sounded like someone was wrestling around with the phone. Perhaps having dropped it.

“Such a child,” Dyna heard someone say, distant and far from the phone’s speaker. The same voice, a stern woman with a slight accent that Dyna couldn’t quite place, spoke far more clearly after a moment. “This is Chief Engineer Ado. Am I speaking with Dyna Graves?”

“Done pretending we don’t know each other?” It must have been the woman who stayed outside the truck earlier.

“My coworker is nervous about the situation. Understandably. Please ignore him and I apologize for anything he said that may have offended your sensibilities.”

Dyna blinked, almost said that he hadn’t said anything offensive, then decided that she really didn’t care about all that. “I’m calling about the Hatman.”

“Did you encounter the entity?”

“Yes.”

“Are you fully intact?”

“What?” Dyna shook her head. “Just… what is it?” she said, trying to avoid getting distracted. “It isn’t human, is it?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Just a feeling. It doesn’t… act right. I don’t know how to describe it.”

“I see. I am afraid I do not fully understand myself. I have several hypotheses, but I shall refrain from sharing them until I can confirm or dismiss volatile elements. Until such time, I will tell you what I was told. The entity is a manifestation of the collective unconsciousness.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh dear. I am not paid to provide lectures on elementary psychics.”

“No, I… I know what the collective unconsciousness is. It’s just not supposed to be real. It’s like an in-joke among psychics. Haha, I’m going to meditate on the cosmos and collective unconsciousness. That kind of thing.”

“It may have been discredited upon its inception, but since the Advent, its veracity is… less questionable. But again, I am not here to provide a lecture. The entity, collective unconsciousness or otherwise, is a manifestation of psionic energy, brought about by group belief. It is not, nor was it ever, human.”

“That’s not possible. Psychics can’t create something real. And that thing is definitely real. I… I’ve seen it. Not just recently, but as a child. There shouldn’t have even been that many psychics back then and certainly no artifacts. Maybe a few dozen psychic worldwi—”

A loud scoff interrupted Dyna. “A statement like that coming from you? I—” Ado got interrupted as well, though from an angry-sounding snap from someone else on her side of the phone.

Dyna didn’t hear exactly what he said and the conversation went silent after like someone put their thumb over the phone’s microphone, but the short clip she heard before that sounded an awful lot like the start of an argument.

“Hello?” Dyna tried after a moment.

“My coworker is requesting that I drop this line of discussion.”

“That’s… fine. Whatever. I can believe it isn’t human.” Dyna already had that impression from the first few times she had seen the Hatman. Maybe even from when she first dredged up the memories of her childhood. “What do we do about it? And what does it do with its victims?”

“Victims?”

“You don’t know?”

“Elaborate, please.”

Dyna pressed her lips together, not sure if she should really be offering information. But… Would it hurt? “When I was a child, it kidnapped a friend of mine. I don’t know what it did in the last ten years, but now it seems to be after another friend.”

“Who?”

“Does it matter?”

The line went silent for a long moment. “Are you with this friend?”

“I’m close enough.”

“And you are sure that the entity is targeting this individual?”

“I’m… mostly positive. Yes.”

“Where?”

Dyna didn’t respond. She looked over to Ruby, pressing her lips together. Telling the enemy where she was didn’t sound like a good idea at all. Especially not without consulting the girl. But before she could say so, Ado cut in.

“Dyna Graves. We, that is to say, Tartarus has the technology required to contain such entities. You do not. I think little else needs to be said on the matter.”

“Damn it,” Dyna hissed. Whether or not Ado was telling the truth about being able to contain it, she was certainly telling the truth about Dyna’s inability to do the same.

Maybe if it didn’t turn invisible, they would still be able to fight it. But the second it saw them…

“How does its invisibility work? Why can’t we detect a psychic intrusion in our minds?”

“Unknown. Hypothesis: The entity is known to have memory modification abilities. It is plausible to presume that it is erasing your memory of its intrusion. You might be able to detect it, but you can’t remember that you detected it, thus resulting in a void domain in your mind.”

“Can we stop that?”

“Psy-insulating equipment. We intend to use protective masks to avoid the issue.”

The silver suits worn by the Carroll Institute anomalous materials handlers were psy-insulating. The masks Id and her crew wore was likely what Ado was talking about now. Did they have anything like that in the car? Ruby would know. Though she probably would have suggested it already if they had brought something like that along.

Could they fabricate something?

Both the masks and the material handler outfits were silvery. Was it something special? Would any reflective material work?

Dyna bit her lip. It sounded stupid, but…

“Thanks for the help.”

“Wait! Dyna—”

Hanging up, Dyna rushed back across the waiting room to Ruby.

The younger girl promptly looked up. “Figure something out?”

“We need tin foil hats.”

“Um…” Ruby stared. A frown slowly spread across her face. “I told you to not believe everything they said, right? They’re making fun of you.”

“It wasn’t their idea. They said protective equipment would help. Psionically shielded helmets.”

“And your mind went to tin foil hats?”

“We don’t have anomaly suits folded up in the back of the car. You got a better idea?”

Ruby scrunched up her brow in thought. Without answering, she looked down at her phone and quickly scanned over the various security camera feeds. As soon as she finished, she swapped applications, pulling up her texts. Her fingers danced over the phone with far more dexterity than Dyna usually managed, finishing up her text in half a second, and promptly switched back to the security cameras.

“Maybe,” she said. “Hold on.”

Dyna, tapping her foot, managed only a few seconds before she had to ask, “Who did you message?”

“Walter. Of course. Tin foil hats are… uh… a creative idea?”

“They work in the movies.”

“Do they really?”

Dyna opened her mouth, but couldn’t quite find the confidence to say yes.

“Well,” Ruby said, “I don’t know how to make a protective suit, but you know who does?”

“Walter?”

“Probably one of the doctors, actually. But he’ll know who to talk to. And we are in a hospital. They have plenty of restricted materials and chemicals around. Maybe not as much as a proper chemical laboratory, but we might be able to create makeshift gear.”

“I don’t think it will take much,” Dyna said, slowly dropping down into her chair. “If a thin bit of glass in the car is enough to block his ability. Maybe we should scrounge up a pair of sunglasses?”

“It’s an institute car. I wouldn’t be surprised if the glass is psionically shielded.”

“We saw him through the window of the house too.”

“That’s… true,” Ruby said with a frown.

“Tin foil hats and aviators. We’ll look ridiculous, but if that’s what it takes.”

“I doubt it will be that easy,” Ruby said, just as her phone buzzed. She quickly swiped over to her texts and read through the short message. “Walter is consulting with Doctors Griffin and Kemp, who created the suits in the first place. He’ll get back to us as soon as possible, but wants us to get started collecting a few materials.”

“From the hospital or a nearby store?”

“Both.”

“We’re leaving Matt?”

“Not much choice. Unless you want to just sit around some more and wait for our hat-wearing friend to arrive?”

“No,” Dyna said quickly. “No. We need to prepare.”

Ruby stood up. “I can keep an eye on the hospital here,” she said, holding her phone up. “If he shows up, we can try rushing back. But until then, lets get moving.”