A sunset in a cloudy sky. A giant field of dahlias. A pumpkin carved into a grotesque face. Rig’s mind flitted over each image in turn, searching for something to latch on to. But Bubbles was standing ten feet in front aof him, her long hair glinting in the multicoloured glare…

He forced himself to focus. An egg yolk glistening in a frying pan. Carrot and coriander soup. Great. Now he was hungry. He cast around for something else. A desert landscape in the –

The alarm went off. Rig jumped and got to his feet. “I’ve got to go”, he yelled at Bubbles over the din. “Can you cover for me?”

She turned to him, eyes wide, mouth slightly open. “O-of course”, she hollered back. “Be careful, ok?”

He turned and ran out of the high-ceilinged cavern. Her concern had made his chest swell with excitement and gratitude, but he didn’t need her to see that. In truth, Rig was relieved that the alarm had gone off. Colour coding was both stressful and tedious work, and he was not cut out for it.

In the hall, he almost ran into Tyke, who was leading a small group of First Responders to the boundary. “Any idea what this is?”, he shouted. The alarm chose that exact moment to stop, making his voice absurdly loud in the sudden silence.

Tyke raised his eyebrows. “Are you authorised?”, he asked in a pointedly quiet voice.

Rig remembered why he didn’t like the guy. “I joined last month”, he reminded him, suppressing an eye roll.

“Right.” Tyke looked so self-important Rig thought he might burst. “I don’t have the details, but it’s big. The spill happened right in the middle of their work day. Multiple casualties, apparently.”

Rig’s heart started pumping. They hadn’t had a serious incident like this since… ever. Not as long as he could remember. He balled his hands into fists. Everything had been out of whack since the Jewels of Judiciousness had disappeared.

A noise blared all around them. Rig frowned. Why had the alarm started again? They were already – Hang on. This sounded different. It must be –

“A switcher”, Tyke bellowed, turning back to him without slowing down. “You can deal with them. We’ll sort out the spill.”

Rig opened his mouth to argue. Then the words “multiple casualties” echoed in his mind. He closed it again. “Fine”, he huffed.

“And remember”, Tyke shouted, raising his voice to cover the increasing distance, “the new protocol requires that we take them right back. No exceptions.”

“Whatever you say, Tyke”, Rig muttered testily, even though the others were out of earshot by now.

A switcher.

He walked on at a leisurely pace. There was no need to rush anymore. All switchers did was walk around dumbstruck and open-mouthed. Catching them was easier than catching brown in a colour storm. Despite this, curiosity tingled at the back of his mind. He had never seen one of them up close. What would they be like, this person who spent most of their life staring at a rectangular crystal display in a grey box? How would they react to him?

Five minutes later, he was staring down at his sick-sodden shoes. Whatever he had expected, it wasn’t this.

“I’m so, so sorry”, the girl mumbled, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I – I just –” She heaved.

Rig jumped away just in time to avoid the stream of multicoloured goo. It occurred to him that he should help her somehow. He carefully skirted around the puddle on the floor and reached for her hair. She jumped, scrambled away from him and slipped, falling headfirst into the pool of her own vomit. “Ow”, she winced.

“Oh no”, he groaned. “Hang on, I –” He willed the sticky liquid to disappear. “There. That’s better.”

She gingerly reached for her hair. “It’s – it’s gone!” She stared at him. “How did you –” She frowned, her mouth dropping open. “You can do it, too?”

Once again, this was not what he had expected. In a small, faraway corner of his mind, he had pictured her sinking gratefully into his arms, telling him that he was her hero and how could she ever repay him? With her long, glossy dark hair and finely chiselled features, she didn’t look half-bad underneath the drab clothes. But this… “What do you mean?”, he asked, concentrating on the vomit on his boots until that, too, was gone.

“The visualisations”, she said weakly. Her face still looked ashen. “That’s how I escaped the dragon.”

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“You escaped –”

As if on cue, the floor trembled and Tyke appeared at the entrance to the tunnel, holding a thick rope. It tightened as Rig watched. Tyke dug his heels into the grass and heaved with all his might. A second later, the dragon came into view, struggling furiously against the rope tied around its maws.

“Finally”, Tyke panted. He held up his hand and stared at the dragon. Its eyes drooped and closed, it took a few tottering steps backward, and proceeded to collapse in a heap. Rig watched it for a moment. Its red and yellow scales stretched across its humungous body which rose and fell with its tremendous snoring breaths. It wasn’t the biggest Rig had seen, but it was big enough. To someone like the switcher, it must have looked terrifying.

Tyke turned to the woman behind him. “Build a cage around it. I need to go and report this to Chloe’s Wardens.” He walked on without looking back.

Rig sighed. “Stay here”, he told the switcher. Not that she looked in any fit state to go anywhere. She was still lying on the floor, staring at the dragon with wide eyes.

“Tyke.”

Tyke turned around. “Yes?” His tone dripped with impatience.

“Care to tell me what happened back there?” Honestly. He was on the team, wasn’t he?

Tyke’s jaw tensed. “I don’t have much time. And anyway, there’s nothing more for you to do. We took care of it.”

“What does that mean?” Like drawing blood from a stone.

Tyke exhaled through gritted teeth. “All three casualties have been dealt with. No permanent damage. They’ve called in the workmen. We should be up and running again by now.”

Rig nodded. “Thanks.” He infused the word with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

Tyke turned to leave. “Remember what I told you”, he said quietly, jerking his head in the direction of the switcher. “No exceptions.”

Rig didn’t dignify that with an answer. He waited until Tyke was out of earshot, then turned around. The girl was still lying where he had left her. She was watching the dragon now sleeping behind thick, tightly woven bars and rubbing the back of her head where a nasty boil had formed.

“I’m not very good at healing injuries”, he said quietly, more to himself than to her. “Can you stand?”

She stared at him. “That dragon killed my boss and chased me down a golden tunnel. And that woman just made a cage appear out of thin air. What is this?” She made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “Where am I?”

Rig hesitated, trying to remember what they had said during training. Make them feel safe. Address them by name. He bent down in front of her and looked into her grey-blue eyes. “What’s your name?”

She frowned. “What’s yours?”

Damn. Already, she was deviating from the script Rig had practised. “Rig”, he said.

“Lauren”, she muttered.

He put on what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Lauren, I need you to know that there’s no reason to worry. Everything is fine.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew that he had said the wrong thing. Lauren propped herself up on her elbow and made the air crackle around her. “I don’t know how you people define the word ‘fine’”, she began, “but let’s see.” She raised her free hand and began to count on her fingers. “A dragon turned up at my office today”, she lifted one finger, “it set my boss on fire”, two fingers, “and it chased me down a golden tunnel that should hang right out of the middle of the building but has somehow never been spotted before.” She waggled three fingers in Rig’s face. “Those are three things that, back where I come from, are definitely not fine.”

Rig sighed. “Your boss is f- I mean, she’s alright”, he said. “She’s been taken home to sleep it off.”

“Sleep it off? Are you serious?” Lauren pushed herself into a sitting position. “I saw her! She was burned to a crisp! The only place she will sleep anything off is in a graveyard.”

Lauren’s anger seemed to give her energy. Rig took advantage by clasping her elbow and pulling her to her feet. To his surprise, she didn’t resist. “What you need to understand, Lauren”, he said, “is that none of this is real. Lauren, all of this –”, he gestured at the dragon snoozing on the multi-coloured lawn in front of them, at the few lone trees and the mountains in the distance, “is just a product of your imagination.” It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a lie.

She folded her arms across her chest. “If you weren’t real, Rig, you wouldn’t be telling me that, Rig.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

She shook her head. “It’s like being crazy. If you think you’re crazy, you’re not, because if you were, you wouldn’t think it.” She scratched her head. “Something like that, anyway.”

He gently steered her in the direction of the tunnel and tried again. “You’ve been working too hard, Lauren, that’s all. This Duck deal –”

“Ducker”, she corrected.

“- yes, that one. You’ve been staying in the office late and not sleeping enough. It was bound to affect you eventually.”

She stopped and looked at him, her brows knotted. “How do you know how long I’ve been working?”

He cursed inwardly. None of this had been covered in the training. “Because I’m a figment of your imagination”, he improvised. “I know everything you know.”

“Really? What’s my favourite colour?”

He examined her, hoping for some divine inspiration. They were standing at the mouth of the tunnel and the glow of the surrounding walls gave her hair a golden sheen. Her face was still pale, but some of the colour had returned to her cheeks. “Err, red?”

“No”, she trilled triumphantly. “It’s green.”

This wasn’t going according to plan. “Look”, he told her. “I need to go back to, er… I mean, I have things to do. You can find your way back on your own, right?” If he stayed in her presence one minute longer, he would either crack and tell her everything or do something even more stupid. That fantasy of her sinking into his arms was still playing on his mind.

Her face hardened. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on.”

It was time for the nuclear option. “Eva might have gone home, but the senior partner must have noticed that you’ve been in the bathroom for over an hour now.”

It was a lie, and a mean one. She shrank at least an inch, folding in on herself, and when the spark in her eyes gave way to a dull, caged look, he had to force himself not to backpedal. It’s for her own good, he told himself. It’s for her own good.

She opened her mouth, then seemed to think better of it and turned around. He bit his tongue and watched her walk away, watched her until her frumpy dress had shrivelled into a tiny grey dot. Even after the dot was gone, he lingered in the dim gleam of the tunnel.