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.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“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.