“Sapphire,” Ruby snarled. “What are you doing here?”

Dyna took a deep breath, beyond glad that Ruby was at her side. She patted at her chest, trying to get her heart to calm back down. Spooky movies, even ones she had seen before, always set her on edge. A good kind of edge, she often thought. They got her heart racing and her blood pumping. But the figure appearing out of nowhere while walking down otherwise vacant hallways of Psychodynamics caused more than just a small shock.

If it had been just a regular person, she probably wouldn’t have jumped, let alone screamed. But this?

A man stood in front of her. Except he wasn’t standing. Hovering in the air with his head lolling to the side like a man hanged, the only indication that he was alive came in the form of shallow, rasping breaths. Were it not for Ruby stepping forward with a blade out, Dyna might have run off screaming.

Since she hadn’t fled, she had the opportunity to take in the situation just a little more. And what a situation it was. First of all, the man’s attire stood out. He wore a sleeveless vest and shorts, blue and black striped gloves, and sandals with socks. Dyna honestly couldn’t decide if his clothes made him more or less frightening. Certainly, the longer she stared, the less frightening he became. But it was just so out there…

“You are the one who called to me.” “We sought you out.” “I found you.”

Wincing, Dyna’s head snapped from side to side, looking for the source of the voices before realizing that they were coming from the hovering person in front of her.

“Ignore him,” Ruby said, slowly sheathing her knife. “It’s just Sapphire,” she added with a small sneer.

“Sapphire… the one you mentioned during the movie.” At the time, Ruby hadn’t said who or what Sapphire was, only that parts of the movie reminded her of him. It wasn’t hard to see which parts now, but Dyna had thought she was just making fun of a brother at the time.

“Yeah. Told you he is a creep. Another artificer. Completely harmless, let’s go.”

Dyna actually perked up at hearing that, heart calming now that her subconscious was coming to the realization that she wasn’t under attack from a creepy ghost. “You are an artificer?” she asked, trying to meet Sapphire’s eyes. It wasn’t easy with the way his head hung off to one side.

Aside from Ruby and Emerald, she hadn’t met any others. There were supposedly a few running around, but, according to Ruby, artificers didn’t spend much time at the Carroll Institute. All artificers could detect artifacts, making them more valuable outside the facility hunting them down.

“Sapphire?” Dyna tried, realizing that she wasn’t getting an answer.

“That isn’t my name.” “Matthew, call me Matthew.” “That isn’t my name either.”

“O-Oh…”

Dyna wasn’t at all sure what to make of the individual in front of her. She wasn’t at all sure that he was an individual with how he spoke. He definitely had only one body, unless there were more around that she couldn’t see. But the way he spoke several sentences in different sounding voices combined with the way he stood…

Like a ghost that had walked off the gallows.

Telekinesis wasn’t supposed to be possible. At least not according to what Carroll taught of regular psychics. Psionic energy was an energy of the mind. Some people were Transmitters, capable of projecting their thoughts onto others. The rest were Receivers, those who pulled in information from outside sources, usually other minds. The mind controller was the prototypical example of a Transmitter while the mind reader was the same for Receivers.

Affecting the physical world outside the brain?

Apparently it was possible, but required artifacts.

Dyna wasn’t sure why she was only now coming to that conclusion upon spotting this floating man. Evidence had been piling up for a while now. Emerald could vanish and reappear elsewhere. She didn’t create illusions that obscured her actual movements. She just up and teleported. Ruby, while Dyna hadn’t seen it for herself, apparently had the ability to perfectly repair her own body from any state.

She supposed it was because they generally looked normal. Emerald and Ruby walked around and talked like normal people. Normalish, anyway. So Dyna didn’t think they were too strange. They didn’t float or… whisper from impossible locations.

And they didn’t usually just sit there, letting the conversation languish into awkwardness.

“You’re Ruby’s brother, huh?” Dyna said, forcing herself to smile. Meeting with another artificer was supposed to be exciting. A chance to find someone else like her. But… Sapphire? Somehow, she doubted they had much in common.

He didn’t even respond. The little girl at Dyna’s side snorted.

“They’re code names, idiot. You think I’m related to this scarecrow? We don’t even look alike.”

That was true. It was a bit hard to look beyond Sapphire’s outfit, which looked like something rejected from a video game with its asymmetrical styling, but he did have much narrower features and a sharp pointed nose. In fact, looking a little closer, Dyna had to wonder if he ate properly. His body was almost anorexically thin.

“Emerald isn’t my sister either.”

“Really?” Dyna glanced down. “But she said—”

“She can say whatever she wants and no one can stop her. But I can stop you.”

The way Ruby stared up with tight lips and narrowed eyes made Dyna step back. “Okay. Not sisters.”

“We’re all the same.” “We’re all in here.” “All out the—”

“Shut up!” Ruby snapped, turning her ire onto Sapphire. “No one wants to hear your nonsense.” She clamped one tight hand around Dyna’s and started pulling her away. “Just leave him alone. No one likes Sapphire.”

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“That’s not a nice thing to say, Ruby.” Especially not in front of his face. She tried to pull away from the little girl, only for a sharp tug to drag her along. “Sorry,” Dyna said, calling back to Sapphire without really fighting the pull. He was creepy and she didn’t really want to stay, but no need to be rude. “Maybe we can talk again some other time.”

Sapphire remained hovering in the hall of Psychodynamics. He didn’t turn toward Dyna or motion toward her in any way. Someone else walking around would probably have a minor heart attack, thinking someone had killed themselves right in the middle of the facility.

“Just ignore him,” Ruby said, keeping her hand tight around Dyna’s hand. “He knows you don’t like him.”

“I don’t dislike—”

“You do. And he knows. He’s the ultimate mind reader. For a few seconds, he probably was you. Every single conscious mind anywhere nearby gets imprinted on his mind at random. He can’t stop it, he can’t control it, but he remembers everything. And nobody likes him.”

“That can’t be true. The last bit,” she quickly added. The rest… sounded pretty terrible. More deserving of pity than dislike, however. “I bet Walter likes him.”

Ruby stopped abruptly, facing away from Dyna. Slowly, some of the tension in her shoulders relaxed and she dropped Dyna’s hand. “Almost nobody likes him. I don’t like him. And neither do you, I could see it in your face.”

“I was just surprised. After watching that movie… How are you not terrified?” Dyna asked, changing the topic. “I saw The Ring when I was around your age and couldn’t sleep for a week. It was the last horror movie I watched for a good five years. Maybe it just hasn’t settled in yet.”

Ruby snorted. “You’re so lame. But don’t worry. I’ll help you get better.”

“Thanks?”

Dyna wasn’t sure how to react to being talked down-to by a ten-year-old. On one hand, she felt like laughing and patting her on the head, patronizing her. On the other… Ruby could throw her around like a rag doll.

Psychodynamics had more than just endless laboratories and horrific test chambers disguised as comfortable sitting rooms. It had a whole division of the facility dedicated toward the artificers, providing space for training in both physical and mental capacities, rest areas, eating areas, communal areas, and a surprising number of briefing rooms. The destination for today, as per her agreement with Ruby, was a shooting range.

Unlike most of the rest of Psychodynamics, it lacked the fanciful aesthetics to it. At least beyond a certain point. The actual human-traversable section of the range was a narrow strip of walkway with tile and wood. A series of booths separated the walkway from the rest of the range, all made from wood and brass. But beyond that, it was gray concrete.

On the opposite side of the walkway from the range, a simple door led into a room filled to the brim with weapons and ammunition. A veritable armory. Ruby ignored the room, however, pulling the pieces of Dyna’s gun out of her pants pockets and dropping them on the table of one of the booths.

“This is a VP9, do you know how to reassemble it?”

“Not a clue.”

“It’s easy. There are only four main pieces. Come here.”

Having already said that she would do what Ruby wanted, Dyna followed along. First, she watched as Ruby slapped a spring and metal tube into the gun casing with far more dexterity than Dyna had ever possessed as a child. Then Ruby promptly disassembled it again and slid it across the table toward Dyna.

“Barrel first. Then… yep. Slide it on. Flip the lever. See? Easy?”

It really was. As Ruby said, there were only four pieces and most of them couldn’t be assembled incorrectly. After watching her once, Dyna picked it up easily enough.

“Now, have you ever loaded cartridges into a magazine before?”

“Cartridge?” The first things that popped into Dyna’s head were old gaming consoles.

“Bullets,” Ruby said, holding up a brass bullet between her fingers.

“I’ve shot two guns ever. This one and a sniper rifle. Once each. I don’t know terminology or practices beyond what I’ve seen in movies.”

Ruby raised her eyebrows, letting out a long sigh. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“How did you learn all this stuff?”

Ruby flinched as if Dyna had just thrust a fist into her face. Except she probably wouldn’t have flinched if Dyna had actually done that.

“Ruby?”

The little girl was frozen, staring down at a mess of bullets around the table.

Dyna reached forward, waving a hand in front of those red eyes.

Ruby flinched again, eyes darting around. She locked onto Dyna, the gun, and the outstretched hand. “Sorry,” she said, dropping her gaze.

“No. It’s fine.” Dyna wasn’t quite sure what happened. Bad memories? Perhaps staying away from the topic of her past was for the best.

In fact, Dyna wasn’t sure she wanted to know about how Ruby became herself today. Little kids didn’t learn so much about guns and how to use them without going through something serious. It was enough to make Dyna reevaluate Ruby, looking over her features. Where was she from? Perhaps Central America or northern South America? Dyna didn’t think she came from Africa, but was fully prepared to admit that she was far from traveled.

Maybe Ruby had been a child soldier in some war-torn country? That was about the only thing that Dyna could think of that would lead to such familiarity with weaponry.

Dyna shuddered. She had lived a fairly sheltered life, growing up in California. Especially relative to something like that. Her family hadn’t been rich by any stretch of the word and her father had vanished just before her third birthday, apparently, but that was about the extent of her hardships. Though relatively poor, there had always been food on the table and clothes to wear, even if her clothes had mostly come from thrift stores.

“There are other artificers, aren’t there? Besides just Sapphire and Emerald, I mean,” Dyna asked as Ruby showed how to load bullets into the magazine. “Are they around?”

“Not if you’re lucky.”

“Really? Don’t get along with them either, do you?”

Ruby hit the magazine against the table hard enough to make Dyna jump. The bullets weren’t going to go off, were they?

“Every artificer is insane. You think Sapphire is bad? I’m the only normal one. You seem normal too, so I’ll help you.”

“Emerald doesn’t strike me as insane.”

Ruby dropped her jaw, staring up with obvious disbelief. “She’s the worst of them all! You don’t know. You haven’t seen her enough. She smiles.”

Dyna gave Ruby a look, but the little girl was rhythmically loading bullet after bullet into the magazine, completely ignoring everything else. She had apparently forgotten that she was supposed to be teaching how to load the gun as well.

“The other artificers,” Dyna said, “What are they like? Besides being insane, that is. What can they do?”

Ruby pressed her lips together in a heavy pout. “Aquamarine makes ghost versions of himself that can touch things. Talks to himself a lot too. Alex pretends to be nice, but likes to sing.”

“Alex? I thought everyone had the name of a gemstone?”

“Alexandrite.”

“Oh.” Dyna tried to ignore Ruby’s flat look. “And what’s wrong with singing?”

Ruby shuddered. “You’ll know if you ever have the misfortune of hearing it. As for Hematite… just keep away from her. You specifically won’t get along. And if she is around, never look into mirrors.”

Dyna’s hand drifted back to her pocket, rubbing the hard plastic of her artifact through the denim of her pants. “What’s wrong with mirrors?”

“Just trust me. You said you would listen to everything I said if I watched your dumb movie. I did, so listen to this: Keep away from Hematite.”

Tapping a finger on the table, Dyna bit her lip. She had no doubt that Ruby was beyond biased. The girl had a chip on her shoulder. She wasn’t sure what kind of chip it was, but its presence had been obvious from the first moment they met. And yet… Dyna didn’t think she would outright lie.

Maybe she should speak with Walter before winding up in a chance encounter with any of these other artificers.

Sapphire had been eerie enough.

“Gun,” Ruby said, holding it by the barrel as she held its grip out for Dyna to take. “You’re going to shoot and shoot and shoot until you’re used to it. Then you’re going to keep shooting until you get five groupings right in center mass in a row, shooting about as fast as you can.”

“Is that going to take long?”

“Not if you’re not an idiot.” Ruby put on a vicious grin. “I’m not expecting much.”