“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.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“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.”