She talks to angels?

Gradie dropped through a swarm of crafts and spirits and glided over the shuffling skyline towards a waterfall and rainbow draped tower, like a ribbon of mirror glass coated in soap-bubble iridescence, where the blinking light flashed one last time.

As he approached the side of the tower, he threw his arms and feet out and skidded on the air, knowing no other way to slow himself down. The iridescent force field expanded and enveloped him and the glass slid apart. He dropped onto the balcony and walked inside, still unable to fight the native gravity of the office.

Most of the team were already lounging on the ring of seats or at the bar, but Michael stood near the front with a woman Gradie didn’t recognize.

“Welcome Gradie,” he said. “How was your trip?”

Despite the gentle golden light of the room, Michael looked like he was standing in a dark alley with only the radiant glow of streetlight bouncing off concrete to keep him from being lost in darkness. His mention of the trip reminded Gradie of EP flying through the air, wind billowing her skirt, and he was glad the mask kept his smile a secret.

“It was good. How do I learn to make the journey by myself?”

“With practice, like all things. This is Klara, our speaker. I believe you’ve met”

She was blonde and slightly tanned, with angled features just on the edge of youth. Her aqua blue wrap dress shimmered with water-reflected light. Gradie was about to tell Michael that they had never met, when she spoke.

“Welcome to the team, Gradie.” It was the voice that had guided him to the light. She smiled and shook his hand.

“Thanks.”

Michael put his first two fingers together and a small silver orb appeared on them.

“Here. Put it in your head.”

“What?”

“It’s a communicator. It will let you talk on our network.”

Gradie took the small orb. It felt like he imagined a bead of liquid mercury might feel.

“You said put it in my head?”

“That’s the best place to put it. Your mind naturally doesn’t have awareness of your brain. If you were to put it in your ear, your mind might decide that you can feel it, that its uncomfortable, or that it only affects one ear. This way, you can keep it without any issues.”

Gradie nodded more to let Michael know to stop talking than to indicate any understanding. He pressed the orb to his forehead and imagined it slipping through into his brain, and it did. There was a brief sensation of cold metal, then nothing.

“EP. Say something on the network, please,” Michael said.

“Hi.” Her voice came through like she was right beside him, though not in any definite location, and her tone was completely without emotion. Like she was activating a voice responsive appliance.

“Can you hear her?” Michael asked. Gradie had been standing like a statue, lost in thoughts of dripping waterfalls.

“Yeah.”

“To speak on the network, you have to imagine the communicator activating,” Michael continued. “Whatever mental imagery you want to use is up to you. Give it a try.”

Gradie looked off into a corner of the room and imagined the strange bead of liquid metal somewhere in his head molding into the shape of a small bowl.

“Hi.” He thought, and imagined the silver bowl vibrating from his voice.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Got it,” EP said.

Gradie pictured the bowl forming back into an orb, and then closed a box around it for good measure. Thoughts felt more liquid here, and ever since Klara had spoken to him, the fear of his inner voice leaking out into the world had nagged at him. He was thinking about what divided an inner image, like the communicator bead locked in a box in his mind, from the physical thought-things in the rest of the Otherworld, when a door opened in the wall.

“All right, what do we got?” Philip walked in with a drink in one hand, an espresso sized steaming something that smelled of chocolate and cardamom, and a cigar in the other. Sam came in behind him, puffing on a hookah hose that disappeared into her pocket. When she exhaled, neon bubbles flooded out of her lips and popped in the air with a scent like peach rings.

“Where is Luke?” Michael asked.

“He had to make a deposit, or a down payment or something,” said Philip. “Guy owes interest on his interest.”

Luke!” Michael's voice was in Gradie’s head this time, loud and stern. He wondered if he could tweak the box to mute the communicator completely.

“Yea, boss, sorry. On my way.” Luke’s voice had more distance to it. A haze that Gradie instantly matched with his personality.

Gradie found a seat next to the bar and watched Sam puff on the hookah. Lindsey was off in the corner smoking a pipe like Aragorn, and she and Sam traded for a bit and whispered to each other about the flavors. Celeste sat nearby on a cushion of cloud, her dress like liquid mother of pearl molded to her body, leaning in to take the pipe from Sam. Philip must have noticed him staring, despite the mask.

“You can take that off in here.” He pointed his glowing cigar at Gradie’s face and he got a whiff of tobacco and allspice.

“Oh yeah.” He took it off with his hands and Philip shook his head.

“No, I mean like get rid of it. Watch.” Philip swiped his hand over his face and a mask, like a blued steel hockey mask with rivets and deep gouges, appeared over his face. He swiped his hand again and it disappeared.

“Where does it go?” Gradie asked. Philip looked to Michael for help.

“We all have personal items we can summon at will,” Michael said. “It helps to imagine a vault somewhere that no one else can get to. Or if that’s too much, just imagine it disappearing into your pocket.”

Gradie looked at the mask and remembered how hard it had been to try and disappear the gun. Michael guessed where his mind was.

“Don’t destroy it, just put it away.”

Gradie nodded, then after some thought, crumpled the mask in his hands like it was made of aluminum foil. When he took his hands apart, it was gone.

“That’s one way to do it,” Philip said. Gradie summoned it again, this time it unfurled like a sheet of foil from an infinitely small point in space, then snapped back into shape. He looked it over to see, or to prove to himself, that it had survived the process unchanged, then crumpled it back into whatever phantom zone he had got it out of.

“Celeste keeps hers in her cleavage,” Sam said. Klara raised her eyebrows and Philip smirked into his cigar.

“Ok,” Lindsey said smiling, trying to hand the hookah back.

“Really. She puts everything in there. One time we were on Sugarsands and she—”

A door opened and Luke walked in. His mask, a smiling mardi gras in green and purple, dissolved off his face in a cloud of smoke.

“Sorry boss. This guy—”

“Don’t let it happen again. Let’s get started.”

Michael motioned to the windows and they disappeared behind falling darkness. Gradie’s chest fluttered as he dropped in the dark, and he understood instantly that they all had moved a great distance.

His shoes struck a marble smooth floor with a sound that echoed and mixed with the others. Celeste’s heels, Sam’s sci-fi flats, Luke’s metal-capped cowboy boots. EP floated down from somewhere, soundlessly. They were now eight glowing figures standing with him on a circular wafer of mirrored marble, floating in a darkness that gained an immense depth as stars flickered to life all around.

A ninth figure walked out of the black.

“Yall ready to make me some money?” Again, her voice clashed with her visage. Liquid nebula skater dress and skin like molded moonlight, and of course those same neon eyes.

A few of the team nodded or mumbled in agreement, Sam said “sure” in a drawn-out pained tone. Gradie just stood there.

“God damn Michael,” Lucy said. “You gotta work on that esprit de corps.”

“I’m ready to make you some cash, Lucy goosey!” Luke yelled.

“That’s the spirit, but do not fucking call me that!” she yelled, unable to keep from smiling. Most of the team returned her smile and traded polite greetings. Philip even made a joke Gradie couldn’t hear that flared Lucy’s smile into a grin he would have never expected. EP even gave her a full on hug.

It was like he had stepped into a house he didn’t belong in. The worst part was when she smiled at him, almost feebly, as if she knew he had been terrified of her. Instead of smiling back, he looked away, and instantly regretted it. Obviously, she had just been doing her job, and now that he was on the team, there was no need to rip into his buried memories or accuse him of not knowing what he was getting into. When he looked back at her, half a second later, she was carrying on with the team as if nothing had happened.

Klara spoke through the laughter.

“Let me introduce you to the man of the hour.” She flicked a light out of her hand and it exploded in the center of the floor. A window, like a hole in space itself, opened on a man sitting in a lounge seat talking to a girl. He wore the military uniform of a nation that never existed and sipped lava out of a black marble goblet. He locked eyes with Gradie and the vision froze. Gradie knew it was a memory of someone who had seen the man in the Otherworld.

“His name is Paul.”