And how should I begin?
“Good luck Gradie.” Klara glided away towards a doorframe covered with a sheer curtain that glowed and pulsed like a rave, where Celeste stood waiting.
“They’re going Dreamwalking?” EP said. Gradie hadn’t even seen her move out of the dark.
“Yes. Celeste will pass the intel to you in the chat,” Michael said.
“Dreamwalking?” Gradie asked, desperate to talk about something other than his own impending failure.
“Remember a few hours ago, at the clubhouse, when Celeste told you she can go into a Spirits Dreamworld uninvited?” EP said dryly. Had it only been that long? It felt like ages.
“She can also enter a dreamworld straight from the Otherworld,” said Michael.
“Can’t everyone do that?”
“No. It’s actually an unusual ability.”
“Why? Wouldn’t that be easier than just waking up in a Hardworld?” Gradie thought of the hallways from the gas station. Why hadn’t he thought to get into a Hardworld by doing the same thing, only backwards?
“No. The dreamworlds are connected to the self, and are thus closer to the Hardworlds than they are to the Otherworld. Getting to them from here is impossible for most, as the Otherworld pulls on the spirit the same way the Hardworlds pull on the self. Which reminds me, this time, I want you to try and prime a self to drop into.”
“Prime what?”
“Rather than just jumping into the Hardworlds, try and have a clear idea of the self you’re waking up into; His job, hobbies, where he lives. You want to make sure he’s armed, and that his life fits in with the target’s Hardworld. It’s better to keep it more of a vague—”
Gradie had lost focus partway through. EP was bouncing towards a doorway, her black lace skirt floating up, stopping just short of exposing anything above mid-thigh. A shame.
An unexpectedly banal sound interrupted Michael and broke through the hazy air of the astralarium; A metal door opening on an echoing empty space. Philip finished swinging it open and stood in the plane of grimy fluorescent light that reached out from its frame.
He was back in his normal Hardworld clothes, this time a Burberry trench over his Adidas track suit, and looked, with the door stood open beside him, like he had taken a break in a dark dreamworld and was now returning to work via a maintenance entrance in a shopping mall or some kind of storage facility.
“See ya in there.” He smiled at Gradie, like he doubted he would, and went through the door. It slammed shut behind him and vanished.
“One last thing, before you hop in,” Michael said. “You’re our newest operative, and though you shouldn’t be getting into any exchanges on this job, you need to know our rules of operations. First, never call any team members their real name. EP will give you code names when you contact her, which is the first thing you’ll do.”
“How will I—”
“Just wait. Second, you will, under no circumstances, purposefully or accidentally, harm anyone other than our target and his defenders during the operation. Any collateral damage is unacceptable. Is that clear?”
Gradie hadn’t even considered that as a possibility. All his imagined scenarios of hunting their targets had involved him landing a flurry of shots center of mass on a surprised man (who now looked like Paul) and the rest of the team being overcome with awe at his ability. At that point, EP, Sam, Celeste, or all three, would throw themselves at him. He hadn’t gotten the hang of imagining Lindsey as the swooning admirer yet, but—
“Is that clear?” Michael said.
“Oh, yeah. Why would I kill anyone else?”
“Haste, or just apathy. Most Hardworlders don’t even consider the people inside real.”
Gradie’s mind went to work on that. Did he believe they were real? The world of the burning car and the clubhouse, the girl in the gas station. Reflexively, yes. Yes he did. The thought of gun-toting astral assassins rampaging through those worlds with no regard for any life sickened him, and a dark fear at the thought of the gas station girl gunned down by forces she could never understand woke a raw hatred in him. It must have shown on his face.
“It’s half the reason I came back,” Michael said. it sounded like a confession, and he scrambled over it before Gradie could ask what the other half was.
“Third, death is better than capture, if it comes to that. The spirit is bound to flesh in a Hardworld, and many of our opponents will have no problem exploiting that, which brings me to my final point.”
He took a breath and spoke in a softer tone.
“Lucy surely warned you, and by now you’ve seen how dangerous the pull of a Hardworld can be, but I’m going to give you one last chance. There is every possibility of you experiencing unbelievable pain in our job. It won't harm the Spirit, any more than torture in a dream would hurt you after you’ve woken up, but in the moment, the pain is very real. Are you sure you want to do this?”
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“Yes.” Gradie thought about taking his time, pretending to be conflicted, giving the impression that he was pondering what Michael was saying, but he couldn’t even wait to do that. Despite the real blood-chilling fear Michael’s words stirred in him, it didn’t matter. This was his purpose. Somehow, the last few days, especially the slips into his “real life” and the Otherworld's ability to smooth over it, had removed any doubt that had remained after Michael’s story.
This was what he had been waiting for all his life.
“All right. Then it's time to drop in,” Michael said. “In the crystal, you’ll find a file on contacting EP. Just pull up the projection and take out your phone. You’ll find a message from EP with a URL and a password. When you wake up, post on the website to let us know you're in, then EP will get you set up. She should have already found your self and pushed something mailed to you. Get to her asap and she’ll either have you observe the job from her HQ or provide you with a feed, depending on how this plays out. Any questions?”
“Yeah. Is everything going to be in DFW?” He almost hadn't asked, but the question felt like the last nagging bit of an old argument. Michael surprised him by laughing.
“I was wondering if you’d noticed that. No, but a lot of our jobs might be. It’s not as odd as it may seem at first. When I found you in the Hardworld, you were near your home in the Real. The clubhouse is in the area because it’s a part of the world I have a lot of experience with, which is also why we’ve taken a lot of jobs there, and also why I ran into you. A lot of Hardworlders take work based on geography. Knowing about the reality of where you operate lets you spot changes more easily, among other things.”
“But you didn’t know where the target was until Lucy found his city.” Gradie had a sinking feeling that he was desperate to be rid of.
“No, but it's possible the client knew and had their own reasons for withholding that info. They often don’t disclose anything they don’t think we need to know, or in this case intel they expect us to find out on our own. A lot of our work involves an uneasy cooperation.”
Michael's confidence was once again contagious, and Gradie was left feeling that the entire situation wasn't a hallucination, but a strange result of forces and processes beyond his understanding.
“Anyway, if you find it hard to drop in from Lucy’s domain, just summon a door to the void. Even those with minimal experience here can do that. Then just drop in like we’ve told you.”
Another door opened next to Michael, this time the back entrance to a chain motel. Inside, a carpeted hallway stretched under yellowed lights.
“Why don’t I just go with you?” Gradie vaguely remembered Michael explaining how fragments were used to drop into Hardworlds, and the idea of just walking through a hallway felt a lot better than trying to wake himself up into one.
“Because I want you to be able to do this on your own, the right way. You’ll learn to use fragments eventually, but right now just do it the way you know, like we said—”
“How do I learn to use them?”
“With practice, you can still your mind enough to ride the fragment out, but it takes time. Right now, your mind is constantly pressing outwards, even if you don’t notice it. It’s the nature of the Otherworld. In order for the fragment to become solid enough to slip out, it must be still, so to speak, and your mind is constantly moving it.”
“So how do I make my mind still?” It didn’t sound like a quality his mind could ever have.
“Spend time in the Hardworlds. Let your Spirit develop a sense for how they feel and operate. Then, once you can get your mind in that mode at will, fragments should work for you.”
“Should?”
“Some people never learn to use fragments. But then again, some people can never get to the Hardworlds at all.”
Gradie glanced longingly at the hallway and its warm flickering light, and dreaded wrestling his mind through a floating door he hoped like hell would take him to the right place.
“Oh, one last thing,” Michael said. “Don’t forget to see Lucy after you get back here. She’ll need to pull your memories of the job while they’re still fresh.”
Gradie’s stomach sank, but he just nodded without expression.
“I’ll see you in there.” Michael kicked the doorstop off the ground and stepped inside. The door did the same slam-shut and vanish trick Philip’s had, and Gradie was left alone in the darkness.
He felt the stars watching him. Ghosts, memories, fragments of worlds or moments. He couldn’t focus with them around, so he reached out and tried to summon a door in the air, but nothing happened. It seemed he lacked the control over the Otherworld that let the team move about at ease. His desire to hurry up and jump into a Hardworld crept up his spine and rattled his head.
Fine. I’ll have to do it my own way.
He kicked the ground and felt it shake hollow beneath him. Another stomp and he felt a latch spring open at the jam. The final stomp dropped him down through a trap door into darkness. His fall felt supernaturally accelerated, as if Lucy’s astralarium was ejecting him, and he floated out into a now familiar void. His Spirit told him that the star room was now infinitely far away, and he could try for a thousand years and never get to it from here.
Good. Got other places to be.
He pulled the crystal out of his pocket and the blue wetness dripped off into the black. It opened on command and he found himself floating above the highway, rain-gorged night spreading over a familiar city.
Now that he was here, the instructions given by Michael, Lucy, even Klara’s words of assurance, seemed totally inadequate.
He took out his phone, and sure enough, a notification blinked a message at him. A URL for a website called “allcityhovercrafts” and a password: gradiecheckinginnumber8.
All right. Time to do this.
He told the projection to show him around. It felt like an instinct. Now that he was fully immersed in it, the dream knowledge that spoke from the signs in the Allcity and little pieces of the Otherworld was everywhere in the projection. Navigating its stored memory came as naturally as wanting to.
He studied the highway, the weather, dropped into a car, and turned on the radio.
This is real. This is what I heard on the radio yesterday, on the way home from work.
The thought became knowledge in his mind, and the world pulled him towards something unknown. The feeling reminded him of the door flying out of the star, the one he had stepped through into that other Hardworld. He remembered his job there, his torched car, those drug addicts…
No! I need to drop into Paul’s world!
The projection reacted to him before the thought had finished. The dream office formed around him, but this time it felt wrong.
A door slammed somewhere and the noise was flat and real. He panicked. The dream knowledge screamed at him in his own voice.
Run.
Someone was coming after him. Someone who didn’t want him in that Hardworld.
Footsteps out of the far office. He turned and bolted across the floor, feeling them spring after him. He made it to the stairwell door and threw it open and rolled through, half falling down the stairs. At the bottom, as the squeak-slam of the door shutting above echoed down the shaft, he clawed at the back of his pants for his pistol. He got it out, safety off, racked the slide, front dot lined up between the rear two, aimed at the door above, just as the handle turned. He squeezed the trigger as the door swung open, but the gun didn’t fire. He screamed, rolled over, and ran.
Then he woke up.