Scratch a liar

They had dropped out of the office back into Lucy’s astralarium, but there was no floating window or rotating map this time.

Michael stood before the half-circle of astral assassins and clapped his hands. His white robes, like a kimono and haori designed for an interstellar age, glowed as if he was projecting from a midday desert.

“All right, before we get to the briefing, I just want to go over some structural changes.”

He motioned towards Philip, palm up, in a gesture Gradie found formal and well-practiced.

“Philip will now be acting as Captain.”

“Woohoo! Yay Philip!” Sam shouted and clapped.

“I quit,” Luke said with a smile.

“What’s a captain?” Celeste asked.

“He’ll be in charge of operations,” Michael said. “Coordinating attack plans, tactics, and moment to moment decisions in the field.”

“Uh,” said Sam.

“And if we disagree with his judgments?” Lindsey said, Gradie felt, in an as neutral a tone as she could muster.

“Then you’ll tell me immediately,” Philip said, for once without even a trace of mockery or pride.

“I’ve been around the block a few times,” he continued, some of his old edge returning. “Though I waste my breath saying it again. And I know that iron rulings and deaf ears bring failed jobs. If I’ve been too bristled as an operator, don’t hold it against me as a Captain. I know an operator’s job is to question everything, and a leader’s job is to have all the answers.”

Lindsey looked at him in a way that, essentially, let the words “we’ll see” bleed out of her eyeballs.

“So, we call him instead of EP, or—” Sam frowned in a way that Gradie found unexpectedly endearing.

“It means I’ll tell you where to go and what to do,” Philip said.

“Oh like you do already?” Sam said with a sneer. Lindsey glanced at Michael, who started up again.

“Also, Gradie will now be assigned to the operations team, supporting Sam.”

“Oh, what?” Sam said.

“He’ll be riding with you as an extra gun. Mainly to observe—”

“So, I’m like her bodyguard?” Gradie said.

“Ha!” Sam laughed at the sky and Luke snickered. Philip raised his eyebrows at Gradie like he was a six-year-old who said he could fly.

“No, you are to observe and engage only if directed,” Michael said. “Think of this as your probationary period.” Michael’s use of familiar corporate terminology struck a sore spot in Gradie. He did his best to nod and stare blankly.

We’ll see about that. The last time I was supposed to observe, I took the target solo.

“Can we get him a “trainee” name tag?” Sam said.

A door-sized slice of the black swung open a few yards from the team’s half-circle huddle and Klara and Lucy walked in. A hallway of lavender-veined white marble and mid-morning sunlight stretched behind them into an atrium of pillars and dense garden foliage. Water rushed somewhere, and Gradie smelled incense and sea air. Like all realms he had been to, it felt like it was made of someone, and even in the brief glimpse before the door shut, he knew it was Klara.

“All right boys and girls, we’re in the money this time.” Lucy’s crimson qipao had embroidered serpentine dragons that flew slowly across the fabric. She stepped up next to Michael and flicked a bare arm at the team. Seven shimmering crystals floated out of her hand towards them. Gradie caught his, and noted that it felt even more electrified than the last one.

“God damn, what are we missing?” Philip said, tossing the crystal in his hand.

“Not much,” said Lucy. “This one’s been dropped in straight up. No Spiritualist.”

The team made various sounds that indicated a positive relief. Gradie felt once again like the new guy, but asked anyway.

“What’s a—”

“Spiritualists drop Spirits into the Hardworlds,” Philip said. “Like a trap door, but more hands-on. Put them into selfs that have almost nothing in common with the Spirit’s Real. Makes them harder to track. Also known as cleaners.”

“Why didn’t they use one, then?”

“Could have been a rush job.”

“Or they’ve got secrets,” Klara said. “Spiritualists need access to your entire memory to work effectively. Which means by using one, you are giving them everything they need to track you indefinitely. It’s why their vows are important.”

“Vows?” Gradie said.

“Yes, Vows,” said Philip. “Raise their right hand, some Keeper standing by, and all that shit. So, moving on—”

“Is that why yall took my memories? So you can track me?” Gradie asked.

“One of the reasons,” Lucy purred. An old annoyance clearly flaring up.

“What are the others?”

“None of your god damned business,” Philip said. “Moving on!”

“So we’ve got a full read on the guy,” Lucy continued “But this time, the target isn’t the target.”

She flipped a coin up into the air with a metallic sound that echoed in the void. It fluttered above their heads, then hung in place, still spinning, and expanded until it was large enough for Gradie to read the year. A grimy Washington quarter with the eagle reverse. It was the most ridiculous thing Gradie had seen in the Otherworld yet, and he looked around with a laugh bubbling up on his face.

The rest of the team wore expressions of dead seriousness. Lindsey and Philip looked like they had just learned the target was going to be Godzilla or something.

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“God dammit,” Philip muttered to himself, apparently forgetting his new leadership role.

“So, bad news first,” Klara said gently. “The target is a polytope. It’s pushed as a fairly mundane item, and the client wants it found and returned immediately. Any delay on our part will result in them sending in a reserve team, which of course would mean a failure and no payoff.”

“Fucking beautiful,” Philip muttered and looked at Michael like he had dumped all of his cigars in the toilet.

“And we have been advised the, uh, courier, has been in about a week already.” Klara continued.

“Hope he doesn’t like gumballs,” Luke said. Philip not only did not laugh, he glared at Luke like he had started pissing in Michael’s cigar-filled toilet.

“Now for the good news,” Klara said. Gradie thought of every manager he had ever known to deliver the bad news first, then temper it with the good. They had all been awful at it, but somehow Klara was so damn endearing he wanted to let her make him feel better.

“There is no defense team. The target, I mean the courier, is obviously dropped out, and we have enough intel on him to make some good assumptions about how he will act, however this goes down in the bricks.”

“Should I skim his dreams, or do you have enough—” Celeste asked, but Klara shook her head.

“I went walking already. You won’t get anything, unfortunately. His Dreamworlds are overgrown with the self and highly erratic, even for a submerged Spirit. The self is some kind of addict or worse. And there’s been some work done to beef up the defenses.”

“Wait, someone fortified his Dreamworlds, but didn’t run him through a Spiritualist?” Philip said.

“I will admit this is a bit of a strange job,” Klara said, with enough distant neutrality in her tone to make Gradie think she was hiding something.

“Focus on the hard facts,” Michael boomed. “This is a simple job, or a complicated one, depending on how we act. All we have to do is locate the object.”

“Which could be anywhere,” said Lindsey softly.

“And if the target is not handled correctly finding it may be impossible,” Michael continued. “This will be a test of our finesse.” He smiled at the team like they were all about to break some kind of record.

“Any questions?” Klara asked.

“What’s a polytope?” Gradie had held onto the question so long he felt it might burn a hole in his excitement.

“A polytope, sometimes called a tesseract, is a physical manifestation of an object in the Otherworld,” said Klara. “In this case, it’s a memory cache.”

“Wait, like mem?” Gradie frowned. The idea of taking anything from the Otherworld into the Hardworlds struck a bad sensation in his brain, like nausea brought on by learning about some dangerous new virus that spread via eye contact.

“Yes. As you know, mem is fused to objects by Keepers. In this case, the courier either pushed or was suggested into believing that the memory cache would come with him into the Hardworlds.”

“So, you can take memory into the Hardworlds?”

“Few can,” Lucy said darkly. “It’s a closely guarded art. Which tells me he probably had some help.”

“Everything in this world responds to intent and belief,” Michael said, seeing Gradie’s persistent confusion on his face. “He believes the mem is stored on that quarter, so the client is unable to retrieve the mem without retrieving the quarter.”

“What happens if we kill him and bring him back to the Other? Can’t they just make him believe the memory is here now?”

“No. The process of infusing mem into an object can only be undone by a Keeper with the object in hand. It would be like trying to unmake an object in the Otherworld you couldn’t even see.”

“Once you have the quarter in your possession,” Lucy continued. “You’ll simply need to drop into the dreamworlds with the expectation that it will come with you. Then return as normal. At that point it will behave like any other item in the Other.” Lucy spoke like she was trying to convince Gradie of something he might find difficult to believe. The concept felt like something made of air and shadows in his head, but he nodded and looked away from her neon gaze.

“Any other questions?” Klara asked again. Sam raised her hand.

“So if there’s no defense, are we running like just pistols or—”

“Hell no,” Philip snapped. “Treat every job like there’s an army running defense, no matter what the intel says. Or learn that lesson the hard way.”

“I’m assuming the client still wants the courier dropped out?” Lindsey said.

“Yes, after you’ve located the quarter,” Klara said.

There was a silence. Some of the team members had already started reviewing the mem crystals.

“All right then, see you all out there,” Michael said.

The team started going through doors and murmuring amongst themselves. This time, Gradie watched them without fear of being left behind. The training had done its job. This time, he felt ready to take on the world. Any world.

“Gradie, I assume you’re going to the Vault,” Michael said, suddenly next to him.

“Yeah.”

“After this job, get with the twins and set up your home realm, so you can access the vault without going to the HQ. Even if you don’t care for the Otherworld right now, you need to start putting down roots. Whatever else you think of it, the Otherworld is the protector of the Spirit, and you need to carve out a piece of it for yourself.”

Gradie nodded and wondered what his own dreamhouse might look like. It was an enticing thought. Lucy’s black house and Celeste’s beach resort home had felt as severed from the Allworld as the Vault did. It might be nice to have somewhere to go where the signs didn’t scream at him and the Twins weren’t watching.

A voice jumped out of memory.

Seek the Spirit! Seek the edge!

“Oh, and this time, you’re going to have to find the way back yourself,” Michael said. “You should have seen enough of other's Dreamworlds to navigate your own.”

Gradie nodded again, but the memory of that cold tunnel and whispering voice made his hair stand on end, somehow, even in this world beyond flesh.

“Good. Let’s get to work.” Michael slapped him on the shoulder and smiled like they were about to steal a million dollars, then turned and stepped through a dingy back door into a long hotel hallway. The slam echoed long after the door had disappeared.

Gradie stood alone in the dark starlit circle and let the excitement pulse through him.

This was it. No fumbling over his self or shooting chalk rounds this time. This time, he would be in control. This time, he would move through that familiar world of concrete and gravity and flesh and fear, not as a piece of it, but as a visitor. An awakened spirit. Walking on the water of the world while others swam below.

A Hardworlder.

He squeezed the crystal in his fist and flicked open the door to the vault with a wave of his hand.

Epilogue

“I don’t like the ramifications of this.”

“You can just say that you’re scared. I won’t tell anyone.”

“And I don’t think you understand the ramifications, hence your confidence—”

“I am never confident. I have seen enough to know that the highest god and the lowest spirit have about the same level of clairvoyancy. I find my peace, what you mistake as confidence, in the uncertainty of—”

“I’m not interested in your fucking philosophy. I’m trying to make you aware of something, because good allies are a luxury in our line, and I’d like to see you—”

“Well then, out with it. We don’t have much time, as you—”

“All right, all right. Listen, this project isn’t as isolated as they would have us believe. Understand?”

“I understand that nothing is isolated in this—”

“Oh Jesus Christ, Listen! I’m seeing layers of abstraction and compartmentalization magnitudes higher than I’ve ever seen them—”

“Aren’t you always bitching and moaning about the lack of—”

“Yes, which is exactly why this is all standing out to me. This kind of obfuscation—”

“Cut the corporate jargon, dear god. What, do you believe, are they hiding?”

“I don’t know, but—”

“You are a tedious asshole, and I have to—”

“Look! I know you! We’re not like them, neither of us—”

“Don’t fucking—”

“The other guys want to be part of it. The legends. The war stories. Even the fucking skimmers and keepers down in the halls, they all want—”

“I have to go. This has been—"

“But you don’t, and I don’t. So what I’m saying to you is be on the lookout for an exit, because the kind of shit I’m seeing gets Spirits put away. You know what I do in this company, what I have access to. I’m telling you, this is a ripple, and whatever stirred it up smells like thirteen years ago. Maybe even twenty years ago. You understand?”

“—”

“I know it sounds—”

“It sounds like you are projecting. You are the one who wants to be part of something big and important, so you see it closing in on you. It’s not. You are at the center of nothing. You are a quintessentially peripheral person. You—”

“Fuck yourself then. And if you tell anyone we talked about this, I’ll stash the full mem of the Alton job. You know I have it.”

“I know that if you threaten me again I—. Hello? Delusional little twat.”

The connection was severed, and a third party stored the mem of the conversation away, in a rather peripheral section of the archive.