A needle in a haystack, under fire

The instructions had been simple. Drive around. Do some shit your self might do. Maybe get something to eat. Wait for the word, then meet up.

It had proved to be a test of Spirit. Gradie drove around, replaying the shootout in his head, letting the memories that jumped out of the landscape flow past like scraps of someone else’s trash. He thought about testing his phone on one of the parked cars, particularly the ones with more than four cylinders, but decided against it. Philip would probably call the cops on him and fry all his tech before leaving him to drift on his own while they finished the job. Then he would be stuck on energy drink duty with EP for the foreseeable future. Well…

The world skipped and an hour broke apart as he drove around making left turns once in a while and imagining being trapped in a remote apartment with EP and all the sexual chaos that would obviously lead to. It was well into the afternoon when his map pinged a new location labeled ‘meeting’ and brought him back to reality.

It was in the part of town he usually drove through to beat the highway traffic. Massive rolling parking lots, built for crowds of single-income nuclear families thirty years gone, flowed out from ancient pebble-faced strip malls and wrapped around pawn shops, cash advances, discount furniture stores and fast-food restaurants occupying buildings in shapes distinctive to some other chain. It all felt forgotten, as if time was struggling to push it along. Years and decades building up in its creases like grime, until one day it would pass a breaking point and drop out of history entirely.

Mostly, the area just made him nostalgic. Memories came in the windows from two different pasts, and he ran his finger along the underside pistol rail to drive them away. His GPS told him to turn in at the last Long John Silvers in the city and the self-storage slinked out from behind it. It looked closed down. He pulled around to the gate across from a line of houses.

“Zoey, I think I’m here.”

“You think? Let me- Yeah, one sec.”

The gate rolled open and he drove down between the storage units until he got to the little office at the back. One of the units next to it was open and a solid black Hayabusa slept in the shadows.

The small office smelled like old dust and something hummed behind the counter. There was no one inside. Philip called from the back room and Gradie found him sitting with Michael in two out of place gaming chairs, picking at one of the Styrofoam BBQ containers on the table. Luke was leaning out the back door holding it ajar with the tip of his foot and blowing smoke outside. Lindsey was standing against the wall with a can of Arizona green tea.

“Heard you got in a little shoot-out this morning,” Michael said.

“Yea. It was alright.” Michael’s tone told Gradie he probably shouldn’t gush about how much fun it was.

“If you had gotten shot, would that have been alright?” Philip said.

“Uh, no?” Gradie said. Lindsey laughed into her tea and Luke made a De Niro-esque frown and nodded.

“I’m not here to help you get your fucking adrenaline fix,” Philip said. “Do that on your own time. You’re on this job as back up.”

“I got four of them.”

“And if this was a video game, you’d have the high score—”

“Well,” Luke raised an eyebrow at Lindsey who rolled her eyes.

“But this is a job with a clear success point,” Philip continued. “We’re not here for a body count.”

“All right. So, next time Johnny gets shot at—”

“You stay fucking put.”

There wasn’t anything to say after that, so Gradie just nodded. After a while, Luke flicked his cigarette out the door and sat down on the carpet.

“That was some pretty good shooting though.” He shrugged at Phillip and took out his phone. No one said shit.

“Ashley and Kate are pulling up,” EP said in the earbuds. Gradie heard car doors outside and remembered something.

“Why’d you give me that shitty car?”

“That shit was rough, Max.” Luke laughed.

“You mean the same kind of car you and every other office monkey drives in the Real?” Philip said.

“I’m not going to work, last time I checked.”

“You going racing? That car blends in. Unlike your wannabe matrix get up.”

“Oh so is that how this works? The cops just pull over everything with more than four cylinders and ask “Are you a dimension hopping assassin?”

Luke laughed and Philip, to Gradie’s surprise, let a smile slide across his face.

“All right kid. Maybe next time I’ll get you a car without hail damage.”

“God damn Mr. Max. You always get the dustiest fucking places as an HQ.” Celeste bounced in from the front with an iced drink that smelled like Hibiscus and was less than a quarter inch below the lid, and dropped a paper bag that smelled like tacos into the trashcan.

“Got here in a hurry I see.” Philip said.

“What, are you thirsty?” Celeste batted her eyes at him and he just blew air out of his nostrils like a cartoon bull.

“Did you stop and get some bleaching done?” Luke said from the floor, looking up the back of Celeste’s barely-there shorts with fake curiosity.

“Oh my god Johnny!” Celeste cackled.

“Jesus.” Lindsey sighed into her tea. Sam slid in the side door with a fast-food cup in her hand and leaned against the wall. She had traded her coveralls for a stripped shirt and pair of worn-in jeans that showed off her unexpectedly full hips—

“Cooper Davidson is in custody downtown,” Michael said suddenly, now standing. Gradie almost jumped out of his shoes and hoped Sam didn’t notice.

“So, we gonna bust him out?” Celeste said.

“We?” Lindsey said to the back of her head.

“No, we're going to search for the cache,” Michael said.

“Which could be anywhere, right?” Sam said.

“He’d want it somewhere he can access it,” Michael said. “So he can try and negotiate. Also, we know a few things we didn’t this morning. First, we know that Cooper isn’t lucid, and second, there are more teams in play than just us.”

“Third, our client is an asshole,” Luke said.

“Aren’t there usually multiple teams on a job?” Gradie said. Philip almost growled.

“No, if you remember, this was a simple retrieval job. All we were hired to do is find the cache, return it to the Other, then drop the guy out. He didn’t even have a guard—”

“He does now,” Luke said with a smile.

“So why are they here then?” Gradie said.

“Someone ran their mouth in the Allclub,” said Luke.

“And now we’re working a fucking bounty,” Lindsey said to the ceiling.

“Don’t bounties usually get messed up?” Celeste said.

“Bounties always go tits up,” Luke said.

“What do you mean a Bounty?” Gradie asked.

He got another one of those silences that implied they had forgotten he existed, until Lindsey helped him.

“It’s when more than one party has stake in one side of a job. Means someone else found out about the cache and put a price on it.”

“Or the client themselves put it out,” Michael said.

“Why the fuck would they do that?” Philip snapped.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“To obfuscate something about the job…”

There was a silence as Michael looked out the window thoughtfully, apparently unaware he had been talking to anyone. The quiet drew his attention back to the present.

“Forget it. Beyond our pay grade. We still have a contract, and despite some new obstacles, the goal hasn’t changed.”

Luke stood up and stretched.

“All right then, so what’s the next move?”

“The POE is still swarming with cops,” Philip said, addressing the group. “Zoe’s got eyes on his apartment, and there’s been no action there, which means our newly found opposition is too cool to get on hands and knees and start turning over couch cushions.”

“Or they’re being cautious,” Lindsey said, as if Philip had never heard the word. He smiled and shook his head.

“No, trust me. Every other crash team has the same play; Get hands on the dude and get him to give up a location.”

“And we’re not gonna be doing that?” Luke asked, hoping to be wrong.

“Nope.” Philip’s smile boiled up to his eyes. “We’re gonna turn over some couch cushions.”

“We need to check all the obvious places,” Michael said, with less animation. “His house, work, then push out and get a feel of his recent whereabouts and check anywhere else he might have put it.”

“You want me out there?” Luke asked. “You said something about laying low.” He didn’t sound pleased about it.

“You will stay in the area, unseen, in case you’re needed. Try and stay equidistant from his house and the POE.”

“I’ll take his home,” Lindsey said. “You sure they haven’t searched it?”

“Zoey’s sure,” Philip said.

“Kate, once they drop the tape, you and Alan will take his POE,” Michael said.

“The tape?” Gradie asked.

“It’s a crime scene, at the moment. As soon as it’s not, you’ll go inside, alone.”

“What, I’m just gonna wait out in the car?” Sam said.

“If he gets caught, leave,” Michael said, like he was letting Sam in on a joke. Gradie nodded.

Alright then. More punishment for actually using my fucking weapon.

“So, I’m gonna break into what is now a crime scene and look for a quarter?”

“If you’re not up to it, just eat a bullet now so I can be rid of your whining,” Philip said.

“Zoey will get you in and Kate will be your lookout,” Michael said.

“But, he could have put it anywhere, right? Like down a drain or—”

“No, remember, path of least resistance. It’s just a quarter. He may have left it in his locker—”

“What if he used it to buy a Twix?” Gradie tried to understand how this job wasn’t completely nonsensical. The soul-shattering coolness of jumping through realities to shoot at people was dampened by the reality of searching for pocket change.

“You’ll check the vending machines too,” Michael said. Gradie exhaled and tried to find the right words. Lindsey stepped up and turned her sunglasses toward him, so he had to look at two warped reflections of himself being confused.

“Look, don’t overthink it. It’s just a quarter that some dude had on him in the past two days.”

“But he could have spent it somewhere and it could be locked in some cash machine or a bank—” Gradie rubbed his temples.

“And if that’s the case, what could we do?” Michael said.

“Nothing! Unless we want to search every—”

“Exactly, so we’ll take the only action left to us, which assumes that isn’t the case,”

“Okie dokie, you got it? Let’s go.” Sam waved to Gradie from the door.

“Even if the tape comes down, wait till dark, both teams,” Michael said.

“So, what do we do until dark?” Sam glanced at Gradie for a split second before searching the rest of the room for an answer.

“Nothing,” Michael said. “Max will get you geared up, then Zoey will route you to a safe house. She and I are working on IDing the other teams so keep an ear out for intel.”

“Ok, sounds good. Have a fun productive day everyone!” Sam moved to the side door and Philip stood up.

“You pull your jeep in?” He pulled a manilla envelope of keys out from somewhere.

“Yep,” Sam said.

“All right. April, your shits in the unit to the left of your spot.” He tossed one of the keys to Lindsey, who was out the door before they were done jingling. Gradie picked up one of the unopened bbq clamshells and started to follow them. Michael stopped him.

“Alan, wait one second.”

“Yeah?” Gradie asked. He hoped the rest of the team would rush out the door, but they all stopped and watched Michael expectantly.

“How are you feeling?” Michael said.

“Uh, hungry.”

“He’s a natural,” Philip said. Two brain cells just like Johnny boy.”

“Well, the one you got is putting in work,” Luke said.

“Any sense of dropping out? Any disconnect at all?” Michael said.

God damned Michael. Gradie had just barely gotten over his disappointment about being assigned the job of digging for the quarter in some dingy store, and was now thoroughly engrossed in fantasies of a rooftop shootout with cops who had Sam’s jeep surrounded in the parking lot.

But now, at Michael's question, his mind turned to thoughts of the Self, those other memories that floated at the edge of his mind, like shimmers cast on the wall of a pool. He found them less enticing than the fantasies. Since he had gotten used to priming a self, they had become far less powerful than the ones that had pulled him out at the clubhouse, and the experience of burning through a hundred different versions of himself had brought on a realization.

The real world, at least his past in it, had never felt any more real to him than the lies other people told him about it or the daydreams he made up to get through it. He had always seen the world as a kind of persistent dream.

He understood, looking at the concern on Michael’s face, that this was not normal, and that this mental state, or detached perspective or whatever it was, guided him through the Hardworlds without getting snagged on the barbed edges of his identity.

“No, not really. Too focused on the job, I guess.”

Understanding came into Michael’s face and Gradie saw he had ignored the words and found the truth.

“All right, good to hear. Don’t hesitate to ask for help if you start to feel uneasy.”

Gradie followed the team out through the back door into a double-wide storage unit, where a parked Mercedes SUV reflected the shelves, cases, and gun safes lining the walls. The SUV had to be at least a hundred grand even un-armored and Gradie, remembering the hail-scarred whining sedan he had driven up in, brushed the polished side of it with a single outstretched middle finger as he passed, and reminded himself that it was here by Philip’s will alone, and that clean laundry found in a backseat was among the lowest of the gifts of the Hardworlds.

They marched out into the Texas sun and crossed the glaring cement row towards another double unit with one door rolled open, where Sam’s Jeep lurked in the squared darkness. They squeezed, single file, between the front corner of the Jeep's bumper and the door frame and Philip flicked on the lights.

The Jeepless unit had a large bare table in the center and walls lined with more safes and cases. Luke was already opening one and loading magazines and small pouches into a duffle bag.

“Jeep’s armored at a B5, so try not to sit and soak it up,” Philip said. Sam nodded.

“Oh hell, I’d rather have some get up and go anyway,” She looked around at the lockers and safes on the wall.

“Which one?”

“That one, I think,” Philip said, pointing to a gun case just past the Jeep’s taillight. Sam gave him a shy smile

“You think?”

“I could always be mistaken.”

“Ok.” She said under her breath. She drummed on her thighs with her hands while approaching the case.

“So can I get something bigger than a pistol?” Gradie asked. “Since I’m gonna be—”

“Shut up.” Philip snapped. He watched Sam like he had sent her on a scavenger hunt.

Sam stepped in front of the safe and put her hand on the handle. She sighed and said something to herself and closed her eyes.

“It’s not magic, sweetheart,” Philip said suddenly.

“Shut the fuck up!” Sam yelled.

“You’re not casting a spell, if it’s in there then it’s in there, nothing special about it, just means that’s where it’s always been.” Sam glared at him with her eyes, but her mouth was curved at the edges.

“If it’s in there,” he said. Sam sighed and yanked open the safe. It was full of ammo boxes.

“Fuck!” Sam said.

“You can’t change the past, kid. Stop trying to cast spells and just remember.”

Sam sighed, red-faced, and stepped towards the next safe, then stopped.

“I told you what I wanted, right? Days ago, I called you.” She was speaking to the second safe. “So you must have got it. Where is it?” she was almost whispering. She opened the second safe and there was a duffel bag on its end and a large toolbag on the bottom. The shelves were full of magazines.

“See, no magic. You sent me the order on Tuesday, and I got it for you. Cause and effect.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Sam said, like she had just remembered, the smile draining off her face.

“It always feels like that,” Gradie said.

“What?” Sam looked at him with those blue-grey eyes, pure and without suspicion. He wanted to tell her everything, but he could only tell her what he knew.

“After you push, it feels like remembering. You can’t even tell you did anything. Just like priming a self—”

“You should be able to tell, if you want to get anywhere in this game,” Philip said. “If you can’t tell the difference between the actions of the Spirit and the dumb events of the Hardworld, or someone else’s pushing, you’ll always be working with a handicap.”

Sam was looking through the bags like Christmas.

“Plate carriers in the back seat,” Philip motioned with an unlit cigar and took out a lighter.

Gradie looked at one of the safes. They had only been in a day, which mean Sam’s self had told Philip’s self what guns to get her.

“Wait, so you two know each other?” he said to Philip. “I thought that was against the rules? Couldn’t she just tell you what she wanted before—"

“So now you give a shit about the rules?”

“Uh—”

“Don’t worry about how I train your teammates. Just practice sitting still in the passenger seat.”

“I think Kate’s gonna be the one sitting in the car this time.”

“Uh, not if you get in trouble again!” Sam yelled.

Gradie looked over at her, leaning out from the back of the jeep, impish smile on her face, and felt something roll over him, like a magnetism that rattled pieces of his body, but rooted him to the ground, unshakable.

“How much trouble you think I could get into?” He smiled slyly and the words slithered across the room.

Sam rolled her eyes, which made the whites flash spectacularly.

“Oh yeah, you’re so cool.” She disappeared behind the Jeep, but Gradie had seen something else in her eyes that bristled his flesh like charged iron shavings.

“Try and check your ego before the bullets start flying again,” Philip said. Gradie just nodded, unphased.

A gun safe caught his eye, and that magnetic feeling whispered to him.

“I think I’ll need something bigger than a handgun if we’re going to his work.”

“Bullshit,” Philip said. “If you need even need that you’ve fucked up. You’re going to search and evade and that’s it.” Gradie pulled on the safe door and almost popped his wrist out.

“Guess somebody locked it.” Philip lit his cigar

“Let’s go!” Sam yelled, shutting the back door of the jeep. Gradie looked at Philip, standing there smoking like a demon.

“Guess I do enough work with a pistol anyway.”

“Keep bringing that up. Might be the only thing you ever do.”

Gradie marched off towards the Jeep.

“Don’t bring that in here,” Sam said, pointing at the BBQ container in Gradie’s hand.

“What?”

“It’s all new car smell in here.” She was sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open and the AC going. Gradie looked around and sat down at the big table.

“Why didn’t you eat before?” Sam asked. “You were driving around for an hour.”

Gradie thought about his drive from the auto shop, how he had drifted around the city, looking at every cop car that went by with his palm on his pistol. He decided not to mention that in front of Philip and shrugged and started forking the brisket.

“Oh my god!” Sam slammed the door and the muted sounds of KMFDM’s Symbols album vibrated out through the windows.

“You got any water?” Gradie said to Philip. He just made more smoke then turned and left. Grade heard a mini fridge open somewhere behind him and then felt a pat on his back. Luke set a water down on the table and smiled at him. He threw a duce at Gradie and the windshield of the jeep then slipped out the slab of light between the front of the Jeep and the wall. Gradie sat there eating and tried to decide if the locked safe looked familiar.