Night had fallen as the detective and his companion snaked their way through tight back alleys. In front of them was the unwashed brick of the dream den’s back wall.

“This should be the one,” said the detective.

“There’s no back door. You have a novel way to get in from here?” asked Barnaby.

“In fact I do. But first, some reconnaissance.”

From his bag, the detective retrieved a metal box and a small cone-shaped object. Both had adhesive pads and an antenna as part of their builds. The box also housed several dials, buttons, and a waveform graphing display.

He attached the cone to his right temple and the box to an electrical junction on the brick wall.

“This astral jack will project my consciousness through the building’s wiring,” the detective said.

Once switched on the box was eager to tune itself to the building’s electrical frequency. As the waveform on the graph became more stable, the detective’s body stiffened and his eye’s turned a milky white. His unseen spirit zipped through the copper wires of the wall, bouncing back and forth before holding a position through force of will. From here Kipling’s detached spirit could peer into any of the den’s facilities.

“Yes. Yes. This is good. The children are hooked up in the basement.”

“Children?” Barnaby said.

“Shhh! Three children. The room behind this wall connects directly to the lower level and doesn’t appear to be frequently trafficked. Some sort of storeroom I imagine. The rest of the floor is dedicated to the reception. Above that is the clientele in dream suites. Little more than the machine, loungers, and curtain dividers. Last floor looks to be the boss’s office and a couple of premium suites. I count two on reception, four tending to the clients, and three in the office including the boss.”

With a jittery hand, the detective killed the connection to the box. He fell backwards as the tension seizing his body released all at once.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine, fine. Now for a door. A dimension door.”

Kipling leapt back on to his feet with a single impressive motion and patted the dust from his backside. In his hand, he held a small cube of polished wood with straight seems running across its faces. With an unnecessary flair, he spun his arm in a wind-up. Like a baseball player, he pitched the cube at the wall.

The sudden loss of inertia was unnerving as the cube froze in place after it had made contact with the brick. With the rhythmic sound of grinding gears, the cube began to unfold. Clack, clack, clack it went as slabs of charged wood spread out across the wall. The panels locked together with a deliberate clunk and the completed door sank into the wall. A knob spiralled out as the mechanical harmony faded back into silence.

“You have your night vision ready Mister Barnaby? On my mark, I’ll overload the building’s power with the astral jack. Speed is of the essence. Through the door and immediately to your right will be the stairs down.”

Barnaby took a pair of round spectacles with green holographic lenses from his breast pocket and put them on his face. He approached the door and shakingly hovered his hand over the knob. He tried to steady himself by holding his wrist with his other hand. A dry lump hung in his throat.

“I’m ready and in position,” he said.

“And you remember what I told you? Do as I instructed and only as I instructed. No deviations,” the detective asked.

“Yes, yes, I remember. Now get on with it!”

Kipling flipped a switch on the side of the astral jack. Energy surged and charged until the circuit could no longer handle it. The hissing of sparks came from inside the junction box and the light in the one visible window went dark.

Barnaby wrenched the handle of the door and pushed the door open with melodramatic force. He tripped and fumbled over displaced stocked items that now scattered the floor before making his way down the stairs.

Kipling wasn’t far behind him, only delayed by his recovery of the metal box. He took a small capsule from his pocket and depressed the button on its top. He threw the capsule towards the stairs Barnaby had run down just moments before. The stairs rapidly filled with an expanding foam. Just as quickly, the foam hardened into a concrete-like wall.

Chaos was fast filling the rest of the building and one of the reception staff had already made their way to the back room. The half dozen patrons went from confused and disorientated to disgruntled and angry in little time. It wouldn’t be long before the boss and his two goons made their way down.

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“The fuck are you? Hey, there’s an intruder back here!” the woman with the cockney accent said.

Kipling threw two fingers towards her as her head was turned and she and her light spell were instantly knocked out.

A voice came from behind the doorway. “Give ‘er a gift. Tragic veneer.”

The unconscious body levitated away behind the door and the shimmer of a floating plane revealed Kipling and the assailant to each other.

“They’re using a variation of rhyming slang to mask their casting,” Kipling thought to himself.

He knocked over a large wooden desk and took a defensive position behind it before lobbing several accented finger motions towards the door. Within the mirror, the detective could see he had missed his mark. Hard impacts circled the receptionists head on the wall beside him.

“Swagger pie and mash!”

Deep slashes flew across the turned over desk. Kipling grabbed a large metal hole punch from the ground and threw it towards the doorway.

“Bounce!” he yelled.

He balled his fist and drew it towards him. The hole punch became like rubber and ricocheted around the doorway.

“Conduit!”

The detective thrust his hand forward and from it shot a dense bolt of electricity. The extending cable of crackling energy whipped around the corner into the metal hole punch laying at the receptionist's feet. Tendrils of bright incandescent energy wrapped around the man’s legs and overwhelmed him.

Kipling rushed over the two floored bodies, across the reception to make his way upstairs. But the den’s staff and the odd overzealous customer were already making their way down.

A moment of silence fell on the stairway as the two groups saw each other and froze. Who could react first would be crucial to determining who would come out on top. The stewards or Kipling.

“Crackling hot through the horse and cart!” the nearest steward said.

Kipling thrust forward an open palm. Gale force winds rammed the opposing group back up the stairs and disarmed two of their channelers. This was not without cost as the steward’s spell had blown a hole clean through Kipling’s shoulder.

While the group clambered to get back on their feet from the pile they were in, the detective pulled what was clearly supposed to be a grenade from his bag. He pulled the pin and tossed the canister upwards. The stewards' eyes were all fixed with fear on the canister as a plume of vapour began to hiss out.

Kipling didn’t let this opportunity go to waste and sealed the stairway with another concrete foam capsule. The sounds of yelling dulled to a murmur as the gas took effect and put everyone on the upper floor to sleep.

The room began to spin as the detective stumbled back towards the two unconscious bodies. The colour began to drain from his face as blood continued to pour from the wound on his shoulder. Still, he managed to check the two reception workers vitals, ensuring their lives were not in immediate danger.

The lights flickered back on as power was restored to the building. With the smug satisfaction of a job well done, Kipling pulled himself back on his feet to begin his retreat. His victory was short-lived however as one of the bosses goons blinked down behind him like a clap of thunder.

Like a bad premonition, the detective sensed the magic that was about to deliver all two hundred and thirty pounds of trouble to his position. Time slowed as massive amounts of adrenaline began to rocket through his veins.

The detective’s head had swivelled around just enough to see his assailant had thrown a right hook before even fully materialising. Kipling fell to one knee with a thud that threw heavy shockwaves through his body. He thrust his palm forward and launched the attacker back. The goon smacked against the wall with excruciating force but he did not keel over.

The situation only turned grimmer as the second of the bosses fixers landed on the scene. The first began a charge towards the detective while the second threw a gloved fist in their direction.

“Just fucking kill him already!” the second hulking man yelled.

Kipling held his hand to the floor and launched himself upwards and over the charging muscle. The second attacker's spell ripped through the first. Shreds of clothing and flesh were blown up and away from the charging man's side and arm revealing the existence of dense, heavy cybernetic plating beneath.

“Dammit, you blew half my arm off you fucking dickhead!” the injured man screamed.

“Yeah well your mum was blowing something of mine last night and it weren’t my arm. But it was just as big. Hehehe.”

The second assailant grabbed his crotch aggressively with his gloved hand.

“Fuck you. And what happened to ‘we need to beat some answers outta him?’” the first asked.

Kipling struggled to get to his feet or steady his hands long enough for a cast. As the two men argued he rummaged around in his bag for a hail mary; anything that could get him out of this tight spot or at least buy him some time.

“Fuck answers. This cunt’s done enough damage for one lifetime.” said a third disembodied voice.

A third man began to materialize as the words rang out. The runt of a man with buzzcut hair and grey suit waistcoat was the boss of the dream den - and he was pointing a pump-action shotgun right at the detective.

The boss wasted no time in pulling the trigger on the detective. The detective could do nothing as the buckshot flew across the room and perforated his body. He fell forward as blood continued to run from his injuries and soak his clothes.

The boss took a deep breath and calmly walked over to the wounded detective. Standing over Kipling, he flew into a rage and began stomping on the detective’s head.

“You don’t get to fuck with another man’s business without there being consequences!”

The boss’s infuriated words mattered little as Kipling’s consciousness had already faded beyond hearing them. The detective rapidly slipped further into oblivion with seemingly no hope of recovery. His heartbeat slogged on, getting slower and slower.

At the moment his heart stopped, Detective Kipling’s fading mind was terrorized by vision and sound. His mind filled with familiar laughter. A sick and twisted inhuman shrieking that clawed at one’s sanity. It was the last thing he had heard the first time he had died. More accurately, it had penetrated his very being in the seconds after he had died. A time in-between existence. Fractured images of rain-soaked cobblestone, stab wounds, and a cloaked figure walking away lit up in the darkness of the detective’s mind.

His eyes shot open and a sharp, deep gasp drew air into his lungs with starved vigour.