Have you ever felt someog you in your dreams?

  The t gave us little to work with, but I was able to get a lock a few days ago. Here's what I’ve scraped so far.”

  In the window-portal, Paul walked down an aisle between rows of cubicles, looking for someone. Suddenly, he khe person he was looking for was in the back office, and Gradie k too, like they were having the same dream. The vision took over his sehe team faded into the background, and their words broke apart before he heard them. There was only Paul, walking across that nightmare office, trying to get to the people who had got him caught up in this shit in the first pce.

  Before Paul got to the door, the vision ged. He was dang in a club, high oamine, grinding on some faceless woman. Another shift, and he was driving to work, very te, sun bzing at the top of the sky. His car lost its grip on the road and flew up into the air, like some mad god had entered a cheat code.

  “Got his city,” Lucy said. The vision froze, freeing Gradie from his trance. He caught enough of Lucy’s too read something in it, like an old bitterness, that gave the city a bad name.

  The window-portal vanished and a floating 3D map rotated in its pce. Subtle beams of light shot from the surface to the faces of the team members, and they began moving their hands in quick motions.

  Gradie tried a touchs zoom-in pin front of his fad the map shrunk to a sireet in the ter. It was so detailed, he would have thought it was a live camera feed if not for the plete absence of people.

  “That’s half the hassle right there,” Philip said. No dropping in and dealing with fug airports.”

  “ you get his POE from what we have?” Michael swiped his hands rapidly and searched whatever he was seeing for a sign.

  “No,” Lucy said. “He never actually makes the trip. Gonna have to get it from the inside.”

  Michael nodded. “Ok, I’ll put together the assigs once we locate him.”

  “O thing.” Kra bahe map with a flick of her wrist and brought up something else. It took a moment fradie tister what he was seeing.

  A door. Pin wood minate, simple knob. Could be in any office, back closet, or apartment in the try.

  “I’m almost certain he’s got a Doormaker.”

  “This from his dreams?” Michael sounded disappointed.

  “Yes. Repeated, unprompted, promising escape and truth.”

  “If the defense has a door, they’re probably one of the bigger corps,” said Lindsey. “Most Doormakers are on traowadays.”

  “Well, at least we know where he’s headed if he gets spooked,” said Philip.

  “Whats a door? Does it let him e back to the Otherworld?” Gradie asked.

  The team looked at him like they had fotten he was there. Kra smiled softly.

  “No. A door allows travel from one Hardworld to another. It’s a hack, you could say, ied by a very crafty Hardworlder long before your time.”

  “So, we would have to follow him through, or—”

  “No, it only works for him. It only really exists in his mind.”

  “t you just find him again. With his dreams?”

  “Good question, but it’s not that easy. The sedary Hardworld will have a pull that’s much strohan the first, as a result of the priming that makes him drawn to it in the first pce. He won't stray outside of it even into the Dreamworlds. It would be a lot harder for me to scrape anything from there, so please,”

  “Don’t let him get to it. I got you, Ma’am.” Luke nodded like it was a challenge.

  “If it's so hard to get to, why not just put him in that sed world to begin with?” Gradie asked.

  “Because no one wants to stay dropped into a Hardworld forever,” Philip said. “Whoever is guarding him presumably would like to be able t him back to the Other ohe heat dies down.”

  “Does the heat ever die down?”

  Philip smiled. “Not usually.”

  “So, is he up?” Lindsey asked.

  “My guess would be no,” said Kra. “but I t say for sure.”

  “Do we have no intel on who’s running the defe least?”

  Kra answered her, but Gradie’s mind pulled on him in a way that was being familiar. Time slowed, Kra’s voice stretched into white noise, and—

  He got up te. She arm three times. No coffee. Walked into the offipletely uncaffinated, miserable. Thursday. Missfire of the week, sputtering day. LCD ss that burhe eyes, dev vision over decades. Ping headset. Stale air and voices but no speaking. Outside, sunlight stretched its legs in a full dance, pale m tht blue noon, a brief exhale, then back down to rumbling evening e, shadows slipping from its grasp and hiding in the ers, between the keys, down the hall. The drive home, smell of office ging to him, dying on the way. Through the door into that other titled existence. Hours evaporate, sliced seds of distra and a scrambling search for purpose, now that the mold and vice were gohe bed, resisted, until “might as well”. Dark sleepless tossing, too te for any hope of a full eight hours, besides calling in on a Wednesday. Unthinkable. At st, two am—

  “No idea,” Kra said. Her voiapped out of the fog, an echo being preseion. The two parts of his memory fused just as before, the Otherworld rolling over the Real, the memory of his waking life subdued beh it, plete but totally apart. Before he k, he wasn’t even thinking about it. Left with only a sensation like being well-rested, but from a different kind of weariness.

  “But we assume it’s a serious outfit if they have a Doormaker,” Lindsey said. It was only a question on the edges.

  “Not necessarily,” Kra said.

  “I’m sure they’ll introduce themselves eventually.” Philip flicked his small espresso cup out into the bck. Liwisted towards him.

  “Be good to have an idea before that, don’t you think? Maybe prevent a repeat of—”

  “I’m sorry Lindsey. I wish I had more for you.” Kra said.

  Lindsey’s face froze in embarrassment. “No, that’s fihank you Kra.”

  “Any other s? We o drop in ASAP.” Michael’s voied in the darkness.

  “Let’s do it.” Luke smiled with more enthusiasm than Gradie had thought him capable of. The rest of the team nodded and the map colpsed into a small light and flew off into the sky, being just aar in the night.

  Suddenly, Gradie reized the starfield. The same steltions had orbited above Lucy’s home. The memory of her digging through his mind still disturbed him, aruggled to meet her eyes as she called to him.

  “Gradie,” She flicked something across the room and he caught it, then almost let it go. It was drippi. A small matte-blue crystal. The rest of the team took theirs with the same air they might accept a handgun.

  “What—”

  Lucy got ahead of him. “Memory crystal. Has all the info we have on his hardworld. It’ll help you drop in.”

  Luke held the crystal up to his fad it blinked with a dappled light, like a projector lens seen from an angle. He flickered and dimmed for a moment, like a hologram, then the light stopped a it in his pocket, now again a solid form.

  Sam studied hers like a puzzle, the light flickering in random rhythms. Gradie looked down at his, still dripping a tingling blue liquid, like Listerih aric charge, down his hand.

  “Why is it wet?”

  “They’re dissolving,” Lucy said. “In an hour they’ll be go's to keep the intel secure.”

  Gradie nodded, again avoiding those eyes by staring at the dripping crystal. He tried to guess how to use it. Sam held hers like a game boy, and Luke had looked through his like a rifle scope, but no two team members used it the same way. Lindsey pressed hers to her forehead and her eyes fshed, Celeste popped hers in her mouth and rolled it around like a hard dy while looking thoughtfully at the sky, and Philip hadn’t even touched his beyond slipping it in his pocket.

  Gradie guessed it was one of those things where only the i matters, like so mu this pce. He squeezed one half of the crystal with his fiips and the facets oher half opened and fanned out, exposing a bzing dot of sunbright light ihe hollow interior. He poi at his fad the light blinded him to everything else.

  A gentle whine like a jet engine grew in his ears, then the noise of traffid muffled stereos. He was floating above a packed highway, cars creeping by below him, brakes squeaking at the stop-and-go pace. Dark clouds swarmed in towards the e evening on the horizon, preparing for rain.

  “It defaults to a proje of st night’s weather,” Lucy said, her voice breaking the vision from a fully immersive experieo somethiween a video and a daydream. The dark astrorium returned in his peripherals.

  “But you roll it back to the day before if you o.” She was standing very close to Gradie, watg him, like she might wateone she was instrug take shots on a range. He sed the proje of the city to distract himself, zooming in on a coffee shop he’d goo st weekend. What were the ces the target was also iroplex? The clubhouse wasn’t evey miles away.

  “Essentially, I’ve distilled all the real memories from his dreams and arrahem into a proje fragment,” she tinued. “You o focus on dropping into a self in the Hardworld with those features so you link up with the team.”

  “’t I just call Michael? That’s what I did st time.”

  Michael stepped into his peripheral vision, the sliver of bd stars framing the window to the crete world. Gradie let the crystal’s vision fade away and Michael stood there glowing in the dark.

  “That time we were dropping into your Hardworld. This time you o ehe ohe target is in, which may have been ged by the defense in ways to make merging more difficult.”

  “What does that mean?” Gradie felt that fear of failure creep into his mind, c his words with anger. Here he was moments from “dropping in”, aill had only the flimsiest grasp of what the hell he was even doing.

  “The Hardworlds want to aodate your mind,” Michael said. “They will default to putting you in your own Hardworld when you drop in. You o force them to put you into the target’s world.”

  “What if I t?”

  “Then I’ll e find you,” Kra said softly. “But don’t worry. This is mainly a precaution. Your Spirit should gravitate to the right world when you focus on the proje we’ve given you. The mind fears the unknown, and will naturally run from it towards something familiar.”

  “Half this shit works best when you don’t think too hard, bro,” Luke said over his shoulder. “See ya in there.” With a wave, he stepped through a door that disappeared with a sm behind him. All around Graide, the rest of the team made simir exits, and he felt a sinkihat they were going somewhere he would be uo follow.

  Have you ever felt like someone is watg you in your dreams? Could they be hunting you across worlds? ime, Gradie takes on his first job with the team. You already know how it goes, but you guess how it starts? episode: The Office Job.