And how should I begin?

  “Good luck Gradie.” Kra glided away towards a doorframe covered with a sheer curtain that gloulsed 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 io you in the chat,” Michael said.

  “Dreamwalking?” Gradie asked, desperate to talk about something other than his own impending failure.

  “Remember a few ho, at the clubhouse, whee told you she go into a Spirits Dreamworld uninvited?” EP said dryly. Had it only been that long? It felt like ages.

  “She also enter a dreamworld straight from the Otherworld,” said Michael.

  “’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 ected 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 boung towards a doorway, her bck ce skirt floating up, stopping just short of exposing anything above mid-thigh. A shame.

  An uedly banal sound interrupted Michael and broke through the hazy air of the astrarium; A metal door opening on an eg empty space. Philip finished swinging it open and stood in the pne of grimy fluorest light that reached out from its frame.

  He was ba 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 mainteran a shopping mall or some kind of ste facility.

  “See ya in there.” He smiled at Gradie, like he doubted he would, ahrough the door. It smmed shut behind him and vanished.

  “O thing, before you hop in,” Michael said. “You’re our operative, and though you shouldn’t be getting into any exges on this job, you o know our rules of operations. First, never call any team members their real name. EP will give you code names when you tact her, which is the first thing you’ll do.”

  “How will I—”

  “Just wait. Sed, you will, under no circumstances, purposefully or actally, harm aher than our target and his defenders during the operation. Any colteral damage is uable. Is that clear?”

  Gradie hadn’t even sidered that as a possibility. All his imagined sarios of hunting their targets had involved him nding a flurry of shots ter of mass on a surprised man (who now looked like Paul) and the rest of the team being overe 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 sider the people inside real.”

  Gradie’s mio 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 nard for any life sied him, and a dark fear at the thought of the gas station girl gunned down by forces she could never uand 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 fession, and he scrambled over it befradie could ask what the other half was.

  “Third, death is better than capture, if it es to that. The spirit is bound to flesh in a Hardworld, and many of our oppos 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 be, but I’m going to give you o ce. There is every possibility of you experieng 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?”

  “Yes.” Gradie thought about taking his time, pretending to be flicted, giving the impression that he 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 st 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 tag EP. Just pull up the proje 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 pys out. Any questions?”

  “Yeah. Is everything going to be in DFW?” He almost hadn't asked, but the questio like the st nagging bit of an old argument. Michael surprised him by ughing.

  “I was w 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 experieh, 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 ges 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 t knew and had their own reasons for withholding that info. They often don’t disclose anything they don’t think we o know, or in this case ihey expect us to find out on our own. A lot of our work involves an uneasy cooperation.”

  Michael's fidence was once again tagious, and Gradie was left feeling that the euation wasn't a halluation, but a strange result of forces and processes beyond his uanding.

  “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 do that. Then just drop in like we’ve told you.”

  Another door opened o Michael, this time the batrao a motel. Inside, a carpeted hallway stretched under yellowed lights.

  “Why don’t I just go with you?” Gradie vaguely remembered Michael expining hments 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 fragmeually, but right now just do it the way you know, like we said—”

  “How do I learn to use them?”

  “With practice, you still your mind enough to ride the fragment out, but it takes time. Right now, your mind is stantly pressing outwards, even if you don’t notice it. It’s the nature of the Otherworld. In order for the fragment to bee solid enough to slip out, it must be still, so to speak, and your mind is stantly 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 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 ever get to the Hardworlds at all.”

  Gradie gnced 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 pce.

  “Oh, o thing,” Michael said. “Don’t fet to see Lucy after you get back here. She’ll o 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 ihe door did the same sm-shut and vanish trick Philip’s had, and Gradie was left alone in the darkness.

  He felt the stars watg 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 cked the trol 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 a it shake hollow beh him. Aomp and he felt a tch 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 astrarium was ejeg 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 pces to be.

  He pulled the crystal out of his pocket and the blue wetness dripped off into the bck. It opened on and and he found himself floating above the highway, rain-ged night spreading over a familiar city.

  Now that he was here, the instrus given by Michael, Lucy, even Kra’s words of assurance, seemed totally ie.

  He took out his phone, and sure enough, a notification blinked a message at him. A URL for a website called “allcityhovercrafts” and a passwradiecheginnumber8.

  All right. Time to do this.

  He told the proje to show him around. It felt like an instinow 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 proje. 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 o drop into Paul’s world!

  The proje reacted to him before the thought had fihe dream offied around him, but this time it felt wrong.

  A door smmed somewhere and the noise was ft and real. He pahe dream knowledge screamed at him in his own voice.

  Run.

  Someone was ing 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 dowairs. At the bottom, as the squeak-sm of the door shutting above echoed down the shaft, he cwed 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 haurned. 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.

  Oops. Well, at least we know he gets the job done. And now you know how to hunt souls across realities, just in case you ever find yourself in a strange world, with an open invitation to bee a Hardworlder. ime, we pick up after the Office job, and Gradie gets a glimpse of another side of the Otherworld. episode: Flesh and Spirit.