Visions in infrared

  “Cut the lights!” Sam said in his ears. Gradie threw his hand down the switches and the office went dark. He fumbled in his pockets and got out his fshlight and flicked it on the low light setting. The ft office looked altered in the red light, unstable, like it might ge or disappear at any moment. He drew his pistol a out into the hallway. A small light blinked iop er of the ceiling, and he almost shot it. A security camera.

  “Just calm down, Ok?” Sam said. “Wait. Wait a sed.”

  Gradie stood at the back door and listeo the noise slipping in through the bottom seal. Rain spped on crete and rushed out of gutter spouts. Slowly, another sound moved in. A car pulling up.

  “Shit.” He aimed at the door and backed up into the office doorway.

  “They’re parking,” Sam said. “A car at each door. No one’s getting out. Maybe they don’t know you're— shit! They're getting out.”

  He was going to have to shoot his way out. Refles of daydreams fshed in his head, but couldn’t survive in the red grainy hallway. They fizzled out as he tried to quiet and trol his breathing and remember that none of this could hurt him.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Down in the woods! Fuck! Ones getting something out of the trunk.”

  He saw an AR sweeping through the rain in his head, and he saw Philip smile at him at the ste. Son of a bitch.

  “Ok, they’re talking. Ones shining a fshlight around.”

  “Are they cops?”

  “I don’t think so. Nothing on the radio.”

  A dumb panic scampered up his bad he shihe light down the hall behind him. Just dead empty walls. Lihat had seemed so insignifit on the blueprints, now the differeween life ah.

  That reminded him.

  “Wait. The Gym.”

  “The what?”

  He went into the offid shihe light from the desk up to the ceiling. The floor pns flickered in memory.

  No. Don’t just remember, choose.

  He let the memory py again.

  The entire building had been a grocery store a decade ago, and now the only thiween him and the gym's back offices was a single wall.

  “They didn’t seal off the ceiling.” The floor pns solidified in his mind and became just another memory. A breath ter, he couldn’t tell he had done anything at all, and his pride withered uhe weight of doubt.

  A strange cousin to adrenalihed his braiepped up on the desk and pushed the foam ceiling tile up and out of the way. He holstered his pistol and bit the fshlight. Somewhere, in a distant dream or memory of a dream, another him climbed into another ceiling, and the twin Gradie’s were linked by a oion. A feeling that the world was more liquid than it seemed.

  “They’re moving to the door,” Sam said.

  He grabbing onto anything and shuffling into the ceiling before he had time to freak out. He stepped along a beam and stopped. He had stepped blindly, but the beam had been under his feet just where he . The thought that he had shuffled the universe by will alone shook his mind, made the dust taste good and the dry air sweet, but it didn’t st. He still couldn’t be sure he had done anything. From where his Spirit stood, it could all be just lud a faulty memory.

  “They’re got a fug key!” Sam said.

  He caught his breath and stepped onto a ceiling tile like a soldier stepping off a pne. He fell through with a sound of crag Styrofoam and rolled across the carpet into a file et. Red light fshed all over everything until he steadied it. A hairless abdomen popped off a poster and he almost mag-dumped it.

  “Be lod damn,” Sam said. “They’re inside.”

  He breathed in dust and bits of foam ceiling as he rolled up and stampeded for the door. The handle didn’t turn. He almost pulled his arm out of the socket. There was another blind sed of panitil he shihe light on the handle and saw the lock was engaged.

  With a minute movement pressed to ridiculousness by his gloves and the circumstances, he turhe tiny button till it clicked and pulled the door open. The backward step taken to pull the door inward felt like a step towards death.

  The gym was a long tomb where treadmills waited to return to life. Raied the roof, reminding him the shelter was temporary. When the floorpns in his memory lined up with his surroundings, he sprinted across the carpet, dodging racks and rowing maes, towards the exit at the back wall. He put his head to the door and listehere was only the sound of the rain. He killed the light and grabbed the handle.

  “Wait, did EP cut the arms?”

  EP herself answered him on the line.

  “Yes! Get the fuck out nout your fug monocle on!”

  He threw the door open and stepped out into the rain. The back lot was a right triangle of dark water and still forms, and the only light came from the distant glowing sky, until he got his NVG monocle on, and the world split in two. One of darkness, and one of silver illumination.

  Something fshed oree line, where the lot dropped away into woodnd.

  “Head for that light and ght down,” EP said.

  He moved low and fast across the wet lot. The wind rushed in his ears and the rain spped his fad streamed down his neck. Lightning fshed silently far beyond the tree line and he felt like he was running towards the edge of the earth. In the silver hrough the mohe lightning glowed like magic. For a moment, after the successes aement of the night, it felt like the Otherworld was finally breaking through.

  Suddenly, the ft bck face of the store slipped away to his right, and he saw the dark form of a parked car sitting in the alley behind the store. He watched it do nothing while the edge of the lot moved closer in the silver world seen through his left eye. Then the lights came on.

  He couldn’t tell if it was just the headlights or if they had caught him in the spotlight, but he squeezed his right eye shut and dropped into a head-down sprint towards the curb. The engine revved and tires screamed o crete. The car had seemed so far away in the dark, but now the headlights came at him so fast he had to throw himself over the curb to avoid being run over. He heard the car roar past as he dropped into the brush.

  Still blind from the sudden lights, he fell more than ran down the hill side as the car screeched to a halt somewhere above him. Something cut his fad khe NVG off his head. He rolled, hopped, slipped, swung himself around trees and broke painfully through branches. It was the same path Luke had taken him down oV, but this time he felt every bump.

  When the ground leveled out, he tried to sprint again, but could only hop around the foliage in a somewhat forward dire. Fshlight beams scattered irees and rain around him as he cwed at his chest for the monocle swinging on its nyard.

  “Get down!” EP said in his ears.

  He stopped and realized the trees had opened up onto a creek bed where Sam’s Jeep blocked off a patch of shadow in the ter of the clearing. He dropped down to the wet earth as a fshlight beam raked the front bumper on a pass and doubled back. Before it could find the jeep again, a shadow moved in front of him. There was a loud smag sound and a softened fsh just above his head. Small hot bits of metal nded on his bad legs, hissing. The spotlight shining on the front of the jeep snapped off suddenly. Somewhere up o, one of the gunmen fell into the brush. Lightning fshed and spshes of blue light lit up part of the shadow. Sam, reized only by her shape, with her face covered by NVGs and a mask, sed the hill with a suppressed 7’ AR and an IR illuminator as she backed up to the Jeep.

  “Get in the fug car!” EP yelled. He got up and scrambled to the Jeep. Before he could get the door open, gunfire cracked from the strip mall above. He swung his pistol arm bad up. All he saw was solid darkness under glowing night, until a fsh lit up a dark figure and the outline of a car. Rounds cracked in the air and disappeared into the earth and foliage, but one skipped off the roof of the Jeep. The sound of Sam’s suppressed shots was pletely lost in the echoes of gunshots and rain sounds, but Gradie saw sparks on the car and wall behind the shooter. The windows and windshield shattered, and he disappeared behind the vehicle.

  “He’s down!” EP hissed.

  Gradie threw himself into the Jeep and pulled the door shut. Sam slid into the driver’s seat, tossed the still steaming bolt open SBR into the passenger side and tore ass down the creek bed, into solid darkness. The dash lights and IR headlights were invisible to him without his NVG, and every time Sam took a sharp turn, which was about every few seds, he felt like he would be thrown out into the dark void where gunmen live.

  Streetlights broke the darkness as they came up a mud road onto ay lot and white starbursts lit up the rain above a gas station at the edge of the lot. Sam took off the NVGs and harness ahem in her p. She tugged off her mask and pulled the beanie off her head and her red hair was the only color in the world.

  “Any birds up? Am I good to go?” she said loudly to EP, then quieter, almost a whisper, she turned back to Gradie.

  “Get up here.”

  He climbed over the ter sole, getting mud everywhere and avoiding stepping oop mounted on it. He put the SBR on safe and held it between his knees and pulled his mask off.

  “No,” EP said. “The oill standing was trying to call dispat his phone, but I killed his service. They were off duty.”

  “Fug A.” Sam flicked on the headlights and drove across the lot to the street. She turned oereo and Speed by Atari Teenage Riot started up. She bounced in her seat to the beat. A few heartbeats ter they were cruising along with the rest of the Friday night traffiassuming and pletely tent.

  Have you ever felt the world flowih you, liquid and listening? ime, a woman longs for uanding, and man walks with phantoms from his past. episode, Ghosts in the Rain.