Scratch a liar

  They had dropped out of the office bato Lucy’s astrarium, but there was no floating window or rotating map this time.

  Michael stood before the half-circle of astral assassins and cpped his hands. His white robes, like a kimono and haori designed for an ielr age, glowed as if he rojeg from a midday desert.

  “All right, before we get to the briefing, I just want to go over some structural ges.”

  He motioowards Philip, palm up, in a gesture Gradie found formal and well-practiced.

  “Philip will now be ag as Captain.”

  “Woohoo! Yay Philip!” Sam shouted and cpped.

  “I quit,” Luke said with a smile.

  “What’s a captain?” Celeste asked.

  “He’ll be in charge of operations,” Michael said. “Coordinating attas, tactics, and moment to moment decisions in the field.”

  “Uh,” said Sam.

  “And if we disagree with his judgments?” Lindsey said, Gradie felt, in an as ral a tone as she could muster.

  “Then you’ll tell me immediately,” Philip said, for ohout even a traockery or pride.

  “I’ve been around the block a few times,” he tinued, some of his old edge returning. “Though I waste my breath saying it again. And I know that iron rulings and deaf ears bring failed jobs. If I’ve been too bristled as aor, don’t hold it against me as a Captain. I knoerator’s job is to questiohing, and a leader’s job is to have all the answers.”

  Lindsey looked at him in a way that, essentially, let the words “we’ll see” bleed out of her eyeballs.

  “So, we call him instead of EP, or—” Sam frowned in a way that Gradie found uedly endearing.

  “It means I’ll tell you where to go and what to do,” Philip said.

  “Oh like you do already?” Sam said with a sneer. Lindsey g Michael, who started up again.

  “Also, Gradie will now be assigo the operations team, supp Sam.”

  “Oh, what?” Sam said.

  “He’ll be riding with you as ara gun. Mainly to observe—”

  “So, I’m like her bodyguard?” Gradie said.

  “Ha!” Sam ughed at the sky and Luke snickered. Philip raised his eyebrows at Gradie like he was a six-year-old who said he could fly.

  “No, you are to observe and engage only if directed,” Michael said. “Think of this as your probationary period.” Michael’s use of familiar corporate terminology struck a sore spot in Gradie. He did his best to nod and stare bnkly.

  We’ll see about that. The st time I was supposed to observe, I took the target solo.

  “ we get him a “trainee” ag?” Sam said.

  A door-sized slice of the bck swung open a few yards from the team’s half-circle huddle and Kra and Lucy walked in. A hallway of vender-veined white marble and mid-m sunlight stretched behind them into an atrium of pilrs and dense garden foliage. Water rushed somewhere, and Gradie smelled inse and sea air. Like all realms he had been to, it felt like it was made of someone, and even in the brief glimpse before the door shut, he k was Kra.

  “All right boys and girls, we’re in the mohis time.” Lucy’s crimson qipao had embroidered serpentine dragons that flew slowly across the fabric. She stepped up o Michael and flicked a bare arm at the team. Seven shimmering crystals floated out of her hand towards them. Gradie caught his, and hat it felt even more electrified tha one.

  “God damn, what are we missing?” Philip said, tossing the crystal in his hand.

  “Not much,” said Lucy. “This one’s been dropped in straight up. No Spiritualist.”

  The team made various sounds that indicated a positive relief. Gradie felt once again like the new guy, but asked anyway.

  “What’s a—”

  “Spiritualists drop Spirits into the Hardworlds,” Philip said. “Like a trap door, but more hands-on. Put them into selfs that have almost nothing in on with the Spirit’s Real. Makes them harder to track. Also known as ers.”

  “Why didn’t they use ohen?”

  “Could have been a rush job.”

  “Or they’ve got secrets,” Kra said. “Spiritualists need access to your entire memory to work effectively. Which means by using one, yiving them everything they o track you indefinitely. It’s why their vows are important.”

  “Vows?” Gradie said.

  “Yes, Vows,” said Philip. “Raise their right hand, some Keeper standing by, and all that shit. So, moving on—”

  “Is that why yall took my memories? So you track me?” Gradie asked.

  “One of the reasons,” Lucy purred. An old annoyance clearly fring up.

  “What are the others?”

  “None of yod damned business,” Philip said. “Moving on!”

  “So we’ve got a full read on the guy,” Lucy tinued “But this time, the target isn’t the target.”

  She flipped a up into the air with a metallic sound that echoed in the void. It fluttered above their heads, then hung iill spinning, and expanded until it was rge enough fradie to read the year. A grimy Washington quarter with the eagle reverse. It was the most ridiculous thing Gradie had seen iherworld yet, and he looked around with a ugh bubbling up on his face.

  The rest of the team wore expressions of dead seriousness. Lindsey and Philip looked like they had just learhe target was going to be Godzil or something.

  “God dammit,” Philip muttered to himself, apparently fetting his new leadership role.

  “So, bad news first,” Kra said gently. “The target is a polytope. It’s pushed as a fairly muem, and the t wants it found aurned immediately. Any dey on our part will result in them sending in a reserve team, which of course would mean a failure and no payoff.”

  “Fug beautiful,” Philip muttered and looked at Michael like he had dumped all of his cigars ioilet.

  “And we have been advised the, uh, courier, has been in about a week already.” Kra tinued.

  “Hope he doesn’t like gumballs,” Luke said. Philip not only did not ugh, he gred at Luke like he had started pissing in Michael’s cigar-filled toilet.

  “Now for the good news,” Kra said. Gradie thought of every manager he had ever known to deliver the bad news first, then temper it with the good. They had all been awful at it, but somehow Kra was so damn endearing he wao let her make him feel better.

  “There is no defeeam. The target, I mean the courier, is obviously dropped out, and we have enough intel on him to make some good assumptions about how he will act, however this goes down in the bricks.”

  “Should I skim his dreams, or do you have enough—” Celeste asked, but Kra shook her head.

  “I went walking already. You won’t get anything, unfortunately. His Dreamworlds are rown with the self and highly erratic, even for a submerged Spirit. The self is some kind of addict or worse. And there’s been some work doo beef up the defenses.”

  “Wait, someone fortified his Dreamworlds, but didn’t run him through a Spiritualist?” Philip said.

  “I will admit this is a bit of a strange job,” Kra said, with enough distarality ioo make Gradie think she was hiding something.

  “Focus on the hard facts,” Michael boomed. “This is a simple job, or a plicated one, depending on how we act. All we have to do is locate the object.”

  “Which could be anywhere,” said Lindsey softly.

  “And if the target is not handled correctly finding it may be impossible,” Michael tinued. “This will be a test of our finesse.” He smiled at the team like they were all about to break some kind of record.

  “Any questions?” Kra asked.

  “What’s a polytope?” Gradie had held onto the question so long he felt it might burn a hole in his excitement.

  “A polytope, sometimes called a tesseract, is a physical maion of an obje the Otherworld,” said Kra. “In this case, it’s a memory cache.”

  “Wait, like mem?” Gradie frowhe idea of taking anything from the Otherworld into the Hardworlds struck a bad sensation in his brain, like nausea brought on by learning about some dangerous new virus that spread via eye tact.

  “Yes. As you know, mem is fused to objects by Keepers. In this case, the courier either pushed or was suggested into believing that the memory cache would e with him into the Hardworlds.”

  “So, you take memory into the Hardworlds?”

  “Few ,” Lucy said darkly. “It’s a closely guarded art. Which tells me he probably had some help.”

  “Everything in this world responds to i and belief,” Michael said, seeing Gradie’s persistent fusion on his face. “He believes the mem is stored on that quarter, so the t is uo retrieve the mem without retrieving the quarter.”

  “What happens if we kill him and bring him back to the Other? ’t they just make him believe the memory is here now?”

  “No. The process of infusing mem into an object only be undone by a Keeper with the obje hand. It would be like trying to unmake an obje the Otherworld you couldn’t even see.”

  “Once you have the quarter in your possession,” Lucy tinued. “You’ll simply o drop into the dreamworlds with the expectation that it will e with you. Theurn as normal. At that point it will behave like any other item iher.” Lucy spoke like she was trying to vince Gradie of something he might find difficult to believe. The cept felt like something made of air and shadows in his head, but he nodded and looked away from her neon gaze.

  “Any other questions?” Kra asked again. Sam raised her hand.

  “So if there’s no defense, are we running like just pistols or—”

  “Hell no,” Philip snapped. “Treat every job like there’s an army running defense, no matter what the intel says. Or learn that lesson the hard way.”

  “I’m assuming the t still wants the courier dropped out?” Lindsey said.

  “Yes, after you’ve located the quarter,” Kra said.

  There was a silence. Some of the team members had already started reviewing the mem crystals.

  “All right then, see you all out there,” Michael said.

  The team started going through doors and murmuring amongst themselves. This time, Gradie watched them without fear of bei behind. The training had dos job. This time, he felt ready to take on the world. Any world.

  “Gradie, I assume yoing to the Vault,” Michael said, suddenly o him.

  “Yeah.”

  “After this job, get with the twins a up your home realm, so you access the vault without going to the HQ. Even if you don’t care for the Otherworld right now, you o start putting down roots. Whatever else you think of it, the Otherworld is the protector of the Spirit, and you o carve out a piece of it for yourself.”

  Gradie nodded and wondered what his own dreamhouse might look like. It was aig thought. Lucy’s bck house ae’s beach resort home had felt as severed from the Allworld as the Vault did. It might be o have somewhere to go where the signs didn’t scream at him and the Twins weren’t watg.

  A voice jumped out of memory.

  Seek the Spirit! Seek the edge!

  “Oh, and this time, yoing to have to find the way back yourself,” Michael said. “You should have seen enough of other's Dreamworlds to navigate your own.”

  Gradie nodded again, but the memory of that cold tunnel and whispering voice made his hair stand on end, somehow, even in this world beyond flesh.

  “Good. Let’s get to work.” Michael spped him on the shoulder and smiled like they were about to steal a million dolrs, then turned and stepped through a dingy back door into a long hotel hallway. The sm echoed long after the door had disappeared.

  Gradie stood alone in the dark starlit circle ahe excitement pulse through him.

  This was it. No fumbling over his self or shooting chalk rounds this time. This time, he would be in trol. This time, he would move through that familiar world of crete and gravity and flesh and fear, not as a piece of it, but as a visitor. An awakened spirit. Walking oer of the world while others swam below.

  A Hardworlder.

  He squeezed the crystal in his fist and flicked open the door to the vault with a wave of his hand.

  Epilogue

  “I don’t like the ramifications of this.”

  “You just say that you’re scared. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “And I don’t think you uand the ramifications, hence your fidence—”

  “I am never fident. I have seen enough to know that the highest god and the lowest spirit have about the same level of cirvoyancy. I find my peace, what you mistake as fidence, in the uainty of—”

  “I’m not ied in your fug philosophy. I’m trying to make you aware of something, because good allies are a luxury in our line, and I’d like to see you—”

  “Well then, out with it. We don’t have much time, as you—”

  “All right, all right. Listen, this project isn’t as isoted as they would have us believe. Uand?”

  “I uand that nothing is isoted in this—”

  “Oh Jesus Christ, Listen! I’m seeing yers of abstra and partmentalization magnitudes higher than I’ve ever seen them—”

  “Aren’t you always bitg and moaning about the ck of—”

  “Yes, which is exactly why this is all standing out to me. This kind of obfuscation—”

  “Cut the corporate jargon, dear god. What, do you believe, are they hiding?”

  “I don’t know, but—”

  “You are a tedious asshole, and I have to—”

  “Look! I know you! We’re not like them, her of us—”

  “Don’t fug—”

  “The uys want to be part of it. The legends. The war stories. Even the fug skimmers and keepers down in the halls, they all want—”

  “I have to go. This has been—"

  “But you don’t, and I don’t. So what I’m saying to you is be on the lookout for a, because the kind of shit I’m seeis Spirits put away. You know what I do in this pany, what I have access to. I’m telling you, this is a ripple, and whatever stirred it up smells like thirteen years ago. Maybe evey years ago. You uand?”

  “—”

  “I know it sounds—”

  “It sounds like you are projeg. You are the one who wants to be part of something big and important, so you see it closing in on you. It’s not. You are at the ter of nothing. You are a quintessentially peripheral person. You—”

  “Fuck yourself then. And if you tell anyoalked about this, I’ll stash the full mem of the Alton job. You know I have it.”

  “I know that if you threaten me again I—. Hello? Delusional little twat.”

  The e was severed, and a third party stored the mem of the versation away, in a rather peripheral se of the archive.

  13 years ago, an angel, fell...

  Thank you for reading book 2 of Manda - Volume 1: Hardworlder. Now take a breath, a ready. Book 3 starts immediately, and it’s another wild ride in the Hardworlds. episode, The Bounty, Chapter 1: Cooper.