Home is where the guns are

  The downtown skyline slid across the distant horizon as they drove over the curving ramp. Clouds swirled in the wide open sky above, trying to bind into a storm, and a green bowl of fluttering grass cradling the interge rolled slowly far below them. It felt like flying.

  Another slice of crete grey rushed over them as their ramp dropped towards the dusty world of ten-ne highways and access roads and gas stations, and the glowing sky with its humming horizon fell backward into memradie let the iia of the turn press him into the door, and a question slipped out of the sensation.

  “Who’s feeling this? Who’s looking at the highway, the sprawl, the sky? Is it my Self, or my Spirit? Is my Spirit now separate from—”

  He hesitated to call the him that lived in the Real ‘himself, not just because the word self was now attached to these other doppelgangers he drove like stolen cars, but because that him felt more distant thahe Otherworld.

  Unlike his awakening in the office job, his disect from this reality wasn’t a sudden jolt that brought crity, but a revetion drawn out maddeningly into a fragile sensation, like being aware of the ce of his owhing and feeling he might suddenly be uo do it automatically. Below him, he sehe self, waiting to take him if he fell, stretched out like a pin of quiet sand.

  “You all right dude? Don’t drop out on me.” Sam’s voice brought him out of the trance. He saw her iherworld, in the Clubhouse, and here o him, and his universes aligned biterally, with those she inhabited on one side, and the Real oher, distant and hazy.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Just enjoying living in a world where I never have tain.”

  “Yonna be doing some work tonight buddy. Don’t get too fy.”

  The GPS told them te onto the access road and Sam tossed her empty at his feet. EP had sent them the address of a safe house where they would hide out till nightfall. A parade of dirty fantasies all proceeding naturally from Gradie being shut in with Sam for the evening had rattled his brains food portion of the car ride, but they had all slipped out quietly to make room for the big hulking elephant in the brain; Gradie was nervous about tonight’s raid.

  He had finally got his panic beaten down to just a vague unease by reminding himself where he was.

  I’m in another dimension, another universe, pag a pistol, riding around in an armored car with a hot tom-boy assassin, and tonight I’m gonna break into my target’s work and look for something that Spirits from another world are killing to get their hands on. And if I die, I’ll just pop bato the world of limitless imagination and go have a drink at the dance club ti. I’m going to have fun, I’m gonna shoot back, and It’s going to be fug amazing.

  Then the depersonalization atop the ramp had shaken his fragile fidence. Maybe he wasn’t as prepared as he had led Michael to believe.

  “I’ve got the floor pns and cameras for the POE loaded up on the PC upstairs, so when you get there start studying them.” EP’s voice, sexy even in its gruff professionalism (or even more so because of it?) crashed his reverie and the word ‘study’ got lodged somewhere he couldn’t think it out of. Before he could get back to the good thoughts, they were slowing into a turn up a suburban driveway.

  The house was a familiar two-story brick box with bckout sor ss on the windows and a front wn you could hop over. The only thing that made it stand out among the other homes was a ck of wood paneling, as if it had siphohe brick from all the other houses and they had to make do.

  The garage door rose slowly, revealing walls lined with ets and cases that had the same look as the ones in Philip’s ste unit. They stepped out into the chemical-smelling garage as the smooth armor ptes at the back of the garage door slid into pd the st slice of sun-warmed suburbs disappeared. It felt like standing in a bomb shelter.

  After the ammo cases and boxes marked “explosive’ in the undry room, the kit was mostly unassuming, besides the brushed steel and bullet-resistant gss of the back door. Sam set her bag on one of the seats in the breakfast nook and started up a massive espresso mae on the ter. It looked like a piece of hospital equipment from the eighties with a bowl of whole beans stu top. A memory ss from the sleeping subterranean of his self. La Marzocco GS3. Attached were the spindly whisps of a meeting at an associate’s house, the cautious texture of his portfolio (a cultish devotion to the index), the self-assured tone of his voice, and the rising question; “If you’re so god damn satisfied with your returns, then why did you ask me for a sult?” and the memory of the answer, revealing itself over the course of an hour. “No, I don’t have any insider knowledge of some uni you short.”

  “You want one, or you just looking?”

  Sam’s void loht him back. The Gradie that had moved from trading shits to hedging with options and worried about the Monday ahead dropped back down into the soft sand of the Self.

  God she’s cute.

  “Yeah, you do a ft white?” he asked.

  “Boy, I don’t think you know what a ft white is, but I’m gonna show you.”

  It erfect. He drank half of it while she sat in front of the massive wall mouV in the sleek furnished living room. She had a Ptroller in her hand and was scrolling through the game library.

  “The pns are on the puter in the upstairs bedroom,” EP said in his ears. Sam looked at him and smiled.

  “Have fun.”

  The menu theme for Rainbow Six Siege chased him up the stairs. There was a game room with a pool table, covered in gear. Both windows had low wide shelves in front of them. One of the three doors stood open and a regle of gently carpeted room lit by softened sunlight beed him inside.

  The floor pns, satellite views, folders, and other dots were arranged ly across two monitors on a desk against the wall. Besides a twin bed in the er, there was only another low shelf, this one just wide enough to span the window. His steps bounced ohick carpet as he moved to the window. The drawer didn’t pull out and he remembered they filled these with sand. There was an M27 leaned against the wall with a shoebox full of magazines o it.

  He felt it in his hands, the recoil in his shoulder. Brass cttered against the wall as he fired out the window at faceless assassins advang across the wn, their rounds thunking in the brick walls and crag into the sand behind the drawers. He crouched down, reloaded, and was letting out a full auto mag dump when EP cut his daydream short.

  “Are you gonna just stand there all day?”

  “Do you ever stop watg me?”

  “Oh! Cause I have a crush on yht? That’s the joke? Not that you’re standing there drooling all over yourself?” EP’s voice dripped acid and he was halfway back to the desk when she finished.

  “All right. What am I supposed to be looking at here?” The floor pns were meaningless boxes and the gallery of photos, taken from the phones of anyone who had snapped a photo ihe store in the past few months, didn’t point towards a hiding pce for a magical quarter.

  “Know the yout, know where the exits are, and know where you o search. Ahe dot. I already did most of the work for you.” She chirped off the line.

  Gradie spent the few hours looking over the images, reading EP’s write-up of the job, (where she thought the ight be, what to sear what order, best escape routes if the cops came,) and falling into daydreams of te night shootouts, most involving a swarm of well-armed but hive-minded gunmen desding oore, being dropped in twos and threes by Gradie’s supernaturally accurate fire, culminating in a high speed drive off into the night with Sam at the wheel, staring at him ihe st fantasies ended in a romantic downpour as the rain fell on the window at the edge of the room.

  After the huh review of the files, the minutes spread torturously and his daydreams dried into still colges. He ged tabs mindlessly and something iion made dle charts and spreadsheets fsh on the s. The months and years spent by that other him trag volume aiment and all the highs and lows that came with it spread below him suddenly like a great open space he was floating over.

  He looked away from the s and found a ed Smith and Wesson 5906 set o the mouse pad, refleg the monitor in bright lines. Its twin fired at Michael on the rooftop iherworld and that other person fell away as if banished, but the feeling of office work remaihe dual monitors showed, in his peripherals, the programs and notes from his work in the Real. The intrusion was repulsive. He stood up and walked out of the room.

  “Zoey, how much time till we leave?”

  Rainfall roared into the now dark game room and lightning fshed neon blue in the windows. Digital gunfire and studio screams bounced up the stairs. He rested his hand on the pistol holstered on his hip.

  From out of the darkness, it came to him. Just as it had poured out of the ndscape that day at the clubhouse. He reized it as the magism he had felt looking at Sam ie, the energy that had carried him away from his desk and down into the tunnels in the office job, and the exhiration of the falling and the kill.

  What Lindsey had called the Pull. He focused on it, hoping that if he itted the feeling to memory, he could summon it at will.

  Whatever the night brings, I take it. This is my world now.

  EP chimed on. “We got lucky with the rain. Tape came down about ten minutes ago. Be out the door in half an hour.”

  “Got it,” Sam said in double, first crystal clear in his ears, and a muffled stairwell-shaped echo an instant after.

  Ihroom, Gradie found a Benelli M4 leaned against the toilet, an RPK 16 with a 14-inch barrel on a pile of ammo ihtub, and, while washing his hands, a Glock 17 by the soap. His mind drifted to fantasies again, but now with the job close at hand, they had an edge he wasn’t in trol of.

  The roar of gu the strip mall echoed at half-strength in his head. The idea of getting into a gunfight here, in a house that so resembled all the houses he’d ever visited or lived in, made his heart beat in a strong upward dire, as if it could lift him into the pne of reality where the guns had already e alive. In a moment of absent-minded panic, he looked out the window.

  Nothing but dark outlines of wns and cars, struck out for a moment in bright fragments by a silent fsh of lightning.

  Halfway dowairs, he suddenly felt that he was the only person in the house. Every room stretched dark ay in his mind like things revealed by some threatening force, and he almost missed a step. Every bullet in every g in every magazine in the house felt poi him. Just a mass of flesh on a staircase waiting to hurt.

  He took the st steps two at a time and wheur the bottom, Sam’s face floated in TV light in the living room. She looked over at him, eyes glowing like moonstones. Nothing but pure curiosity in them. A thing to be protected, just as exposed as he was. Stepping into the dark living room, the fear remained, a thing to be endured.

  “You ready? You weren’t just up there beating it were you?”

  “No, I like to go into these things fully loaded.”

  “Nice.” She wi him ahe troller oable and her immobile avatar got gunned down by a figure bunny hopping across the s. I, they got two water bottles out of the fridge. Gradie noticed a Jeri in the door shelf and five frag grenades in the crisper. Sam took her bag with her into the garage.

  “Are we ing back here afterwards?” Gradie asked.

  “No. Never want to go to the same pce twi one day, at the least.” She set her bag in the back seat and opened up one of the shelves.

  “So, what? Another safe house?”

  “Ohing at a time. Here.” She passed him a pte carrier, a soft armor low profile kind the twins had cooked up, and put the ptes on a small table. He took his jacket off and started putting them on.

  “Shouldn’t we have a p mind?”

  “No, because we might end up trying to lose the cops and wind up oher side of town anyway,” Sam said.

  “Or one of you might get shot and we’ll need a pce with a sterile room.” EP came in suddenly.

  “How many you think are gonhere?” Gradie asked.

  “Hopefully zero. If any show up, run.” She clicked off the line.

  Sam chambered a round into something and shut the passenger door. She came around to the driver's side door with a pistol in her hand, a subpact Beretta PX4 Storm with the stealth decockers. She put it in her coat pocket and got in the jeep.

  “Get in the back.” There was no taunting in her voice this time and Gradie got in without a word. He saw the stock of a ohe edge of the passenger seat. The garage light went out as the door went up and Sam’s face was lit up like an angel as she watched a rearview camera in the dash.

  Gradie looked out the back window. A solid sheet of rain. The streetlights floating in clouds of chaos. They backed out and the downpour took over the windows and everything was water until Sam flipped on the front and rear wipers, then it was like moving through a tunnel.

  Sam flipped oereo and Juno by ASC gave the entire ride ara otherworldly feel, but it was the reality of the situation that had Gradie’s heart beating out of his chest.

  Will Gradie's fantasies csh with "reality"? ime, a professional at work in a dark stormy night. episode, April Showers.