A proje from an unseen dimension

  After at least ten rounds sparked off the cars and a few red-hot tracers scraped the side of the beetle with no effect, EP was vihe gas had been full of water. Clever, and it had almost worked. If Cooper had been half a sed slower with the door, it might have been game over.

  She pushed the thoughts out of her head, ahe map bee the world. She khe battlefield by heart but sed the map anyway, drawing lines of sight from the PKM’s position to everywhere else. One of her camera drones watched Lindsey, lying in wait o a big mound of fill dirt, looking like an android desigo kill, all bck leather and gual and full-face helmet.

  She stared in the dire of the PKM, sed by the dirt mound, and ched the grip on her ACE every time a round cracked anywhere.

  “I’m moving on the gunner,” she hissed. EP tabbed onto her line frantically.

  “Wait, I’m trying to put—”

  “You got one minute!” Lindsey hissed.

  “Fine!” EP said. “Joe, Max, I need you to suppress the MG!”

  “Uh, how—” Luke started, between bursts.

  “Move West, keep low, get up on one of the buildings or something. Ill tag one for you. Max—”

  “I’ll be in position, just call it.” Calmly, in an ‘oh these kids’ tone.

  Lindsey scraped the ground with her boot and exhaled like a bull. EP would bet her cut of the payout that she was ting down the 60 seds in her head.

  “Moving out!” Luke shouted, and dashed around the back of the SUV.

  “What!?” Gradie yelled, firing at the interse as he disehere were at least three shooters left ireet, hidden among the windowless cars. They hadn’t approached or even shot at the Beetle since Philip had pihem down then vanished, but now that Luke was leaving him and Sam to fend for themselves...

  “I gotta sneak,” Luke said, suddenly right o him. “Just keep firing like there’s three of you!”

  He flung open the driver’s side ter door and ripped open his shirt, exposing the Velcro pat the front of his pte carrier, and spped on a full mag pouch. He ejected his mag and loaded a fresh one from the under-seat ste and cpped Gradie on the hip.

  “Keep their heads down so they don’t see me!”

  Then he was gone, vanishing behind the dumpsters o the covered parking. Between shots, Gradie heard him sprinting down the slope of Asiatic Jasmio the road oher side of the wall behind the covered parking.

  Taking Luke’s advice to heart, Gradie put aire magazio the cars he had st seen the gunman hide behind. As he ejected the empty mag onto the crete and pulled a fresh one from his belt pouch, he felt the pouch haless on his hip. Last mag. He would have to grab another pouch out of the—

  “An! You’ve still got two on your left somewhere!” EP said in his ears, like she had reminded him his fly was uhen snapped off the line.

  Gradie had spent what felt like hours engaging the guys ireet since Philip had ehe PKM and had pletely fotten Michael had warned him of the two guys going around. Now, down to his st mag, with all his cover between him and the street, and his body exposed to the face of the office building, a chill ran up his bad screwed his jaw closed.

  The office was made up of two small brick buildings with a walkway betweehe building closer to the bridge was shaped like three boxes staggered in a zigzag, and the one closer to Gradie and the SUV ia’s long end fag the dead-end alley-street Luke had just disappeared down.

  A window at the far end of the zig-zag building, shaded by a tiny spindly oak tree, dropped like a waterfall and a muzzle fshed in the dark as the distinctive report of an AK echoed i and rounds hit the back window of the SUV inches away from Gradie’s face.

  “Right!” he yelled, and dropped back behind the driver's side fnk of the SUV and tried to get a bead into the window. “The building!”

  Sam’s gun rang out again but the fire from the window didn’t stop.

  “Keep firing god dammit!” She yelled as the fire from the street rose. Gradie realized, siingly, that if the gunman figured out they were down a shooter, they would be in serious trouble. He snapped his rifle up to his shoulder and started to e back around the rear of the SUV. As he did, he saw his refle in the windoulled up over his face, bck ballistigsses refleg a ed world, X95 gliding like an arrow, suppressor still smoking.

  “This isn’t real. That’s not me.”

  His Self had been too preoccupied with the fire fight, too ser-focused on the gunsight and his practiced movements, to give the Spirit much trouble, until Gradie took cover to reload. It had created a strange diy of experiences, a dual-sided orientation of reality that had pushed Gradie to spend as much time up and firing as possible, at least then fag off against enemies he could see and fight.

  When behind cover, while reloading or repositioning, the Self had leaped up and tackled him, every time, only falling silent when Gradie threw them both into the crucible of gun fire.

  But now, as he was just two steps from getting bato the fight, the Self made a final mad charge, and the two Gradies met in flict.

  The Self’s ons were simple. Fears, memories of its own simple life, now being ripped to shreds, and the ft dry knowledge that this was illegal, and dangerous, and would hunt him for the rest of his life, and above all, was absolutely pointless.

  The Spirit responded, and Gradie saw the Allcity slide beh him, Michael in his craft, the twins w their magic, Sam looking at him across the Astrarium, EP gring at him in Michael’s car, Lucy’s impossible eyes disseg his secrets, and a thousand radies in the clubhouse, all sacrifig their existence for this moment, all giving real blood sweat and tears to learn lessons Philip had driven, somehow, into the fabric of his soul. And finally, a million lightyears away, he saw himself, in a small apartment, watg another Saturday burn by, safe, untouchable, immobile.

  “Are you sure this is what you want?” Lucy had asked him, and his soul had answered, his Spirit, the real him, and now, it spoke to the Self, reminded him that all he had ever wanted was to step beyond the world he ko find a real kind of magic, to believe in something more, and that this was his dream, and all these other shooting fucks were just in it.

  Suddenly, the Self’s cries went quiet, and something else rose up from it, a pleading, a demanding, a promise.

  “I’ve been waiting for this all my life, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t give to have it. I’m ready to live. I’m ready to die.”

  The Self and the Spirit fused, like two tones matched in pitch, indistinguishable, their volume more than the sum of their parts, and Gradie stepped out from behind the SUV.

  The window across the lot fshed, and the air cracked. The bullets missed him just as he imagihem doing so, and he fired into the ter of the bck window, and was overe with the supernatural knowledge that he had killed the gunman.

  Half a heartbeat of euphoria ter, the AK cpped again and proved him wrong.

  “Fuck You!” He kept firing, using the fsh of the AK to find the shooter in the dark square, until something stopped him. The AK hadn’t fshed in what seemed like ages but had only been enough time for him to fire five times. The shadowy square was silent and still, another eon passed, then suddenly, the office lit up.

  Gradie almost fired reflexively, thehed relief. One of EP’s micro drones was shining a high-powered fshlight into the building. Through his sight, he saw the body of the gunman crumpled o a cubicle wall about te from the window frame. His relief was short lived.

  “That’s why y white light! Where’s the other one?” EP hissed, almost to herself, as the micro drone flicked off its light and zipped over the building toward the river. In half a sed, Gradie’s brain kicked two thoughts at him.

  Ohere was anunman somewhere close, trying to kill him. Two, the wide bck window of the regle-shaped building to his right, just fifty feet away, would be the absolute worst pce for the shooter to be.

  He was bringing his on around, with that same ‘dragging it through mosses’ feeling he had felt on the bridge, and dropping down into a low crouch, when the gss dropped out. He watched the muzzle fsh out of the window for ay, helpless, before he got his own gun around and fired. His own suppressed semi-automatic shots seemed weak against the full auto bst of the gunman’s Draco, but the attacker dropped in a heap just a few seds after the gss finished waterfalling.

  Only afterward did Gradie realize how fast it had all happened. What had felt like a slow movement had really been a quick drop down to one knee while snapping his rifle up and firing before the window was done breaking, all while rounds gnced off the SUV above his head.

  There was a moment of silence, of only his newfound Spirit Self synicity singing in the air, aiced the wind rustle a piece of the dead shooter’s shirt.

  Then the air cracked open and buzzing rounds sparked off the crete in front of him, and an instahe gunfire echoed from the street. The gunmaasted blood, or sensed an opening, or had seen their rade die.

  Gradie shot up and got behind the SUV and ged mags in a single breath, then stepped around the front end, high on adrenaline and victory.

  Have you ever felt the sweet song of soul and self, singing together? ime, Lindsey makes a leap of faith, and the fight reaches its cresdo. episode, Rise and Fall.