An unputdownable pulse pounding thrill ride

  The chute was a fshing tunnel with trids of light and dark that reminded Gradie of the o level in an old Sonic game. He rolled and dropped so many times he couldn’t be sure if he was slidi or head first or even in what dire. When the disorientation was plete, it spit him out in the familiar hum.

  He looked back at the building behind him, but saw no evidence of whatever hole he had popped out of, only a solid pane of opalest marble. He realized the exits could number in the millions and be anywhere iy, which reminded him he had no idea where he was.

  A s of the buzz around him gave little indication of his location, until he spotted a familiar tower shimmering up into the sky.

  Gulfstream tower. A pilr of streaming bright water as thick as a city block. Like a morphing serpent of molten gss that stretched from the deep dark uy all the to the bck. He had only seen two of them, the other being an e and peach colored sibling shooting into the sky he 6’oclock band, turning dark violet at the top.

  Inside Gulfstream tower, Spirits swam with projes of sea life and air-bubble bars the size of neighborhoods. It took yht up to the bck but terminated in a spiral eddy that portaled to a resort world called Tidepool or something. He had ridden it o dropped out half. It had been awkward taking it alone, especially with all the couples. Maybe one day he’d ask Celeste if she—

  “Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be the ultimate killer? An apex predator at the top of yame? And what if the very anization that created you, the try you loved, the nation you swore to protect, took everything you hold dear, in the blink of an eye?”

  The voice hit him before he had a ce to put his defenses up. It had a direal quality and he found the source with an irritated flick of his eyes, like log the side mirror beaming you with reflected sunlight from across a parking lot.

  It was a craft shaped like a bck hawk helicopter flyiers above a city street where a bomb had just gone off, the explosion frozen in time. The bdes spun dramatically in slow motion, and a masked man hung out the side, holding a pornstar-bodied woman by the hand as she hung down towards the fiery death ball, tears in her eyes, a look of pure desperation and need, back arched in an anatomically improbable way, tits and ass poked out iher dire like there was a sed unseen explosion inside her spinal n propelling them away from her.

  “In ‘Wounded Game’, you are a grieving father, a tortured widow, an enemy of the state, and a Navy Seal, with nothing to lose, and no more red tape to hold you back. Your bloody quest for revenge will take you to—”

  Gradie had gotten really good at flying. The few times Philip had put a pause on his training, or the Twins had told him to e ba a few hours, he had taken to the skies, timing his trip around the ball, and looking for any dots or silhouettes that seemed to be moving faster than he was, then trying to catch them.

  So, it took him a little less than a sed to leave the Allcity behind and break up out of the blue, and the echo of the movie announcer voice was still buzzing around in his ear al when the silence of the bck embraced him.

  It had been a while since he had been this far up. He remembered how mesmerizing it was just to watch. To be reminded of the scale of this world, at least a part of it. The city sparkled, the suburbs and archetypical zones hummed in their respective frequehe mall jittered nervously, the beaches bloomed like a prolonged yawn. He had explored so much of it from a distance, but never anything but Rays. Now, with Michael’s order to fly away from it all, he felt a sudden desire to dive into it, to explore everything and take up every offer. The only thing that stopped him was the people. Every part of it felt full of other Spirits, watg and wanting, and he realized it was this, more than anything else, that had kept him from it.

  A craft fshed through the sky towards the Allworld, blended into the shifting colors of the surface, and was gone. All around him, others shot out to the bck at impossible speeds, like beads of light streaming across some invisible gss pane floating in front of his face.

  He looked out to the darkness. Besides the small dots of light, it was the kind of sky that hung over fluorest lit parking lots in the middle of the night. So bck he felt like it was about to drip. Other crafts disappeared into it like they had broken its liquid surface. Where were they going? What was out there? Michael had mentioned gameworlds aworlds. Would they be any less ay indug than the ball? What if he found something else? Was there still danger in this pce, after the Demons had gone?

  Sarios pyed out in his head. Flying through the bck, finding worlds and creations beyond the restris of reality, massive fortresses as plucked from Michaels story, where they had been tinged in an elegance absent from the Allworld. He saw himself flying past them, expl them, and if anyone looked his way or so much as asked his name, getting in his craft and—

  ht.

  The Allworld rolled bato view, as if a gravity was turning him around to face it. The sensation was uling, especially given his sudden iion to make a craft, which felt, somehow, like a private thing. Mixing his mind with the material of this pce, like speaking of somethi, might expose elements of his mind he had fot he was hiding. The speaking signs and searg voices had the same kind of irritation. An intrusion he had never gotteo.

  Floating in front of it all, he felt exposed, a trast to his fantasies of flying around the worlds untouchable in his craft.

  His Spirit precluded his desire, and the Allworld shrunk to half size as he flew away from it, and he felt something ued.

  Weariness. Like a mental fatigue from staring at one word too long. Flying in the bck, he realized, was not without effort. Zipping across the Allworld had felt like falling by parison. Must be arick of the Principalities and Schema of the pce, to make flying around the ball as easy as summoning a door.

  The weariness blended into an anger, a rage at beiricted, trapped.

  All right. I’ll make the fastest fug craft anyone’s ever seen.

  His anger, unfortunately, failed to find a release. He had no idea how to even begin making one.

  Now what had Michael said wheold him he didn’t know how to make a craft?

  “Fly up, past the blue, where the Pris go, and use your mind.”

  Awesome, very helpful.

  His frustration with Michael brought on memories of the rooftop and the gun that had e without thinking.

  He closed his eyes and imagined a craft. It was a vague shape at first, like all day dream things. He zeroed in oails, and the craft took them on seamlessly. Bck. Polished. All angles like a stealth bomber. It was like he was carving it out of the void. He opened his eyes.

  It was there, just as he had seen it, but now it was almost invisible in the bck. When he had imagi, he hadn’t had to worry about whether or not he could see it. He k was there. Now he had to move to position himself with the Allworld behind it so he wouldn’t lose sight of it. As he moved, he noticed something was off. He reached out and put his hand on it.

  It was too small, and it crumbled like tinsel wheouched it. He realized that as he had reached out for it, the thought that it might be the wrong size, or the wrong material, had popped into his head, and he hadnt had time to dispel it.

  So that’s how it was. You had to hold the idea of something in your mind without any doubt or any other ideas about what it might be like. It took focus. Like effeg your dreams, but

  He tried again. Same shape, same color, but this time he kept his eyes open. The fear of it being small and brittle fshed ba his head, and it was small and brittle again, but he kept his focus and it grew until it was the size of a semi. He touched it again and it crumpled where his fingers brushed. He imagi healing and it did. He thought of marble half a foot thid touched it again. It was smooth and cold and held its form.

  He took another noh, backed up and looked at it.

  Now what? He had to get i. Right now, he knew, it was a solid piearble. He ope up, slid bae of the pnes seamlessly into itself. Darkness. He imagined what the interior should look like, held the visage in his mind, and turned on a light.

  Inside was an oblong room about the size of his bedroom, a rge leather bench seat at the front in front of a panel of ss and keypads, more bench seats along the walls, with shelves and ets set into the benches.

  He went inside. He told himself that the walls could bee transparent at will, and made the ceiling vanish. He looked around and saw that it was far more real aailed than it had been inside his head, but nothing was out of pce, as if his subscious had filled in the gaps when he wasn’t looking.

  He sat in the captain’s chair and looked out the front, telling the rest of the walls to bee opaque again. Taking hold of the single joystick, he tried to turn it out to space.

  It moved like it weighed a thousand pounds aed sluggishly to his ands, if at all. Once he finally wheeled it around and had it fag away from the ball, it kept drifting aruggled to aim it back at the star he had arbitrarily chosen as his destination.

  Finally, he got it aimed, and told it to move. It didn’t.

  “Fuck!”

  A loud roar shook his craft and knocked him out of the seat before he had time tister what it was. A foghorn, the kind that would be used by an old steamship in the foggy waters of an old bd white horror movie, but loud enough to shake empty space.

  He looked around and saw nothing but bess.

  Oh.

  He focused again, and imagihe top of the crystal hull turning transparent, and it did, just in time to see The massive ship began to pass over him.

  The bow looked like a sci fi city in the shape of a ical pyramid. It’s main body was drical and covered in ahat gave a hint at its size by the slowness of the white capped waves that rolled around it. There were isnds and buildings dotting the surfad it was lit from below, as if the core of the craft was a trated rod of summer.

  It stopped suddenly and something shot out of the pyramid and in an instant was floating in front of Gradie. A solid metal cube twice as long as his craft. A door opened up in the face closest to him and three figures were standing there, framed ile indht that felt like it came from a real world living room and cshed with the darkness of everything else.

  The Afterlife has been curated for your pleasure, at a low, low, priext time, catch a ride to some high quality time wasting. episode, Invite.