“What’s taking them so long? The city is tiny. You can get anywhere in ten minutes or less.”

“Easy,” Ruby said. “They probably want that guy to get us.”

“They want to recruit me.”

“Then they’re cowards.”

“Maybe,” Dyna said. They hadn’t exactly felt like cowards over the phone, even explaining several things about the Hatman without too much prompting. They had even asked where he was the first time around, presumably with the intention of going after him. So when Dyna had called them back and told them where the Hatman was, and they said they would be on their way, she hadn’t really doubted it.

A quick flick of her eyes to the clock on the wall made her scowl. Twenty minutes? They should have been here ten minutes ago.

“Hatman still outside?”

“Hasn’t moved. What’s he waiting for?”

“Don’t tempt it. But… there are more people here. Maybe he’s scanning the entire building or whatever.”

“What if he finds a better target than this guy?” Ruby said, pointing her thumb at the bed over her shoulder. The PACU had a few chairs. Apparently, while they didn’t really want people in the room who weren’t patients or staff, it was common enough that they had seats ready for people wanting to stick by their loved ones’ sides.

Dyna pressed her lips together, looking from Matt to the other patient in the room then to the nurse. “I don’t think we can help that. If we try to evacuate the place… well, people will probably die just from the hospital suspending their work. Then the Hatman might nab someone in the chaos anyway. We need to get Matt out of here and hope he is still after him.”

“He’s too close to the car. If the hats don’t work…”

“I know.”

Dyna’s foot tapped against the floor as she stared at her phone, wondering if she should call Tartarus back again to find out where they were. Or perhaps Walter again. He was aware of the situation, but had little advice beyond their plan being sound enough for what it was. Calling him would be little more than a comfort move. He would surely call first if he had any new information or updates regarding phase-wandering entities.

Ruby disturbed the silence with a short yet sharp intake of breath. “Well, we’re out of time.”

“What do you mean?”

She flipped her phone over, showing off a certain security feed. The same hallway they had left behind when leaving the sterilization room. She barely got a glimpse of someone rushing into one of the rooms before the hallway was empty once more.

“I’d give us five minutes before the technician manages to explain the situation and they call the police,” Ruby whispered. “Maybe five more minutes before we’re under siege.”

“So it’s either police or the Hatman…”

“If we’re jailed, Walter will be able to get us out, but he won’t be happy.”

“Strangely enough,” Dyna said with a faint sigh. “I’m more worried about the Hatman. If we get jailed, I doubt bars will save us from him. And we won’t be able to save Matt.”

“Total mission failure.” Ruby clenched a fist. “Unacceptable. We have to go now.”

Matt was still unconscious. Dyna wasn’t sure how long that was going to last, but he couldn’t walk even if he was awake. “They aren’t going to let us just wheel him out of here.”

“They aren’t going to have a choice,” Ruby said, hand going to the pocket of her scrubs.

“So we just pull guns on everyone. Great. This is going to go well.”

“Come on. We’ll take an ambulance out of here. They’ll be closer than the car.”

“Kidnapping, assault, battery. Why not add a little grand theft auto to the day.”

Ruby stood and started looking around the bed. “Are you going to sit there complaining or are you going to help me figure out how to move this thing?”

Dyna got to her feet. She didn’t want to brag, but she had been in more than her fair share of gurneys before. Mostly at the institute before or after various tests. This bed wasn’t quite as simple as those, being far more comfortable for longer term care with an integrated IV hook, but it was essentially just a fancy gurney. Finding the brakes took just a few seconds.

The moment they started wheeling, the nurse at the counter stood up. “Hey, you can’t—”

“We can,” Ruby said. From behind, pushing the gurney, Dyna couldn’t see the gun. But she could see the nurse’s face.

She couldn’t help but grimace as he slowly sat back down.

“Just sit tight. We’re not here for you.”

“We’re sorry about this.”

“And you quit apologizing.”

Dyna shot Ruby a glare. “You don’t have to act like a bad guy. They’re just trying to do their jobs.”

“And I’m trying to do mine.”

Dyna groaned as they rushed down the halls at unsafe speeds. If somebody or some other gurney appeared in front of them, stopping would be a problem. “Don’t we have like a FBI badge to flash to people to get them to do what we want?”

“That’s not how the FBI actually work. They don’t get to do whatever they want.”

“Yes but someone like that nurse would still sit down if we flashed a badge instead of a gun. And same with that sterilization technician. Then we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do about it now.”

“Nothing,” Dyna snapped. “It’s not you I’m mad at. But I’m going to have a long talk with Walter when we get back.”

Dyna wasn’t so much upset with Ruby as she was with him. Or maybe not him, but the organization as a whole. The Carroll Institute was a government entity, wasn’t it? Dyna might not be some secret operative like Emerald and Ruby were, but Ruby at the very least should have some kind of badge that she could use in place of a gun. People would probably ignore a ten-year-old wielding a government badge, but… something.

Were Emerald and Ruby sent off around the world with absolutely no support at all?

What kind of an organization was Walter running, anyway?

Or was it the mysterious administrators? Dyna already had a bone to pick with them about Beatrice and her restrictions. If Beatrice were unrestricted, she could probably intercept all phone calls to the police and relieve that source of pressure at the very least.

Someone was at fault for this situation. Despite the gun in her hand, Dyna was pretty sure it wasn’t her fault. Yes, it probably wasn’t easy to plan for insane childhood friends and phase-wandering entities, but some things could be resolved simply by some people in authority figuring things out.

Frustrated, Dyna swerved the gurney down the hall leading to the emergency room entrance.

“The Hatman is moving,” Ruby called from where she was trying to help steer the gurney from the front.

“Of course he is! Tin foil hat!”

Dyna didn’t stop pushing the gurney, but Ruby let go, moved around, and jumped up on the side. High enough now, she took off the spare hat and placed it on Dyna’s head. “These better work or I’m going to be having even more words with Walter! Why don’t we have protective gear in the car?”

“You’re really upset.”

“The last time we did something like this, it was unsanctioned, we were spying on our own organization, and had no support. So why is it the same now?”

“We had Emerald.”

“Perfect. We have even less support.”

“It’s how it always is,” Ruby said with a casual shrug. “Out of the way!”

A pair of scrub-wearing doctors looked up from a tablet. Dyna could see their eyes widen and had to wonder just what was going through their heads. A little girl in matching scrubs, wielding a gun while wearing a tin foil hat, rushed alongside a gurney with an obviously comatose patient. The one pushing the gurney had a tin foil hat as well. Dyna couldn’t imagine she looked too pleasant at the moment.

Simple inertia physics meant that they couldn’t just stand there, something they obviously realized as they split, pressing themselves up against either wall while the gurney rushed past. Dyna counted on their bewilderment to keep them from grabbing at her as she made it to the emergency room lobby.

With Ruby’s help, they skidded to the side and angled toward the doors.

Dyna pulled back, dragging the gurney to a stop.

The Hatman, plainly visible through the doors, stood outside the hospital in the parking lot.

“What now? A different exit?”

“He can teleport,” Dyna said. “And then we run the risk of running into someone who might actually try to stop us.”

“So charging straight at him? Think he’s immune to bullets?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“We’ve got to do something. He’s getting closer.”

He was. Walking forward, he moved at a fairly sedate pace, yet there wasn’t much distance left between them. As long as his pace remained steady, he would reach the doors in only a minute. Dyna stared at that face, visible now at this distance, that she couldn’t see. The scribbled marks of a permanent pen brought with it such a feeling of dread and impending doom.

If he so much as touched any of them, Dyna had a feeling that they would just disappear, never to be seen again.

“Guns… slow it.”

Dyna blinked at the weak voice. Looking down, her eyes widened when she saw Matt gripping the gurney’s railing. “You’re awake,” she said, more out of surprise than anything else.

“Wish I wasn’t.”

“Guns work on it?”

“Not forever. It keeps coming… and coming… and coming… and—”

“Of course they work,” Dyna said, realization hitting her. She should have noticed earlier. “Of course they work or all those traps in the house would have been for nothing.”

“Good enough for me,” Ruby said. She racked the slide of her gun back, chambering a round. Dyna was a bit surprised it hadn’t already been ready to fire, but not even Ruby wanted to hurt a bunch of innocent people in the hospital.

“I don’t see any ambulances outside the door. The car is to the left,” Dyna said. “If we can stop him long enough, we can get to it.”

“Let’s go before he gets closer and blocks us in.”

“Hold on tight,” Dyna said, putting her weight behind the gurney once again.

Ruby left the front of the gurney, rushing straight to the door with her weapon at the ready. As soon as Ruby reached the sliding doors, something changed.

The doors slid open and Dyna felt it. Deep in the back of her mind. A tingle of mental influence. With direct line of sight, the Hatman was trying to do something. Dyna couldn’t quite tell what, only that it wasn’t working. Not wholly. She could still remember the Hatman. He was outside the hospital. He was still coming for them.

But she couldn’t see him anymore.

Pushing the gurney, Dyna didn’t have the concentration to spare to try to stop whatever it was.

“He’s still there.”

Ruby’s face scrunched up into a look of concentration. The gun in her hands wavered back and forth.

“Ruby! He’s still there. Shoot where we saw him.”

The look of concentration didn’t leave Ruby’s face, but she did add grinding teeth and a wrinkled nose. She picked a fixed point, steadied her aim, and squeezed the trigger.

Dyna grimaced at the noise. She didn’t have her ear protection on. The people in the lobby had already been ducking and taking cover, but now they were screaming too. Ruby firing off three more shots didn’t help matters. Though Dyna was more worried for the people driving out on the street on the other side of the parking lot. There weren’t many people or cars, but if someone got killed…

The noise and alarm didn’t stop Dyna. There wasn’t time to stop. She had to keep moving. Unable to see the Hatman, unable to tell if he had even been hit, she couldn’t tell if he was getting closer or not. As soon as the gurney hit the sidewalk outside the hospital, Dyna swung it off to the side, heading straight toward where they had parked their car.

Something obstructed her view of the car. A large moving van with three red hexagons painted on the side barreled through the parking lot, sounding its horn in one long, constant noise. The front windows weren’t tinted, giving her a clear view of someone behind the wheel. Probably one of the two people she had seen before, but with the brushed nickel-colored full face mask, Dyna couldn’t tell which.

The truck slammed on its brakes, making a high pitched squealing whine for a few seconds before it finally stopped alongside Dyna. Despite looking like a moving truck, a side panel slid aside. The woman stood on the other side. Instead of a silver mask, she wore large rectangular goggles. One lens was divided into four differently colored squares. The other had some kind of scrolling graph. Little red, yellow, and green lights blinked on and off along the sides of the goggles, going back around the woman’s ears.

She jumped out of the truck the moment it stopped, holding out a brushed silver mask just like the one the driver wore. Just like the one Id had been wearing the last time Dyna saw the woman.

“Quickly. Put this on,” she said, shoving it into Dyna’s hands.

“What—”

The woman didn’t bother to explain. She immediately turned to the gurney and dragged it to the opening in the truck. “Unless you wish to face it alone,” she said, trying to shove Matt from his bed and into the truck. He either fell unconscious again or just lacked the strength to move his own body. His head lolled off to the side as she grabbed his arms to try to heave him over her shoulder. “Are you going to stand there or are you going to help?”

Dyna didn’t trust them. She didn’t trust them at all. But between humans who probably wanted to recruit her or some inhuman entity obviously hostile to her and her friend, Dyna didn’t take long to make her decision.

The mask used thick leather straps to hold it in place. She quickly pulled it over her head. Despite not having any holes for eyes, Dyna could see. Some kind of VR headset-like screens and lenses displayed the outside world. The corners of her vision were filled with bars and graphs that she didn’t know how to read. One clear warning, front and center of the screen, flashed red text at her. Warning: Extreme psionic energy emissions detected. Do not remove protective equipment. If the Hatman really was just a bundle of psychic power given form, she could easily believe that. The mask was a bit loose. There was presumably a way of tightening the straps for a more snug fit, but Dyna didn’t sit around to fiddle with it.

Putting a foot on a small step, she climbed up into the truck and immediately grabbed hold of Matt’s arms. With the woman helping to push, they dragged him into the back of the truck. His eyes were open and looking around, but he just flopped down onto the floor without any resistance the moment Dyna let go. It was probably still the anesthetic slowly wearing off.

The woman used the same step that Dyna used to get into the truck. She hadn’t even closed the door before it started moving, speeding off as fast as such a large truck would allow. Closing the door looked like a struggle, at least until the truck slowed to make a turn. As soon as it sealed into place, Dyna let out a sigh.

They did it. They got away. She and Matt and…

Dyna blinked and looked around.

The interior of the truck looked like any random laboratory inside Psychodynamics. A bit more… grungy. Psychodynamics and the Carroll Institute as a whole had a generally clean aesthetic that they maintained throughout all its various laboratories and offices. This truck, much like the glimpse of Id’s organization that she had gotten the night they tried to steal the Aztec artifact, looked far more industrial.

Still, there were recognizable bits and pieces. The terminal most obviously. The woman took a seat in front of a dozen screens, each of which displayed footage of the truck’s exterior or bars, graphs, scrolling text, and more information that Dyna felt too exhausted to try to figure out.

Thick cables hung from the ceiling, running from the terminal to various machines. One looked like a miniaturized MRI or CT scanner. Another was clearly something to be worn over one’s head. The most peculiar thing was a large cylindrical tank of liquid. Just the right size for a person. Similar devices had been in Id’s workshop, though those had contained floating brains. This one was just empty.

Waiting.

Dyna tried to ignore it. She kept her gun in her hand and chambered a round. If these people thought they were going to shove her in there…

The woman heard the noise of the gun. Looking up from one of the terminal screens, she slowly raised her hands.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” she said, speaking slow and clear, though it was marred ever so slightly by that accent that Dyna still couldn’t place.

“Yeah, well, you and your friends haven’t been so friendly in the past.”

“Our purpose at this moment is solely to contain the entity.”

“Great job so far,” Dyna said, not even needing to try to put the sarcasm in her voice.

“We were not prepared for an encounter with the entity. It was decided that keeping you out of its hands was a higher priority than containment at this time.”

Dyna pressed her lips together. Thanks was the proper response. Instead, she said, “Could have showed up earlier.”

“I could apologize, but I wouldn’t mean it. I could explain the delay, but I do not wish to do so. It is bothersome, unnecessary to our current objective, and likely to be taken as a falsehood with you acting as you are.”

That sounded honest, but Dyna couldn’t fault the woman. She probably wouldn’t believe whatever they said. Not right now. “Where are we going?”

“Relocating the mobile headquarters to a more defensible position within the city’s suburbs while we reevaluate how to progress with our primary goal.”

“If you are lying—”

“I imagine that would be foolish at the moment.”

Dyna nodded. “I’m going to make a phone call.”

“Feel free. Am I allowed to lower my arms?”

After a moment of thought, Dyna nodded again. “Don’t make any sudden movements.”

“I’ll just be working at the terminal,” the woman said, slowly lowering her hands. Her lethargic movements came to a stop the moment her fingers touched the keyboard. Dyna tensed, but the woman was just typing. With her eyes still hidden by the odd goggles, Dyna couldn’t tell exactly where she was looking, but it felt like she was so absorbed in her work that she wasn’t even noticing the world around her anymore.

After watching for a long moment to make sure that she wasn’t trying anything suspicious, Dyna pulled out her phone. She looked down at it and simply stared.

Something was… wrong. Missing?

Matt was here, hardly moving but alive. The woman was almost certainly the one who introduced herself over the phone as Chief Engineer Ado. And…

Dyna scrolled down her contacts list with a frown on her face. Her thumb froze when she got to a certain name. Her finger hovered over it, steady at first, yet slowly gaining a tremble.

Something was missing. Something… disappeared.

“Ruby!” she shouted.