“We are approaching our target.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call her a target,” Dyna said, pushing the goggles back up to her forehead. She shuddered. It took a moment to reorient.

It was odd, somehow. She honestly couldn’t tell if the goggles were naturally nauseating or if it was something she was doing. It had taken a few weeks of regular usage for the mirror to go from mundane to artifact according to Doctor Cross—all the tests had come back negative until after the night she used it to track down Grafton—but it had still worked just hours after she got it.

Whether or not Dyna was doing anything was even more confusing when she looked over to Ado. The woman, now with the silver mask on in place of the goggles, didn’t actually seem all that impacted by her apparent blindness. She might just not be as blind as her milky eyes would indicate, or perhaps the mask had similar features to the goggles, or… perhaps she got around her blindness in a more esoteric manner. For all Dyna knew, she could be a clairvoyant that saw what her eyes would naturally see, effectively eliminating her disability. The only thing that Dyna could objectively observe was that she still worked at the terminal, though she might have slowed down a small bit.

Dyna got to her feet and stepped away from Matt—who had gone back to trying to get some sleep—only to have to stop and grab a hold of a small pipe as the truck took a corner a bit too fast for comfort.

“The target is still on the move, unfortunately.”

“That’s fine,” Dyna said. “Just get us close enough that we should have sight on Ruby.”

“That might be hard to determine. She might enter a building or be hidden behind a fence.”

“Just close enough,” Dyna said again as she looked over the terminal screens. “Where are we?”

The buildings here were old and clearly in need of maintenance. Most, on either side of a fairly dusty road, were of a warehouse style. Several that they passed had overgrowths of trees and shrubberies, making them look about as abandoned as much of the rest of Casper. One lot was filled with old cars. A junkyard of some kind.

“A bit north of the hospital,” Ado said. “There should be a railroad on the opposite side of the buildings to our left.”

Dyna looked up to one of the monitors, watching as the lot of cars turned into a series of shotgun shacks. Between each house, Dyna could make out a clearing with a series of rails with some more warehouse-style buildings past that. Judging by how the rails were nice and clear of debris and foliage, Dyna assumed that they were still in use.

The truck turned again, forcing Dyna to shift her stance to keep from falling over. The truck turned into the parking lot of a building that looked like a horizontal cylinder—an aircraft hangar? There wasn’t a runway around, so probably not, but Dyna wasn’t sure what else it would be for.

Past the hangar, the truck slowed to a stop. Not because they reached their destination, but because a chain link fence was blocking their way.

“How far past the fence?”

“Not sure. But not far. We’ll find a way around.”

“Let me out here.”

Ado didn’t hesitate. She pressed a finger to her ear and spoke softly to the driver, then stood and pressed a button on the wall. The side door of the truck slid aside. Dyna hopped out and just about started sprinting for the fence, only for Ado to call out to her. “Wait. Take this,” she said, holding out a small device.

The basic shape was that of a gun, though having become familiar with guns, Dyna knew it wasn’t. Black and red, it was polymer with a large coil of wire handing down below where the barrel should have been. Instead of a barrel, it had a gold pipe, the end of which had no hole, just a small red light amid a gold cap. There was something kind of like a scope attached on top, except it had no sight and its angle aimed directly down, maybe an inch in front of where the ‘barrel’ ended. Even if it had lenses, it wouldn’t have made for a very good scope. A number of knobs and buttons lined the side of the gun.

“Do not touch the settings, please,” Ado said, holding the handle out toward Dyna. “It is a psionic disruptor. Psychics do not like it pointed their way. At its current settings, it should incapacitate the target long enough to secure it.”

“Her,” Dyna said, taking it from Ado. It was heavy. Heavier than a pistol even, and they were already heavier than they looked. A lot of the weight came from the scope-like cylinder on the top. “Will it work on the Hatman?”

“That was our hope, yes.”

“Not instilling a lot of confidence here.”

“Apologies. This is the first time we’ve done something like this.”

Dyna blinked. From the way they talked, especially Darq, Dyna would have guessed that they had been around for a while. She almost asked, but they were wasting time. Ruby was probably still running even now. They probably just meant the first time capturing a Class Two Phase-Wandering entity. “Just aim and pull the trigger?”

“Yes.”

“Can do,” Dyna said, turning away.

She left Ado and the truck behind, reached the chain link fence, and started climbing up and over. It was a good thing there wasn’t any barbed wire along the top. Hopping down the other side, she advanced into a dirt-covered lot. One that clearly hadn’t seen much use lately. There were no tire tracks or footprints apart from her own.

Would Ruby leave footprints in her current state? Based on some of what Ado had said, Dyna supposed it depended on just how she had been phase-shifted. Class One would leave traces behind. Class Two wouldn’t. The Hatman was Class Two, but they weren’t sure whether his targets were as well.

Stopping at the rough center of the lot, Dyna stopped. Firming her stomach, she pulled down the goggles.

The world twisted and distorted. A dizzying sensation made her want to take them back off again, but with an effort of will, Dyna forced herself to look around.

Scanning the horizon for Ruby wasn’t easy. The horizon wasn’t a straight line with the goggles on. Her stomach flipped a few times as she turned. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t continue. Clenching her jaw, Dyna looked down as she reached up for the goggles.

Before she actually lifted them up, however, she noticed something. Footprints. Footprints that continued forward, ahead of her own feet.

Lifting the goggles, in spite of the surroundings being the same dusty lot, there were no footprints.

Putting the goggles back on, Dyna tried to figure out which way they were headed. Not an easy task with how the world distorted, but Dyna was fairly certain that they curved around a few old empty truck beds and toward a metal-sided warehouse.

Sliding the goggles back to her forehead—moving while wearing them would surely lead to uncontrolled vomiting—Dyna rushed around the same empty truck beds and to a closed door. It had been painted white at one time, but the paint chipped off around the edges. The metal had since rusted.

The handle didn’t budge. Dyna threw her shoulder into the door, but the rust wasn’t so bad as to ruin the door’s integrity. She just about started running around to find a different way in, only to realize that Ruby probably hadn’t been able to get in either. That meant she went somewhere else?

Using the goggles, Dyna looked back out to the lot. The footsteps, moving just along her own, came right up to the door. She turned, trying to figure out where they had gone after, only to blink and look back to the door.

Or, more accurately, the doorway. The door was still there, but it was fully open. Maybe pried open? It was hard to tell for certain with the warping of the goggles, but there was damage to the door’s frame right around where the locks were.

Slowly, Dyna reached out a hand.

Her fingers hit the cold metal of the rusted door. It was still closed.

Of course. The goggles, if they worked the way she wanted, let her see into some alternate reality. They didn’t transport her to that reality.

“Ruby!” Dyna called out, slamming her fist against the door that she couldn’t see with the goggles on. It was probably useless. If Ruby could hear her, she wouldn’t need to stun her or whatever the psionic disruptor did. But maybe she could hear something. Some small glimmer, much like what Matt apparently heard.

Dyna would have thought that something done in one version of the world would affect the other. How else would there be buildings and cars? Then again, Ruby had presumably taken her clothes and equipment with her. Not to mention her body. If phase-shifting was purely mental, they wouldn’t have a hard time finding Ruby at all. Maybe phase-shifted world and the real world did affect each other in some way that Dyna wasn’t able to understand or perceive. She wasn’t a scientist after all.

Dyna turned to try to find a way around—an alternate entrance or footprints showing Ruby had left the building.

Instead, she stopped immediately, sucking in a breath.

Goggles on, she could see a tall figure in dark clothes, striding toward her from just beyond the abandoned truck beds. A figure in a wide-brimmed hat.

Chasing her? Or chasing Ruby? Dyna’s hands tightened around the handle of the disruptor gun. Would it work? Ado hadn’t seemed all that confident. What was its range? Did the Hatman need to be right in front of her? Or would it hit him now? She should have asked. How many times could she use it before it needed to be reloaded or recharged or whatever needed to be done to it? She should have asked. Why hadn’t she asked for a fancy ear-piece that would let her ask these questions now?

Cursing her foolish haste to find Ruby, Dyna edged along the building, away from the Hatman. If there was one good thing about him, it was that he wasn’t fast. But she couldn’t move quickly either. Not with the goggles on. She could try taking them off, but what if she just forgot that the Hatman was around and then stood waiting for him like some kind of idiot?

Glancing back, Dyna scowled. The Hatman didn’t move fast, but at this pace, it would be fast enough.

Dyna just about removed her goggles, but had an idea at the last moment. Pulling out her phone, she typed a few quick words into her notepad app.

Holding her phone in front of her face, Dyna pushed the goggles up to her forehead and…

Looked at a confusing message written on her phone.

“Run straight ahead,” she read, “or he will get you?”

Tension ripped at her stomach. She had been looking for Ruby. Found her, even, though only footsteps so far. But run? Dyna couldn’t remember typing that. Looking around, she didn’t see anything. That didn’t stop her from taking the advice. It was her notepad. The notepad filled with her own trusted words. Reminders and memories. Bits and pieces of information that she occasionally read through just to see if she had forgotten something.

And apparently she had forgotten something.

Dyna broke into a run, sprinting away as fast as she could manage alongside the old warehouse building toward the railroad tracks. Hopefully far from wherever the Hatman was.

Barreling past the warehouse, Dyna slid to a stop in the dirt. She remembered what she had come here for. Ruby. If Ruby and the Hatman were both here, the latter must have changed his target. Unless the entity was clever enough to assume that his actual target, Matt, would be coming here as well. Either way, Dyna couldn’t just leave Ruby to his machinations.

Having put some distance between her and the Hatman, Dyna donned the goggles once more.

Dyna looked through the twisted world once more. She spotted the Hatman immediately, distinct as he was. Surprisingly enough, he wasn’t headed directly for her, but toward the warehouse.

“Ruby!” Dyna couldn’t see the younger girl, but if the Hatman could sense her, she had to be around somewhere.

Gritting her teeth, Dyna raised the disruptor gun. The Hatman wasn’t paying attention to her. There wouldn’t be a better opportunity to test out the gun’s range and reach. Aiming, however, wasn’t easy. There were no indicators on the gun, the scope-like pipe wasn’t an actual scope, and looking through the goggles made everything… dizzying.

Dyna had been trained. Emerald and Ruby took her out to the shooting range nearly every day. At least they had over the last few months, before Emerald left to track down that artifact. The disruptor wasn’t exactly a gun, but it was close enough.

She aimed as best she could and squeezed the trigger.

Dyna expected something to happen. Some noise or a jolt of recoil. Even a light flashing to indicate that gun actually fired. A button on a television remote would make a light blink. The disruptor didn’t even do that much.

The Hatman, on the other hand, collapsed. Instantly. Like a puppet with its strings cut. A small cloud of dust kicked up into the air around him. Not enough to obscure the Hatman, but enough to get caught in the light wind.

Tense, finger still hovering over the trigger, Dyna stared and waited. She kept aiming, kept watching, but slowly started to feel herself relax. It was a disbelieving sort of relaxation. Dyna didn’t have a clue what the disruptor did beyond the very brief explanation that Ado had given her, but it was…

It was too easy. That was it? One shot and the Hatman, some monstrous entity that wasn’t even human, went down? It couldn’t be that easy. Dyna just couldn’t believe it.

Sure enough, the Hatman’s hand slammed into the ground. His fingers dug into the dusty lot as he started pushing himself back up. The wide brim of his hat tilted upward, revealing the scribbling marks constantly obscuring his face. Even Ado’s goggles didn’t let her see past the permanent marker covering his eyes and mouth. And yet, Dyna could tell, the Hatman was not happy with her.

Not happy at all.

Standing fully, he brushed a hand down his long coat, dusting himself off. Except, none of the dust actually stuck to his clothes. Dyna, despite having not fallen and rolled around in the dirt, had a thin film coating her. Yet the Hatman’s dark clothes and wide-brimmed hat were immaculate.

He took a step. Not toward the warehouse, but toward Dyna.

Dyna pulled the disruptor’s trigger.

The Hatman staggered, went limp, and fell backward. But this time, he started getting up almost immediately. Just a brief pause, almost more of a mental hesitation than physical impairment, before he planted his hand on the ground.

Was he adapting? Or was the gun just not fully charged? Dyna didn’t know.

She fired again before he got fully to his feet.

He collapsed, but didn’t even pause in pushing himself back up.

“Ruby! You’ve got to hear me, right?” Dyna wouldn’t be able to keep the Hatman down forever. She couldn’t move well with the goggles distorting everything; seeking out Ruby wasn’t as easy as she had been hoping for. With the Hatman here…

The Tartarus truck turned around the side of the warehouse. They must have found a way through the fence. That was…

Not good. Dyna hadn’t found Ruby yet. At this point, they would have to leave. Try again another time. Leave Ruby to handle the Hatman on her own.

The truck kicked up a curtain of dust as it drove right past the Hatman. Maple didn’t swerve toward or away from the entity. Though Dyna could see the brushed silver mask on him through the window, he must not have been able to perceive the entity.

The goggles did work then. Maybe they always worked and Dyna wasn’t doing anything. Or maybe it was her power. Dyna didn’t know. She didn’t care at this moment.

The truck pulled up to Dyna, slowing to a stop with Maple rolling down the window of the driver’s door. “You find her?” he called out.

“No. And the Hatman is right next to the wall over there,” Dyna said, pointing with the gun.

Maple jolted, jumping in his seat. He looked in the side mirror before leaning fully out the window to see around the side of the truck. “I don’t see anything.”

“He’s there,” Dyna said as she pulled the trigger.

It stopped the Hatman from moving for a few seconds, but didn’t send him back down into the dirt.

“Get in! We’ll find her later.”

“I can’t just leave her,” Dyna shouted back. “She’s here, somewhere. So close. Maybe inside the building.”

“The one the entity is guarding?” Maple’s voice sounded higher pitched now than it had when he stopped to talk by the car. Nervous? Scared?

Dyna could empathize. Being able to see the Hatman should have made it better. At least she knew where he was and what he was doing. Every time she caught a glimpse of his face beneath the brim of his hat, however, her stomach clenched and flipped. But she couldn’t just run away because she was scared. Not if it meant leaving Ruby out for the monster to get.

She had to find her.

“Do you guys have another of these guns?” Dyna asked as she pulled the trigger again. “I think this one is running out of batteries.”

“Talk to Ado,” Maple said. “Hurry, please. Darq said that coming into contact with the entity wouldn’t be good for my health.”

Dyna didn’t bother with a response. She hurried around to the back of the truck, keeping her goggles on but using the truck itself as something to lean against. The side door was on the wrong side and wouldn’t let her keep shooting at the Hatman. At the moment, despite how little of an effect it was having, the gun was probably the only thing keeping him from getting all of them.

Likely using the cameras to tell where she was headed, Ado already had the rear door lifting up.

“Got any other fancy guns? This one isn’t working much anymore.”

“Unfortunately not,” Ado said, walking to the rear of the truck without any problem despite lacking her goggles.

“Can we contain the Hatman?”

“The Portable Metaphysical Entity Snare is not calibrated. We are acquiring proximity data through our psychtrometer, but additional work must be done to properly apply the data to the snare. I warned you that we were not prepared for dealing with the entity.”

“Then have you got any other bright—”

“There…”

Dyna looked down from Ado to where Matt had propped himself up on his elbows. He was staring out the back of the truck.

“Yes, the Hatman is here,” Dyna said, turning and firing another… whatever the disruptor fired.

“No, over there. A ghost.”

Blinking, Dyna whipped her head back fast enough to give herself whiplash. Fighting through the wave of nausea, she turned again, following Matt’s pointing arm. He pointed toward a second warehouse, just past another metal fence. Dyna squinted through the warped world, not seeing anything at first. A cloud of dust caught in the wind changed that.

There, between the fence and Dyna, was a small silhouette of a person. Transparent. Barely visible, casting a strange shadow on the ground. Definitely ghost-like. But also definitely there.

“How do we get Ruby?”

“As a physical being and not a psychic manifest—”

“I don’t care about the explanation,” Dyna said, firing at the Hatman again. “Just get her. She’s there!”

Through the twisted world, Dyna managed to catch a glimpse of Ado’s face without turning around. She looked almost offended with a deep grimace on her lips. Like not being able to explain her technology physically pained her.

Still, she turned around, moving further into the truck. Pulling something off a rack on the wall, she brought it back to the rear of the truck. “This harness is a tether, you need to—”

“Get it around her. Got it.”

It was fairly obvious. It looked like a climbing harness, though without the leg straps. A large black and white sphere was hooked in around the chest area, one with a glowing red light in the center.

Grabbing it right out of Ado’s hands, Dyna took a few steps.

And she faltered.

There wasn’t anything to hold onto. No wall to lean on, no railing. Not even any lines on the ground to help guide her through her twisted perspective.

Dyna forced herself to take another few steps. Ruby was still there. The gun was supposed to keep her from running away while attaching this harness, but Dyna couldn’t use it now. If something went wrong, if the harness didn’t work, Ruby would be incapacitated, left to the mercy of the Hatman.

Dyna had to move on her own. She grit her teeth, and tightened the muscles in her stomach, not willing to remove the goggles with the Hatman and Ruby both here. She would forget about the former and potentially not even see the silhouette of the latter.

Foot after foot, step after step. Squinting to try to avoid vomiting, Dyna put one foot in front of the other. Faster and faster until she broke into a run.

She didn’t stop when she reached the silhouette. Ruby would normally have never let herself be tackled, but she must not have been able to see Dyna approaching with the harness stretched out in front of her. Or if she could, she was too busy focusing on the Hatman, probably wondering why he had fallen and couldn’t get up. Assuming she could see him.

Tackling Ruby to the ground was a strange affair. Except where the harness touched, Dyna couldn’t actually interact with her. Her hand passed right through the transparent ghost. Using the harness as something like a net, Dyna struggled to loop it around her. Ruby quickly started to fight her off, but must have realized what was going on. Her struggles changed to attempts at helping.

“Dyna!” Matt shouted from the truck. “The Hatman!”

Sucking in a breath, Dyna looked up.

The Hatman had gotten to his feet. He stood three steps away, looming over Dyna.

Eyes widening, Dyna reached for the disruptor gun and raised it up as the Hatman stretched a hand out toward her.

She squeezed the trigger.