Amanda Brotzman absolutely loved being in a car.

She loved the soft rocking lull of wheels rolling across roads. She loved pressing her forehead to the window and watching the sights blur into a colorful tapestry of nonsense. She loved falling asleep on the back seat, listening to the sound of a steadily working engine. Hell, she even loved the gas station hot dogs and the smell of leather seats and gasoline.

She had absolutely no qualms about spending half her life in a car, as long as her friends were around and the radio was working.

And today, for the first time since she was in kindergarten, she found her mouth uttering the phrase “are we there yet?”.

She hated that; hated the pestering urge at the back of her head, gnawing at her cerebellum and pushing her towards her goal. The prophetic dreams were making her cranky; the morning was dull and hectic and the hot dogs tasted to their full extent of unforgivably horrible this time. Inside her, she had the first sparks of either a vision, an attack, or a brain-eating combination of both. She acknowledged that fact, then told her nervous system to kindly fuck off.

Everyone else noticed this, of course. Martin didn’t even let her drive, for fear of breaking the speed limits so severely, even he and his fellow vampires wouldn’t be able to deal with the fallout. When he heard her ask The Question, it instantly made him worried - and nothing ever made him worried. He ate worry. He wasn’t built for handling it himself.

“Half an hour,” Martin replied, and Amanda produced the groan of an exasperated cat who had spent an hour harassing its owner for food only to discover that Swedish fish had little to do with actual fishy fish.

“I have a bad feeling,” Amanda whispered, resting her head on the door window and slipping deeper into her front passenger seat.

“Is your brain movie giving you bad news?” Martin pondered.

“It’s not giving me anything since I woke up,” she replied, “I’m not letting it. And somehow that’s worse.”

With that reply, died Martin’s hope of Amanda’s bad news radar being off.

They rolled into Seattle at half past noon and drove straight to Dirk’s apartment. This was the address that kept popping up on Amanda’s mind, so she’d assumed it was the one the Universe wanted her to visit. Alas, upon arriving there, all six of the Rowdy Three were greeted by a locked door. The door did not respond to any knocking, no matter how persuasive.

“We should try Todd’s next. And Farah’s,” Amanda said with a level of calmness that surprised even herself.

And so they checked - first Todd’s apartment, then Farah’s. Both were locked and presumably empty.

“The agency,” Amanda instructed, hearing her own almost robotic voice coming into her ears from some parallel dimension. “Now.”

Martin did not ask questions. He simply got everyone back into the van and drove to Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency office - which was locked, dark, and presumably empty.

No one wanted to be around Amanda when she stepped back outside. Not even the people who literally fed off strong emotions and chaos.

Of course, nothing dramatic happened when she did. She simply walked behind the building, stood defiantly near some garbage bins, raised her head to the sky and screamed. It was a short, intense, cathartic scream; it raised a flock of crows into the air but incurred no further damage or unwanted attention.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Amanda bellowed at the sky, and flipped her middle finger at it for good measure. “I come all the way here for this?!”

For a few seconds, she felt the tingling of an attack in her spine and fingertips, and pushed it away angrily. She had serious beef with the Universe and she refused to give it what it wanted.

She was engaged in some joyful kicking of garbage bins when the Rowdy decided to check up on her after all. Instead of joining in, they just stood aside respectfully. Vogel was the one brave enough to approach Amanda, stop her furious kicking, and ask her:

“Boss, what do you need? Painkillers? Codeine? Paracetamol? Vitamin C? Vitamin D? Vitamin E? Food, maybe? Bowl of soup. A nice bowl of soup? Soup and a sandwich? Soup and a little ham sandwich?..” He would have kept listing if he hadn’t ran out of breath.

“I need a triple shot iced latte and a chocolate croissant.” Amanda replied, unblinking, then pulled a joint out of her pocket, sat down on the ground, lit it up and took a deep, deep swig.

*

If the customers of the tiny, unremarkable cafe “La Belle Sauvage” knew what was going on around them, they would have surely been tweeting and texting and gossiping about it for weeks afterward. After all, it’s not every day that you share a balcony with a group of punk vampires, a magical creature from a fairytale dimension, and a witch who is far from recognizing her full power - while a band of desperate and exhausted rogue engineers watches from the opposite street.

It wasn’t immediately obvious to passing by strangers that anything out of the ordinary was happening here. Indeed, many were already annoyed by the brewing rumors that kept popping up in various workplaces and news sources. Some even heard from their friends, neighbors and co-workers of strange things. Of perplexing and bizarre malfunctioning devices; of mysterious figures in spacesuits bumping into them at night; and of the local billionaire being allegedly poisoned half to death by his ex-girlfriend. So surely they would not be surprised by some retired alternative band going out for an afternoon coffee.

The only people who found this fairly confusing were the four rogue engineers in a “Kruk Electronics” van parked twenty meters away from “La Belle Sauvage”.

“Are you sure the signal’s not moving?” Grażyna was hovering over Dancho’s shoulder like a remarkably large, hoodie-dressed bee.

“I am sure that the signal is not moving,” he responded, “but that doesn’t mean they are not moving.” He rummaged across the floor of the van until his hand found a pair of binoculars. “I’m keeping track of all the cars. As soon as the signal shifts, I’ll be able to tell which one has the key.”

“What if they threw out keychain into a garbage bin,” Varya suggested, “and went on.”

“Uh, well,” Dancho began, then stopped. “Then we’re screwed.”

“I wish we could skip to the part where we give up and crawl to bosses on all fours and they take all of our shit away and tell us to get out,” Milena complained. “I’m tired.”

“No one’s keeping you here,” Grażyna scowled at her.

“Suuure,” she snorted with laughter, “as if I have like, a career path after this! With a five year gap on my CV? Please. Might as well go back to Kosovo.”

“You could always get a job at Trader Joe’s or something,” Varya suggested helpfully, “they always need electrical engineers with MIT degree.”

“Gotcha!” Dancho exclaimed unexpectedly, scaring even himself. “Grażyna, drive, quickly! It’s that goddamned huge ass van!”

The last twenty minutes of the chase were not as exciting as the previous several days. One van followed another across the half-empty midday streets, until both stopped outside the detective office building. Amanda already knew what was about to go down as she stepped outside and walked towards the office, and she did not care. She tried her best and the Universe let her down. She was now prepared to beat the living crap out of her pursuers, or get beaten up in return. The office was still locked, and no one was responding to the calls from a freshly purchased phone. The chase was over; she was ready for the fireworks.

Sadly there were no fireworks. There was maybe a last year’s Christmas cracker level of tension and excitement, and even that would be a generous description. Four figures appeared in the empty space behind the office building and formed a line in front of the garbage bins. Six figures stepped up from the other side and assumed a formation in front of them. No one was moving; the whole scene resembled a stand-off between Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol factions of a public kindergarten.

“Give us the key,” Grażyna said.

“No,” Amanda replied, smiling warmly.

“So you admit you have it then?!” Dancho exclaimed.

“I admit to nothing,” Amanda shrugged. “But you ain’t getting what you want.”

“We’ll take it by force,” Grażyna was trying to persuade herself of this more than anyone else.

“Go on then,” Amanda prompted, glancing sideways. She felt strong. She felt confident. Her friends had their baseball bats and gold clubs of choice ready and were waiting for her signal. She reached into her jacket and pulled out her magic wand - a secret ace literally up her sleeve saved up for special occasions. “Please feel free to attack whenever you feel like it,” said Amanda.

“Yeah just give us two minutes,” said Grażyna.

“Is that a fucking magic wand in your hand?” said Milena.

That concluded their first round. There was a pause. Cars passed by on the street to their left, and crows cawed impatiently above them.

“So…” Amanda was really struggling to maintain the fighting mood. “Do you have that knife you mentioned?” she asked.

“Fuck around and find out,” Varya beamed. She had waited a long, long time to use that phrase and was ready to leave now, since all her expectations of what a gang standoff would be like have already been fulfilled.

“Are you sure you’re a mafia?” Martin rubbed the back of his head with the handle of a baseball bat and squinted at the group.

“Who told you we are a mafia?” Dancho scoffed. “We’re, uhm, we’re IT people? We work with computers and tech and… stuff?”

“Are we gonna beat each other up or what?” Vogel asked. “Hey boss, can I kick that one with glasses already? I really want to kick something.” And he made the first move towards Dancho, which made all four of the Slavic not-mafia step back in quiet panic.

“You can kick some bins,” Amanda suggested helpfully, “as a warm-up, you know? I’ve already started over there. Now guys, come on,” she turned back towards Grażyna and her friends, “can you deal the first punch? Cause they’ll go off on the nearest shop any second now.”

“You know what? Very funny,” Grażyna exclaimed unexpectedly, tears in her voice though not yet on her face, “go on, beat us up, we deserve it. God, what the hell do you even need with that key? And actually how did you end up in there in the first place? I mean, sure, so did we five years ago, but it took us two weeks to build up the courage to even call the elevator! And you’re what, stumbled upon a secret dungeon in the middle of a desert and immediately decided to go down and investigate?”

“Yeah pretty much,” Amanda nodded nonchalantly, conveniently omitting the fact of her legs and arms being guided in more ways than one.

“Well I hope that thing ruins your life like it ruined ours!” Grażyna continued, angry tears appearing in her eyes after all. “Why did I ever think we had it in us to do that stuff? What kind of insane idiot even messes with clearly alien technology?! Me. I’m the idiot,” she laughed nervously, very close to a total mental breakdown, “on so many accounts. I could have stayed put. I could have been working on algorithms that make preteens addicted to Instagram right now, in my own office, instead of, ugh,” she waved her hands around, “this! Come on then just punch me already,” she urged, taking a step towards Amanda.

“Hey, it’s fine,” Amanda began, “we can work this out! Just… just…” she paused mid-word as the wretched tingling and sweat hit her like a sledgehammer. “Not now!” she thought angrily to herself, trying hard to fight off what could with equal probability be an attack, a vision, or both.

“You okay drummer?” Martin was already near her, baseball bat abandoned on the concrete.

“I’m fine,” Amanda assured him - then collapsed unconscious on the ground.

*

Two seconds after she closed her eyes in the dumpster behind the detective agency office, Amanda opened her eyes in Friedkin’s backyard garden, right in the middle of his flowerbed of petunias.

“Aaargh!” yelled Friedkin, dropping a full water can on his toes and splashing the water all over himself.

“What the crap?!” Amanda yelled back.

“You!” Friedkin gasped, vanishing the water off his trousers with one swift motion of his hand. “You’re Amanda Brotzman!”

“And you’re…” she hesitated, “you’re the guy who held me at gunpoint in front of the Rowdys?”

“What are you doing in my garden?”

“What am I… what are you doing in my prophetic vision inside of my pararibulitis attack?”

“What?” Friedkin said, “No! I’m not inside anyone’s attack. Look around. Look at me.”

And she did - which is when she noticed that everything around her was exceedingly strange - soft, shimmering, ever so slightly translucent - like a very realistic, tangible 3D projection. And Friedkin… Friedkin’s eyes were filled with fractals, patterns breaking up into smalled patterns, forever and ever without end.

Also there was more than one Friedkin, but the other two were very quiet and unwilling to engage, so that was beside the point.

“I’m in the backstage of reality,” Amanda muttered. “What the hell are you doing in the backstage of reality?!”

“Well I was weeding the lawn before you, like, totally crushed my petunias!” he retorted, “also, I live here!”

“Why the…” she began, but decided that it was beyond her comprehension at the moment. “Okay, so this is new. I guess I suppressed an attack so hard, it kicked me in here somehow. I was…” she rubbed her temples, thinking, “I was in a middle of a, a thing! With those people, the Slavic engineering mafia…”

“Oh the gang?” Friedkin beamed. “I know them! I love watching them, hilarious. Don’t worry about them, they’re, like, well, not on your side, but they have the same enemies as you.”

“I have enemies?” Evidently this was news to Amanda.

“You all do,” Friedkin nodded, “you, that gang, the professor, the billionaire, Dirk…”

“Dirk!” Amanda exclaimed suddenly. “Can you… you look into our world, right?”

“I can look,” he confirmed, “but I can’t go there, which is interesting, cause you…”

“Shut up!” she instructed. “Now do your… reality window or whatever you do to watch us and show me Dirk. Now!”

“Alright, fine,” he muttered, shaking his head in frustration. “No matter how challenging the situation is, there is no need to shout.” And he conjured the Universe TV along with the remote out of thin air. “Here, there’s your Dirk,” he said, pointing at the screen. “In a car with that Lilly girl, and professor, and others.”

“Where are they going?”

“To the spaceship, of course.”

“Ugh not again,” Amanda hissed, “you’re telling me I have to drive all the way back there five minutes after I arrived?!”

“Hey, so while you’re here,” Friedkin began, “can I like, ask you some things? About the real world?”

“Don’t… don’t annoy me right now, dude,” she waved the request away, “I’m… I think I’m gonna wake up soon so just tell me - what in the name of hell is going on down there and what am I supposed to do?”

“Pff,” Friedkin said, “how should I know? I’m not God and stuff. I know there are these bosses, and they’re the bad guys, but also there was a bloke called Arthur and, like,” he chuckled to himself, “you won’t believe what happened to him…”

But just as Friedkin was about to enlighten her, Amanda felt herself fall backwards through static and woke up gasping on concrete, the figures of her vampire friends looming over her.

“And she’s back,” Martin smiled, as she sat gasping and panting on the concrete. He reached into his jacket for a spare portion of her pills, but she pushed him away.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she muttered, already trying to get up. “You!” she exclaimed, standing shakily, pointing at the gang of terrified and exhausted engineers propping up the garbage bins to the side. “You’re idiots! If you could just have a conversation with me, a normal fucking conversation, we would have known that we’re on the same side and that we’re both in danger.”

“Did God speak to you during your epileptic seizure?” Grażyna asked.

“It wasn’t God, it was just some himbo,” Amanda replied, “but yeah. Yeah I spoke to someone. And you’re not getting your key. You’re getting into your van, and we’re getting into our van, so we’re both getting into our respective vans and, ugh, can’t believe I’m saying this, but we’re going back exactly from where we started.”

“Back to the spaceship?” Grażyna frowned.

“Yes,” Amanda nodded, “back to the god-forsaken spaceship…”