WIP Wed: Psychonauts Fanfic Part 3 (Patreon)

So I've been traveling this week, which means I haven't had a bunch of time for drawing or working on action figures. What I have been doing is adding more words to my Psychonauts fanfic. The post on Ao3 is currently ahead of the last first draft portion I shared with you, so you can read the fic up to date here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53280559

Below is many many many more parts. So many parts that I gave up on chapter numbers. I'm trying to stay a league ahead of the Ao3 posts so I'll be able to doctor them a bit still before they become "canon." This dumb fic keeps getting longer and longer but at least i'm having fun. It's actually been really good therapy for me these last couple months. I put a lot of pressure on my writing because I publish books, but having a silly little project that's not destined for table sales eases that. Thanks everyone for your patience!

Chapter 20?

The Hospital was bustling even more than the lobby of Fanrong HQ. For every one latent psychic exposed by the Mind Bomb, there were a thousand normal-minded people experiencing simultaneous involuntary existential crises. Every hospital bed was full, the waiting rooms were full, the hallways were full. The doctors and nurses were Mind Bombed as well, so they couldn’t help out. Psychonauts and People’s Republic medics swarmed the building tending to those affected. 

Raz, Dion, and Frazie walked through the front doors of the Emergency Room unclear about where to go or what to do. Raz’s packet said to find Bob and ask him. The people working at the Emergency Room front desk were all speaking Chinese, but the first Psychonaut they ran into said Bob was in the back and to “just follow the yelling.”

Raz gulped and led his older siblings into the chaos. Beyond the ER, the halls of the hospital were packed with so many gurneys and beds it was hard to get around. Workers squeezed past them like they were furniture and not mindless people. They weren’t hooked to machines or IVs, they just laid on their backs, staring at the ceiling the same way Zheng Wei was when his mind was gone Wild. 

“I don’t see why we’re doing this,” Dion whined. “All I wanted was to watch movies and make out. Now I’m not doing either. I wish I was home.”

“Start walking then,” Frazie said. “Be sure to let Mom know where we’ve been.”

“No way, I’m not telling her! Raz needs to tell her, he’s the Psychonaut.”

Raz sighed. Even with the family camping in the Questionable Area, the world of the traveling circus and the world of the Motherlobe felt two happy bubbles Raz moved between when he had to. The sudden venn-diagramming of his life complicated both his job and his heart. His Psychonaut archetype chafed against his “Little Pootie” archetype and the fight for dominance was ongoing. With a deep breath, he willed Psychonaut Raz to the forefront. “If Nona hasn’t told Mom by now, I’ll tell her when we get back, don’t worry.” 

“Really?” Dion gawked. “You’re just gonna tell her?”

“Mom getting mad at me is so low on the list of stuff I have to worry about right now I’m almost looking forward to it.”

Dion whistled. “Wow! Someone’s grown a spine.”

“This is why he’s my favorite brother,” Frazie said.

“I thought Queepie was your favorite brother.”

“Oh yeah, but he doesn’t count. Queepie is a tier up.”

“You’re right, at least a tier.”

Raz’s chest muscles unclenched a fraction as he pushed through the next layer of doors and into an even more congested landscape of patients. Bob’s voice could be heard barking orders somewhere ahead. A set of double-doors opened halfway up the hall and two agents used TK to move a line of gurneys toward a bank of elevators. Two more agents popped out to grab more beds and pull them in. The sign above the door was in Chinese. Raz hoped it wasn’t the morgue. 

It was the ICU. Bob was at the central desk surrounded by open bays with accordion walls folded back against the walls. The standard machinery and monitors were pushed aside to make room for lines of beds and exam tables where mindless people slept. Psychonauts moved among the bodies. Some hovered over the victims in clouds of sparking Clairvoyance. Others were frozen in concentration as their astral projections hopped in and out of open psi-portals on a dozen different heads. Junior Psychonaut Adam Joseph Gette was working near the administration desk with Helmut’s brain ball balanced on the table beside him. They studied an elderly woman with a glaze in her eyes. Helmut spoke through telepathy. <i>”Okay, I think she’s coming around.”</i>

“Really? You got her back?” Adam asked.

<i>“She was in a lot of pieces, but she’s a tough old gal. She’ll pull through it.”</i>

Bob rose from his seat behind the reception desk and approached the gurney. When Raz first met Lili’s great uncle he was in patchy clothes with wild gray hair Zanotto beard full of gardening equipment. He was still squat and still gray, but dressed fresh for business with new glasses, a clean apron, and a pair of clippers still tucked behind his ear. “You finally done over here?”

Helmut rolled back across the desk to a little ball-caddy made of towels. <i>“Yeah, babe. We’re good.”</i>

“So what’s the final grading?” Bob grabbed a clipboard off the peg rack behind him. ““What would you label her? A one? A two?”

<i>“Oh she’s a definitely a three.”</i>

“A three? After the state she arrived in?” Bob asked.

<i>”You doubt my skills?”</i>

“Doubt? That was ‘impressed.’ That was my impressed voice.” Bob scribbled on the top sheet of paper and unclipped it from the pad. “Gentry!”

“Here, sir!” An agent across the room reported. 

“Get this one upstairs.” Bob handed the loose page to Adam who pinned it to the woman’s bed. “Send Nvita and her crew back down here. We’re going to need another triage sweep.”

“You got it, boss,” Agent Gentry said. They hooked the edge of the gurney with their mental fist and dragged the old woman past Raz as he held the door.

Adam noticed the new arrivals. “Raz! You’re here!”

<i>”Razputin!”</i> Helmut bobbed in his nutrient fluid, displacing his tiny viking helmet. <i>“Otto said you were on your way to us! How’s it hangin’?”</i>

“Uh, I’m okay,” Raz said. “You guys are working hard.”

<i> “Yeah, well, you know. Global crisis and all that.”</i> Helmut sloshed back and forth. <i> “We’re getting it done.” </i>

Helmut’s appearance finally registered on Dion who recoiled at the sight. “Is that a talking brain?”

Bob’s brow leveled into a shelf above his glasses. He used TK to move Helmut’s helmut back into it’s rightful place.  “Who’s this?”

Raz folded in on himself a little bit. “These are Dion and Frazie. My older siblings.”

<i>“The civilian volunteers!”</i> Helmut said. <i> “Okay, that makes sense.”</i>

Bob pouted. He drew another clipboard toward him with his mind. “Psychics?”

“Not me,” Dion said.

Raz slid a look at Frazie. She averted her eyes. Raz answered on both siblings’ behalf. “They’re mostly acrobats.”

“But they come from a psychic family, so they know about psychic stuff,” Adam added with a dose of cheer. “I know them already, Mr. Bob. They’re good people, don’t worry.”

“Hmmm.” Bob looked doubtful and checked a couple more boxes. “Fine, Mr. Gette. Congrats. You’re a team leader now.”

“Nice!” Adam grinned.

“Get to work on the back hallway,” Bob said. “Compton’s pinged me about a massive influx of minds rolling in. We better be ready.”

“Leave it to me, sir!” Adam saluted. “C’mon, team. We have a lot on our plate.” 

Adam led them out of the ICU and back into the congested hospital halls. Raz had to trot to keep up with the older boy’s long strides. He knew Adam to be easygoing and responsible, but he was coming alive in field work. He directed the group’s attention to each door they passed, sharing procedure and catching them up. “When the Psychonauts arrived, the first task they had was collecting bodies off the street. They declared the hospital as the non-psychic center right off, but there’s way more non-psychics than psychics so they hit capacity before the other Junior Agents and I even got here. We’ve commandeered the nearby office buildings as temporary housing for the ones who are whole again and walking around, but the upper floors of the hospital are still busting and who knows how many more people are out there.”

“So there’s no telling how long this is going to take?” Raz asked.

“Agent Mentallis is always coming up with new ideas on strategy, so you’ll have to ask him. Around here we’re interested in healing,” Adam said. 

Dion lolled his head back. “Come on! We haven’t even been here a day! He’s talking like he’s an expert!”

“I am an expert!” Adam waved the clipboard in the air. “We’ve got a whole system here. Color and number. Mr. Bob is real logical. Back when he was a full-time agent he was like Hollis, you know? A tactical guy. Look, we’re here. I’ll show you.” 

Adam jogged around the final corner and into a service corridor. The room was packed with a grid of gurneys parked wall-to-wall. They completely blocked the utility door at the back. There wasn’t even room to walk between them. Raz was goggle-eyed at them a moment. “You just left these folks here?”

“We ran out of room,” Adam said.

“But there’s not even a nurse! You just left them all piled up like some kind of traffic jam! Like you were storing packing crates!”

“You can throw stones later if you want to,” Adam said. “We’ve been working nonstop around here from the minute we landed and we didn’t have the staff to watch over every hallway. These people are mindless still anyway, so it’s not like they’re going anywhere.  We’re getting to everyone as fast as we can, which is why the four of us are here now! Let me go over the rules, okay?”

Adam unclipped a sheet of colored stickers from the clipboard and passed them out to the Aquatos. “We need to rank these people in order of severity of impairment. You heard Mr. Bob talking about a number system – that’s for after the minds are reconnected. It corresponds with the recovery floor they need to go to. One is the ones who need the most treatment to get back to normal. Fives are pretty much back to normal and they get released. That’s the usual ‘civilian volunteer.’ We’re not worrying about that right now, though. Everyone down here on the ground floor is mindless.”

Frazie waved the sheet. “And the stickers?”

“The pre-repair stage is a color system,” Adam answered. “ Minds separated from their brains start to degrade pretty fast and everyone’s got a different level of natural  fortitude. Psychics have the strongest minds – even the latent ones – so they’d be graded Blue. Put a blue sticker on and we know they can wait, because they’ll survive the longest without their minds. Green is people who look like they’re sleeping. You know, a peaceful expression, closed eyes, normal color in their face. Yellow is like medium-dead – eyes half-lidded, slack jawed, feeling clammy. And Red is like, pretty much a dead person with a pulse. Their eyes are the tell in that one. If their eyes are going cloudy that’s definitely a red. We send those straight in to Mr. Helmut to keep them from degrading past the point of being able to repair them.”

Rez cringed. “Please tell me there’s no Reds in this group.” 

“There wasn’t when we put them here, but there might be now,” Adam replied. “That’s why we’re here to check.”

“What if they’re at the back?” Dion asked.

“Let’s look!” Frazie slugged Dion in the arm. “C’mon whiner.”

Frazie flipped forward onto the nearest bed and sprung into a flip. She progressed across the tops of the mindless people, catching the railings of their gurneys with her hands and feet to keep from touching them. Dion followed suit, tumbling and dancing across the field, exhibiting all his skills as an acrobat to reach the back of the hall.

Adam scratch his scalp below his hat. “Didn’t expect that.”

“Don’t know why you didn’t,” Raz replied. 

“You said the eyes, right?” Frazie called as she balanced on one of the beds’ safety railings. “Look for people with glazed-over eyes?”

“That’s right!” Adam called. 

“Then I found one!” 

“Allow me!” Raz said. He pressed his fingers to his temple and levitated the bed Frazie perched on from the block. His sister did a backbend onto the adjacent bed and watched with pride as the gurney  floated over its fellows and came to rest on the clear spot of floor in front of Adam.

The team leader double-checked Frazies assessment and gave her a thumbs-up. “Good work! Keep looking!”

“Aye, aye!”

Adam grabbed the gurney with his royal-purple mental fist. “I’ll take this one back to Helmut! Keep pulling them until I get back!”

“You got it!” Raz agreed. 

The three Aquatos worked together, identifying Reds (and some Oranges probably) and pulling them free. Raz floated them out as Frazie and Dion searched. Adam ferried the Reds back to Bob and Helmut two or three at a time until there were only three left. 

“Good job everyone!” Adam said. “Are you sure that’s all of them?”

“All the ones I could find,” Frazie answered. “Want us to move on to the stickers?”

“Think you can handle the categories on your own while we deliver these beds?” Adam asked.

Dion combed through his hair. “We are PROFESSIONAL civilian volunteers, thank you very much.”

“Carry on then, Aquatos!” Adam said. He beckoned to Raz. “I’ll lead.”

Adam snatched the first and second beds and Raz followed with the third. The halls were even more crowded than before. Raz jogged to keep up, this time noticing rooms marked with colored sheets of paper along the route back to ICU. The Yellows were in a room full of parabolic chambers. The Greens were in a staff room. The Blues were in a family waiting room to the side. Each of the colored wards had a Psychonaut attendant watching their progress as other agents moved beds in and out. It was a relief to see the patients were actually being looked after. If only they had the manpower to care for everyone right away. 

Adam punched open the swinging doors to ICU and swung his beds in ahead of him. “This is it, Mr. Bob!”

“Good job.” Bob floated another stack of papers toward him. “ I’ve got some names for you to find. Can your team handle it?”

“Absolutely!” Adam nudged Raz. “Ready for a scavenger hunt?”

“Always!”

“Let’s get your siblings. Can either of them read Chinese?”

“Not that I know of.”

Adam jogged back to the hall, but Raz stopped when Helmut rolled up from behind. <i> “Hey, kid! Wait a sec!” </i>

Raz bent over him. “Yeah?”

Helmut rocked the ball back in forth in a brain-ball expression of concern <i> “Otto called down with a more thorough report of everything that happened. He said you were Mind Bombed. You doin’ okay? You need a nap or something?” </i>

“Oh!” Raz softened. “No, thanks Helmut. I’m okay. I wasn’t flung free for long.”

He perked up in the juices. <i> “Good to hear. If you start feeling kinda funky, just let me know. Sudden sensory restoration can mess you up. I’M happy to pop in and give you a hand.” </i>

“Thanks, Psi-King, but it sounds like you’ve got your hands full, figuratively speaking.” Raz gestured to the Reds. “Adam said you get the worst ones.”

<i> “Yeah, some are real bad off,” </i> Helmut sank. <i> “ Its pretty overwhelming. </i>

“No panic attacks, I hope?”

<i> “No, no. Close a couple of times, but Bob helps with that. He has everything all lined up and organized so I can focus on  just the folks in front of me. These people are really hurting, but I know what it’s like to be scared like that. I prop ‘em up until their minds can be located and hunt around for their identity although when they get to this point, its more about sensing a vibe than getting a name. When the crew arrives with their minds, they’re pretty much just energy with a lasso around them.”</i>

“If anyone knows how to read vibes, it’s you,” Raz said. “Keep up the good work.”

<i> “Don’ my best!” </i> Helmut replied. <i> “Offer stands open. We’re not too busy to look out for you if you need us.”</i>

“I’ll let you know.”

Raz returned to the hall where Adam was waiting. “What was that about?”

“Nothing important.”

“One side, boys!” A field agent called. Raz tucked and rolled to the wall as a telekinesis-propelled gurney rushed past him followed by no less than three agents. 

“An emergency case,” Adam guessed. “Wonder who it is.”

“That’s the mayor of Fanrong.” Morris Martinz rolled up on his levball-propelled chair. Despite the chaos and panic, he was as immaculately pop-collared and quaffed as ever. “He was in a helicopter when the bomb went off. We found it crashed on top of a skyrise.”

“And you brought him here?” Raz asked. “He needs like a DOCTOR  doctor.” 

“The army guys took care of that part. Now he needs his brain sorted,” Morris siad. “You know how Truman keeps harping about the brain and the body being connected ever since he got hijacked? Faster your body goes the faster your mind goes and his body isn’t going to heal right without his mind there to direct it. If he doesn’t get his mind back in him, he’s a gonner for sure.”

“Does Agent Boole have the mind recovered already?” Adam asked.

“Yeah, he had to go way out though. The bomb shot him straight up in the air. If we didn’t have Milla – ” Morris stopped himself. He rolled closer to Raz. “You see her?”

Raz leaned. “Yeah.”

“Is it bad? Is she okay?”

“Why?” Adam asked. “What happened?”

“Gisu said she’d gone nuclear,” Morris said. “She was gonna hurt herself.”

“I don’t think it was that bad,” Raz said, but even as he did doubt crept in. Her glassed-over eyes, the way everyone was afraid to touch her, Sasha actually swore. Maybe she was going to burn herself out and no one was willing to say it. That would be a good reason for Truman to approve an EMP. Raz swallowed hard. “She’s okay now. Sasha snapped her out of it.”

“I hoped that would happen,” Morris said. “He’s always been her ground, you know.”

“Yeah…” Raz grimaced again. “I wish he could stick around. Or she could leave on the Pelican with him.”

“He’s leaving already?” Morris said. “But… didn’t he see what was happening? Doesn’t he care?”

“According to Otto, he won’t have a choice,” Raz said. “And Milla’s got too many minds in her head to clear out in time.”

“Maybe not on her own,” Morris said. “We could help her.”

“That’s right, we’ve got the bodies all organized,” Adam said. “Can either of you do the Mental Lasso thing?”

“No.” Morris slouched in defeat. 

“No, but I have done the tie-down part before,” Raz offered. “And Milla’s already been collecting all the lassos. If we can find the bodies they belong to, We can try to hand them through.”

“That’s a great idea!” Adam said. “Do you have a looking glass?”

“A looking glass?” Raz asked.

“Yeah, a Looking Glass,” Adam frowned. “You never seen one? They’re an Otto invention. They look like a magnifying glass or an old-timey hand mirror. It’s how the handoff happens.”

Suddenly the perfectly circular hole in Zheng Wei’s mindscape made a lot more sense. Raz shook his head. “Where do we get one?”

“You can buy them from Otto’s tech company I’m pretty sure, but the Pscyhonauts issue them to agents on missions like this,” Adam answered.

“Did you get one?” Raz asked.

“No, when he got here he said no Junior Agents.”

“Then why’d you think that we’d have one?” Morris asked.

Adam threw up his hands. “I dunno, you two are the ones whispering conspiratorially about top secret happenings. I figured you lifted one somewhere.”

Raz tapped his chin. “I don’t have a Looking Glass, but Otto did give me this.” He fished in his backpack and pulled out the camera-shaped Otto-shot he’d borrowed his first day as an intern. It takes pictures of the mental world and stores them in memory so you can print them out in the real world. If Morris and I can get in her mind, we can take pictures of all the loose minds still stuck in there and give them to Agent Zanotto to speed up the recovery.”

“That’s a good idea,” Adam said. “How are you going to get in? I’m sure she’s locked down tight as a drum.”

“She said she’d leave the back door open,” Raz answered.

“That means the Collective Unconscious!” Morris determined. “Heck yeah, Raz, we’re back in business. Do you think Zanotto would notice you missing?”

“Actually, I’m his team leader if you don’t mind,” Adam puffed out his chest. “I don’t need a Psychic to play find-the-face scavenger hunt. Your sibs will be helpful and Milla needs  you much more.”

“Well? Shall we?” Morris asked.

Raz’s heart swelled, then deflated. “The only way I know how to get to the Collective Unconscious is through a Brain Tumbler. I can’t imagine a non-psychic hospital will have one of those.”

“I know where you can get one.” Sam Boole’s voice said from directly above them. The trio looked up and saw her peeking through the ceiling tiles directly over their heads.

“Sam? What the hell?” Adam asked.

“I’ve been observing things,” Sam replied. “You wanna get a Brain Tumbler, I can get you a Brain Tumbler, but I ask something in return.”

“This is no time for your bridge troll schtick!” Morris said.

“All I ask is that you help me out with one thing. One little thing while you’re in there,” Sam backed into the dark of the ceiling until only her eyes were visible. “What do you say?”

Raz frowned up at the lurking troll, weighing the value of helping Milla with whatever nonsense or nightmare might be folded into this bargain. He set his jaw. “It’s a deal.”

Chapter #

Sam led Raz and Morris out of the hospital and back up the street to Psychonauts HQ. They avoided the front door, instead entering through a fire entrance opened for them by a stack of rats who then escorted them up the flights. 

Morris levitated backward up the swirling staircase, eyeing Sam studiously out of the corner of his eye and exchanging baffled glances with Raz as they went. “So this Brain Tumbler you’ve found. The Psychonauts brought it with them?”

“Nope.”

“So it was just part of this normal office building?”

“Nope nope.”

“Were you in charge of looking after it or… were you assigned to like, tech?”

“Nope, I was assigned to my grandpa,” Sam replied. “Agent Boole is in charge of the physical world coordination of this mission and he’s been using Fanrong’s animal population to scout the area and locate bodies and Wild Minds in the streets. He gave me the same job, specifically the rats. Brown rats are general man-about town rats. Black rats are in the sewers, so I’ve been running squads. These guys here told me about the sixth floor.” 

 “What’s on the sixth floor?” Raz asked.

Sam grinned. “You’ll see.”

They finished the ascent and entered a darkened hallway full of private offices. Sam and her rat army led Raz and Morris up the hall to a service closet. The scene inside was unmistakable. Electronic parts, loose wires, meticulously organized tools, and half-built gadgets packed the small space. A single lamp hung from the ceiling, illuminating a work station with a laser-gun-looking gizmo sitting at its center.

Raz marveled as he crossed the threshold. “Otto’s secret lab!”

“Yep! And it just so happens to hold exactly what you’re looking for.” Sam presented the laser-gun in grand fashion. “Ta da!”

“Um…” Morris rolled his levball to the table. “I think you’re confused about what a brain tumbler is.”

“This is the new and improved version,” Sam said. “I read his notes. Apparently not all of the mental navigator agents are super good at brain hopping, so Agent Mentallis was thinking about ways to make them better and voila! The Mental Hairdryr TM!”

“He invented that in the last twenty-four hours?” Raz asked.

“You know what they say about necessity,” Sam said.

“That it leads to us toasting our brains with a half-conceived and very unfortunately shaped gizmo?” Morris asked.

“Come on, you scaredy cats” Sam groaned. “Do you want to help Milla or not?”

Raz DID want to help Milla, and it wasn’t like he’d never been brain-tumbled before. Still, the Hairdryr looked haphazard. Necessity was the mother of invention, but haste also made waste. Still, the thought of Coach Oleander abducting a sleeping Sasha and leaving Milla all alone to deal with her exhausted body and over-crowded mind was worth a little risk. Raz raised his eyebrows to Morris. “Well?”

Morris groaned. “Okay, I’ll do it for Milla.”

“Great.” Sam put her hands on her hips. “First I need that favor.”

Raz braced for impact. “Okay, what is it?”

“Here, I'll show you.” Sam walked over to a catering-style presentation platter and lifted the dome-shaped lid. Underneath was an extra-fat brown rat with bugging white eyes and it’s tongue lolling out of its mouth.

Morris scoffed. “What are we supposed to do with a dead rat?”

“He’s not dead. Mr. Rattatoing is just… kinda indisposed.” Sam set the lid aside. “See, Gramps put me on scout duty because of the whole Zoolinguistic thing, but once I’d sent all my squads out to look I was out of stuff to do. I could see how much help the mind-cowboys needed, so I started trying to figure out that Mental Lasso thing.”

“And you got it to work?” Raz asked. “Can you show me?”

“Oh sure.” Sam squinted her eyes shut. “You gotta astral-project first, then all you gotta do is think of a really long snake and visualize holding it in your hand.”

Morris sounded doubtful. “A snake?”

“Yeah. Helps to imagine it wearing a little cowboy hat – ” She floated out of her own head mid-sentence. Her mouth kept moving but without using telepathy she didn’t make any sound. Sam’s ghost cocked her head to one side and thumped the upward-facing ear with the heel of her hand. Her signature strawberry-red mental energy sparked and a vaguely snake-shaped coil of glowing energy spooled out of her opposite ear and into her hand. 

Raz and Morris both leaned in. “Whoa!”

“You really figured it out on your own?” Raz said. “Sasha said he didn’t have time to teach me. He made it sound complicated.”

Sam flicked the tail of the snake like a whip, leaving sparks of red. The lasso vanished as she sank back into her head. “Its easy enough to imagine. The hard part is making the loop on the end.”

“Is that what you need our help with?” Raz pressed. “You couldn’t make a loop so you couldn’t hold on to Mr. Rattatoing’s mind?” 

 “Oh, I’m holding onto it alright.” She tapped her forehead. “He’s been running around in here for the past six hours and I can’t get him out. That’s the favor.”

“Get a rat’s mind out of your head?” Morris asked. 

“And I assume put him back where he belongs?” Raz finished.

“I mean if you want to,” Sam said. “His mental acuity has degraded pretty bad since I pulled him out. Rats aren’t meant to astrally-project, you know. I’m pretty sure if you put him back, he’ll just run into the walls.”

Raz frowned. “So what? We just let him float off?”

“Hm, that’s a good point.” Sam tapped her chin. “Do either of you want a pet rat in your head?”

“Can’t say it's something I’ve thought too much about,” Morris said. “Besides, neither of us knows how to do the Mental Lasso, let alone mindwalk a rat.”

“Rats are easy, their brain’s the size of a grape,” Sam said. “All they think about is mating and not getting eaten.”

“That makes me want to go in less,” Morris said. 

“Let me try to get a Mental Lasso going. That’ll answer this question pretty quick,” Raz said. He lowered his goggles and attempted to force himself out of his body. Before the Psi-Bomb, he'd only ever astrally-projected himself into a psi-portal. It wasn't easy to maintain. A free-roaming ghost-form required the psychic to not only recreate their own body, but to replace all the senses and functions missing without one using their psychic abilities. It's why the free minds dispersed by the bombs went wild, and Raz could testify to how unsettling it felt to suddenly experience. He also hadn’t realized to that point how much he’d come to rely on the magnetic pull of the open psi-door to free himself from his mind. He thought about how Sasha did it when he was confronting Milla. Raz extended one hand palm-outward and imagined himself running down the length of his arm. Over and under. He imagined a tiny him hopping over the strap of his knapsack, tracing  the seams of his jacket, climbing the rolled-up cuff of the sweater Sasha gave him on his first day at HQ. His imagined self ran up the slope of his forefinger and jumped into thin air. A sudden lapse of gravity gave his head a spin. Raz clamped his eyes shut behind his goggles and tried not to notice how much the sensation reminded him of floating untethered in the rock of the Lowha Lasung mountain.

“Nice, Raz!” Morris cried. The echo of his voice scattered as if Raz were underwater. “Now try the lasso thing!” 

Raz had completely forgotten about the lasso. He opened his eyes. For a brief moment, he beheld a ghostly image of himself floating in the air before his hand, but the moment his physical eyes focused, the projection was sucked back into his face. He flinched. The twang snapped in his skull like a stretched rubber band. He covered his face but only succeeded in smacking his goggles further into his eye sockets. “Ow.”

“You can’t open your real eyes, dummy,” Sam said. “Haven’t you astrally projected before?”

“I have.” Raz rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“You gotta do the lasso before you astrally project,” Sam said. “It’s gotta be attached to your head not your ghost. If it’s attached to your ghost, then it doesn’t work.”

“You’ve learned this from experience?” Raz asked.

Sam shrugged. “Mr. Rattatoing’s brother Rico may or may not haunt the place now.”

“Agent Mentallis is going to be thrilled about THAT.” Raz closed his eyes and concentrated again. 

“Remember!” Sam stage-whispered into his ear. “Snake with a cowboy hat!”

Raz did not imagine a snake with a cowboy hat, but he could imagine a rope. He summoned up memories of pitching the family circus tent. He recalled the weight and texture of the heavy bundle of twine, the pull of its coil against his leather gloves, and the tickle of the frayed bits of fiber when brushed his bare arm. He thought about tying it into knots on the tent stakes – how he had to use his legs and stomach to get it as tight as he could. He drew this memory with him back out of his body. It was easier the second time, a lot more like leaping into a psi-portal. He kept his real eyes closed and opened the mind’s eye of his projection. He was floating in the space above the three Junior Pyschonauts, peering down at Sam, Morris, and his own body frozen in his “casting” position. His arms and legs were bluish and translucent, just like they had been after the Mind Bomb, except this time he held a thick length of sparking orange rope in one hand.

“You did it!” Morris cheered from very far off. 

<i> “It was easier than I thought it would be,”</i> Raz thought back. The Mental Lasso was warm and tingly like Sasha’s and Oleander’s had been, only this time he could feel the electric charge in his head as well as his hands. It hung limp with weight like he expected a real rope to. Bolts of shining green energy raced along the twisted fibers, emitting a faint “whizz” as they went. 

“You’re a natural, bro,” Morris said. “Now try and get the rat out.”

“Don’t forget the loop!” Sam shouted.

Thankfully Frazie used lassos in her Sugarcube act, although the rope she used to catch barrels and straw dummies was a lot thinner than the one he’d conjured. He tested it with his hands, then got ready to rope. <i> “Can you project Rattatoing’s mind out for me to get?”</i>

Sam shrugged. “If I could do that, I wouldn’t be asking you for help.” 

<i> “But I’ve only seen agents use a lasso on loose minds. </i>

“Just put it on my head. What’s the worse that could happen?”

Raz sucked his astrally-projected lips. <i> “Okay, if you say so.”</i>

He tossed the Mental Lasso toward Sam’s ginger head. It caught around her crown like a tiara and pulled tight. The Mental Lasso tightened, slipping right through her skin. Sam went walleyed as it cinched tight.

<i> “Ugh,” <i> Raz cringed.

“Ugh!” Morris agreed. “Is it supposed to do that?”

<i>“I… uh… I don’t know,”</i> Raz tugged the rope. He definitely had something caught. He hoped it was Mr. Rattatoing. <i> “I guess… here goes nothing.” </i>

He gave the lasso a hard yank and the loop pulled out through Sam’s forehead. He had Mr. Rattatoing all right. The rat was bleary-eyed and panicked with all four feet scrambling for purchase in the air. Raz also had Sam, who was bound to the rat as if he were a horrific tiara. Her projection stretched as it was pulled unwillingly from her brain.  

“Ahh!” Morris cried.

<i> “Ahh!” </i> Raz thought sympathetically. Sam’s feet came free of her skull with a violent SNAP. Mr Rattatoing was thrown free and Sam drifted out of the slack. Raz’s lasso fell limp as the two floated off in different directions like lost balloons. 

“Ahh!” <i> “Ahh!”</i> The boys screamed anew. 

Sam cooed soundlessly, dazed and awestruck, almost dreamlike. She floated through one of the shelving units unimpeded and into the ceiling. 

Morris pointed. “Catch her, Raz! Before we gotta go up a floor!”

Raz tied another knot and flung the lasso at her drifting projection. She vanished into the acoustical tiles, but Raz’s lasso wasn’t bound by physical space and followed her up. It caught on something and Raz responded with a yank, hoping he hadn’t dementistrated another rat. He yanked hard on the Lasso and Sam emerged from the ceiling, snagged by her ankle. 

Raz sighed. <i> “I’ve got her!” </i>

“Now what?” Morris asked. “Do we drag her all the way back to the hospital? Get Agent Zanotto and Fullbear to fix her?”

<i> “Sasha told me on the plane that the next step of the lasso is to pull the loose mind into your own head. I think I have to do that.” </i>

“You need smelling salts?” Morris said.

<i> “No, no. I got it. Maybe if I just open my eyes…” </i>

Raz became suddenly aware of his own physical body. His eyes opened behind his goggles and his projection sucked in the same as before. He watched in fascination and mild horror as the Mental Lasso reeled into his forehead, towing Sam by the ankle until she, too, vanished into his mind. He felt her jostle around like a loose part in a broken toy, but didn’t go in with her. He raised his goggles and stared at Morris, dumbfounded. 

Morris stared back. “Did you? I mean? You got her?”

Raz could feel something bopping around in his mental landscape. He covered his ears, trying to make out what was being done or said, but his mind was outward-facing not inward-facing. He closed his eyes and tried to turn himself inside-out, but it wasn’t as easy as visualizing a lasso in his hand. He needed help.

Morris rolled closer, brow knit. “Raz?”

“Brain Tumbler,” he grunted. 

“Hair Dryr?” Morris corrected. “You sure? We don’t even  know if it works.”

“It’s that or back to the hospital,” Raz said. “We could always go upstairs and tell Otto we found his secret lab.”

“It’s your call, dude.”

Raz understood why Sam asked them for help. She wasn’t even a rat and her presence was unnerving at best. Raz thought about all the minds he’d visited. The psychic manifestations that populated the landscapes of those places were not their owners’ conscious constructions. The Fred and Edgar he saw in their levels were personifications of their subconscious. Was Sam talking to a subconscious version of him? Was she tidying up his figments and unlocking memory vaults? The thought made him shudder. He’d always been a mindwalker, never the mindwalked. He pressed his hands against the earholes of his helmet and tried to listen in but it was like thinking through a confusion grenade. Everything was upside down and inside out. He nodded.

“Okay.” Morris rolled to the desk and picked up the Hair Dryr. He searched the side of the body for an on-switch. Lights flashed across the top. A caged fan on the side spun to life with a high-pitched whine. “Do I just aim it at you?”

“I don’t know!”

“Stop!” Gisu burst through the lab door on her skateboard and skidded to a stop. She grabbed the Hair Dryr from Morris’s hand and switched the gizmo off. 

Morris rolled back, affronted. “What”

“You wanna blow his head off? Let me do it.” Gizu grabbed a screwdriver and went to work on Otto’s device. 

Raz squinted at her, Sam still bopping about unsupervised. “Is there a security camera in here, too?”

“Of course there is.” Gisu replied. “I rushed down here the minute I saw Sam come in. Knew you all would screw something up.” She took a metal plate from the worktable and screwed it on the Hair Dryr to cover the fan. “There. Otto was messing with the cooling unit.” 

“And it’s safe now?” Morris asked.

“More or less.” She grabbed a curved bit of wire from the desk and revealed it to be a mounting stand. She fit the Dryr to the top and maneuvered Raz beneath it until both were in position. “Okay. That’ll do it.”

“Wait. I’ll need someone in Sam’s mind, too.”

“I’ll go,” Morris said. “Do you have your psi-door?”

“Yeah, here.” Raz TK’d it out of it’s pocket in his backpack and handed it to him. “When Oleander did it, he opened up a window and handed the end of the string through to me.”

“Then you’ll need one of these.” Gizu rummaged in a drawer and pulled out an over-sized magnifying glass. The handle was twisted with red wire and a capsule of purple Psitanium. “It’s called a Looking Glass.”

Raz took the gizmo. “Otto really needs to work on his naming conventions.”

“At least he didn’t name this one after himself,” Gisu said. “This works like the Otto-shot. You carry a mental copy of it into your mind with you. When you want to use it, turn the tuner and dial up who you want to call.”

Suddenly the perfectly circular opening the coach reached through in Zheng Wei’s mind made a lot more sense. Raz tucked the Looking Glass into his backpack. “Got it.”

“I’ll watch the door. Make sure no one walks in on you. I already froze the camera feed down here… you’re lucky you’ve got me on security. If Otto finds you messing with your stuff in here he’s going to be PISSED.” Gisu switched on the Hair Dryr. The gizmo sputtered and coughed, then buzzed to full life. Raz felt the familiar pull of the Brain Tumbler at the back of his head as the gizmo drew him inward, out of his body, through the barriers of his own mind, and out into the Collective Unconscious.

Chapter #

Compared to Sasha’s Mental Neighborhood, Raz’s was humble, but it had still grown incredibly in the short time he’d been a Psychonaut. What started as a simple ring of doors had grown into a node-based network of islands connecting him to his family, his teachers, his classmates, and everyone he’d helped. New ones popped up without his knowledge, too. He’d never visited the mindscapes of his fellow Junior Psychonauts. Truman said it wasn’t appropriate for them to visit each other unsupervised until they were all practiced enough to build safety nets and walls – something about them still being minors – but a door existed for each of them anyway just because they’d forged an interpersonal relationship. Raz spotted Sam’s leopard and zebra-print door hovering with the other Juniors, but he couldn’t jump in yet. He needed to dredge her out of his own head, first. Raz grappled the mental nodes and flung himself through the glowing door of his own tent-shaped doorway. The light enveloped him and seeped through him, welcoming him home.

He entered his own mindscape with a forward roll and hopped up to find the smoky void around his family’s traveling caravan surrounded in a ring of polka-dot green wallpaper.

“Oh! Raz, there you are!” Sam said. She was on a stepladder with a bucket of paste and her hair covered in a kerchief. “Took you long enough!”

“What are you doing!?” Raz cried. 

“Sorry, it was just so dreary in here. I got bored and then inspired!” She unrolled a bolt of pink and blue striped paper she’d clamped under her arm. “Like it? It spoke to me.”

“Where did you find that?” Raz asked.

“Manifested it.” 

“You can manifest things in my mind?”

“Oh Raz, it’s just like building a mental construct,” Sam said. “It’s all about visualizing! Use your imagination.”

“But I didn’t agree to that! This is my mind, not your mind!” He said. “Take it all down!”

“What? But I just put it up!”

He crossed his arms. “Take it down, Sam. I’m sending you back home.” 

“You’re no fun.” She stuck the bolt of paper to an exposed patch of wallpaper paste and slid down the ladder. “Thanks for not letting me float away though.”

“Right…” Raz lost his high ground. “Sorry for pulling you out of your head.”

“That’s okay. I was just as surprised as you.” 

“Hold still and let me put another Lasso on you.” Raz conjured up another rope. It appeared thinner and with a lot less effort the second time around. 

Sam raised her hand. “No need for that, Raz.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not a Wild Mind, silly. I was just involuntarily projected.” She smirked. “If it was that easy to break a mental tether, Hornblower wouldn’t need to make human bombs to do it. I mean, maybe if I wasn’t psychic you could have snapped me free. Or if I was a baby. Or a rat. How’s Mr. Rattatoing, by the way?”

“Oh… uh…” Raz grimaced. “I think he floated through the wall.”

“Oh well, at least he’ll have Rico,” Sam said. “Do you want to go help Milla now?”

“Yeah, but first, Morris is in your head waiting for me to hand you back through to him.” Raz pulled out the Looking Glass and dialed it until the screen displayed a picture of her door. “I’ll call him.”

“That’s not going to work. You’ll just call back here.” Sam grabbed the Looking Glass and twisted the handle to select Morris’s door instead. “The glass calls your mind, not your brain. If you dialed my door, you’d just call back here because this is where my mind is.” She held the glass at arm’s length. The thick, warped lens rippled and opened a window to reveal Morris rolling through a lush jungle full of flowering plants.

“Is that your mind?” Raz asked. “I’ve never seen it before!”

“I haven’t either, really,” Sam said. “Coach put me in the Brain Tumbler once, but he said it was unproductive.”

“Hey!” Morris rushed to the circular window and peered through. “Sam? You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, you worry too much,” Sam said. “How do you like my crib?”

“It’s got mosquitos,” Morris said and slapped his neck.

“Imaginary mosquitoes,” Sam rolled her eyes. “Join us over here. Raz’s place has literally nothing in it.”

Raz glared. “Hey!”

Sam thrust her hand through the lens of the Looking Glass, burying her arm up to the shoulder. Raz heard shuffling and squawking before Morris was yanked through the opening by the collar. He spilled onto the floor of Raz’s mindscape first with his lawn chair close behind. It beaned Raz in the head before clattering to the foggy floor.

Sam shut the Looking Glass off and handed it to Raz. “There we go. The gang’s all here.”

“Thanks.” Raz tucked the glass in his backpack. “How do you know all this stuff, Sam? I get Gisu knowing about Otto’s lab, she’s still his intern kinda, but you’re not anything like that. Did the coach teach you?”

“Coach doesn’t care about gizmos. He’s a big picture guy,” Sam says. “No, the rats showed me all this stuff.”

“Rats?” 

“The rats see everything, Raz.” Sam’s smile faded. Her eyes drifted out of focus. “Everything. Everywhere.”

“This has become way more than I signed up for,” Morris grunted and floated himself and his chair back into their proper configuration. “Are we still going into Milla’s head or are we done?”

“If we aren’t already too late.” Raz took off at a jog. “Come on, Oatmeal’s around the back of the caravan.”

“Oatmeal?” Morris asked.

“Oatmeal.” Raz stopped in front of the yellow and orange worm guy. “ His name.”

“Name?” Sam asked.

“They have a name?” Morris asked. “I always just called him an earwig.”

Raz grimaced. “Earwig? Ew.” 

“He never told ME his name.” Sam bent over the wiggling little wormie. “Why didn’t you tell me your name, huh? You talk? Why didn’t you say something?”

Oatmeal buzzed at her and inflated a spit bubble, sucking the three of them in and out to the Collective Unconscious. 

Unlike when Raz entered the space with Sasha, each of the Junior Psychonauts were still tethered to their minds. Even when they were in the same bubble, they each emerged into their own corner of the Collective Unconscious. Raz landed in front of his mental door and took off at a run. It was up to Morris and Sam to make it to Milla’s mind through their own mental connections. Raz grappled past the portals for Lili and Sasha and propelled himself through Milla’s portal at a tumble. He emerged in the same spot he’d appeared for Levitation training at Whispering Rock – the lobby outside Milla’s mental dance hall – except the vibe was completely different.

The pounding thrum of Milla’s constant internal rhythm was crackling and dull as if playing through a public loudspeaker. The atmosphere was heavy. It smelled of burnt hair and sweat, and the air was warm and sticky from the crush of thousands of physical manifestations. Chinese-speaking victims packed shoulder to shoulder. Confused and frightened people who’d been going through their day only to find themselves cast from their bodies, ensnared, and held captive in a surreal location with no guide or explanation. From what Bob would call Blues and Greens seeking comfort in huddles, to the Yellows standing alone with thoughtless expressions, to the unfortunate Reds floating above the rest in clouds of sparkle, each one tied down by one of Milla’s fuschia-pink Mental Lassos. 

Raz searched the crowds around him, but saw no sign of Morris or Sam through the forest of limbs. Everywhere he glanced, the adrenaline flashes of eye contact pricked him from gaps in the crowd. He wasn’t going to find his team on the ground. It was time to follow the rules of the house and float for it. He summoned a levitation ball and hopped straight up in the air where his thought balloon caught him for a slow drift back down. 

The crowd was even thicker than his first impressions, and it made his stomach turn. This wasn’t the way Milla Vodello treated her guests. Every camper who came through her training course was given individual attention. Her calm, soothing nature made sure everyone felt safe even as they were throwing themselves against walls and falling from great heights. She would have never left people shivering and afraid if she had the chance, but if she didn’t act quickly everyone in the room with him would be dead. All the proof he needed was tied to every one of them. Raz traced the paths of pink through the dark scene. They appeared to converge on a single point in the middle of the room – an anchor, just like the sculpture of the little girl in Zheng Wei’s head. He decided to head toward it and hoped Morris and Sam would think to do the same. 

Raz took another bound and floated as far across the heads as he could, then picked the rest of the way through the crowd on foot. He picked one of the tethers at random, following it like a golden thread through the human labyrinth. Blues and Greens followed him with their eyes – likely adding him to the narrative of whatever dream they thought they were having. The plan to use the Otto shot to identify them felt silly, now. The number of people who needed sorting was too much for individual faces to make a significant difference. His heart broke for Milla with this crowd of misery in her head, then broke again when he found the anchor she’d used to tie them all down. 

At the heart of the crowd was an old wooden crib, the flatted walls woven thick with the tethers of the masses. Raz dropped his arms to his sides. He didn’t know why he was shocked. Not all deeply rooted memories were love like Zheng Wei’s. Sometimes it was trauma, especially one that hit hard enough to awaken Milla Vodello’s psychic powers.

“Razuptin,” Milla spoke. She was standing behind him with dark bags under her eyes and her hands clasped in front of her. 

His voice cracked a little as he spoke. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I am asleep, sweetie, but I could still feel someone moving around in here. I floated up to non-REM to see what was wrong.” Her eyes clouded with exhaustion. “Can I help you with something?”

He swallowed, stirring the guilt in his stomach. “No we…. I wanted to clear out some of these minds in your head. So you could leave on the Pelican with Sasha.”

A bit of color returned to her cheeks. “That’s very thoughtful of you, but Sasha’s already gone.”

Raz’s heart sank. “What?”

“They left half an hour ago.”

“Did the coach have to kidnap him?”

“Kidnap?”

“Yeah,”  Raz cleared his throat. “Otto said they’d have to smuggle Sasha out in his sleep.”

“Oh.” Milla smiled behind her hand. “No, darling. He went willingly. And he apologizes for not saying goodbye to you, by the way. They were in a bit of a rush.”

Raz’s spirit lifted. “You can talk to him again?”

“But of course! You know we’re never more than a thought away.” She sighed. “Of course, today was a bit of an exception to that, but that’s all over, now. No more Psilirium fences or solo recovery missions for us, you have my word.”

A return to her lighter, more normal tone was the last bit Raz needed to be convinced. He rocked on his heels. “Sorry we barged in. We didn’t mean to intrude.”

“I appreciate any help. I only wanted to make sure you were all right.” She frowned. “I could sense more than one presence. Did you bring someone else in ehre?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got ‘em,” another familiar voice interrupted. The crowd shuffled away as Helmut Fullbear – hat, mustache, cloak and all – ushered Morris and Sam into their midst.

Milla’s hand flew to her mouth again. “Agent Fullbear! Always a joy to see you in the flesh!”

“As close as I come to it, anyway.” He slapped himself on the hip and gestured to his two charges. “Caught these party crashers rushing the line over by the bouncer. Bob had a feeling something went screwy when two Junior Agents vanished under our watch.”

“Sorry, sir,” Raz said.

“Milla!” Morris zoomed over to her. “You’re here! Are you okay? Gisu said you were like a hurricane or something. What’s up with the crowd?”

“I’m fine darling. So sorry to have frightened you.” She conjured a pink leviball and sat beside him. “Sasha said you called him for help.”

“Uh, yeah, uh…” Morris scratched the back of his head. “No one else was doing anything.”

“I should be chastising you about spying on official channels and breaking the rules of the Grand Head, but I’ll thank you instead.” She smiled. “We are government agents, but we are also humans and you did not forget that. I am happy to know that you and the other Junior Agents care so much about my well being.  And as for the spying, that is part of our job! Just remember that there are good examples of applying personal judgment and bad examples. Stepping up to get me the help I needed was a good reason to test orders, but if you do it too much, your peers and superiors will not be able to rely on you when it counts.”

“That’s a real wobbly line to draw, Milla,” Morris said.

“Real life often is.” She squeezed his arm and raised her eyes to include Raz and Sam in the lecture. “As members of a team, we want to be trustworthy to those who are relying on us. Think carefully the next time you consider going over the team-leader’s head. Getting me the help I needed was a good example, but leaving your post to come in here and complicate things was not. Not that I doubt your intentions! I know you three had only the best intentions at heart, but my mind is busy enough as it is, and you three are very badly needed elsewhere. I know it is confusing, but with more experience, you will start to understand the differences.”

“So what do we do for now, then?” Sam asked. “Just sit around and take orders?”

“Use your best judgment, sweetie,” Milla said. “Support your teams as best you can in the places you were assigned, because every moment we spend here is one that Agent Boole, Agent Zanotto, and Agent Fullbear are short-handed. I am sure Helmut has very important work he should be doing instead of chasing three wayward minds.”

Raz spoke on behalf of the three. “We’re sorry we barged in. We thought we could help.”

“You can help, pipsqueak, you just should have asked us how first.” Helmut poked Raz in the back of the head. It gave Raz a little bit of a thrill considering how rare interacting with Helmut’s whole body typically was. “Let’s let Milla recover a bit first though, alright. She doesn’t need three more bodies in this exclusive dance club.”

She smirked, and shook her head. “Any club lobby is meant to be crowded, darling, but perhaps the time has come for us to drop the velvet rope.”

“That’s up to you, Miss Mental Minx,” Helmut said. “Do you think you’re up to it?”

“A proper hostess prepares ahead of time,” Milla assured him, “and a good party keeps going long after she’s gone to bed.” 

Milla floated from her seat to the side of the old crib. Gazing on it was enough to reintroduce the note of sadness, but she gathered her resolve and bent over the rail. With one purposeful touch, the symbol of her dark past vanished back to the nightmare it belonged in. With it went all of the Mental Lassos. The loose minds marveled, chatting to each other in curious tones. Milla rose above them and clapped her hands. When she spoke, it sounded like a speaker. 

“Attention everyone!”

The minds faced her, drawn by her warm tone if not the words. 

“I know most of you do not understand me,” she said, “but I still want all of you to be greeted and welcomed. Thank you so much for your patience. Tomorrow this will feel like a marvelous dream, but for now, relax and enjoy. This party is just for you!”

The lights shifted from flat brightness to colored spotlights and disco balls. The music swelled, rising through the crackle of the loudspeakers and thumping Raz’s diaphragm with a deep dancing beat. The giant bouncer statue in back raised its arms revealing a new chamber beyond. The hall was papered in stars and sparkles. A fully-stocked buffet and bar hugged the right wall, and one of Milla’s faceless dancers jammed on the turntables along the left. Between the two was a massive lighted dance floor beneath a constant rain of confetti.

The minds around them ‘ooh’ed and ‘ahh’ed, taken by the charm. Most of the Blues and Greens moved toward the party together with many of the Yellows and Oranges following toward the flashing lights. 

Helmut let out a laugh that echoed above the tunes. “Groovy, Milla! I like it!”

“Naturally, darling,” she said as she descended. “I added a little empathetic spice to the mix. Nothing intrusive, just enough to enhance the surrealness of the moment and help sell the idea of a dream.” 

“You can do that?” Raz asked. “Did you do that at Whispering Rock.”

“Of course not,” she said, affronted. “You children are psychic! You know what it means to hop into someone’s mind and experience a mental world. These poor people have never experienced such a thing before and hopefully will never experience it again. It’s better for their mental health to lift the burden of disbelief. Afterward, when their minds are reunited with their bodies, our therapists will sit down with them and talk through all that happened. For now, though, they can relax and enjoy and I can drift back down to REM sleep where Dr. Cao preferred I go from the start.”

“Are you still on the couch in the breakroom?” Raz asked.

Milla laughed. “When Sasha woke me to say goodbye, I agreed to move to a recovery room. A small one. For observation.”

Raz bit his lip. “And you’re sure you’re okay?”

Milla said. “I will be, Razputin.”

 “Before you drop back to dreamland, lemme consult with you a sec,” Helmut interrupted. “I know you gave us carte blanche to start liquidating your guest list, but Bobby wants to get a filing system in order - you know him. Do you mind if we do some redecorating?”

“Not at all, darling. Do whatever you like with the front of the house. Just don’t go past the bouncer.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“And Helmut,” Milla added, finally. “Sasha told me about the adventures the Pelican crew have been on. Razputin needs uninterrupted sleep as badly as I do. Would you give him a couple hours?”

Raz’s face went red hot. “I’m okay! I can keep going.”

“You’re starting to sound like someone I know very well,” Milla chastised. “Get some rest.”

“You heard the lady,” Helmut said. “Raz, you’re off duty for the next five hours. I’ll call Otto to authorize it. Martinez, you’re with me. After you wake up from wherever the lot of you disappeared to, get back to the hospital. We’ll get to work on streamlining some kinda coat check or something to sort people out.”

“I look forward to seeing your interior design,” Milla said.

“It’ll be Bobby’s design, but I’ll pick the colors,” Helmut winked. “Good night, Agent Vodello.”

“Good night, Agent Fullbear. Good night, Junior Agents.” Milla bade. She nodded with gratitude and vanished in a ball of light. The others pulled out smelling salts and followed, awaking alongside Morris and Sam in Otto’s secret lab where the Hair Dryr was still running and Raz’s head was killing him.

Gisu crossed her arms.”Well? Did you stitch Sam back together?”

“Nah, we went to a dance party,” Sam popped Raz’s psi-portal off her forehead and tossed it back to him as she passed out of the lab. “Let me know if you see any ghost rats on your cameras, okay?” 

“Whaa?” Gisu asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Morris said. “Thanks for lookin’ out.”

“Yeah, you’re a champ,” Raz said. “Goodnight!”

“Good… night? But it’s nine in the morning.” Gisu said. The other three slipped past without further explanation. The ghost of Mr. Rattatoing squeaked a disembodied farewell from the walls. 

Chapter #

Sleep was EXACTLY what Raz needed. His official wakeup time was 2pm local, so he bedded down in his assigned corner of the conference room with his goggles over his eyes and dropped straight to sleep. He dreamed about being an untethered mind, floating through the Motherlobe. He kept drifting past people he trusted – Truman, Hollis, Sasha, Lili – flailing and begging for help but no one saw him. He slipped out into the quarry and started floating toward the sky when a red-tinted snake with a cowboy hat bit him on the arm.

“Ahh!” Raz squawked and sat up.

“Hey!” Lizzie cried. She’d shaken him awake. 

The clock on the wall read 1:00 pm. Lizzie and Norma were leaning over him. Raz razed his goggles. “What’s going on? What happened?”

“You almost slept through the action, that’s what happened,” Norma replied.

“Did Hornblower attack?” Raz pressed. “Was there another Mind Bomb? News from HQ? Is Milla still okay?”

“Whoa, cool down there, bud,” Lizzie said. “Compton’s located another Wild Mind and all the other agent teams are busy, so the Natividad sisters are up to the plate. We thought you’d like to get in on a little ghost bustin’.”

“I’m assigned to Agent Zanotto’s team,” Raz said.

Norma rolled her eyes and adjusted her glasses. “You’re such a snob.”

“Come on, Pooter. You’re not really going to skip out on honest to god field work for a dumb rule, are you? We get to use psychic powers out in the open on a real city street fighting a real psychic threat! When’s the next time we’re going to get to do that?”

Raz sucked his teeth, neglecting to mention that he’d already done that once on this mission and would probably end up doing it again.

“Whatever, kid. Do what you want. This was only a courtesy call, you know,” Norma said. “We are the ones being called up for work. We just thought you’d enjoy the fun. Of course if you’re too scared of Bob Zanotto...”

“No, no, no,” Raz said. He checked the clock again. He was officially off duty until 2. Maybe if he was quick… “I’m coming.”

“Great.” Norma grinned, which was rarely a good sign. “There’s a bus downstairs. Get your stuff.”

Norma and Lizzie did not wait for him. Raz pulled on his boots, made sure all his comics and things were still in his backpack, and dashed to join them on the elevator before the doors closed. They rode down to the first floor where triage was still bustling. Without Milla to worry about, Raz was able to pay attention to the agents moving from person to person. The HQ lobby was psychic triage, and everyone here was a psychic. He wondered how many knew they were before the bomb went off. Probably not many, considering the Wild Minds. Agents and translators spoke to the more aware ones, were they recruiting? A girl close to Mirtala’s age ran through the crowd with a yellow legal pad. She handed it to a Psychonaut who thanked her and began speaking with a shivering man on the ground. The girl dashed to another man nearby. A familiar man. Raz waved for Norma and Lizzie’s attention. “I’ll be right back!”

“Huh?” Lizzie asked.

Norma put her hands on her hips. “We’re not going to be late because of you!”

“I’ll only be a second!” Raz dashed to the girl and who he now assumed was her father, survivor of Buxing, Mr. Zheng Wei. Raz waved his fingers at him. “Hi there!”

Zheng Wei practically leaped away in shock. “Shìnǐ!” 

“nàgè nánhái,” the girl asked, then turn to Raz. “You helped father?”

“You speak English!” Raz cried.

The girl blushed. “Little.”

“What’s your name?” 

“Ling,” she said. “Yours?”

“Raz.”

“Raz.” Ling giggled. “Funny.”

“What are you two doing here?”

“Father wanted to help after you helped him,” Ling said. “He is … “ she struggled for a word. “Brain show.”

“Psychic,” Raz said.

She laughed, as if it was obvious. “Psy… kick.”

“Did he know before?”

“No, but learning!” Ling tapped her head. “Maybe me too? When the bomb went off, i flew around but wasn’t scared. 33 says that could mean powers. We are trying. He sits with other people like him. Talks to them about brain kick.”

“PSYchic.”

She pouted – again very Mirtala of her. “Talking makes everyone feel better. Father, too.”

“That’s great to hear. I’m glad you’re both okay.” Raz frowned. “You said 33?”

“Yes?” The woman with the notepad turned around. She was statuesque with bobbed blonde hair and sharp cheekbones. Raz recognised the tone of her voice. It was the agent who answered Sasha’s call from the Pelican and told him Milla was classified. 

“Agent 33,” Raz said, shrewdly. “We haven’t actually met.”

“Agent Aquato,” she replied, meeting his tone. “We shouldn’t be meeting now.”

“Why are you working down here in the lobby? Shouldn’t you be on coms? Where I ASSUME you were assigned?”

“My coms shift ended at five this morning,” 33 answered. “I’m volunteering my free time down here.”

“Uh huh,” he said. 

“Is this about the call on the radio?” She brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Don’t blame the messenger, kid. I assume you’re upset because your team is getting a dressing-down about disregarding directions when they get back to the Motherlobe. Notice that has nothing to do with me. It doesn’t matter to me who gets in trouble with who, I was just following orders.”

“Just seems a little suspicious,” Raz said. “You followed orders. Did you follow order when we called Motherlobe before the Rhombus of Ruin as well? Did you just HAPPEN to be tehre, just like you just HAPPENED to be on vacation at the Lady Luctopus when Gristol Malik was there?” Raz pressed. “A place where Psychics are NOT ALLOWED?”

“I was not working coms before the Rhombus incident, I was on vacation,” 33 said. “Yes, at the Lady Luctopus… utilizing their spa and country club where psychics ARE allowed. As long as they don’t place or take bets and don’t participate in any sponsored competitions of course. Which is fine. I don’t care for golf, but I do like a hot-stone massage. Is that a crime?”

“No, I guess not,” Raz said. Otto confirmed that the order to go straight to the Motherlobe did come from Truman, after all. Perhaps he was being unfair. “You don’t know anything about the Mentalists, do you?”

“First you think I’m a Deluginist, now you think I’m a Mentalist?” 33 scoffed. “I suppose I should expect no less from a ten year-old secret agent.”

“I didn’t say you were one, I just asked if you knew anything about them.”

“I know a lot about them. They’re psychic supremacists,” 33 said. “They believe that psychics are the next logical step in human development, and that our mistreatment across the globe is merely old biological hardware afraid of becoming obsolete. I admit I can see a bit of their side, but that doesn’t make me a terrorist. I have plenty of friends who are non-psychics and I wouldn’t want to kill them just because I think they’re diminished without powers.”

Zheng Wei asked something in Chinese. Ling translated. “Something wrong?”

“No, nothing,” 33 said. “Ask your father to sit with Mr. Xiǎo, here, a while. He’s having a hard time.”

“Yes, miss!” Ling said and obeyed. 

Norma cleared her throat loudly from the door. “Agent Aquato? You coming or not?”

“Yes!” He narrowed his eyes at the blonde. “Carry on, Agent.”

“I intend to, thanks,” 33 said with a snort. 

Raz returned to Norma and Lizzie who were groaning up a storm. Lizzie kicked the revolving door to get it moving. “Circus seconds must be longer than real seconds because that took forever.”

“I was investigating,” Raz said. “Do you know much about Agent 33?”

“Yeah, she’s an Omnilingualist,” Lizzie said.

“That means her psychic affinity is understanding and translating languages,” Norma defined with the over-sweet tone of a kindergarten teacher.

“I know what an Omnilingualist is,” Raz said. “Why’s she got a number and not a name?”

“Well, I heard it’s because in her real life, she was a convicted criminal,” Norma said. 

“Nuh uh,” Lizzie contested. “I heard it’s because she’s a stealth agent and that her name is a secret to protect the agency. No one knows her real name, not even Truman.”

“That’s dumb. The Grand Head would have to know her name,” Norma said.

“Not if he wiped it out of his head for security.”

“How would not knowing who works for us enhance our security?” Norma asked. “It makes no logical sense.”

“And hiring a convicted criminal does?”

“Sure it does! Compton was a convicted criminal and he’s YOUR mentor,” Norma replied. “And Raz found out Hollis was a criminal, too. She just didn’t get convicted because she called the Psychonauts before she could get arrested. Righ, Raz?”

Raz’s heart seized and plummeted. “I… uh… I promised not to discuss that stuff.”

“Evasion!” Norma said. “Proves I’m right.”

“Proves nothing. 33 is not a criminal,” Lizzie said. “And if she is, changing her name doesn’t do anything about changing her face. I’m sure there were mugshots.”

“Not if she committed her crimes while invisible,” Norma said. 

“Oh my god, stop! Next you’ll tell me she’s an alien under cover.”

“ACtually,” Raz said. “Until science proves otherwise, aliens are still a statistical possibility.”

“Oh my GOD shut UP!” Lizzie groaned again. “I hope the Wild Mind fries you both.”

The three of them piled into the black transport van waiting for them. The vehicle was driven by police with a People’s Republic of China insignia sewn on their uniforms. Compton was waiting inside with Cassie O’Pia, both dressed in formal psychonaut-gray suits. Lizzie and Norma went stiff with attention, but Raz broke a broad smile. “Compton! Cassie!”

“Hello there, Raz,” Cassie said. “Weren’t expecting us along were you?”

“Nor were we expecting YOU.” Compton raised his heavy brows under his bowler cap. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”

“I woke up early,” Raz said. “Is it okay if I come help?”

“Oh, I suppose,” Cassie said. “Otto keeps saying ‘All hands on deck.’ Why not yours, too?” 

Compton knocked on the glass partition separating the body of the van from the cabin and the vehicle pulled forward onto the busy street. The block between Psychonauts HQ and the city hospital was blocked off, even though logically all the citizens of Fanrong were incapacitated. Republic cops moved the barrier to let their van through and released them into the broader city. The city beyond was still and quiet, but not quite as ghost-towny as Buxing. People still walked. Some businesses were open. Raz tapped on the window. “Are those people released from the hospital?”

“And psychics, yes,” Compton confirmed. “Those with a particular grasp on reality recovered quickly from the bombing once we’d connected them back to their own brains.”

“Mostly those who were asleep at the time,” Cassie said. “They thought they were dreaming. Or those under psychedelic influence. Someone used to having hallucinations just assumes they’re having another one. For people like that, the hard part is explaining that they are no LONGER hallucinating after waking them up.”

“The third option, of course, are psychics who are already aware of their identities,” Compton agreed. “In a town this big, there were more than a few of those. That’s who gave us this tip. We’re headed into a residential neighborhood where a Wild Mind has been causing havoc since Hornblower attacked. We only found out about it because one of our released victims was allowed to move back home.”

“The recovery team didn’t notice a Wild Mind when they picked her up?” Raz asked.

“The Wild Mind’s powers aren’t quite so noticeable,” Compton replied.

“What kind of Wild Mind are we fighting, Mr. Grand Head?” Norma asked.

Compton pressed his lips a bit at his old title. His time as Grand Head of the Psychonauts was a long time ago and not particularly enjoyable. Raz didn’t know if it MADE him an agoraphobe, but it certainly didn’t improve his mental health. He regarded Cassie a moment for support and answered. “We believe they could be a Medium.”

“A medium?” Lizzie asked. “Like someone who talks to ghosts?”

“Not ghosts,” Compton corrected. “Other minds. Those trying to contact them and use them as a channel to communicate.”

“Like what Milla does?” Raz asked.

“Milla is a very gifted Aural Reader,” Cassie said. “She can sense the rhythms of minds around the world. She can Channel, but it’s not something a powerful psychic likes to do. To channel is to surrender control over your body to someone else.”

“Like when Malik put his brain in Truman’s body?” Norma tried.

“Sort of. That’s a more physical version of the idea,” Cassie said. “Most Mediums don’t use their affinity very often. It’s like Precognition. Those who are naturally attuned to it can do it fairly easily. Sometimes accidentally. Those with training can even do it on command. Those without the natural predilection, however, can’t simply learn how to Channel or see the future. At least not without heavy drugs. I’m pretty sure I had a vision once in Green Needle Gulch but it was hard to tell with all the LSD.”

The Natividad sisters gaped at her. Raz smothered a chuckle. The Psychic Seven did some crazy far-out stuff in Green Needle Gulch. He was surprised she wasn’t huffing pure Psitanium at the time.

Compton cleared his throat. “In any case. This Wild Mind has been like an open radio signal for a while now. No one was trying to contact this person before, but apparently another psychic has tapped in and is having a bit of fun with them.”

“That’s awful!” Raz said. “So the mind isn’t even aware they’re doing anything?”

“It’s likely they don’t even know who they are,” Cassie confirmed. “We won’t find out their real identity until I’ve got them in my head.”

“Your head?” Lizzie asked.

“Yes. I will be the cowgirl on this rodeo mission,” Cassie giggled. “Cowgirl and babysitter. Can’t let Junior Agents into the field without a little supervision.”

“Lame!” Lizzie slouched in her seat. 

Raz was thrilled to have Cassie and Compton along. He loved seeing the Psychic Six-now-Seven in action, it was like living one of his comic books in real life. And fighting a Medium was a new experience for him. He’d be grateful for some instruction. Maybe they’d teach him new strategies. He was also grateful not to be pulling out another Mental Lasso. He could still feel Sam’s wallpaper clinging to the walls of his mind.

The van ignored traffic lights, signs, and speed limits on its way through Fanrong. Evidence of previous Wild Mind activity zoomed by out the window – scorch marks high on buildings from pyrokinetics, juts of earth from geomancy, slashed plaster or broken siding from concussive psi-blasts. Raz spotted a team of other Psychonauts at the far end of a branching street surrounded by police tape and police lights. Another Wild Mind? Some other crisis? At least there weren’t a bunch of bodies laying around. The military had collected most of the obvious victims, but there was no telling how many people were still mindless in the apartments or businesses. 

There were a few wrecked cars like in Buxing, but most were parked along the side of the street. Raz didn’t even notice they were wrecks until spotting broken headlights and smashed bumpers. Forklifts could have moved them out of the street, but Psychics could have done it faster and better. That was what the average medium-rank Psychonaut ended up doing. Maybe someday Raz be assigned to a cleanup team like that… although something deep inside him told him ‘no.’ He was being mentored by the two top field agents in the company. Three if you counted the coach. He was climbing a completely different ladder up the ranks than the agents investigating houses, and that both made him excited and a bit guilty. 

He couldn’t do anything the average psychic agent couldn’t do – at least technically. What he had done was sneak into Whispering Rock, save the minds of his fellow psi-cadets, rescue Truman Zanotto, reunite the Psychic Six, expose the mole in the Psychonauts, AND both defeat and redeem Maligula all in like a week. He reflected a moment on the lecture Milla gave him and Morris in her mind, and the reprimand Sasha gave him when he went after the Wild Mind in Buxing. They both told him to stay within their rules, but he’d gotten as far as he had by disregarding rules and leaping by faith. It was all very confusing. He’d talk to Lili about it when he got back. She’d understand. She also didn’t care about rules.

His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden blast of red adn yellow flame. The van screeched to a stop, the pavement in front of it smoking from the plasma shot. Compton unclipped his seatbelt. “Looks like we’re here!”

“Excellent!” Norma adjusted her glasses. “A firefight.”

“Hold on, Miss Natividad,” Compton said. “This is a Wild Mind not a censor or a nightmare. You can’t attack them head on.”

“Why not? It’s not like we can kill them,” Lizzie said. 

“It’s because they’re a person,” Raz answered in the seniors’ stead. “A person who is having a really bad day, but still a person. They haven’t done anything wrong technically. We’re just here to contain them, not … I don’t know the word you want to use. Banish them? Defeat them?”

“Defeat is a good choice,” Compton agreed. “Razputin is right. And to continue the cowboy analogy, your job is to corral this mind in such a way that Cassie can lasso them. I will provide the Clairvoyant field to help you target, but you should use your own powers of Clairvoyance as well. Try to capture the mind in a shield.”

Another plasma blast struck the van. The non-psychic drivers covered their heads as the metal above them warmed. Compton pressed fingers to his temples and raised a mustard-yellow mental barrier around the vehicle. 

Cassie took over direction. “All right, Junior Agents, let’s give ‘em what-for!” 

Lizzie kicked open the double doors in the back of the van and leaped to the pavement. Another plasma blast hit Compton’s barrier and dissipated against the dome. Raz rolled to his feet, ready to fight. The street was empty of people, including the mind. They were invisible to non-psychics, but Raz could still feel lit out there. He tried to get a bead on it, but Compton’s shield muddied his powers. The two adults joined them. Compton raised one hand to get everyone ready and dropped it for a silent “go.” The shield vanished long enough for him, Raz, Norma, and Lizzie to dash through before Cassie’s lavender shield replaced it.  

“Open your minds, agents!” Compton called. “I’m going to blast the field. Locate where the mind pings!”

He sent a mental wave through the street, just like Oleander did in Buxing. Raz felt the ripple of the floating mind and focused his own power of Clairvoyance on the place. It was whizzing through the air like a bullet, too fast to identify any physicality to its shape. Perhaps it had degraded enough to lose human shape like the Red minds in Milla’s dance party. Raz shot three Psi-blasts ahead of its path and the Wild Mind skidded to a stop in midair. He sent a mental hand out to herd it downward where a circular shield could pin it, but a blast of fire from Norma drove it skyward instead.

“Hey!” Raz said. “I was doing something.”

“This is OUR assignment thank you,” Norma said. A wave of solid ice manifested beneath her and carried her into the air. Lizzie lifted Raz as well, using her Cryokinesis as both shield and platform to support the team. Raz surfed along the banks and curves of her path, shooting Psi-Blasts at the Wild Mind and focusing hard to keep a Clairvoyant image visible for targeting. 

The Wild Mind growled in a low psychic tone. It spoke in a language he didn’t recognize. French, maybe? Before shooting another plasma bolt from the region that could have once been its head. 

Raz raised a shield, but Lizzie raised an ice wall to take the impact. He glanced back at the melting arch with a smile. “Thanks, Lizzie!”

“Less talking. More working!” Lizzie shouted from the ground. She followed Raz and Norma’s paths with her hands, generating more ice to guide them closer and closer to the mind as it darted erratically.

Norma surfed Lizzie’s ice path in a loop, blasting the mind with red flame as she circled. The Wild Mind spun in place to avoid her attack. Raz zoomed in, shield charged and ready. His orange and green mental influence encircled the jumble of thoughts, but it was incredibly hard to hold. He focused all of his attention on maintaining the shield and let Lizzie’s ice path guide his movements. She tucked him into a spiral and deposited him on solid ground. 

Norma jumped from the ice and landed on the sidewalk beside him. “Good catch, Raz!”

“I can’t hold it!” He winced, his Hair Dryr headache back in full force. “It’s kicking.”

“I got ‘cha!” Norma said. She raised a hand toward the floating shield, adding a layer of red to Raz’s orange. It took shape just as his own shield breached with a dizzying snap. Raz stumbled, but steadied himself and shook his thoughts clean. Norma took on the Wild Mind with a withering. “Argh!” 

“Gotcha sis!” Lizzie added her smoky-blue shield in the same manner.

Raz laced Lizzie’s shield with his just as Norma dropped hers. Norma cleared her head and layered atop it, creating a three-way leapfrog of shields cycling red to orange to blue to red as the Wild Mind fought confinement. Compton’s yellow hand manifested above the cycling orb and guided it downward until it was tucked within a circle of Psychonaut agents. 

“Cassie?” Compton prompted. She shut her eyes and an astral projection of herself rose from within her physical body. A lavender Lasso wove together in her astral hand. Compton turned to the Junior Agents. “Let it go!”

Raz, Lizzie, and Norma did so gratefully. The Wild Mind burst forward, only to be ensnared by Cassie’s lasso. The knot tightened around its “neck,” two amorphous limbs clawed at it without fingers. Cassie opened her eyes and drew the mind into her head, only for it to cleave the cloud in two. Raz gasped. Hanging in the air, no longer clouded by the shimmer of the Wild Mind, was the astral projection of a stunning young woman. Her eyes sparked with blue fire as she stared at her hands. She spoke telepathically. Raz trained on the voice, his natural proclivity for telepathy coming through in the clutch as he heard the mind’s distorted voice think. <i>“Psychonauts! Pull me out”</i>

Raz leaped into action. He thrust his Astral Projection out through his face – easier the second time, or perhaps easier with intention –  and conjured up his own Lasso to attack the loose mind. He flung the knotted loop with the full strength of his astral arm. It caught her by the wrist. She stared at it a moment in shock before spotting his projection near the pavement. A pull tugged her from somewhere far-off. Smelling Salts most likely. She contracted to a pinpoint of light and zoomed off, drawing Raz’s Lasso with her. His Astral Projection went with her, stretching like a rubber band. He cringed, trying not to snap, when the scent of ammonia filled his nose. 

He had a nose. He had a body. He hit the pavement, Astral Projection back in his mind and the woman behind the Wild Mind vanished from their midst. 

Chapter #

“That was a close one!” Compton said. He patted Raz’s shoulder and tucked his tube of smelling salts back in his suit jacket. “We almost lost you.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you could make a Lasso?” Cassie asked. “That’s an advanced technique.”

“I learned it this morning,” Raz said.

“From Agent Nein?” Compton asked.

“From your granddaughter, actually,” he said. “Sam taught me.”

“Sam!” Compton was aghast. “Who taught her?”

Raz shrugged. The movement hurt his head. “She taught herself?” 

“Oh my, that girl is more crafty than I gave her credit for,” Compton said. “Those kids never cease to worry me.”

“Who was that girl just now?” Lizzie asked. “The one Raz had on a rope?”

“She was a Pyro-kinetic right?” Norma added.

Cassie nodded. “She was, yes. Although I’m surprised we saw her. It must have taken a great deal of her concentration to inhabit the mind. Her whole consciousness was here.”

“You heard her, right? She said ‘Horatio.’” Raz said. “She must be one of the ones helping him! Did you recognize who she was?”

“Not me, I don’t know the names and faces of the current Psychic threats,” Cassie said. 

“I did not recognize her by face, but if Horatio truly has returned to the Mentalists as Otto suggests, we can possibly narrow down her identity,” Compton said. “Does the mind have any clues?” 

“I’m afraid Ms. Mèng doesn’t know her, either.” Cassie answered.

Raz shoved up. “That’s the identity of the Wild Mind?”

Cassie nodded. “I’m afraid she’s in a sorry state. It’s probably best that we get her back to HQ right away.”

“Agreed. Hopefully Dr. Cao has her body on hand.” Compton gestured back to the van. The roof was still smoking from the plasma attack and the drivers looked terrified despite their stony faces. Cassie spoke Chinese to one through the window and they got on the radio to request backup. The team Raz saw up the street earlier arrived secure the area just as their vehicle was pulling out.

Raz was still feeling mentally stretched. The pull of the plasma psychic on the end of the lasso was worse than the Brain Tumbler OR the Hair Dryr. It was almost Mind Bomb-y. He swallowed a nauseating lump in his throat. “Agent Boole?”

“Yes, son?” Compton asked.

“If you hadn’t used the smelling salts on me, what would have happened?”

“Essentially a tug-of-war,” Compton said. “One I very much doubt you would win, considering you learned Lassoing this morning.”

“Would that break my mental tether?”

“It depends. Probably so,” Compton replied. “That woman was a very powerful psychic with a strong sense of self. She would have carried you back to wherever her body was, and without knowing where that actually is, most likely marooned you there until we found you.”

“And could take months or even years,” Cassie added. “Who knows what state your mind would be in at that point. And if you let go of the Lasso between her location and ours, we may never find you again.”

The lump in his throat was starting to feel like sickness. “If it took you years to find me, would you still be able to fix me?”

“We would certainly try,” Compton said. “But you’ve seen how these poor lost minds have fared. Psychics aren’t any different from them on the most primitive level. The human animal is a whole creature, and our minds are intended to be a part of our brains. As psychics, our minds can wander safely knowing they have a place of safety – a home, if you will – to return to. Without a home, the mind goes feral and forgets what it is or who it used to be.”

“That’s why the Wild Mind didn’t look like a person,” Norma surmised.

Compton nodded. “The reason the Psychonauts are here is to repair some of the damage, but none of these poor people will ever be the same after this. There’s trauma there that even Otto’s Astralathes can’t fix. Their subconscious minds will never forget what it was like to be lost, and all future decisions will be tainted by that experience. Like a house cat gone feral, the mind will remember the betrayal of abandonment, and it scratch, and claw, and defend itself however possible to keep from being hurt that way again.”

Raz stared at his lap, shaken by how close he came to losing his mind for good. If his team hadn’t been there… he shuddered to think. He poked at the figurative scar on his psyche, remembering the moment in Lowha Lasung when he was blown free, and the offer Pergola gave him about circling the wagons of his mind. Would closing doors help him feel more secure in his head? Would it fortify his “home?” Or had he already stretched himself too thin to snap back into shape? If only he could see what damage had been done so he could fix it. If that was possible. 

Cassie bent forward and patted his knee. “Don’t worry so much, Raz. Nothing bad happened. If we all stick together, we can keep each other safe.”

“Right.” Raz forced a smile, acutely aware of the half-decayed human mind in Cassie’s head. He wanted to ply her with questions, but that mind and the host of minds inside Milla and dozens more agents in Fanrong were the priority. He made a note to ask Sasha about it when they were back in the Motherlobe, whenever that was going to be. Still, the thought was enough to help him feel better about the uncertainty. No matter what kind of confusing jumble Raz’s mindscape was currently, Sasha would know what to do about it. 

The van parked outside HQ and let the team out.

“I’ll locate Dr. Cao,” Cassie announced. 

“You do that. Take Razputin with you, he is supposed to be working recovery righ tnow, anyway,” Compton said. “The girls and I are heading upstairs to do some research.”

“Research?” Lizzie groaned again. “We’re supposed to be field agents!”

“Research is a very important part of field-agenting,” Compton tutted at her. “You can’t fight someone you know nothing about.” 

“Don’t we have people for that, now?” Norma asked. “Get Adam to do it. He’s mad for research.”

“Now, then. Stop complaining. You’re here to do a job and this is part of it. To the elevator with you.” Compton tipped his hat to the remaining agents. “Good luck, Cassie.”

“Good luck, Boolie.” Cassie beckoned to Raz. “Come along, young man. We have a mind and body to reunite.”

The lobby of HQ was the same as before. Agent 33 and her Buxian assistants were on the other side of the room. Dr. Cao was at the reception desk, writing notes on a collection of clipboarded papers. Looked like Bob’s organization system was at work there, as well. 

“Zhi,” Cassie said.

Dr. Cao looked up. “Ah, Cassie. How many are you checking in?”

“Just one with me this time,” Cassie said. “A Mrs. Mèng Yáng. Medium.”

Dr. Cao sighed. “Color system, please?” 

“Oh, ah… I’m not sure.”

“Red,” Raz offered. 

Dr. Cao tugged a small grin. “You’re sure.”

“Definitely. Like bright bright red.”

“Okay, Reds are over here. Let’s find her.” Dr. Cao took a clipboard out of a box and marched two of them through the lobby and back to a conference center area where the bodies of the mindless psychics were laying on blankets on the floor. The air buzzed with psychic energy. Raz projected a little Clairvoyance and could see clouds of mental activity shrouding each empty head. 

Dr. Cao stopped in front of an elderly woman in the corner. “This should be her.”

“Okay, then.” Cassie raised her eyebrows. “Razputin? Would you like to do the honors?”

He gulped. “Me?”

“Of course, why not? You’re no stranger to a stranger’s mind,” Cassie said. “What’s wrong? Are you nervous?”

“No, I’m just…” Raz squared his shoulders and pulled out his psi-portal. “I’m ready.”

“Go ahead, then.”

He set the psi-portal gently on the old woman’s head and tapped the door to open it. The door drew Raz’s mind from his body, which was a lot nicer than forcing it out of his head with sheer will. He lowered his goggles and released himself to its pull.

Inside was dark, just like Zheng Wei’s mind although the space was more tightly contained than his was. Raz ducked under a bit of low-hanging canvas and ducked through the layers of what appeared to be a black tent. He tested the walls, looking for something solid to tie Ms. Mèng’s tether on to, but everything was soft or squishy and nothing stood straight when he moved it. Maybe Mrs. Mèng was an ACTUAL Medium, not just classified as one and he was wading through her mental seance room. He started looking for a crystal ball or something but instead found a desk with an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine built into the top. Raz gave the machine a shove both with his hands and with his mind and determined it sturdy enough for the job. He sent a thought up to Cassie. “Okay, I’m ready!”

The air near his head rippled with an odd bowing effect before ripping open like a pair of pants and permitting Cassie’s hand into the woman’s mental world. 

“Ahh!” Raz jumped. “What happened to the Looking-Glass-window-thing?”

“Looking Glass? Who needs a Looking Glass?” Cassie dangled the lavender end of her Mental Lasso. “Take it.”

Raz made sure to plant his feet and grab firmly, this time. Cassie released her grip on the Lasso and it snapped tight just as it had with Oleander. Raz dragged his end toward the sewing machine and wrenched it tight. He worked out just enough slack to secure a good knot and called again. <i>”All good!”</i>

<i>”Okay, come on out.”</i>

A part of him wanted to stay inside for the connection. Watching Zheng Wei’s mind right itself was exciting, but hopping out was probably procedure for a reason. He opened his tin of smelling salts and returned to the real world. 

Cassie was crouched over Mrs. Mèng with two fingers on the sleeping woman’s forehead. Dr. Cao noted the time and administered his own tube of salts. Mrs. Mèng’s eyes flew open. She raised her shaking hands and poked at her own face. “wǒ zàinǎli”

 “Don’t be afraid,” Cassie said and began speaking Chinese to the woman in a conversational tone.

Mrs. Mèng answered back, the worry gone, speaking calmly. Dr. Cao joined in, too, adding his clinical tone to the conversation. Raz wished he understood any of it. He envied Agent 33 and her affinity for languages. Was that something like being a Medium or a Precog or could he take a class in that? He’d have to ask.

Dr. Cao and Cassie helped Mrs. Mèng up from her blanket. The old woman stooped forward like Nona did, evidence of a hardworking life. Dr. Cao waved to a couple other agents and held up one finger. They rushed to Mrs. Mèng w and ushered her off.

“Is she going to be okay?” Raz asked.

“Oh yes, she’ll be fine,” Cassie said. “Thankfully part of being a Medium meant she was possessed for most of her sojourn. She’s lost a lot of time, but she also doesn’t remember being puppeted. And she was already aware of her affinity.”

“She was?” Raz asked. “Was she conducting seances?” 

“Oh no, nothing like that.” Cassie laughed. “She heard voices from ‘beyond,’ but chalked it up to religious experiences. She considers herself a spiritual leader for her family.”

“Her head looked like a big tent.”

“She’s a seamstress,” Cassie said.

“Ah, yeah, that makes sense.”

A runner rushed up with a note for Dr. Cao. He read it quick and cleared his throat. “Compton says the coast is clear, Cassie. He suggests you take a break, but Bob is requesting help on his side of things. It’s up to you.”

“I’ll help Bob. It’s no problem.”

“You can take Razputin with you. He’s supposed to be there anyway.” 

“So we’re going over to the hospital?” Raz asked.

Dr. Cao sucked his teeth. “Actually, Bob’s request was more specific than that.”

He led them out of the conference room and up the hall to a small security office. A window in the wall allowed Raz a peek in. The wall was built up with CCTV monitors similar to the one with the joystick Gisu was using to spy on people, although instead of camera views, the screens displayed sine waves and EKG lines. A low beeping filtered through the glass, and was joined by a chorus of others as the doctor opened the door. Milla lay in the middle tucked into an actual medical gurney with an IV running from a pole to her arm. Her hands were folded on her chest and her head was hooked to the machines by even more wires than before. 

Raz bit his lip. “And we’re SURE she’s okay?”

“She’s fine,” Dr. Cao said.

“You’re SURE sure?” Raz watched her heartbeat map itself on a staticky little screen. “Like for REAL sure sure?”

“We’re sure,” Dr. Cao said with finality. “We’re monitoring some of her basic physiological functions so she can focus on the work. There’s also a mild sedative on board to keep her under. We don’t need a repeat of earlier.”

Raz’s throat tightened. Milla preferred to be levitating pretty much at all times. Her meditation room back at the Motherlobe was built around that concept. Seeing her tied down felt like a violation of some kind. Denying her what she needed to thrive, maybe? Although she had to have consented to it, otherwise she wouldn’t be as she was. 

Dr. Cao checked the readouts. “Last note from Bob said we’ve got her passenger list down to two-thousand. Considering where we started, that’s incredible progress. Truman’s requested she report back to the Motherlobe as soon as possible, so any extra help is appreciated. Honestly, once these minds are restored we’ll have the bulk of our current bodies accounted for.”

“How many were lost do you think?” Cassie asked.

Dr. Cao shrugged. “Hard to say until the final tally comes in. We’re still sweeping houses, although at this point the morgues are filling as fast as the beds.”

A boulder dropped in Raz’s stomach, but he managed to stay professional. Losses were logical in an operation this size, but he hated to be reminded that innocent victims existed. In the comic books, only guilty people met a bad end. None of the people in Fanrong were anonymous background noise. He understood why Milla went overboard to save them.

Dr. Cao pulled a psi-portal out of his coat pocket and fit it to the center of Milla’s head. “You two might as well hop in here. At least your bodies will be out of the way.”

“Okay. Let me know if Agent Boole needs me.” Cassie nodded to Raz. “After you, young man.”

He lowered his goggles. Dr. Cao tapped the door of the psi-portal and the two dove in. 

Chapter #

Inside Milla’s mind, the party was in full-swing. The untethered Fanrong citizens  were in high spirits, drinking and dancing as if they weren’t all in mortal danger. Milla must have put the mood-adjusters she mentioned in the punch, because some of the partiers were acting very drunk for people with no connection to their own bodies. As promised, Agent Zanotto had taken charge of the lobby where he’d manifested a wide desk against the wall.  In a true stroke of inspiration, Helmut had styled it as a coat check. Five sweater-clad Psychonauts served as tag attendants behind the counter with color coded ropes to help form lines. There were even coats, although none that normal people would probably wear. Most of them were paisley and half had fur collars and cuffs. Guests waited in lines between the velvet ropes to claim their “outerwear” from the agents. The blue and green lines were full, but the red and orange lines were empty. The team must have taken care of the worst patients first.

Helmut was leaning heavily on the front of the desk with a megaphone when Raz and Cassie projected in from HQ.

“Will a Li Na please report to coat check to gather your belongings?” Helmut called toward the party room. “ A Li Na to coat check, please!” 

Raz traipsed over. “You know they don’t speak English, right?”

“Some do.” Bob was buried behind the same  mound of paperwork at the coat check as he was in real life. “All of them know their name though.”

“Li Na!” Helmut called again. “Li Na to coat check!”

“Allow me,” Cassie said. She took the megaphone out of Helmut’s hand and adjsuted the volume. “Qǐng Li Na nǚshì dào dàtáng de yī mào jìcún chù bàodào ma?”

A group of ten women of various ages drifted from the party. Helmut held an empty hand out to Bob who slapped a polaroid photo of a sleeping woman in her twenties against his palm. 

Helmut checked the image, then  held the picture to the crowd. “Which one of you is this Li Na?”

“Zhè jiùshì wǒ!” One of the Li Nas cried. 

“We have a winner!” Cassie said. She lowered her megaphone to instruct the young woman as she approached the counter.

 Bob pulled a colored ticket from to the counter and handed it to her. “Can you tell her to get in the colored line.”

“Of course,” Cassie said.

“Actually, how long can you stay?” Bob asked. “Can you take over all directorial duties?”

“Babe!” Helmut cried. “You’re giving away my job!”

“Sorry, hun. You don’t speak Chinese.” Bob said. “Come back here and take over for me. I’m needed on the outside.”

“Oh! A promotion!” Helmut rounded the counter and kissed his husband on the top of his bald head. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

“You know me a lot better than that,” Bob said, but tugged Helmut closer to kilss him on the lips instead. “See you later.”

Helmut blushed across his nose. “Good luck out there!”

Bob smelling-salted away and Helmut plopped into his chair behind the desk. Raz summoned a levball and rolled up like a customer. “Anything I can do?”

“Hmm.” Helmut sifted through the pile of papers, already muddying Bob’s careful organization. “You can’t make Lassos, can you?”

“Yeah, I can!” Raz said.

Helmut brightened. “You have a Looking Glass?”

“Right here!” Raz summoned the gizmo out of his bag with a little spin. 

“Well lookit you,” Helmut said. “Let me ping Morris and see if he’s ready to do some head-hopping. I’d give you Adam, he’s more efficient, but he’s still busy with your sibs.”

“How are they doing, by the way?” Raz asked. “I didn’t mean to abandon them earlier but one thing led to another…”

“Oh they’re doing great!” Helmut smiled. “Especially together, they’re getting the organization done super fast. With thousands of new minds to stitch up, having the bodies all documented and sorted is taking a lot of stress off Bobby and the team. We wouldn’t have this swanky “MillaHQ” setup without them taking over the little stuff.”

“That’s great. I’m really glad they’re a help and not a bother. You never know with them.”

Helmut pressed a finger to the brim of his viking-style hat. “Morris has, like, fifteen minutes until he’s free. Why don’t you run up to the party. Tell Milla Bob’s fleshside now.”

“Milla’s here?” Raz asked. 

“I mean this IS her mind.”

“I know, but Dr. Cao said she was sedated. I thought she was resting.”

“She is!” Helmut said. “Run on up and see.”

Raz grinned and steered his levball up the ramp through the bouncer sculpture and onto the dancefloor.

The party was even more groovy inside. Untethered minds laughed and smiled, eating the mental snacks and drinking the mental punch. The DJ manned five turntables at the head of the room. The mental construct had no face, but was wearing rhinestone framed glasses and a huge zebra-striped hat. He pumped his fist in the air as he added another disco tune to the mix. The dancers below echoed his “whoop” of enthusiasm and shimmied to the new rhythms as the light show shifted around them. In the middle of the dancefloor was Milla Vodello, back in her favorite long-sleeve mini dress and leggings and smiling as broadly as any guest. A group of children clustered around her, bouncing and grooving. Milla was dancing with a little boy that only came up to her knee. She twisted him back and forth by the hands and he was howling with laughter.

Raz popped his ball and ran up on his feet. “Hi Milla!”

“Razputin, darling! How are you?” She cheered above the music. “I hope you slept well.”

“Well enough,” Raz said. “I see you’re feeling better.”

“Music is medicine, young man.” Milla winked.

She was right. All the people around her were victims, but no one would know it. Especially the children. He thought of Compton’s words in the van about how being untethered was trauma to the psyche. Nothing could take back what they’d experienced, but with Milla’s help, perhaps the good memories would even the odds. 

“Helmut wanted me to tell you that Bob’s gone back outside,” Raz said.

“Oh Helmut!  Isn’t he brilliant? His design fit right in with my party atmosphere. The transition is seamless and these people don’t even have coats!”

“I’m going to help reconnect people, but I have a few minutes. Is there anything I can do for you until they need me?”

She beamed at him. “Just have a good time, darling! Nothing would make me happier.”

 One of the kids grabbed his hand and he joined in the dancing with immediate reward. Moving felt good, but to move in concert with the thrumming bass notes and the groovy melody made him part of the concert. Beneath the lights of the discoball and the flash of the floods, he almost forgot what he was there for until Cassie’s voice boomed in through the megaphone.

“Agent Aquato! To coat check, please!”

“I gotta go!” Raz waved. “By Milla!”

“Miss you already, darling! Come back soon!”

Raz sashayed his way off the dance floor and back to the lobby, filled to the brim with good vibes. 

“There’s a true aficionado!” Helmut said. “Look at him, he’s glowing.”

“Is Morris ready, now?”

“Yep, you’re assisting Lupe on the greens.” Helmut handed him a badge and a clipboard. “Go take your spot. ”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Psi-King!”

Raz slipped behind the counter, still bouncing along with the distant music. Lupe was a twenty-something year-old Dominican woman with waxed-down black curls in front and a feather in her hat. Raz had met her at the Motherlobe. She was one of the few happy to say “hi.”

“Aquato!” Lupe said. “Great to have assistance!”

“Hi, Agent Alcaro,” Raz said. “So how do we do this?”

“Oh it’s easy,” Lupe flipped the end of her feather. “Watch.”

Lupe whistled to the next person in her line. “Ticket?”

The Chinese woman in front of her was baffled until Lupe extended her hand. The woman’s green slip was handed over. Lupe referenced the serial number and reached for her Looking Glass. It was similar to Raz’s, although much sleeker and well put-together with Otto-Matic branding on the handle. She dialed the handle until another woman appeared on the screen. 

“Carla!” Lupe called.

The woman on the other side was dressed in full Psychonaut formal uniform including a military-looking hat Raz had never seen anyone wear. She addressed Lupe with an exasperated tone in her voice. “Number?”

“One-Nine-Nine-Six.”

“Okay I’ll call back.”

Carla vanished from the lens. Lupe set the gizmo on the counter and returned to the customer in front of her. “Stand up straight, please?”

The woman still didn’t understand what was being requested, but standing straight didn’t seem to matter. Lupe flashed out a pansy pink Mental Lasso and flicked it over the woman’s head. The woman in front of her squawked in protest as the Lasso pinned her elbows to her sides. The Looking Glass beeped and Lupe ignored her captive’s protest to answer the call.

“Lupe!”

“I’m in. Hand her through.”

“You got it!” Lupe took her end of the pink Lasso and thrust it through the “glass.” The string went tight. The woman in the loop drew back, fighting the pull for a minute before she was sucked bodily through the tiny hole. The man behind her in line gaped in horror as Lupe called an enthusiastic. “Next!”

He inched forward with his ticket ready.

“Thank you!” Lupe took the green slip and handed it to Raz. “You’re up, kid!”

Raz mounted a leviball and bellied up to the counter. He pulled out his Looking Glass and dialed in Morris’s door. His face didn’t appear on the screen, but his mind did – a quintessential teen bedroom looking space plastered wall to wall with band posters. Morris’s voice echoed from within. <i> “Hey, Pooter!” </i>

“Hey, Morris. You ready for a number?”

<i> “I’m ready, hermano.” </i>

Raz read the number off the tag. Morris read it back to confirm then hung up the call. Raz turned next to his customer who was still shaken from watching the last incident. Raz glanced to Lupe then held out his own wrist as demonstration. “Hand?”

The man in front of him extended his arm. Raz summoned up an orange Lasso and tightened it around his wrist. 

Morris called back. This time he DID appear on the screen. The mind around him was dark with vague forms like the other untethered victims’ had been. “Kay, ready!”

“Here he comes!” Raz said. He slipped his hand into the Glass. It was icy cold on the other side. His Lasso crackled in his hand and in the back of his head. Sasha said there was no distance in the Collective Unconscious, but it really did feel like he was reaching across the world to make this possible, especially when he released the end of the Lasso to Morris’s hand. The pull Raz had fought as the tie-down man and the pull he’d witnessed on the previous customer turns out was actually the same pull and it was coming from the Lasso and thus coming from him. Raz cringed as his brain fought to maintain the tether without physical contact. It wanted so badly to knot itself back up into his mind, but he had to keep the connection strong until smelling salts were applied. It took less than a minute, but felt much much longer until the man in front of the counter was reeled through the lens like trout and Raz was able to let go.

“Good job! You’re a natural!” Lupe cried.

“Thanks.” Raz rubbed the base of his skull. “That was tougher than it looked.”

“That’s why I’m glad you’re here to help,” Lupe assured. “I’ll take the next one and we’ll do turns you-then-me until we’re done. The rests will make this go way faster.”

“Happy to help.” Raz saluted and called to the line. “Next!”

chapter #

Raz worked on the Green line for a full work shift. Lupe was let off on break before Raz was and was replaced by another agent who was much less friendly than Lupe. Raz gave the man space and caught up with Morris instead.

In the four and a half hours Raz had been sleeping, Morris was sent back to the hospital to assist Bob and Helmut. He’d actually helped Helmut set up the coat check, but didn’t know how to make Lassos so was forced to move to the real-life side. 

<i>“I tried to teach myself like you did,”</i> Morris thought through the Looking Glass.<i> “I even tried imagining a snake with a cowboy hat but it didn’t work. I don’t know why, either. Usually I’m good at manifesting stuff. I guess the whole Astral Projection part threw me off.”</i>

“It’s not as easy as it looks,” Raz agreed. “I’m lucky I caught on so quick.”

<i>“Luck nothin’ you’re some kind of savant,”</i> Morris scoffed. <i>“It’s been like that since you elbowed your way into the intern program. We learned tons of stuff from Hollis, sure, but we didn’t catch on immediately like you did and we’re older than you.”</i>

Raz went sheepish. “I mean… I’m not like <i>special</i> or anything.”

<i>“No, you’re related to one of the most powerful psychics in this history of psychics.”</i> Morris said.

Raz’s heart fluttered. Morris was right. Maligula wasn’t his grandmother, but she was his great aunt. They even shared some power of hydrokinesis, even though he wasn’t good at utilizing it yet. He wondered if his REAL grandmother was psychic as well. The sisters were twins. If psychic powers were genetic, she’d have to be at least somewhat psychic to pass  the powers on to his dad, and Augustus Aquato was as much a natural talent as Raz was. He even mind-walked like Raz. At Whispering Rock, Augustus shoved his way forcibly into Raz’s mind while it was tangled up with Coach Oleanders, and Ford and the others were too busy being unconscious to assist him. Maybe his Grandpa Lazerous was psychic too! If only they’d survived the fall of Grulovia, what would Raz’s life look like if they’d been raised as a troop of psychics as well as circus performers.

His turn was up at the counter. Raz bounced up to meet a young man with a nervous look on his face. Raz extended his hand. He’d asked Cassie what the word was for ‘ticket’ before she was called back to Compton’s team. “Piào?” 

The man offered his green slip. Raz communicated the number to Morris who hung up to go look.

“This is your last one, kid,” Helmut said from behind him. Raz spun on the ball to see him peeking through the coats. “It’s midnight out there. you’re off until morning.”

“Midnight? Really?” Raz cried. “Time went so quick.”

“It’s all jumbled in the mental world, yeah,” Helmut said. “More reason to clock-out. Don’t want to lose track and be here for a million years.”

He was speaking from experience, so Raz didn’t argue. He tied a Mental Lasso to the untethered mind in front of him and handed him through to Morris when the Looking Glass popped back on. “Hey, I’m off duty after this.”

Morris grabbed the end of the string. “I should have been off an hour ago.”

“Why are you still here, then?”

“We were making progress,” Morris said. “I‘ll meet you up there.”

The twang of the Lasso was less annoying after a whole day of repetition. Raz watched the young man flush through the lens and tucked the Looking Glass in his bag. He looked up at the grumpy agent in a suit and tie with him. He suspected it was one of the Psychonauts that lingered around the Motherlobe but couldn’t recall the man’s name, which was awkward. “I’m off. Um… good luck?”

“Hmph,” the man replied. 

Raz pulled out his smelling salts, but decided to say goodbye to Milla first. He elbowed through the coats and rolled around the outside of the coat check to get back to the dance floor. It was quite a bit emptier. A slow song was playing and pairs of minds swayed together looking tired and maybe a bit stoned.

Milla’s children were all restored to their bodies. She stood by herself near the speaker looking melancholy with a glass of punch in her hand. Raz jogged over to her with an encouraging smile. “You okay?”

“Of course, sweetie,” Milla said. “Are you? You’ve been working very hard.”

“I’m alright. It’s tiring but it’s really important.”

Milla smiled grimly. “That it is.”

“You seem sad,” Raz ventured. “Why not go down and hang with Helmut and coat check team? They’d be nice company.”

“Perhaps I will, dear, thank you,” Milla said, although made no outward sign of following through. Raz wondered what kind of mental drain hosting a never ending party was. The music and lightshow were things she had running all the time, but Raz had seen a mind “turned-off” and it didn’t look like this. Her body, he assumed, was still being monitored by a bunch of machines on the outside. She was sedated but was she really resting? Was it helping her heart?

An idea caught in Raz’s head. He extended a hand. “Want to dance?”

Milla’s face lit in a flash of charm and gratitude. “What a gentleman! How could I refuse?”

She placed her hand in his and allowed him to guide her to a spot on the floor directly under the disco ball. The DJ transitioned to another slow song. Raz summoned a leviball to even their heights out, but even with levitation he was still only up to her neck. He checked the dancers around him to see where they put their hands. The men mostly had one on their partner’s hip, there was no way he was going to reach that. He awkwardly tried to wrap it around the back, but Milla moved it to her upper arm and took his other hand in hers. She gripped his shoulder and proceeded to “lead from behind.” Raz didn’t care, his stomach was so full of butterflies it took all his willpower to keep from panicking.

“I don’t believe we’ve danced like this before,” Milla said in a coy, teasing way. “I have waited in the corner all night for you, darling. A girl will start to wonder.”

“I… uh…” Raz’s tongue went dry. “I was held up at the office. You know.”

“Oh, I do.” Her gaze dipped to the side, staring at nothing. “These missions take so much time. There’s so much pain in a place like this. It breaks your heart.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t know what to say, but sensed it wasn’t necessary.

A beat of silence passed and she continued. “I wish we could live in a world where such things never happened. I know, intellectually, that wicked people will always exist. Without wicked people there could never be good people. Balance, you know. Sasha would say it’s the law of statistics. I think of it more of a balance. For every wicked person out there in the wider world, there is a good person to counter them. If we are lucky, those people end up being one and the same. Like your Nona for instance. A good person triumphed over her wicked self and tipped us all a little further to the side of good.”

“What about Horatio?” Raz asked. “Do you think he’s a good person inside?”

Her face tightened. “It’s tempting to say ‘no’ isn’t it? How could someone capable of such widespread pain and horror be in any way good? But if we say that, then we lose any possibility that it may yet be true. I have to remind myself of that often on missions. Giving people a second chance is a conscious choice on our part. It’s a delicate balance between granting someone grace to mend their ways and naively trusting in dreams. Humans are complicated creatures. We are minds and bodies and souls all tangled together in small, fragile shells..”

“‘Souls’ like the tether between the heart and the mind?” Raz asked. “Tension? Like the monks say?”

Milla regarded him with an odd, nostalgic look. “Souls like what makes you ‘you’ and me ‘me.’ The intangible part of the mind that manipulates chemicals of the body without either’s direction. We are meat and we are thought, but we are more. There’s always just that little bit more to humans that make us unique. Some might call it intuition, some call it experience, but all recognize its existence. It’s why even at birth, identical twins differ in want and need. We are more than nature, darling. We are miracles, and all of us together make the world a wonderful place to be.” 

Raz beamed. “I’m glad you’re in the world, Milla.”

“I’m glad you’re in the world, too,” she said with a little laugh. “I’m very proud of you, darling. You’ve been very brave these last two days, and very helpful. Sasha could not stop praising your accomplishments.”

“Really? I was afraid I was in the way.””

“Of course not! We wouldn’t have invited you if we thought that,” Milla said. “You must understand. There’s a difference between not wanting you with us and not wanting you hurt. I think you’ve seen today the type of people we are dealing with. If anything happened to you, I would never forgive myself.”

“I get it.” Raz bowed his head. “I wonder sometimes if I know the difference just in myself. Gisu called me a goody-two-shoes and said I was obsessed about following rules, while Sasha got mad at me about leaving the Pelican and not following orders. We broke the rules to come help you, and that was good… but Sasha’s still getting in trouble with Truman for doing it. How am I supposed to know what choices are risks and which are mistakes?”

“You don’t, darling. That’s what living is all about,” Milla said. “Perhaps it was wrong of you and Sasha  to come help me. Perhaps it was wrong of you not to. The important part was that you looked at the situation and you made the best decision you could with the information you had before you at the time. Yes, Truman was angry you disobeyed him, but Sasha made that choice knowing such a thing was likely to happen. Just as, I suspect, you did in Buxing when you and Morceau left the plane to help that poor mind. You looked at the situation and made the best decision. It was Sasha’s job to scold you, but just between you and me, he’s proud of you for that, too.”

“He is?”

“You always impress us, darling. Frankly, it’s sometimes hard to know what to do with you.” She leaned in, conspiratorially. “You make Truman nervous.”

Raz gulped. “I do?”

“He wants to make sure you have good direction. And that you aren’t a bad influence on Lili.” She shook her head. “I’m sure he has nothing to worry about.”

“No! I mean, I hope not.”

Milla laughed. “And that right there is why. In hindsight, helping me was a good thing. And helping Zheng Wei was a good thing. And bringing you along on this mission was a good thing. But that doesn’t mean all risky decisions are good things. Information changes. Situations are unique and complicated. The future is hard for most of us to read. We can only do our best…”

“With the information we have,” Raz finished.

She nodded. “Now you’ve got it.”

The DJ turned over another record and Raz noticed they’d stopped dancing. He gripped her arm a little tighter. “Are all Psychonaut missions going to be like this?”

“I hope not, sweetie, but its encouraging to me to see the Psychonauts rise to such an occasion. We’ve saved thousands of lives today. Ten thousand yesterday, and thousands more tomorrow. People who would have died can now return to their loved ones and their lives, all because we were a team. I think that’s very special don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Raz grinned.

“Feel better now?”

Raz’s grin went lopsided. “I guess music really is the best medicine.”

“I always thought so,” Milla giggled. She drew Raz back into rhythm and joined the surrounding couples in their sway.

Chapter #

Returning to his body reminded Raz that bodies needed stuff like food. Thankfully others knew it, too, because someone had left a sandwich with his name on it and a water bottle on the desk beside Milla’s bed. The note taped to the plastic wrap was from Dr. Cao and read simply. “Go to bed.”

It seemed like he’d just been in bed, but after hours of playing tug-of-war with his mind, he was ready to go back. Milla still lay on her gurney, although someone had come in and moved her onto her side. The screen with her EEG read an even line of theta waves. Barely asleep. Dreaming. She’d need a nap when she was done, too. Raz left her half his sandwich and whispered through the railings of her bed and ate the other half on the elevator ride up to the tenth floor. Most of the other agents were sleeping as well, obeying the circadian rhythm regardless of jet lag. The room assigned to the Junior Agents was full as well. Lizzie and Norma were bundled in their blankets alongside Gisu. Dion and Frazie were on the other side of the room snoring in the corner. Adam was still missing. Perhaps he napped earlier. Sam was still missing, but that wasn’t a surprise. Morris was already tucked in his spot, Raz’s dance with Milla must have taken too long. He left the door cracked open and stole away to the bathroom to brush his teeth real quick before climbing fully-clothed into bed.

He woke up hours later, stirred by the movement of his fellow Junior Agents and the sunlight flashing through the vertical blinds. Excusing the fact that their dormitory was an office building, the morning moved forward almost normally. A breakfast buffet made mostly of bagels was waiting on the top floor along with their assignments. Raz found his labeled manila folder on the table and carried it with him to the spot on the floor where his friends were sitting. Adam and Sam were there, too, although Adam looked exhausted. He must have been headed TO bed not getting up from it.

“Morning Pooter,” Lizzie said. “Where you goin’ today?”

Raz sat and opened his folder. “Hospital again. Third floor.”

“Me too,” Gisu groaned. “Waste of my talents if you ask me.”

“We’re on the second,” Lizzie said, indicating Norma.

“First,” Morris reported.

“I’m on the first, too,” Sam said. “Which ones are on the first?”

“The worst ones are on the first,” Adam answered. “Patients that need intense psychotherapy to recover.”

“Mistake sending Sam in there, then,” Lizzie laughed. 

Norma elbowed her sister. “She probably speaks their language.”

“Shut up,” Sam pouted. 

“Leave her alone, you guys,” Raz said, biting his bagel. “We’re supposed to be a team.”

“Speaking of, I wanted to ask you something.” Norma leaned in..

Raz paused chewing. This was never good.

She dropped her voice to a whisper. “We didn’t invite you on that mission yesterday just for fun. We had a proposition but we were too busy being babysat by Compton and Cassie to ask it.”

Raz swallowed. “Well?”

“Well!” Norma adjusted her glasses. “Lizzie and I have been wondering – ”

“Mornin’ losers,” Dion interrupted. He and Frazie stood together with a pile of doughnuts and a glass of orange juice each. Dion’s brow leveled at Gisu. “Morning Gisu.”

“Morning Dion,” Gisu said, even more irritated than before.”

Lizzie and Norma scooted away, allowing the Aquatos to sit together. Frazie offered Raz one of her doughnuts. “Got your favorite.”

“Thanks!” He reached for it but Frazie redirected it into her own mouth before he could grab it. “Whoops.”

Raz wrinkled his nose at her, but recognized a bit of normalcy where he could get it. They were literally on the other side of the world, yet they could have just as easily been around the campfire back home. He noticed the folders they carried. “You two get assignments?”

“Yeah, weird,” Frazie said. “It’s like we’re part of the group or something.”

“We better be getting paid,” Dion added.

“Of course you’re not, you moron. You’re CIVILIAN VOLUNTEERS,” Lizzie snorted. “The definition of the word is not-paid.”

“Aw man,” Dion sulked and stuffed a whole jelly doughnut in his mouth. 

They finished up breakfast and everyone except for Adam decided to walk over to the hospital together. 

“I’ll probably join you before you’re off,” Adam said at the elevator. He pulled an envelope out of his pocket. “Raz, one sec okay?” 

Raz stopped. “Yeah?” 

“Oops! Can’t hold the door, oh no….” Lizzie said in mock drama as she hit the “close door” button.

“We’ll wait in the lobby!” Sam called as the door sealed and they descended. 

Raz sighed and shook his head. “Apparently it’s because they like me.”

“It is because they like you,” Adam said. “They’d ignore you if they didn’t like you.”

“Figures my work family turns out to be exactly like my real family.” 

“Speaking of them, just want you to know they did a great job yesterday. For all the horsing around they do, they’re good at taking direction.”

“That comes from the circus,” Raz said. “When you’re building a human tower you can’t wait for direction. You gotta fill in the gaps or everyone falls over on you.”

“Bob’s asked me to write up a report on them. Just letting you know.” He offered Raz the envelope. “Bob also wants to see you before you start today. Asked me to give you this.”

“Does he get a break at any point?”

“He could probably take one if he wanted to. I caught him asleep at his desk last night when it got slow.”

“It got slow at some point?”

“I know, right?” Adam grinned. “We’re doing good work around here. I’m glad Truman let us come along. I think this is the kind of thing I want to do for my whole career!”

“Mind recovery?”

“No, management!” Adam said. “Organizational systems, schedules, sending people places, writing reports. So many clipboards! Just hundreds and hundreds of different clipboards.”

Raz grinned. “You can’t beat a good clipboard.”

Adam adjusted his hat. “Anyway, you better get down there before the crew leaves without you. Good luck on the third floor.”

“What’s on the third floor?”

“Awake people.” 

Raz grinned. “I’ll find a way to survive.” 

Raz opened Bob’s note on the ride to the lobby. It mostly said what Adam told him – to report into the front desk when he arrived, also added a post script about some secret issue. He hoped he wasn’t in trouble, although he couldn’t imagine what for. 

The lobby was a lot emptier than it was the night before. Dr. Cao was making progress, too. Raz was proud to see it. He joined the Junior Agents who were waiting in the street. 

“What was that about?” Sam asked.

“Adam had a note for me,” Raz said.

Dion beckoned him to continue. “And?”

“He said you guys were annoying jerks who cried like babies all day,” Raz snickered. 

Dion’s eyes widened. “I didn’t cry!”

“But you were annoying,” Frazie said. “Not that that’s different from any other day.”

“Shut up, sis,” Dion said. “Adam didn’t really say that, did he? He didn’t tell that to Mr. Bob?”

“No, I was teasing,” Raz said. “You guys did fine.”

To Raz’s surprise Dion looked sincerely relieved. Frazie held up her envelope. “We’re assigned to the third floor. Gisu says you’re up there with us.”

Raz cringed at the idea of working a shift with both Gisu and Dion in the same place. “That’s right.” 

“We’re reporting to someone who’s just named Thirty-three,” Dion said.

Raz cringed even harder. “We are?”

“Yeah, what kind of name is that?” Dion asked.

“Convicted Criminal,’ Norma said and winked.

His eyebrows shot up. “What? Really?”

“She’s one of the field agents,” Raz answered, more matter-of-factly. “She’ll be a good fit. She speaks languages, like all of them, so she can talk to the patients without an interpreter.”

“That’s something, I guess,” Frazie shrugged. “Think she’d tell us her real name if we asked her?”

“I’m going to introduce myself as Civilian Volunteer Fourteen and see what she does,” Dion said. 

“Probably tell you you’re an idiot,” Lizzie said.

“Because you’re an idiot,” Norma agreed.

Dion pouted the rest of the way to the hospital. The streets were still packed with People’s Republic military vehicles and troop detachments, but the Psychonaut activity was down and a lot of the ambulances were parked. The lobby of the hospital actually had open seats in it and the hallways were mostly clear of patients. Raz sent the crew on to the elevators and popped in on Bob. The Reds were all cleared out. Helmut was back in his ball caddy, bobbing upside down in his fluids.

“Agent Zanotto?” Raz asked.

Bob shushed him with a nod to the ball. “He’s asleep.”

“He doesn’t have ears so it’s probably fine,” Raz said. He put the envelope on the counter. “You wanted to see me?”

“I did, yeah.” Bob shifted his clipboards around. “I wanted to talk to you about you running off to help Milla yesterday.”

Raz gulped.

“I’m compiling reports on the Junior Agents. It’s the only way Truman agreed to let them come. You weren’t part of that briefing, so I wanted to inform you that you’ve been under review. I’m also aware that it’s not fair to report actions you’ve taken as violating the Grand Head’s directives when you didn’t know you were under them. So here’s the deal. Sasha’s report on your behavior up to this point notwithstanding, you shirked off my orders to do what you wanted, then joined up with Compton’s team even though you’re technically my agent here. That’s two points off already, which means one more and you’re looking at disciplinary action.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Raz said. “Although in my defense, I didn’t think helping Compton was going to be a problem. I was technically off-duty.”

“Hmm, I guess so. But it did make you late.”

“Not REALLY late, though.”

Bob snorted at him. “Come on, Raz. Do I look like I want to put you on the no-fly list? You’re an actual asset to this operation. Some of our full-grown agents aren’t actual assets around here.”

Raz tried not to smile. “I mean, I try…”

“Just toe the line from now on, okay?”

“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll stay on task,” Raz said.

“Good.” Bob made a note on the page in front of him. “Get upstairs.”

Raz took off for the door, but stopped just inside. “Sir?”

“Yeah?”

“Is Milla okay? When I left her she was in a recovery room. Are you still working on her mind?” 

“We wrapped her up a couple hours ago. I just finished dismantling the set” Bob answered. “Otto’s got her off the schedule for the rest of the day. Let’s hope she’s better at following directives than you are.”

Raz grinned. “Me too, sir! Thanks!”