Limbus, Inc.

We Employ By Anne C. Petty

Dallas squeezed himself into the stall behind the guy from the bar. Trust his luck to pick the grubbiest shitter in the row. At least there wasn’t anything floating in the bowl.

The guy went right for his fly, no messing around.

“Wait!” Dallas pushed his hand away. ”Payment up front, we agreed.”

“Yeah, but maybe I wanna sample the goods before I pay,” said the man, Jim Beam leaking from his pores. He grabbed Dallas by the crotch.

Dallas’ knee came up, but there was barely any room to defend himself. His foot slipped, and the guy pushed him toward the wall.

He landed on his butt between the toilet bowl and the stall divider. His head cracked against the tiled back of the stall and stars blossomed behind his eyeballs. The door banged shut. Heavy footsteps squelched away and soon were gone.

Dallas lay on the damp floor, the tang of urine infesting his sinuses. Well, that could have gone better. Granted, he was beyond desperate to resort to a stunt like this for money, but the alternative was sleeping on a piece of cardboard under the bridge.

Shaky, he emerged from the stall and was relieved to have the men’s bathroom of the seedy South Beach night club to himself. He caught a glimpse of the nondescript street person in the mirror over the sink. Disheveled brown hair, skinny frame wrapped in a threadbare T-shirt, grubby jeans at half-mast. Not to mention he needed a shave and definitely a shower, things a reasonably civilized person took for granted until the means to make them happen were beyond reach. He regarded the reflection with distaste. You’ve sunk to a new low, Hamilton.

To complete the picture, there was toilet paper stuck to the bottom of his shoe. It figured, the way things were going. But on closer look, he saw it was a card. He bent down, head throbbing, and picked it up. Plain white. Dallas turned it over. He saw red print on a white field with some kind of holographic logo that looked like a globe of the world.

Dallas made a rude noise. That was about the lamest employment come-on he’d seen yet…and he’d seen plenty in the months he’d been out of school and out of work. He started to chuck it in the trashcan but stopped in mid-toss. The slogan had changed.

What the fuck? He looked again. It said nothing about feeling lucky. Where had he gotten that? Maybe banged his head a little too hard. He did feel kind of dicey, probably mildly concussed. He held the card up to the light. No address, just the phone number, which was a bitch because he didn’t have a phone. At least it was a 1-800 number. He rubbed his finger over the globe logo and instantly the little image began to rotate, with tiny pinpricks of light exploding and disappearing over all the continents. Dallas stared. Was there a chip embedded in the card? An animation app? He blinked. An address had appeared just below the company name. Dallas stifled the urge to flush the card and get the hell out. But hallucination or not, his curiosity was hooked.

The address was an office tower near Bayfront Park, off the Macarthur Causeway and a couple of blocks down Biscayne — about a six-mile walk from where he was. The park, a thirty-two acre urban extravaganza of fountains, outdoor amphitheatre, rows of boxwoods, and tightly grouped ornamental trees, had been his nighttime refuge more than once. Dallas went outside and started walking toward the causeway. His circumstances were dire, but he was resourceful, even for a college dropout. If only his parents had given him a little cushion money before they’d disowned him for flunking out it would’ve made things a lot easier.

A cop car cruised by and slowed. He put his head down and kept walking. Stay unobtrusive, unremarkable. It glided on past. Once it was out of sight, he thumbed a ride as far as Watson Island, and headed up onto the high causeway bridge, walking fast, trying not to think about the dark, deep water underneath him. He hated bridges. The weather was warm and he didn’t mind the hike, just as long as nobody fucked with him. He’d only been in one serious fight since leaving college and ending up on the street. He’d come out of it robbed and bloodied, but mostly intact — no broken bones or cuts that needed stitches. Since that encounter, he’d been more careful and much less trusting. Except for that stupidity back in the bathroom. He must have been losing his grip. If he could somehow find a job, even something as degrading as scooping dog poop from the sidewalks, he’d be willing to take it. He wondered if that Limbus agency had jobs like that. Maybe they were so high-level he’d need to be a laid-off AIG exec to even get an interview. That was unlikely, given where he’d found the card. He felt around in his back pocket and pulled it out by the corner, as if it might bite. To his relief, it hadn’t changed since he’d last checked it in the South Beach restroom. He rubbed his thumb over the logo — nothing happened, which confirmed his suspicion that all the weirdness he thought he’d seen under the flickering bathroom lights had been a concussion headcase illusion.

He got to the office tower around noon of the next day. Standing on the sidewalk looking at himself in its mirrored windows, he knew there was no way in hell he could waltz into this glass and steel monolith and ask for a job. He was lucky its security guards didn’t swarm out of their air-conditioned safety zone and lock him up for impersonating a human. He hauled his jeans up over his hipbones — had he lost that much weight? — and thumbed a ride to Miami Shores where his parents lived.

Dallas stood on the doorstep of the modestly comfortable house he’d grown up in, feeling like a complete stranger. The last time he’d been here, his father had slammed the door in his face and left him standing on this exact spot with no belongings and no money. Sink or swim, the man had said, or something to that effect.

Dallas pushed the doorbell. He knew his mother was home because her Camry was in the driveway. If she was on the phone or lunching by the pool it might take her a minute to answer. He waited, and then rang again. After a few seconds the door opened and his mother, a petit hair-salon blonde, looked up at him. “I’m sorry, this neighborhood doesn’t allow panhandlers—” She stopped in mid-breath, took a closer look at Dallas, screamed, and slammed the door.

He sat down on the front steps. Pretty much the reception he’d expected, but what to do now? He needed to get cleaned up before he could go to the Limbus office. He heard the door open behind him.

“Good lord, it really is you, isn’t it?”

Dallas got up and faced her. “I…I have a job interview and I just need to get some clean clothes.”

His mother looked him up and down, frowning. “What kind of job?”

“Um, whatever they need. It’s a new agency, so… they need a lot of recruits.”

His mother’s shoulders softened a smidge, by which he knew he’d won. “Stay right there, you smell like a landfill.” She shut the door, more gently this time.

Dallas let his breath out. For once he’d made the right choice. He waited some more as she took her sweet time. Probably calling his father, which would be majorly awkward what with the potential for a parental meltdown but he hoped to be long gone before that unpleasant scenario could play out. His mother opened the door and handed out a stack of folded jeans, polo shirt, socks, and briefs. A towel and bath and shaving stuff rested on top.

“I can’t let you in smelling like that. Go around to the back and use the cabana shower. And for God’s sake shave your face.” Her expression was grim.

He took the clothes. “Right. And could you… I’m really starving.” No joke there — he felt and looked it. He could feel her disapproval like a force field that kept her from coming any closer. “Just go clean up.” She pulled the door shut.

Dallas sighed and went around the side of the house where mango and grapefruit trees and a tall hibiscus hid the pool fence from the street. He went to the patio shower and stripped off all his clothes in front of God and everybody just for spite, giving any curious neighbors an eyeful. Soaping and rinsing in the cool water, he began to feel better, and after he’d toweled dry and pulled on the clean clothes, he thought he might live. He stepped into the cabana and shaved his ratty beard away. His face in the mirror looked like the old Dallas Hamilton, only not so naïve. Wary, less trusting. Nothing he could do about the hair for now. It wasn’t quite long enough for a ponytail, but clean and pushed back behind his ears it wasn’t too bad.

He retrieved the Limbus card before tossing his torn T-shirt and beyond-redemption jeans in the City of Miami waste disposal canister near the fence and was about to slide it into the breast pocket of his clean polo shirt when he saw it. Not possible — the slogan had changed again.

Dallas’ fingers shook as he held the card — something was definitely hinky and it wasn’t the bump on his head. So, the mysterious card was quoting Eliot now? It was almost enough to make him laugh if he weren’t so spooked.

His mother came out of the back door carrying his old high school book bag. She set it down on the patio table. “I put some extra clothes and a few supplies in it. That’s the best I can do.”

“Mom, I’m really sorry—”

She put up her hand. “Don’t. Just don’t. Sixty thousand dollars of your father’s hard-earned money to finance your education and you manage to flunk out your last year with no degree.” She crossed her arms over her narrow chest.

“I know how it looks, but—”

“I’m not going to tell your father you were here. His blood pressure and all.”

Dallas gathered up the book bag. “It was good seeing you, Mom.”

She nodded and went back inside without another word. He wasn’t sure that bridge was burned, but he decided not to push it. He checked the book bag. A change of clothes, some fruit and a sandwich, and an envelope with $40 in small bills. He felt rich beyond expectations. Dallas inhaled the food, hoisted the bag strap over his shoulder, and headed down the sidewalk to the bus stop, feeling weirdly expectant. The first thing he intended to ask those Limbus people was how they did that thing with the card.

Dallas found the Limbus office without much trouble. It was on the second floor, down a very long hallway.

The company name was on a small plaque beside the door. He turned the knob and found himself in a waiting room that looked more like his dentist’s office than an employment agency. Institutional green paint, uncomfortable vinyl sofa along one wall, matching side chairs on opposite walls, an old-fashioned umbrella stand and coat rack beside the door. To his right, the built-in reception window allowed a glimpse of file cabinets, fax machines, and printers crowded into a small workroom. He went to the window, but saw no one. No business cards or company brochures on the narrow ledge under the window. No bell to ring to call anyone. An open hallway directly across from the door he’d come through revealed gray carpeting and rows of cubicles on either side, filled, he supposed, with workers hiring people like himself into jobs they could live on. The only flaw in this assumption was the utter stillness of the office — no voices, no phones ringing, no keyboard clatter.

He walked over to the sofa and took a quick look at the dozen or so books and magazines scatted over a low table. Brane Theory for Dummies. The Zoltron Dynasty Then and Now. Body Templates Catalog. Offworld Travel Tips. The hairs along the back of his neck prickled. He should walk away now and forget he’d ever heard of Limbus Employment Agency.

Turning, Dallas stared at the company sign affixed to the wall over the reception window. There was the turning globe, with its little pinpoints of light pulsing on every continent. The slogan below it read simply, We employ. Without a doubt, this company had the dumbest motivational slogans of anything he’d ever seen. They needed to fire their copywriter.

This was looking less and less like anything he wanted in on. He turned to leave when a short, squat man stepped out of the first cube in the row. With bald head and bulbous features and practically no neck, he looked to Dallas like a toad in an ill-fitting suit.

“Hello, I am Recruiter Rigel.” He beckoned to Dallas. “Please come have a seat.” He motioned toward two folding chairs in front of his desk.

Dallas entered the cube, still fighting the urge to bolt for the door. “Is there some company literature I could have a look at?”

Rigel sat down. “Literature?”

“Don’t you have any brochures? Every employment agency has brochures.”

“Did you want a job or not?”

“Well, yeah, why else would I be here?”

“We have one. Tailored for you.” Recruiter Rigel opened the central drawer of his desk and extracted a sheet of paper, an official looking document with very fine print, and pushed it toward him.

“Don’t you want me to fill out some kind of application? How can you tell if I’m suited to a job if you don’t even know anything about me?”

“This one was pre-selected for you. Please read it over carefully.”

Exasperated, Dallas snatched up the page. It looked like an ordinary job description, with sections labeled Tasks, Qualifications, Duration of Work, and Compensation. He started reading the bullets under the headers. It was at that point all similarity between any previous job description he’d ever seen and this one took a sharp detour.

The job title was Dog Walker. He scanned the Qualifications column:

Dallas snorted. Who were they kidding? And what kind of effing dog were they talking about here? He imagined a bloody-fanged junkyard mastiff with red glowing eyes.

"It’s a temp job, but the pay's high. They’ve had trouble keeping someone," Rigel was saying.

Dallas looked at the really fine print at the bottom of the page. “What’s this about a bonus?”

“If you complete the job successfully by the deadline, which you’ll notice is not far off, you will have earned a bonus.”

Dallas mulled this over. “How much?”

“That’s for you and the recruiter to decide.”

Dallas glared at Rigel. “I don’t see how you can run a business this way.”

“I don’t run the business. I am merely a recruiter.” Rigel tapped his badge. It said RECRUITER in bright red letters.

Dallas ground his teeth. “I can see that.” He consulted the Job Description again. That was a lot of money just to walk somebody’s dog around the block for ten days. He checked the end date of the contract. Just like the card had said, May 31^st. “I’ll do it.”

Rigel took a pen from the desk drawer and handed it to Dallas. “Sign your name, there at the bottom. Today’s date is May 21.”

Dallas wrote his name and dated it. He handed the page back to Rigel. “Don’t I get a copy of it, for my files?” As if he had any such thing, but one should ask, shouldn’t one?

“Why would you need a copy?”

“Well, in case I had questions, you know, about the job. Like how to find the freaking place with the dog.” He’d given up being polite. This was clearly a fly-by-night operation and as soon as he got an actual payment from the owner of the dog, he was hitting the road.

“The address of the contractor is on the card,” Rigel said with a trace of contempt, as if Dallas truly deserved his status of college dropout.

Dallas pulled the Limbus card out of his pocket and indeed, the contractor’s name and address appeared in the spot where the spurious slogan had been entertaining itself. Her name was Marilyn Fairbanks and she lived at an address in Coconut Grove.

“I still want a copy.”

The recruiter got to his feet, took the signed contract, and walked around his desk and out into the hall, presumably heading for the tiny workroom Dallas had glimpsed from the reception window. He heard a copier warming up and, eventually, its gears grinding.

Rigel returned and took his seat at the desk. He put the original contract in the middle drawer and handed the copy to Dallas with a look that telegraphed every ounce of how much trouble it had cost him to make that unnecessary copy. Rigel straightened his too-tight jacket across his shoulders. “This is a new client, so try not to embarrass us.” He looked doubtful.

Infuriated, Dallas pushed back his chair and stood up. “I may be a failed academic, but you have no idea of the excellence with which I will be able to walk this dog.” He assumed irony was lost on this toad, but he couldn’t stop it from slipping out the side of his mouth.

Rigel’s expression revealed nothing. “Just try to complete the task before the expiration date.”

Dallas caught the Metro line to The Grove and walked to Marilyn’s address. He’d seen trendy places like this smallish but cool apartment complex where upwardly mobile singles gravitated. That gave him hope that Ms. Fairbanks was at least good for the promised compensation. People who lived in places like this were hip, mostly in their twenties and thirties, stylish. educated. Dallas banished the bile that threatened his meager lunch and focused instead on the contract fee. Two thousand dollars for ten days’ work came out to what… two hundred dollars a day for simple dog walking? There had to be a catch, but he intended to get his hands on the money before whatever it was kicked in.

Bounded on three sides by crepe myrtles and tamarinds interspersed among tall palms knee-deep in ferns, the property of Jacaranda Apartments gave the illusion of being surrounded by tropical jungle. Four tan stucco buildings rose three levels, each with a Spanish style red tile roof. A high wall of the same stucco buffered the apartments from the street. Spilling out of weathered planters on both sides of a head-high iron-grille gate, a profusion of multicolored crotons led into a small courtyard. Dallas could imagine the marketing copy: “Providing that little touch of the Alhambra right here in the heart of The Grove.” A pool-sized terracotta fountain anchored the central patio with brick walkways leading to four pods that comprised the complex. He found building C, which appeared to have two apartments per level, and climbed the wide staircase with its black filigree railing to the third level. Ms. Fairbanks’ apartment, number C-6, was on the left. He looked down on the lovely courtyard dozing in the sun and tried to imagine living in a place like this. He couldn’t see it. Sad to say, he couldn’t see himself living anywhere.

He reached the appointed door, painted black like the ironwork along the staircase. Putting his book bag down, he positioned himself directly in front of the peephole and pressed the buzzer. More waiting. It seemed most of his day had been spent waiting on someone — it was getting tedious. Impatient, he knocked a few times. At that moment, someone came up the staircase and unlocked the door to C-5. A nice-looking young man a little older than Dallas. Perfect haircut, perfectly matched navy shirt and khaki shorts, new deck shoes. Perfect smile, like a GQ model.

“I don’t think anybody’s home,” he said to Dallas.

“What? But I was supposed to meet…” His thoughts went into freefall.

“Maybe they moved out. Apartment’s been dark for a couple of days.”

“Moved?” No other words came into his brain.

“Pretty sure. Sorry, man, looks like you got jilted.”

“What? No, that’s not—”

GQ guy smiled again. “Not what?”

Dallas stared at him blankly. He could feel the stupid settling in, the armadillo-in-the-headlights fog of incomprehension leaking out of his ears.

“Do you know her name, the person who moved out?”

The guy screwed his mouth up, thinking. “Marilyn? Like the actress. I think she had a dog, terrier maybe?” He grinned and Dallas’ stomach flipped. There was something there…

“Say, you look a little unsteady. It’s really hot. Want to come in for a drink? Something with ice in it?”

Dallas was sweating. Was the guy hitting on him? Not that he minded, but that was absolutely not on today’s agenda. “No, sorry. I’m late for an appointment. Just thought I’d stop by before…” Before he lost his mind?

Marilyn Fairbanks’ neighbor shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He flashed another smile and went inside, closing the door quietly behind him. Dallas waited, then tried the buzzer to C-6 again. Knocked, tried the door handle. Nobody home. He consulted the card.

“Shit!” The address had changed. “Will you cretins make up your mind already?!” He was so tempted to tear up the cursed card and throw the pieces in the fountain, but he’d signed a contract and somebody was going to pay him to do the work. Where was it this time? “For fuck’s sake!” The address was just about as far away from Coconut Grove as you could get, way out in Hallandale, at least half an hour’s drive north. He considered his funds. Of the $40 his mother had given him, he’d spent a good chunk of it to get here. He’d have to thumb a ride to this new address if he wanted to have money to eat on for the next couple of days. If he managed to see this job to its conclusion with a yappy dog flapping at the end of a leash, he would damn well make sure that bonus paid for all his trouble.

It took three separate rides to get out to Hallandale, but Dallas was beyond determined at this point in the game. And that’s what it was, a huge honking game of gotcha orchestrated by whoever was pulling the strings of his fate these days. He walked down 9^th Street, a long narrow residential strip of asphalt with sporadic sidewalks, looking for the house number on the card. Where had he gone wrong? He’d done alright in high school, had friends, made decent grades, aced his English classes. What had been the turning point into his current downward slide? It was hard to pinpoint… a subtle shift in attitude where he’d realized that all the blather he listened to in class was just that, and the knowledge that nobody, not even his most favorite professors, had a lock on the truth. It had all seemed so pointless.

Dogs barked at him from behind chainlink fences and big-wheel pickup trucks rolled past, sound systems thumping. Broken sections of sidewalk with weeds pushing through the cracks dotted long stretches where he had to walk along the shoulder of the road, careful not to get run over. He passed rows of concrete block houses baking in the sun, interspersed by a few partially wooded lots with slightly better houses set off from the road. Not the best part of town, for sure. Quite a come down, in fact, for Ms. Fairbanks. Had she lost her job and been forced to move? Why this far away? Sweating, he checked the house numbers on the mailboxes. Another block to go.

The little frame house under the live oaks was so well camouflaged by a dense privet hedge he’d walked right past it before he realized X marked the spot. He backtracked and went up the overgrown walk, stopped at the front steps, and checked the card once more, daring it to do what it did. The address was still correct, but the contractor’s name was different: Charlotte Birch. Dallas refused to be fazed. Fine. Marilyn Fairbanks had been abducted by aliens and her dog now belonged to someone named Birch. Whatever.

He knocked on the door with a little more force than normal. By now he was in a completely no-nonsense mood — get in there and get the job done. When there was no response within twenty seconds he banged again. The front door opened a crack and a tall slender woman with dark hair cut in a stylish bob peeked out at him.

“I’m here about the dog,” he said abruptly. “The dog walking job?” He tried to sound upbeat.

“Oh.” The door opened a little wider. “Come in,” said the woman who might be Marilyn, or Charlotte. She was barefoot and wore cutoff jeans and a tank top. Her attractive face had a haunted look, something hollow around the eyes and the tight, thin set of her mouth that telegraphed unease. Maybe she had an illness. Dallas followed her down a short hallway, wondering what her story was.

A very small dog, a terrier of some sort by the look of its pricked-up ears and sharp face, sat on its haunches in the middle of the living room. An ordinary looking dog, mostly white with caramel splotched ears, it stood up and wagged its docked tail. A Jack Russell, Dallas decided.

“This is Buster,” said the woman, gesturing toward the terrier. “I’m…Charlotte.”

Dallas nodded. “Dallas Hamilton. I was sent by the Limbus agency. To walk your dog for ten days,” he added, just so there was no mistake about the job.

“That’s a relief,” she said and plopped down into the shapeless cushions of an old sofa. Buster jumped up beside her, his flank pressed against her thigh. Charlotte crossed one long shapely leg over the other. “Well, Mr. Hamilton, please have a seat.”

Dallas perched on a weathered rocking chair that had probably been dragged in from the back deck, which he could see through glass doors that faced a small fenced back yard.

“Here’s the situation,” said Charlotte. “I work for an ad agency in downtown Miami, and often I’m not home until dark. That leaves Buster here by himself all day.”

“Sure,” Dallas offered, “he gets bored.”

“While I’m at work, I want someone reliable to walk him every day, wherever he wants to go.”

Dallas tried to look as dependable as humanly possible.

Charlotte continued. “There’s a city ordinance that dogs must be on a leash if you want to walk them. Unleashed strays get picked up snap! We can’t have that. I rescued him from the pound and he’s not going back because of somebody’s carelessness. Understood?”

“Yes, absolutely. I’ll be the best dog walker you ever met.” Dallas felt like an idiot, but he so needed the money. “When did you want me to start?” She didn’t look like she was headed off to work at a Brickell Avenue office in that outfit.

“Today.” Charlotte got up and retrieved a braided leash with a loop on one end and a clip on the other. “I want you to do a test run. If it works out and Buster likes you, then your first day on the clock is today. Sound fair?” Charlotte was pretty no-nonsense herself.

“No problem.” Dallas wondered if she had a map of the neighborhood for him to follow. “Um, how long do you want me to be out with him?”

“Just around the block for today.”

She clipped the leash to a ring on Buster’s collar. “Do you have a cell phone, Mr. Hamilton?”

“Just Dallas, please, and no, I don’t.”

She looked at him with that “loser” expression he’d seen too many times recently. “Well, you can carry mine while I’m at work, in case you need to contact me. The neighborhood’s old, not too dangerous. It’s all mostly rentals like this one. Just watch for cars where there’s no sidewalk and make sure Buster doesn’t get too hot.”

“Got it.”

“There’s one more thing,” she said, standing up. Her hand shook as she gave him the leash. “I need to show you something.”

Before Dallas could breathe "holy shit," Charlotte’s body began to stretch taller and go slightly blurred. Within seconds, a creature about seven feet tall with a head that mostly resembled a moray eel stepped out of Charlotte’s rigid body and stood over him. It had long thin arms, terminating in agile three-fingered appendages. Its skin was leathery looking and kept changing colors, first dull brown and now luminescent green. The figure was semi-transparent, as if it were not able to fully materialize — sort of wavery, like looking through water. The rows of needle-sharp teeth resolved themselves into the semblance of a human smile.

“Charlotte is not quite alone.” The voice was husky, strained sounding, like someone getting over laryngitis.

Dallas dropped the leash and scrambled away. He'd never felt such terror in all his scant twenty-one years.

The not-human voice spoke again. “I regret somewhat having to use her this way, but there wasn’t much of a choice when I came through the gate. She was the only body available.”

Dallas bolted for the door.

“Don’t run. I need your help.” The horrible voice took on a wheedling tone. “I don’t intend to eat you, if that’s what you’re thinking. There are worlds beyond worlds that you don't even have a clue about. Your world's pretty tame, far as it goes, which is why I'm hiding out here.”

“Hiding out?” Dallas’ voice broke and he tried again. “Why?” Images from The War of the Worlds flooded his numbed brain.

“Well, that's the thing. I need to get offworld, but I can't find the gate.”

Dallas blanched. There was that word. Gate. Gate expires. . “This job isn't about dog walking, is it?”

The alien shook its ugly head. “No, friend, it isn't.”

“T-then what am I supposed to be doing?”

“You and Buster here have to help me search for the gate so I can get out of here, which will be impossible after May thirty-first. That’s when the gate expires, goes offline for good. It was a quickie patch job, just meant to get a body in and out in a hurry. So, you know, timeline’s a little tight.”

Dallas swallowed. He hated to ask. “What… who's after you?”

“Not sure. Somebody hired through Limbus, I think. Assassin job most likely.”

Dallas’ knees went shaky. “But that doesn't make sense! Why would a company hire someone — me — and then turn around and contract a hit on the client I’m supposed to be working for?”

"You don’t need to know.”

Dallas was having none of it. “And now that we're talking about this so-called Limbo Ink or whatever it is, how come Charlotte set up this job through them? And by the way, who's Charlotte, or Marilyn, anyway? HUH?" Dallas realized he was shouting. At an alien.

The creature whispered in its raspy not-human voice. “She’s a human friend, with money.”

Dallas didn’t think Charlotte had bought into the “friend” part too much. If anything, she seemed in a state of controlled terror. His hand firmly on the doorknob, he took in the scene: Charlotte and her dog still as statues with an alien being towering between them, talking to him, fixing him with its round yellow eyes.

“What, exactly, are you wanted for on your homeworld?”

“Little of this, little of that, whole lot of the other.”

“You won't tell me, will you?”

“It's really better if you don't know.”

“Do you have a name?”

“You couldn't pronounce it. Charlotte calls me Gurtz.”

The creature said a word that sounded like a blender going off, somewhere between a gulp and a hiss. Gultranz. “That is my species. We’re friendly toward humans, in a number of ways.”

Dallas shuddered, wondering how Gurtz had revealed himself to Charlotte. “Did you ask Charlotte’s permission, before you took over her body?”

“Unfortunately, there wasn’t time. She took it pretty well, all things considered. She's maybe a tad more adventurous than you.”

“What's her reward for helping you?”

Gurtz was coy. “Adventurous, like I said. I might come visit her again, under better circumstances.”

Dallas was sticky with sweat.

“So, you’re like a shapeshifter. A body jumper. Could you take me over?” He gripped the doorknob.

“It’s not that simple, and no, I can't jump from body to body. Took a clever bit of spellcrafting to get me into the human template. But it's been a good disguise, so far.”

Dallas swallowed. “It said on the contract that I was hired to work for somebody named Marilyn Fairbanks but when I went to her address, she’d supposedly moved out, according to her neighbor at the apartments where Limbus told me she lived. Did I get any part of that right?”

Gurtz gave him a long silent look. “We had to make a quick change of plans. Once we found out about the assassin, it became necessary for Marilyn to go into hiding, just to be sure of my safety. Hence the name and address change.”

“What did you mean by human template?”

“Once I take on a basic body template, homo sapiens in this case, I can slip into an available package, like Charlotte. Simple, for a spellcaster of my experience.”

Dallas kept his mouth shut. His brain was in overdrive.

Actually, he was trying to work out what qualified him for such a dangerous job. He was about the least likely person one would want on their side in this kind of situation. He remembered the “life-threatening” part of the Qualifications list and knew with a certainty he should have turned down Rigel’s contract and gotten the hell out. One of his not-so-good choices.

“How come her dog hasn’t gone apeshit? He should be reacting to you but he’s not.”

“I had to tamper a little with its canine instincts, I’m afraid. Buster is highly protective of Charlotte, so it was necessary to imprint myself on his mind as well, in order to keep him from attacking me. I also imprinted the smell of the gate, so he could help me search.”

“I see.” Dallas didn’t see at all, but it seemed like a safe thing to say.

“Well? Are you in or not?” Gurtz cocked his massive head.

It was only for ten days, nine if you didn’t count today. Two thousand dollars and a bonus could go a long way toward redemption of this mess he’d landed in. And the sooner he could get the nasty creature back where it came from, the sooner Charlotte would be freed. “In.”

“Excellent. I think my host needs a drink.” The figure went transparent and slid back into the young woman beside it. Charlotte ran her fingers through her hair. “Just sit there for a minute, and then we’ll talk.” She headed for the kitchen.

Dallas hoped Charlotte had something alcoholic, with a good bite. His fingers trembled, his mind in denial. It was unthinkable, but he’d seen what he’d seen.

“So you really are Marilyn Fairbanks.”

She returned with two glasses. “I was until last week. But don’t call me that, forget you heard that name. So you’ve decided to stay?”

Dallas sank into the rocker and gulped the gin and tonic Charlotte had given him. “Yeah, I have, but I’d like to hear this thing from your side… if you can tell it.” He wondered how much the alien presence controlled her thoughts and speech.

Charlotte settled into the couch cushions, pulling her feet up under her. “Gurtz came here through a portal of some sort, an interplanetary travel gate. He was on the run and made the gate somehow to escape from people who wanted to kill him.” She closed her eyes, as if to make sure she got the facts straight. “But the gate’s drifted. It opened in Coconut Grove, but it’s not there now. It was scent marked, but Buster couldn’t smell it anywhere around the original site. So last weekend, we drove all over town with the windows down so Buster could get a whiff of it.”

Charlotte shut her eyes again.

“Gurtz says to tell you he didn’t have time to anchor its coordinates before it spewed him out. After driving around all over creation, we came back to my apartment and that’s when Buster smelled him.” Charlotte’s wide dark eyes pinned Dallas.

“Him?” Dallas sipped at his ice-filled glass. He felt like rolling it across his forehead.

“The assassin. Another Gultranz. The whole place stank with his scent according to Gurtz.” Buster sneezed, as if he’d sensed what she was describing.

“Buster wouldn’t go past the gate, so I left him hiding in the ferns while I ran inside, threw some clothes in my gym bag, and locked the apartment up tight. Then we got in the car and I just started driving north, to get as far away as possible.”

“And you landed here.” Dallas hoped he sounded helpful, but he was well beyond any ability to reason.

“Well, I would have kept driving, but Buster alerted us on the gate somewhere around Aventura, in the mall parking lot. But it just turned out to be a trace of where it had been — it wasn’t actually there.”

Dallas nodded. “Pity.”

“So we headed into Hallandale, still following the trace, and decided we needed a base of operations. I saw the “for rent” sign in the yard here and called the number. The owner, a very sweet Latina, drove in from Sunny Isles to meet us. I told her I couldn’t rent under my real name because I was running from an abusive husband. She hugged me and said she knew exactly what I was going through.” Charlotte beamed a cheeky smile at Dallas. “You have no idea how far a sob story and cash up front will get you. I have the house, no questions asked, as long as the money’s paid.”

Dallas kept nodding. “Okay, now what?”

“Well, you need to stay here with us, till the job’s done. That way you and Buster can spend as much time looking as possible. There’s only one bedroom, but you can have the couch. It’s big and comfy.”

“Okay, I don’t mind.” It was light years better than sleeping in the park.

“I can drive you back to your current address so you can get necessities and stuff, then we’ll all be safe here. I think.”

Dallas took a breath. “I don’t currently have an address, and this is all I need.” He pushed the book bag with his toe.

“So,” said Charlotte. “You’re a homeless person.”

Dallas scowled. “It’s just temporary.”

Charlotte brightened. “That’s good, though. Less likely you can be tracked through a landlord or neighbors.”

Dallas had so many questions he hardly knew where to start, but there was one sticking up above the others. “If Buster can smell this hired killer just from his scent trail, can the assassin smell you, too?”

“No. He’ll be wearing a human body, so he can’t differentiate smells any better than you can.” Buster hopped up beside her and leaned against her shoulder. Cozy. Dallas thought his head might explode.

Instead he asked, “Why does what’s-his-name have to wear a borrowed body? Oxygen disagree with him?”

Charlotte gripped the cushions and shut her eyes. “He says it’s not pleasant, but he can process it. The problem’s with the density of the atmosphere. It’s too thin — prevents the Gultranz from fully materializing into the earth plane. They need to take on the shell of an earthbound creature to fully function. There are a lot of body templates. He could have taken on Buster as his template, but that would have been too limiting. ”

Dallas sucked in his breath, suddenly remembering a certain catalog he’d seen on the table in the Limbus reception room. “What happens if the alien’s ‘occupied’ earthsuit gets killed?”

“The Gultranz wearing it gets sucked through the nearest official gate and spewed back, hopefully intact, onto the homeworld.” Charlotte made an unpleasant face that Dallas was certain didn’t reflect just her own reaction.

“Won’t they catch you if you go back through the portal you made?”

Charlotte emitted a guttural noise that Dallas had never heard a human make. “Gurtz asks if you think he’s some novice who doesn’t know how to hide his own patch gate.”

“Well, you let it drift all over the greater Miami area like the Hindenburg. ”

Charlotte quivered and Buster growled in the back of his throat. She scratched him behind the ears, defusing the moment. Maybe Buster still had a desire to sink his teeth into that luminous greenish hide. Dallas winced. In spite of his terror, he was starting to empathize with them.

“How many miles do you think we have to walk before this gate thing drifts across our path?” He’d been mildly confident when he’d set out this morning, but now the task seemed enormously hopeless.

Charlotte was massaging Buster’s shoulders. “Do you have a driver’s license? I could let you drop me off at work and borrow my car.”

“I do, but I don’t have it on me.” Dallas’ cheeks flamed.

“Well, can you get it?”

Dallas imagined standing on the front steps of his parents’ house and asking his father to give his license back. “Doubtful,” he said.

“Well, then, we’ll just have to improvise.”

Dallas found himself warming to Charlotte. Here she was, possessed by an entity that was anyone’s worst nightmare, yet gamely making plans to move forward with an impossible task. He could learn a thing or two from her.

“We could catch the bus, or maybe a taxi,” he offered. “I’m good at thumbing rides. I could wear dark glasses and pretend he’s my seeing-eye dog.”

Charlotte/Gurtz eyed him. “You catch on fast. No wonder you’ve survived on the street with basically nothing. I like you.” She smiled and it was Dallas’ turn to shiver, remembering the rows of needle-sharp teeth.

Dallas drained his glass and rose to go place it in the sink of the tiny kitchen. He turned to Charlotte. “Why’d you place your dog walker ad with Limbus?”

She shrugged, looking at Buster. “It was the biggest display ad in the yellow pages for employment agencies. You can look it up if you want.”

“No, that’s okay.” He didn’t need to consult the yellow pages — he knew there wouldn’t be any such ad. Charlotte — Marilyn — had seen what was meant only for her. Like she said, he caught on fast.

Dallas took Buster out on the leash and spent the next several days trying to follow the very faint trace of the drifting gate, wandering through neighborhoods in Miramar, Miami Gardens, and Opa-Locka. By Tuesday, Dallas tried skirting the Miami River along a jogging/skating path that gave him a good view of Miami Beach across the water. They’d been out walking for nearly an hour, with Buster catching occasional whiffs of spots where the gate had lingered and moved on.

Suddenly Buster took off at a run, dragging Dallas after him. The leash was wrenched with a slap out of his fingers. “Hey!”

Buster disappeared down a residential street, across a back yard, and into a copse of willow. Dallas caught up with him in seconds. “What the hell—” The dog cowered between his feet, teeth bared and snarling.

Dallas swallowed hard. Buster must have smelled something dangerous, something deadly. Dallas grabbed the leash. “C’mon, I know the neighborhood.” Of course he did. His parents lived in it.

He ran across yards, between houses, and ended up in a small wooded park, its circular boundary marked by chest-high holly hedges. In the center of the park grew half a dozen centennial oaks with branches so wide you could stand on them. In the tallest tree, a weathered clubhouse hid among its upper forks, a few climbing slats still nailed to its gnarled trunk.

Dallas huffed, grabbing the dog around the middle and wedging it up under his arm. He jumped and caught the highest slat, scrabbling with his feet onto the lowest fork, and worked his way up into the canopy of dark green leaves. The tree house had no door, and Dallas flung himself and Buster through the entrance and onto the rough plywood flooring. He lay gasping, listening for pursuit but heard nothing. Finally Dallas sat up and took stock of their refuge. It looked remarkably the way it had when he’d played in it as a kid.

Buster was peering down through the doorway at the ground below, snarling.

Dallas pulled up his T-shirt and wiped sweat out of his eyes. He chanced a look out the door just in time to spot a jogger coming into the park. In tank top and shorts, he looked harmless enough. Buster was shaking all over, pressed against Dallas’ leg. The dog emitted a low growl but Dallas grabbed his snout. “Shhh!” He flattened himself against the floorboards and took another furtive look.

The jogger had stopped on the sidewalk leading into the park and stood wiping his face. Perfectly normal behavior for a runner. Nothing to see. Until he walked slowly to the center of the small grassy area near the oaks and stood perfectly still, head raised slightly, as if listening. He faced east, then west, with a questing behavior much like a bird dog seeking its prey after the fowl has plunged out of sight into the reeds of a marsh. Dallas crouched against the wall of the tree house, hardly daring to breathe. Against him, Buster shivered in silent terror. Dallas had no doubt the jogger was someone, or something, to be feared.

The stranger below took his own sweet time, but eventually moved on across the park and back out to the street. Dallas let his breath out and then called Charlotte.

“I think we narrowly missed your friend,” he said in a whisper. “If Buster hadn’t taken off like a streak I don’t know what would have happened.”

“Be very careful coming home,” she warned. “We can’t have you leading anyone to the house.”

“Roger that.” Dallas disconnected the call.

He sat in silence for awhile, just listening to the breeze off the river rustling the tops of the oaks and palms. Occasionally Buster sniffed the breeze, but he seemed to no longer find any threat hiding there.

Buster walked to the door, his dog nails clicking on the boards of the tree house. Dallas picked him up. “If you don’t smell the guy anymore let’s get out of here.” The first thing he wanted to do when they got home was get some better details about the assassin, something he’d failed to do when Gurtz’s situation was first explained to him.

Charlotte called around five-thirty to say she was on her way and would bring Cuban take-out home with her.

A brief thunderstorm broke overhead and rained just enough to make everything steamy. Dallas and Buster sat on the back deck, listening to rain drip off the trees and shrubbery, while legions of frogs sang their rain-conjuring songs. The sound of Charlotte’s Grand Cherokee pulling up under the carport some time later brought him back to the fact that his stomach was chewing on itself. He went inside and found Charlotte unloading Cuban sandwiches onto the kitchen table. “Help yourself,” she said.

Dallas took a wrapped sandwich from the bag and sat down across the room, as far away from her as he could get. They ate in silence until Charlotte got up and poured herself a glass of burgundy.

“You’re awfully quiet.”

“Just thinking.”

Charlotte put down her glass. “That was a close call you had today.”

“No shit.”

More silence. Finally Charlotte got up and stretched. She headed out into the living room and Dallas followed.

“Can I…talk to Gurtz? I mean, physically?” He could feel the blood beating a tattoo against his temples.

Charlotte cocked her head. “All right, but you have to promise you won’t run out the door.”

“I won’t run.” Since that first terrifying day, the alien hadn’t showed itself outside its host, in the interest of keeping him employed, Dallas assumed. Now that he felt reasonably sure Gurtz wasn’t about to abduct him for medical experiments on some distant planet, he wanted to see, as clearly as possible, the creature he was contracted to help and ask those nagging questions.

Gurtz slowly lifted out of Charlotte’s body. Dallas was shaking but kept his eyes riveted to the ungainly form partially coalescing in front of him. Seven feet tall, for sure, maybe more. Dallas was holding his breath. There was the moray eel head, which he now saw had two slightly protruding perfectly round eyes with a tiny red pupil in the center. The eyes seemed to move independently of each other, one giving Dallas the once over and the other angled toward the doorway, like a chameleon he’d once kept in a terrarium back in his college days. But Gurtz wasn’t a chameleon, or an eel. What had he called himself? Gultranz.

The Gultranz sorcerer stepped away from his host, who remained frozen in mid-step, and Dallas took a good look. Although partially transparent, it was still a terrifying sight. The alien was bipedal but also had a long thick tail that it leaned back on for balance. Dallas licked his dry lips. He’d seen a kangaroo do that once at the Miami Zoo. The creature’s skin was luminescing greens and blues and ochres. From the front of the mouth, a cluster of prominent upper and lower serrated teeth jutted at a bucktoothed angle. As the hinged jaw moved, Dallas saw double rows of triangular shredding teeth. Sharp as razors, he was willing to bet. A flesh eater.

“You don’t look much like a Little Grey,” Dallas croaked out.

“What’s that?” Gurtz’s voice was raspier than he remembered.

“You know, Little Greys, alien abductions… medical experiments?”

“Is that a DC comic? I might like it.” The Gultranz stood to his full height and stretched his long thin arms out from his sides, flexing his three-fingered hands as if unwinding the kinks. Dallas noted uneasily the suckerlike pads on each digit. The creature took a step forward.

“Don’t!” Dallas skipped backwards.

“Seen enough? I can’t hold this form too long outside the host.”

“Yes! Please go back in.” He was hyperventilating.

Charlotte shuddered and settled stiffly onto the couch. “Gurtz wants to know your story.”

“Me? I don’t have a story. I’m your basic loser, a nobody.”

Charlotte’s dark eyes went wide, looking at him with such fixation it felt like a trowel scraping at his brains.

“I see a lot going on in there, but I don’t see stupid,” Charlotte/Gurtz said. “How’s a smarter than average guy like you end up homeless?”

“Long unpleasant story involving a lot of money spent on an education I failed to get.”

“Studying what?”

“I was an English major.”

“Mm. Sympathies.”

“Noted.” Dallas sighed deeply. “I’m what’s known in this world as a slacker.”

“Looks like we have something in common, then.”

“How’s that?”

“We’re both in trouble with somebody over money. Isn’t that always the way it goes…”

“What happens if you miss your gate?”

“I’ll be stuck here.”

“And if your host dies?” Dallas had every intention of keeping Charlotte alive, but he had to ask.

“My essence gets sucked into the nearest official gate. If I survive the transfer in one piece, I’ll probably be executed.”

But Dallas’ mind was on another track. “What happens if the assassin catches us?”

“It won’t be nice. Body parts, yours and ours.”

“What’s he armed with?”

“A splitter, most likely — a stealth weapon, highly portable and deadly. You think a Japanese katana’s sharp? Phhht. A splitter’s particle beam cuts through anything with substance, boulders, steel, meteorites, you name it. Small neat handle, fits in the palm of your hand, beam opens up as wide or as narrow as you want, depending on what you need to cut.”

Dallas shivered. “I still don’t get it. That recruiter guy said this job was tailor made for me. But you need somebody from the Avengers or the Justice League, not a college dropout.”

“You’re doing okay so far. Charlotte likes you. Buster likes you. ”

He had to admit that had been the nicest part of the job — besides the money, which he received in cash at the end of each day. It felt good, being praised by someone smart and successful, which Charlotte obviously was.

Dallas cleared his throat. “How come you’re so familiar with the way things work here on Earth? You seem pretty savvy to me for a non-native.”

Charlotte closed her eyes and hugged her chest, her voice husky. “It's on my regular route. I’ve been coming here for a long time.”

Dallas felt a chill creeping over his skin despite the ninety-plus heat. "For what?"

“I thought we weren't going to talk about that.”

“I want to talk about it now.”

“I told you─I'm a Masterclass Spellcaster.”

Dallas was persistent. “Casting spells on what?”

“Body templates. I figure out the design and make the prototypes with all their thousands of variations. I have to use originals to work from, to get the details right.”

Dallas wasn’t liking where this was headed. He felt his guts tighten. “How do you get those originals?”

Charlotte had pulled herself into a near-fetal position. “Slaves. I work with the Slave Traders Guild to get body types… and do a little refurbishing for them on the side. There. Happy you asked?”

Dallas scrambled toward the door. “I knew it! You lied to me.”

“How do you figure that? You were yammering about little grey guys and medical experiments. This is about commerce.”

“But a slave means abduction! And ‘refurbishing’ means torture, I assume.” Dallas was freaking, heart pounding against his ribs.

“Offworld slaves have to be refurbished before they can be used. I take away their breathing apparatus and embed a little methane converter at the base of the throat. Eliminates their ability to talk, but they can't speak our language anyway, so no loss. I'm good at what I do. Better than most of my competitors, which doesn’t make them happy,” Gurtz conceded.

“But that's inhumane, it's horrible! You’re despicable!” He suddenly realized he had Charlotte by the throat, squeezing tighter with each shout. The Gultranz lifted partway out of the woman’s body and unfurled one of its long skinny digits. It touched Dallas on the forehead and he fell back as if he’d been tazed. A mild electric shock ran through his body, just like the time he'd stuck a fork in a toaster as a kid to get at a piece of trapped toast.

“I don’t want to harm you, but I will defend myself. You were trying to attack my host and I can’t allow that. Be assured that if I could fully manifest, you’d be dead now.” The husky voice had changed in pitch. Dallas had sort of gotten used to the timbre of that unnatural voice filtered through human vocal cords, but right now the voice had an edge that frightened him to his core. The Gultranz settled back into its host and glared at Dallas with an expression that could have meant anything from fuck you, earthling, to you poor stupid sod with the brain of a flea.

Dallas sat with his forehead on his knees and tried to rearrange his scrambled brains. Part of him just wanted things to go back to the way they were before he’d ever heard of Limbus Inc., but that was helpless loser thinking. He was sick of being a loser.

He pushed his hair out of his eyes and gave her eye contact, not confrontational, but not backing down either. “Understood. I signed a contract. So, I agree to put my personal problems with your occupation aside for now, and I will see this job through to the end.” So you can leave and get the hell off my world. Gurtz probably understood that part, too.

Charlotte leaned back against the cushions. “Alright. Just so we understand each other.” She shivered visibly and gave Dallas that haunted look. “Sorry about that.” Her normal voice was back.

Dallas let his breath out. He didn’t know if he’d won or lost, but he understood he’d had a narrow escape, his second of the day. He continued to sit on the floor, watching the light fade and listening to sounds of traffic along the street outside. The naked reality that “aliens are among us” had come crashing down with a vengeance. To be honest, the whole job experience had felt like some surreal prolonged cosplay event until tonight. This was no pop culture dress-up-like-monsters weekend, and his rational mind had ground to a halt.

Dallas felt the anger leak out of him, like an oversized gasbag punctured and wilting. He closed his eyes, too wrung out to think.

He felt her hand on his shoulder, a barely-there squeeze.

“Sleep on it. We’ll talk more tomorrow. I just want you to know, Dallas, that I think you’re a fine person.” With that, she entered the bedroom and shut the door.

Dallas curled up on the couch and willed himself not to think about the kinds of dreams she must have been having.

When Dallas woke, Charlotte had already gone to work. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, feeling fogged over. Buster was stretched out near the glass doors, watching him. He wasn’t sure how he felt this morning, but the thought that he’d lain asleep under the same roof as a creature whose race harvested humans for slaves and worse gave him goosebumps.

“Today’s the twenty-ninth,” he said to Buster. “What’s the game plan?” Dallas ran his hands through his hair. “You know what? I think we’re going at this all wrong. Chasing the gate but never quite catching it isn’t working.” It was like a game of quantum tag. All these little contiguous events looked random when you stared at them head on, but under the surface they felt deliberate, controlled, planned. What he really wanted was to see the bigger flowchart. And then the light went on in his head. He called Charlotte at work.

“I think we need to go back to the place where the gate came in and,” he wasn’t sure how to describe what his brain saw as a strategy, “cut it off at the pass, so to speak.”

“Not bad,” she said. “I could see that.”

“It’s fractal. My strategy.”

“Excuse me?”

Dallas tried to explain. “When you’re down in a little eddy current of a fractal arm, you can’t see the larger pattern it belongs to. You may not even be aware there is a larger pattern. All you get are those little separate details of the hook-curve you’re meandering around in. So, Gurtz’s gate is oscillating on some pattern of its own. We just need to see it. We know the farthest out it went was Hallandale, and then it started heading back south.”

“Gurtz says he thinks you’re onto something.” Charlotte’s voice sounded hopeful.

Dallas and Buster spent the morning combing neighborhoods near the airport with no results, eventually working their way south toward downtown Miami. By mid-afternoon, footsore and overheated, they met Charlotte for food at a Calle Ocho sidewalk café in Little Havana that Dallas liked to frequent when he was a student at FIU and had spending money. Charlotte treated them to pork-stuffed tostones rellenos and tres leches cake. With good food in his stomach and a sea breeze drying his sweaty face, Dallas felt better. He poured ice water from his glass into the empty salsa bowl and put it down for Buster, who noisily lapped it up, ice and all.

“I dunno, maybe I was wrong about the gate coming back. It made perfect sense to me this morning.” He watched a couple of old-timers playing chess at a table nearby. Beyond them, a young black girl with very green eyes stared at Dallas. It was a pain in the ass to have to be suspicious of everybody around them, but if the assassin was in a human body, he could be stalking them right now and they wouldn’t even know it.

“What do you think, keep heading south toward Coconut Grove?”

Charlotte drove them back to the financial district around Brickell Avenue and parked in the company lot. They wandered among the glass and steel towers for a block or two when Buster suddenly yelped in surprise. He took off trotting, Dallas and Charlotte running to catch up. “After him! Down that street!”

They ran flat out, Buster catching the scent and then losing it.

“It’s here, I know it!” Charlotte gasped, as Dallas leaned against the side of an office building, trying to catch his breath. “It’s circling southward, like you guessed.”

They chased the trail of the drifting gate down to Bicentennial Park. It occurred to Dallas that if the damned thing sailed out over open water, they were SOL. Besides which, the sun would be setting before long — a few street lights were starting to come on, and the Art Deco magenta pylon lights along the split lanes of the MacArthur Causeway cast rippling ribbons of color across the bay all the way to Watson Island.

Dallas was about to give Gurtz some grief for being such a half-assed sorcerer when he heard Charlotte mutter under her breath. “Oh shit.”

In Dallas’s current experience, he knew exactly what that meant.

“Where?”

“Can’t course the direction exactly, but Gurtz says his scent is strong near the causeway.” Buster was trembling and growling, his nostrils blown wide.

Behind them, a lone figure came up the cracked sidewalk. Dallas retreated onto the causeway’s pedestrian corridor. The stranger advanced, walking steadily. Dallas quickened his pace. “Hoof it. I don’t like his looks.”

They headed over the causeway at a trot. The incline wasn’t overly steep, just enough to prevent them from seeing beyond the top of the bridge. Dallas took a quick look over his shoulder. The guy behind them was still there, but not gaining on them. They’d nearly crested the bridge when another figure came into view, walking toward them from the other direction. A nice looking guy, hands in his khakis, he came quickly along the walkway. As they passed he nodded and smiled, a familiar face. Instantly a thin whine like a dentist’s drill erupted as the man stooped and slashed at Charlotte, the splitter shearing across ribs and belly. Without hesitating, Dallas grabbed her and did the unthinkable. He jumped.

It took longer to hit the water than he would’ve thought, but maybe time dilated when you were in shock. Clutching Charlotte’s body tightly to his chest, they hit the water hard and sank for terrifying seconds as everything went cold and black. Silently giving thanks to all those high school swim meets that had pushed his aquatic skills to the limit, Dallas crested the surface quietly, trying to spread as few ripples as possible. He was drifting under the causeway, close to one of the gigantic pylons and some yards nearer land than the point from which he’d jumped. He was a strong swimmer and under normal circumstances wouldn’t have given a second thought about swimming the distance to the shoreline ramp where the causeway met land, but holding a mortally wounded friend made it a wholly different game. He had no problem swimming laps in the clear, chlorinated pool at his high school, but navigating the dark turbulent waters of Biscayne Bay at dusk ranked right up there with his most favorite nightmares. Buster’s snout broke the surface not far from them.

Like a light switch flipped on, he suddenly remembered where he’d see the assassin — Charlotte’s, Marilyn’s, apartment — the friendly next door neighbor. He should’ve known. But he hadn’t quite got the hang of being on the run back then, so he hadn’t been suspicious enough. He shuddered to think that he might have actually gone into the guy’s apartment for drinks… and body parts? He shoved those thoughts aside and concentrated on staying alive.

A powerboat bore down on them, so close he could see the pilot’s face in the glare of the pylon display lights, his head tilted back chugging a beer and oblivious to anything in the water he might run over. Dallas had always considered the nighttime show that defined the MacArthur decorative lighting project as uselessly garish as the rest of Miami Beach, but tonight it kept him from floundering around in complete darkness. The wake from the cigar boat washed him up against the horizontal concrete span between two pylons. Spluttering, he held Charlotte’s head above the waterline and bit down on the pain as barnacles encrusting the pylon raked his back and shoulder. Buster whimpered and treaded water beside them.

“Hold on,” he whispered. “I won’t let them kill us.”

The distant drone of the Miami Coast Guard’s small search and rescue vessel got louder and filled the space near the bridge as a searchlight played over the water. Within seconds, it caught him in the eyes.

A radio crackled. “Yeah, we found them. Pulling alongside now.”

Dallas counted the seconds as the rescue boat idled closer. A crew member leaned over the side and tossed him an inflated ring like a giant peppermint lifesaver. “Are you all right? Can you grab on?” Dallas hooked his free arm over the ring and felt the tug as he was pulled in toward the boat.

“Got a couple of 911 calls from people who saw you go off the bridge. That’s a sixty-foot drop or so. You fall or get pushed?”

Dallas was shaking so hard he could barely get the words out. “W-whack job up there slashed my friend. She’s bleeding to death, n-need a doctor.”

It didn’t take seconds for the Coast Guard rescue crew to assess the situation. The guy at the helm made another call on his radio, while the crew helped Dallas, Charlotte, and Buster aboard. The man who seemed to be in charge turned to Dallas. “Closest 24/7 emergency service is a few miles upriver. I just put in a call — the ambulance’ll be waiting for us at the dock.”

He shook out a blanket and wrapped it around Charlotte. “People are crazy, you know?”

“D-did you spot anybody up on the bridge, near the top?” Dallas’ teeth clacked together, mostly from the adrenaline shock of jumping and dropping such a long way down. Who would’ve thought the water would be so cold this late in May?

“No, but we alerted the police. They’ll catch him before he can get off the causeway. Who would want to hurt someone like that? It’s inhuman, ain’t it?”

Dallas kept his mouth shut and held Charlotte to his chest. His shirt was wet with blood, his and hers…the wound looked bad. He just hoped the Gultranz wouldn’t pull out of his damaged host and show himself. There’d be no explaining that.

The ambulance was ready for them at the dock with lights flashing. Two cop cars parked beside it added to the light show. Charlotte was carefully loaded onto the gurney and whisked away as Dallas gave his statement to the officers. There was no way he could explain that his employer had just been slashed by the weapon of an offworld assassin, but he gave them as good a description of the guy as he could remember. Not that it would do them any good if they found him.

The police car trailed the ambulance to the hospital, and Dallas got out almost before it came to a stop at the emergency entrance.

“If you think of anything else useful, call me. I’ll take your little buddy here to Mojo’s. It’s an animal boarding service nearby. You can collect him when you’re done with the doctors.” The officer wrote a phone number on the back of a card and pressed it into Dallas’s hand.

“I really appreciate it. More than you can imagine.” Dallas stuck the card in his pocket next to the dreaded Limbus card and ran up the steps of the hospital, his thoughts in freefall.

“Your girlfriend’s one lucky lady.” The doctor came into the waiting room where Dallas was hunkered down in his bloody clothes. “She lost a lot of blood, but we got her stabilized and put back together. She’s lucky — the cut missed her heart and lungs.”

Dallas had gotten over his shakes and now simply felt numb. “She’s going to live, right?”

“I think she’ll make it. We’ll know more in the morning.” Dallas nodded. He was prepared to spend the night in the waiting room, because as the doc said, there was nothing more to do now but wait. He was getting good at that. But those barnacle scrapes were starting to hurt like hell. He pulled the shirt away from his back and grimaced. The doc gave him a look and sent him off to a treatment room. After what seemed like hours, a young RN knocked at the door and came in, only mildly appalled at his blood-soaked appearance. As an emergency nurse, she’d probably seen worse. Efficiently peeling off his shirt, she swabbed his scrapes with a light touch, taping gauze over the worst ones. She also found his story fascinating, at least the part of it he was willing to share. “You jumped off the MacArthur Causeway? The section with all the party lights?”

He closed his eyes, trying to decompress. “Yep.” The only act of heroism he’d ever performed was going to be fuel for many nightmares to come.

“Done. I hope that feels better.” She patted him on the shoulder.

“Much. Funny, it didn’t start hurting until I got in the police car.” He wondered what his parents would have thought of the stunt he’d just pulled — an idle thought because it was a chapter in their son’s life they weren’t ever going to hear about. He considered his bloody shirt. “You wouldn’t happen to have a spare T-shirt lying around, would you?”

The RN smiled and patted his shoulder again. “I think I can find you something.”

Engulfed in an oversized Miami Hurricanes green and orange tee, Dallas caught what sleep he could in the waiting room, but by early morning he was prowling the maze of hospital corridors looking for the cafeteria. He couldn’t help giving anyone who got too close to him a second look because who knew how many assassins had been sent to collect their bounty on the outlaw Gurtz. He wolfed eggs, sausage, and black coffee, and then went to the Central Registry to find where Charlotte was recovering. He found her in a tiny private room on the third floor. A transfusion blood bag suspended on a pole near the bedside dripped dark red slowly through the I–V line taped to her arm. He was shocked at how pale she was, lying still in the white sheets.

“Hey,” he said softly, coming into the room and shutting the door.

Charlotte turned her head. “Dallas. You’re safe. I was worried.”

“I’m fine, it’s you we need to be worried about. How do you feel?”

“Drugged up. The nurse told me I’ve had four units of blood.” She cast her eyes up at the drip bag. “It must have been a mess. I don’t remember much after the assassin showed up on the bridge. I recall falling and being in the water, but nothing after that until early this morning. How bad is it?”

“The doc says you’ll make a full recovery. Police are looking for the slasher, but a lot of good that will do. It might be better if they don’t find him.”

“Where’s Buster?”

“Boarding at a nearby vet. The cop assigned to your case took him there.”

Charlotte looked relieved. “I knew you were the right one the day you showed up on our doorstep. Just a gut-level instinct. A smart guy who’s basically good at heart.”

Dallas felt his ears heating up. “How could you know that about me?”

Charlotte laughed and then flinched. “I work all day among people whose job it is to dress up the worst products in the best possible package. We make our living telling lies, big and small, for commerce. Sincerity is rare in my line of work, so when I meet someone who has it in spades, I can’t help but notice.”

“I almost chickened out, you know. A couple of times.”

Charlotte smiled. “Doesn’t matter. You’re still here, and so am I, thanks to you. You saved my life without thinking.”

“I’m not a hero. I was scared shitless… still am.”

Charlotte frowned. “You sell yourself short and I don’t know why. But you’ve proved yourself to me. I couldn’t be more grateful.”

Dallas swallowed and asked the question he dreaded. “Is Gurtz still there?”

Charlotte nodded. “He’s not enjoying the sensation of human pain any more than I am.”

“Good.”

Charlotte closed her eyes. “We have one day left before the gate shuts down. Somehow I have to get out of here and go looking with you.”

“No way. I’m not letting you risk your life for him.”

“You’d rather have him stuck in my body for good?”

Dallas shuddered. “No! But I don’t see how—”

“We’ll figure something out. We have to.” Charlotte hesitated, then added, “Gurtz needs to survive.”

“Why? If he died you’d be free! He’s an alien, for chrissakes.” Dallas could feel his blood pressure spiking.

“I know, but it’s not the whole story.” Charlotte frowned, whether from pain or frustration he couldn’t tell. “He corrects the horrible mistakes made by others not as skilled as him. The truth is he’s on the run for being the instigator of a dissident group trying to create better treatment and conditions for offworld slaves.”

“And you believe this?” Dallas didn’t even try to conceal his incredulity.

“I want to.”

“Why, exactly?”

Charlotte turned toward him. “There’s a movement to change the way the Slave Guild operates, and Gurtz is at the heart of it. He knows he can’t wipe out an institution that’s been around for millennia, but he thinks he can at least change the way slaves are treated. He’s trying to establish rights for them."

Dallas listened, his tenuous grip on The Truth evaporating, only this time it was cosmic truth that refused to cooperate, not some meaningless classroom debate about the significance of poetry. And even as he grappled with enough stuff to drive him mad into the next century, a new truth dawned on him. Charlotte wanted to believe because it was the only way to cope with the whole experience. If it ended up being for a good cause, it wasn’t so horrible, right? Dallas tried to imagine lovely Charlotte being ‘refurbished.’ He just couldn’t deal. “He abducts humans and animals for body templates!”

Charlotte’s expression shifted, the rasping voice emerging. “Who do you think sent the assassin after me? It’s a government hit, to stop me from upsetting the way the Gultranz have done things for eons.”

Dallas stood beside the bed, trying to gather his thoughts. He didn’t believe the alien’s sob story for a bleeding second, but Charlotte was right about one thing. They had to find the gate.

Thursday morning, the thirty-first of May, dawned gray and storm-tossed. Rain whipped through the trees and pounded the roof of the house snug under the live oaks. Dallas fed Buster and found a change of clothes for Charlotte. Their plan was simple: focus on the area south of Brickell, moving toward Coconut Grove where the gate had opened.

“He said the gate expires today. Does that mean we have all day or just part of it?”

Charlotte had shrugged in her hospital bed. “Who knows? It could be expiring right now, for all we know.”

“That should give the hospital staff a thrill.” Dallas had to forcibly suppress the image of the Gultranz sorcerer being sucked out of its human shell before some astonished personal care assistant’s bleary early-morning eyes.

“Then we need to get moving.”

“This is a terrible idea.” Dallas pushed the wheelchair through the automatic double doors and out onto the hospital parking deck. The SUV sat in a loading zone near the wheelchair ramp. Charlotte gripped the arms of the chair with white knuckles and said nothing. He knew she was in pain, but she’d been adamant. There was no choice.

He eased her up into the passenger seat and left the wheelchair on the walk beside the driveway. Trying to go over the speed bumps as carefully as possible, Dallas wound their way out of the parking garage and into morning traffic, heading south.

Dallas was just pulling into a South Miami Wal-Mart to gas up when the urge to go hit him. There was no ignoring it, and he couldn’t expect to hold it for hours of driving if that’s how long it took. Cursing his uncooperative plumbing that ran on its own timetable instead of the one he and Charlotte had devised, Dallas reluctantly parked out front.

“I won’t be a minute, I promise.” Charlotte nodded and closed her eyes, her arms wrapped around her midsection, as Dallas got out of the SUV. “You protect her, got it?” he said to Buster who sat alert on the back seat.

Inside, he quickly found the men’s room and stepped past the freestanding signage — CUIDADO! PISO MOJADO — warning him the floor was freshly swabbed. Pushing the door open, he was met with an overpowering Lysol aroma that had scoured away any piss smell left by guys who couldn’t aim their stream into the small porcelain urinal. There were two stalls with doors, both unoccupied. Dallas selected the nearest one, locked the stall door, pushed his jeans to his ankles, and sat down.

At that moment, he heard the restroom door open. Footsteps came slowly into the room, passed the first stall, and stopped outside the one where he sat. He stopped breathing. Unable to see the shoes of whoever was obviously standing outside his compartment, he sat still as a fawn hidden in the tall grass with hyenas on the prowl. Then he heard the shrill dentist’s drill whine and the stall door sheared away. It fell sideways with a shocking clatter.

GQ model guy was as nattily dressed as ever. The handsome face winked at Dallas. “Nice view.” Then the inhabiting Gultranz lifted partway out of the body, revealing its hideous toothed snout. It was similar to Gurtz, only this one’s skin was shiny black like obsidian, no colors playing over its surface. The pinpoint pupils of its eyes flared yellow. It held the splitter, about the size and shape of an iPhone, loosely in its left hand.

“I'll ask once. Where have you hidden the traitor?” The voice rasped at Dallas’s eardrums like an industrial file.

Aiming low, Dallas launched himself at the human host’s ankles, toppling them both. The assassin crashed forward into the stall framework, unfurling its Gultranz fingers out toward him. The splitter went flying, hit the far wall, fired… and cut the Gultranz assassin in half just as he was getting up. Intestines and other body parts spilled over the restroom tiles in a wet squelch right over the drain hole in the middle of the floor. Blood dripped through, joining the sudsy slosh of urine and cleaning fluids. Dallas rolled away from the carnage and scrambled to his feet. Its host shell dead, the military Gultranz exited the body as if it were the object of a taffy pull, stretched, extruded, and thinned until with a howl it tore and shredded and finally disappeared. Dallas leaned over the sink and lost his breakfast as the human shell’s head eyed him, its startled expression frozen on the generically handsome face.

Turning on the faucet, Dallas splashed cold water over his face, staving off the ringing in his ears that suggested he might be about to pass out. Straightening up, he saw the splatter-spray of red across his bare thighs and chest. It made the T-shirt look kind of tie-dyed. Dallas retched again, but there was nothing left to yark up. He peeled the shirt off and stuffed it in the trash receptacle beside the sink. Wetting a handful of paper towels, he washed off his arms and legs and pulled up his jeans. A red splotch painted the left side at the hip, but there was nothing he could do about that.

Dallas looked around for the splitter and found it against the wall under the urinal. With trembling fingers, he picked it up by its edges and went back to the doorless stall. Maneuvering around the lower half of the assassin’s shell without stepping in the mess, he slid the weapon into the water of the toilet bowl and flushed, cowering in case it went off again. When nothing happened, he let his breath out and watched the water swirl and gurgle, sucking the splitter down but not all the way. He could still see the top of it in the neck of the toilet. He flushed again and pushed it with the tip of his finger. As the water drained, it slipped out of sight with a scrape and the toilet completed its flush as if nothing peculiar had been shoved down its throat.

Dallas got out of the restroom as fast as possible without drawing attention to himself, even in his shirtless condition. That was part of why he’d been hired, right? Mr. Invisible. He was beginning to sense a larger connectivity, leading from the Limbus agency to this moment playing out in grisly perfection in a South Miami shopping strip. Any rational person would’ve packed it in right there, but now he felt more determined than ever to see the game through to the end. He made his way back to the Cherokee and collapsed into the driver’s seat.

Charlotte stared at him. “Dallas, what the hell…?”

“Met your ex-neighbor again.” He saw the panic in her eyes. “He’s dead, lucky accident. Got anything I can wear?” He felt like he was babbling.

“Look in my gym bag, back seat.”

Dallas found the bag and extracted a Yoga shirt decorated with the slogan When in Doubt, Just Breathe. He sighed and pulled it on over his head — he was in no position to be picky. He fastened his seatbelt with shaking hands. Cranking the engine, he cut across the parking lot and headed for the highway.

As rain lashed the windshield, Dallas drove the speed limit along the South Dixie Highway toward Coconut Grove, aiming for the place where Gurtz had come out of the gate. The Gultranz hovered in semi-transparent form over Charlotte’s body, looking like an ailing reptile pulled from a tank that’d never been cleaned.

When they reached Coconut Grove, Dallas drove to the grounds of the old Plymouth Congregational Church and stopped. Built in the 1800s and picturesquely ivy covered, it was a peaceful photo-op on any tourist’s walking tour of the Grove. It was here, in front of this very landmark, that the portal from another world had opened in the middle of the night.

They waited in silence for a few minutes, and finally Dallas asked, “What’ll you do if Gurtz manages to leave?”

Charlotte’s breath was ragged. “I don’t think I can go back to that apartment in the Grove. I still can’t believe the assassin was right there next door.” Dallas couldn’t believe he’d almost had a tryst with the guy.

She sighed and leaned her head back. “I’ll probably look for a place close by. Maybe Coral Gables, somewhere like that. If he ever comes back…” She’d be waiting for him, Dallas thought, especially if he came in a human shell.

An idea took root in Dallas’s mind. “I want it, the house in Hallandale. I’ll take it over when you move out.”

Charlotte gave him a weak smile. “It’s just the right size for a single guy. Secluded, functional, cheap. Landlady who doesn’t ask too many questions.”

Dallas grinned. “It’s perfect.” All he needed was an income.

They continued to sit. Charlotte opened the window, giving the terrier a chance to sniff the air outside. “Buster doesn’t smell anything. Maybe we got here ahead of the gate.”

Dallas was feeling antsy. “I don’t want to just sit here and wait. We might run out of time. I’ll cruise around the neighborhood and see if we get lucky.”

Dallas didn’t like the way the alien’s skin had turned a dull muddy brown, its form hovering just above its host’s body as if too traumatized to stay fully engaged. A yellowish second membrane seemed to have slid over its eyes, although it was hard to tell as the alien got more transparent by the minute.

“Dallas, open your hand.” The sorcerer’s voice was a rough whisper.

Dallas was shocked — Gurtz never addressed him by name. “What, like this?” He held out his hand, palm up. Gurtz slowly unfurled one long digit and pushed it toward Dallas.

“Hey,” Dallas snatched his hand away. “I’m not falling for that electric eel trick of yours again.”

“You mistake…” Gurtz wheezed. “I,, want to show you something… won’t hurt.”

Heart thudding, Dallas opened his hand again. The sucker pod of the alien finger brushed lightly over the center of his palm, right across his lifeline. Primary colors exploded in his mind, painting a surreal landscape. Saturated hues and fluid shapes formed sky, jagged landmasses, and a sinuous river whose pearlized surface resembled an oil slick. There were no pastels to rest the retinas. The wide river wound its way around tall mounds and high peaks in bright sulphur yellow, dusky orange, and darker ochre — massive shapes folded, rounded and featureless, as if carved from foam or shaving cream. On the horizon two enormous moons of mottled cerulean dominated the sky, one so close half its spheroid shape was hidden below the mountain range while the other hung low and full in a poisonous lime green sky so bright it hurt Dallas’s eyes from the inside out. Further beyond the two satellites, the sky darkened to cyan and then to cobalt and finally black where a sprinkling of stars dusted the heavens.

But most astonishing was the gate, or what Dallas assumed must be the portal that allowed travel from this strange world to places unknown. The track began as a pinpoint far out in the starfield and as it homed in on the alien landscape, it resolved into two distinct crimson tracks that paralleled each other much like the twin east/west bridges of the MacArthur Causeway. The trackways then spread into a wide red Chinese-fireworks flare when they reached what he guessed must be the gate itself. Straddling the river, it seemed a marvel of fractal engineering, with strands like dazzling gemstones arching up over the oilslick surface of the river, forming whorls and spirals on a deep purple field that held a center point of blinding white light.

It was terrifying, and beautiful.

“This is your homeworld?”

The Gultranz didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to.

Dallas drove in silence up one street and down another, passing Charlotte’s old digs at Jacaranda Apartments at one point. The storm had mostly blown through, leaving the air damp and steamy. Finally, he stopped at a red light near the entrance to a gated community and looked over at Charlotte. “I give up, he’s got to give us some direction.” He touched her shoulder gently.

“Gurtz? Can you hear me? We’re just going in circles. Can you slip back in for a few seconds, just to see if we’re anywhere close?”

The Gultranz sorcerer shut his eyes and faded from sight. Charlotte shivered and opened one eye. The alien’s voice was muted. “…so much pain.”

Suddenly Buster barked sharply from the back seat and poked his nose out the window.

“It’s close!” Gurtz’s voice was barely audible.

“How far? Should I keep driving straight or what?”

“Turn left.”

“That’s a dead end. It doesn’t go anywhere.”

“Just do it!” Dallas knew Charlotte hadn’t meant to yell at him, but clearly this was the life-threatening situation he’d signed on for. Failure was not an option.

The Cherokee lurched as Dallas pulled a hard left.

“Are you sure? I don’t see anything weird looking.” Dallas scanned the sides of the road, having no idea what he was looking for. Buster was yipping, his head out the window.

Charlotte gripped the seat. “Doesn’t matter… smell’s strong.”

They cruised past hacienda-style homes deep in foliage, then a clutch of mango trees, then a few more houses. Charlotte shuddered. Blood seeped around her sutured side and belly. The alien inside tried to talk, his voice grinding like a shot transmission. “You know, Dallas… at first, I thought you were… the most… inept human I ever met.”

Dallas squinted. Was that a shadow across the sidewalk? It stretched into the street ahead of them and turned the bright crimson Dallas had seen in Gurtz’s vision of home.

Gurtz rasped, “I was wrong. You were my frien—” The Gultranz sorcerer suddenly lifted out of his host’s body and dissolved with no fuss right in front of Dallas’s nose. Charlotte’s body went slack.

The SUV slowed and rolled to a stop.

“Hey, I think it worked! Is he gone?” Dallas touched her arm. But Charlotte was dead.

His mouth settled into a hard line.

How lucky do you feel? Dallas wanted nothing so much as to punch Recruiter Rigel in the middle of his ugly face.

“I want your fucking job.”

“What?”

Dallas stood in the entrance to Rigel’s cube. “Just what I said.”

“That wasn’t in your contract.”

“That contract was crap and you know it. I did the job but it nearly got me killed, twice. But maybe you knew that too, huh? Maybe I wasn’t supposed to come back. How big was your bonus if the assassin took out Gurtz and me before we could find the gate?”

“I don’t know anyone named Gurtz.” Rigel looked unperturbed, but Dallas plowed ahead.

“Of course you know who Gurtz is. An innocent woman is dead because of him!”

“I hired you to be a dog walker. Recruiters are not allowed to interfere with the execution of a job once the applicant is hired.”

Dallas was hyperventilating in his fury. He took a deep breath and tried to connect the dots. “I see. So you hired someone you figured was incapable of performing the job to the end.”

He glared at the toad man, who glared right back.

“Well, surprise, I survived… so I’m here to collect my bonus. And that’s what I want.” He dragged the wrinkled contract from his jeans pocket and spread it out on the desk. “See, right there.” His finger stabbed the fine print at the bottom. “It says to tell the recruiter what you want if a bonus is earned, so I’m telling you.”

Rigel looked at the contract and then back at Dallas. Without a word, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a cell phone, popped it open, and thumbed a number. He texted something and waited, then texted back. Waited. Finally he closed the phone with a snap and slipped it back into his jacket. Without a word he got up, removed his badge and laid it on the desk blotter. He gave Dallas a squint-eyed look, then turned and went out through the door in the wall behind him.

Dallas waited, angry but determined. They were not going to get away with this. He’d been set up and misled by shady employment offers before, but this was the worst. He waited some more, got up and went out to the reception room, which was empty. No surprise there. He went back to Rigel’s cube.

“Hey, are you coming back?” he shouted. Apparently not.

Fed up with waiting, Dallas went around to Rigel’s side of the desk. Under its Plexiglas cover he saw a map of a world which he assumed was Earth, with small pulsing red targets in hundreds, maybe thousands, of locations. Limbus offices? He pulled out the wide front drawer — empty. In the right-hand drawer he found, to his great surprise, a stash of Japanese Pocky in his two favorite flavors, strawberry and chocolate. He checked the date on the back of several boxes. They looked fresh. He couldn’t imagine Rigel munching on sweet-coated biscuit sticks, but how could anyone at Limbus know it was his own guilty pleasure?

The left-hand drawer held an industrial-sized key on a metal ring and a flip-top phone. The tag on the ring gave him a start: STAFF ONLY, D. Hamilton. A key to the front door? Or maybe the one behind the desk? He turned the key over in his hand wondering when it would have been made and why Rigel hadn’t given it to him. He flipped open the phone, which instantly lit up with a message: HELLO NEW RECRUITER.

Dallas checked the phone’s contact list and saw two entries, his own name and just the one word, Limbs. He punched it and put the phone to his ear.

An androgynous voice of indeterminate age responded.

“Greetings, new recruiter. Thank you for joining Limbus, Incorporated. Always remember your primary mission: we employ.” The call disconnected. Annoyed, Dallas hit redial but got a flashing message instead: SORRY, YOUR CALL CANNOT BE COMPLETED AS DIALED. He was about to try again when a small voice interrupted.

“Excuse me, are you the recruiter?”

Dallas looked up to see a teenaged girl in full Goth drag, her kohl-rimmed eyes and cropped black hair a perfect complement to the fat-bodied tarantula clinging to her shoulder.

Dallas hesitated a moment, then sat down in Rigel’s chair. “Yes. I am.” He put the phone back in the drawer.

“We answered an ad I saw on the Internet.” She shrugged, as if that should be explanation enough.

Dallas smoothed his hair away from his face. An inexplicable calm seemed to have settled over him. “Certainly. Have a seat, won’t you?”

She sat in one of the chairs fronting his desk. “It’s for him, not me.” She nodded to the arachnid, who leapt from her shoulder to the empty chair with a substantial thump.

“Of course.” Dallas took the recruiter’s badge and pinned it to his shirt front. “I’m Recruiter Hamilton. I’m sure we can find you something.” Instinctively, he pulled out the main drawer again. There was a single sheet of paper inside.

He took it out and slid it toward his applicant. The tarantula climbed up onto the desk and the girl leaned forward, studying the job description carefully.

Dallas leaned back in the recruiter’s chair and discovered it to be more comfortable than it looked, as if molding itself to his body. He watched the girl and the spider communing over the various points of the contract, and only idly wondered what deep shit they might be getting themselves into. Whatever it was, the pay would probably be more than enough to seal the deal, and in any case, it was not his problem. His intention had been to confront the Limbus agency, to pull the curtain aside a la Dorothy and reveal the evil piss-ant manipulators pulling the strings. But that didn’t seem so important anymore, because clearly he was on the inside… and employed.

Dallas opened the right-hand drawer of the desk and extracted a box of strawberry Pocky, the cascade of Kanji on the packaging telling him it came in crunchy almond as well. He popped the top and tore along the perforation, pulling out two long crispy-sweet Pockysticks, the most sought-after snack treat in Japan. The aroma of sweet biscotti and fresh, otherwordly strawberries broke over his tongue. He couldn’t remember why he’d been so angry a moment ago. Maybe this Limbus gig wasn’t so bad. He might even grow to like it.