Pietro paced back and forth in the tight confines of the alleyway that had been designated as the night’s pickup spot. His van was over thirty minutes late. This had never happened before. Alarm bells were sounding in his head, dread was roiling in his gut. Something was wrong.

  He hadn’t bungled the job, despite the frankly insane amount of work he’d been expected to do in his allotted window. The church basement had been near-ruined; it was a miracle he’d been able to salvage most of the original carpet, a sign of his experience that he’d artfully covered up the burn marks streaking the walls. More battery fragments weighed down the trash bag he left slumped against his duffel on the ground, as well as what appeared to be the source of the crimson scraps he’d been seeing at more and more job sites: he’d collected a nearly intact red cloak of some kind, spattered in gore, at the scene.

  The Mover had confirmed the time when he’d called to report back. He was at the correct coordinates, he’d quadruple-checked this. Where were they?

  He thought he was in the clear. He assumed he’d been forgiven.

  A vehicle rolled to a stop at the far end of the alley, idled there. It wasn’t one of the Mover’s usual vans or SUVs; it resembled a police car, without the sirens or insignia.

  The man who stepped from the car was lithe and muscular, clothed in all black, wearing a mask and, oddly, dark glasses, despite the lateness of the hour. He nodded toward Pietro, gestured for him to approach.

  “I’m your pickup tonight,” the man said. He was resting his hand on the car’s hood, for some reason, stood as if reluctant to break contact with it.

  Pietro hesitated for a moment, then, not seeing much in the way of alternatives, gathered his bags and hurried toward the car.

  When he was maybe ten paces away, his vision swam in a way that was sickeningly familiar. What started as a sort of double-image over reality coalesced into something more solid. Time around him seemed to slow as this double-image played its course in real-time:

  The man, one hand still on the hood, raised his other hand up lightning-fast, index and thumb arranged in a finger-gun. A thin bolt of lightning, actual, visible lightning, arced from the tip of his finger, toward him.

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  Pietro’s vision lurched backwards, away from his own body, and he watched himself be struck in the chest by this strange projectile, spectated from above as he collapsed backward to the ground, striking his head hard on the concrete, spasming and steaming as the electricity coursed through him and cooked him from inside out.

  Then, as his vision had on the day he’d killed a man on the job, as his vision had before his meeting with the ghoulish woman in the woods, this scene quickly reversed and he was shunted back into real-time.

  Pietro jerked out of instinct, falling backward, just as the man raised his arm, exactly how he’d foreseen. The bolt of lightning that was meant to kill him arced away, drawn to the metal of a fire escape a few feet to Pietro’s left.

  Pietro heard the man curse, and before he had time to stand, before another vision could play out and warn him of his next course of action, the man was at his side, as if he’d popped into existence there.

  Pietro was lifted bodily from the ground and slammed into a wall. He didn’t know if it was his imagination, but the impact seemed to shudder the entire building behind him on its foundations. Another vision began to play out in front of Pietro, another half-image forming to show him just how the man would pummel him to death with fists too fast to see.

  Unfortunately, this time, the advance warning was no use. Pietro, held off his feet and out of his mind with panic, was in no state to dodge anything.

  The man reared back to strike him, and Pietro noticed an odd shimmer around his person. A viscous, miniature atmosphere that shifted and shined, an inch or so from the surface of his skin, all over. The haze glowed and surged brightly around the man’s right fist as he threw his first blow.

  The man only had to hit Pietro once before it all went black.

  Quiet, and then warmth.

  Pietro is in a world that is less a space and more an all-encompassing glow. The glow is aware of him and overjoyed that he is within it. The glow is composed of other minds like his. The minds are eager to meet him, to discuss and debrief.

  Pietro is briefly stunned by the scalding heat of direct attention, but that gives way to relief, to recognition that he’s ready to accept what they’re offering.

  Before the conversation can begin, before he can really be seen, the glow recedes, too fast for Pietro to even begin to object.