Mari behind him, David opened the door, holding the broom handle in one hand.

As if that’s going to do anything… Besides, what could he do? Try and beat up a woman after sneaking into her…

Secret base?

Business?

Whatever. And there she was, standing in front of David, wearing a stylish business suit, shoulder-length red hair framing a smiling face. She was wearing glasses, and by her feet, the spider prowled, looking up at them and making little wiggling motions with its metallic frame.

Then it looked at the broom handle and growled.

Holy shit. David carefully put the broom handle up against the wall. “Nice…”

“See, O12, they’re not hostile, you just scared them.”

The spider looked up at the woman and then wiggled again.

“Is that going to… eat us?” Mari asked, coming out from behind David, pressing her body into the wall. She was staring at the spider, face pale.

Mari really hated spiders.

“Eat you? O12? No, O12 is a good spider, aren’t you…” She put her hand out. The spider looked up at her…

And then flopped over on its back, all eight limbs in the air. The woman put her hand down and rubbed the bottom, the robot wiggling in…

“Is she giving a robot a belly rub?” Mari asked.

“Of course I am! Now go to your house, you’re scaring Mommy’s guests.” The robot rolled back over, hopped up, and made a squeak-barking sound in David and Mari’s direction and then turned around and ran off down the hallway.

David was suddenly aware that Mari had a death grip on his right arm.

“That’s a…”

“Advanced robot—well, not completely a robot, but close enough.” She looked at the two. “Wilma Grayson, and you helped me win a bet.”

“What?”

“Antonio thought that you’d take at least another week before you got your courage up. I figured you’d be here a few days ago, and since I got closer…”

“Wait a minute.” David shook his head. “You knew we were coming?”

“You saw the aether.” Wilma looked at them over her glasses. “Most people who see that don’t tend to leave things alone. But c’mon, I think we’ll save time if we meet Antonio and go over all this at once.”

“Wait a minute, you left,” Mari said.

“Of course we did. How else could we leave the door open for you?” Wilma smirked at them. “See, David, you’re… well, you’re kinda right. The cameras weren’t installed. That was because we didn’t need those big, bulky things. Actually, the entire street is wired.”

“So you…”

“Knew you were coming. Good stunt with the garage, but you know what they say about old age and treachery… Still, great for your first audition.”

David turned to look at Mari.

She mouthed “audition?” at him.

David shrugged. I have no fucking idea…

But on the other hand, if they had cameras, they had them walking into someone’s property and going through the stuff.

“I really screwed up…” David muttered.

“Nah, you had an adventure!” Wilma said. “Complete with a robot monster! Now, c’mon, Antonio is waiting.” With that, she turned and walked towards the other end of the hall.

David looked at Mari. Mari shrugged her shoulders. “I guess we’ll find out…” She gestured around her, the motion taking in the entire building.

“Yeah,” David said. “I guess we will.”

With that, the two teens followed the woman down the hallway.

Mari hated spiders.

No. Mari hated spiders. Even the supposedly cutesy music videos just gave her the creeps. So when she almost got eaten by a giant robot spider…

Pardon me for being a little creeped out! Mari kept one hand on David’s arm and tried to keep an eye out for any other abominations that might be running around.

Because it was still a spider, a giant robot spider, even if it had acted like an overeager puppy. And then they were back in the lab, with the other PIB, Antonio, sitting at a desk with…

Greg’s Takeout? Mari blinked. Antonio, now that she saw him in good light and wasn’t worried about the local fairytale murdering her brother, was tall and good looking.

Okay, he looked like a bit of a hunk, even if he was at least thirty.

“So, you eaten yet?” he gestured. “I have chicken and rice, and there’s diet and regular cola in the fridge.

“Um…” David looked over at Mari. “Right…”

“I’ll have diet,” Mari said.

“Good choice,” Wilma said and walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out some cans. “You?”

“Um… regular, please.” David stared at the woman as she came over, holding some drinks.

“Okay,” Antonio said, pushing some of the food across to them. He gestured at the chairs. “Sit down and let’s eat. You’ve had a little bit of a shock.”

“What—” Mari took a deep breath. “What was that m—robot?”

“An autonomous robotic support unit,” Antonio said as he dished some rice out to Wilma.

Mari stared at her rice and chicken. What if it’s poison? What if they… Mari took a deep breath and grabbed the plastic fork and nibbled at some rice.

Nope. Tasted like Greg’s Takeout.

“And you knew we were here from the start?” David asked.

“Uh-huh. I mean, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Antonio said. He took a bite of food, chewed, then washed it down before he leaned back and gestured with the fork. Mari found herself focusing on a ring he wore, the metal gleaming against his dark skin. “But… The thing is, Hollywood really doesn’t know what it’s talking about, because good security is really, really hard to breach, at least not without some help on the inside.”

“Which you gave us,” David said. “Did you do that so that you could say we had broken in?”

“We wanted to see what you would do. High points for taking the opportunity… Some deduction for not having an exit route,” Wilma said. “Call it a B.”

I’m talking to a pair of PIBs, and we’re eating Greg’s Takeout, and they’re grading us on breaking and entering. Mari took a deep breath. A deep, calming breath.

“So, got some questions?” Antonio asked.

Mari nodded. “Yes. What’s an AE, and why would it ‘become realized due to psychological interaction with a local mythology-tale?’”

“How did…” Antonio tilted his head, “figure that out?”

“You mean that wasn’t part—” I’m so stupid. Mari had assumed that they’d been watching them for the entire thing. “When we were in here, you didn’t see us?”

“No. The sensors said you weren’t doing any damage, and we’d secured the computers. We were going to review the video later.” Wilma smiled. “Remember, we were getting takeout.”

“But I am…” Antonio said.

“We took a rubbing,” David burst out.

Mari glanced over at him. He’s trying to distract them. What if that paper had something they really weren’t supposed to know…

“My notes. You took a rubbing of my notes.” Wilma glanced over at Antonio and smiled. “Okay, upgraded to A minus. We didn’t think of that. Nothing you can’t know, but still, we didn’t think of that.” She turned to stare at David and Mari.

For a moment, Mari felt nervous. There was something about the way Wilma looked at her, especially given those violet eyes…

Then Wilma nodded. “Fine. Time to see what’s behind the curtain, kids.” She gestured around the room. “Have either of you ever heard of the theory of aether?”

Mari frowned, then shook her head. A moment later and David did the same.

“Good. We don’t have to go through the ‘my science teacher told me that was impossible’ stage. Right, there’s a… substrate of the universe, that depending on who you ask is called the aetheric plane, the aether, or ‘that shit we don’t know a lot about’.” She held up her arm, the sleeve falling back to reveal a wristband with some kind of control system on it. Wilma touched a few buttons, and moments later, there was a glowing ball floating in the room.

“Sh—” Mari bit the word off.

“Okay, you can make light,” David said. “But what does that…”

“Oh, that’s the technological way of doing things. Aether can be… compelled for form into just about anything. Flesh, steel, fire—it looks, feels, and acts just like it, but it isn’t.”

“The bags,” Mari said. “They just healed…”

“Yep, not cloth—aether formed to look like it. See, aether reacts to thought, images… belief, and when there’s a breach, the aether that comes through is really malleable. Malleable enough that two kids coming out on a dare can cause it to take the form of their dare…”

“So… this is like the reason for ghost stories?” Mari asked.

“Some. And legends of wizards, and for all we know, saints and devils…” Antonio said. He leaned forward and gestured at Mari with a fork. “And it explains why there aren’t any lands of magic. Maybe someone stumbled across a breach, had the right thoughts, and got oh, a demon or angel serving them, but then the breach goes away, and their “magic” goes away.”

And so everyone thought it was just a fake… Mari remembered one program with a skeptic talking about how every time a psychic showed up for testing, nothing happened. But if they only had ‘powers’ because of a breach… “How long do they last?”

“Not long. Most breaches used to be transitory, maybe up the aether in the area, but they went away pretty fast.”

“Used to be.” David stared at them. “Not now?”

“Yeah…” Wilma looked around, and Antonio looked embarrassed. “You know how humans have a thing about poking things they shouldn’t? See, there was some work on the aether back in the 1970s. Blue sky stuff, but it was the oil embargo, and the aether can be anything—including electricity—electricity with no smog attached.”

“The problem was,” Antonio filled in, “that without being able to control the breach, you couldn’t use it. So some of our geniuses figured out that if you used the right amount of power, directed in the right way, you could punch a hole through the um, barrier, and create a permanent breach. So they used one of the bombs in the Arbor test-shot series.”

“And it went horribly wrong,” Mari said. She’d seen the movies, after all.

“Yeah. The entire area around the test area was hyper-charged with aetheric energy. Nightmares took human form, yadda-yadda, and there was much screaming. Then the breach sealed, and all the shafts were filled in with cement, and everyone wrote it off.” Wilma smiled at Mari. “Real horror movie fodder.”

“But it didn’t stay written off,” David said.

“Bingo,” Wilma said, and now she wasn’t smiling. “Throw a brick through a window, and you don’t just get a hole, you get cracks. Good news, nothing like the events of 1974, bad news, not going away anytime soon.”

“I…” David looked around. “You’re kidding. Why isn’t—why aren’t you telling people about this?”

“Telling them that more or less random breaches can open up, which are harmless unless the right set of circumstances hits, at which point they might conjure the nightmare or dream of your life?” Antonio raised his eyebrows. “Oh, and there’s the possibility of gaining great power from these things?”

“And we can’t know for certain, but there’s some evidence that actively trying to access a breach makes it longer-lasting, more severe.” Wilma looked at the two teens. “So tell me, Mari, David, any kids at your school who would go ‘great!’ if you told them there might be a way to get magic powers?”

Some would… Mari realized. There were kids at school who risked getting in trouble to get the newest game. This? But… She stared at Antonio and Wilma, then looked around the lab. “There’s something special about Allendale, isn’t there? You have a car, and that means that you can’t like, go to the other end of the state.”

“Breaches can come in clusters, and the aetheric count in this area has been going up.”

“So, why do all of this with us?” Mari asked. “Why not just bring in more PIBs?”

“PIBs?” Antonio asked.

“Persons in Black,” David said, rolling his eyes.

“I am so using that for our next report,” Wilma said.

“You like to live more dangerously than I do,” Antonio replied. “But to answer your question, without getting into the classified stuff that would require us to shoot you, how many of us do you think there are? I’ll give you a clue, the California department isn’t much bigger than your police department.”

I… Mari didn’t say anything, then looked back at Wilma. “You’re kidding.”

“Hey, secrecy and thousands and thousands of people don’t mix well. We don’t have any magic memory-erasing gadget to make our lives easier.”

“But you’d have to train us…” David said. “And you said we could see aether.”

“Better than us. We’ve had training, treatments and equipment—but you saw it without any of that. You’re exactly who we need, and we pay very well…” Wilma nodded at Mari. “Enough so that maybe someone doesn’t have to go to community college for two years?”

“And before you say no,” Antonio added, “there’s another thing to consider. You can see the aether, and from our testing, it turns out that the aether, and the things from it, can see you as well, and there’s a higher-than-normal rate of breaches around people who are capable of perceiving the aether.”

“So even if we don’t work for you, we’ll still have monsters dropping in on us,” Mari said, folding her arms across her chest.

“Yap, pretty much,” Wilma said. She didn’t sound unhappy at all about it.

“We need to talk,” David said. “Can you give us a minute?”

“Certainly, take ten,” Antonio said.

Walking to the far end of the room, David glanced at the two, then turned back to Mari. They’re probably recording everything we say, but…

“What do you think?” Mari asked. “I mean, this is spooky, and they have a spider-dog, but do you think they’re telling the truth about these things hunting us?”

“I…” David ran his hand through his hair and then pulled it back. “I dunno, but you heard what they said about your community college?”

“Yeah, I—” Mari snapped her mouth shut. “How did they know that?”

“You keep your journal on the computer, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but it’s password—oh, those—” Mari glared down at the floor for a few moments.

“Or maybe they’ve been listening in more. They know a lot about us.”

“So should we?” Mari asked. “I mean, we’re getting in deep but…”

“But what?”

“They’re not going to stop watching us just because we say no. All saying no means is that we can’t watch them.”

“Yeah.” David nodded. She’s right.

“And we can’t get paid,” Mari added in a deadpan voice.

“Really?”

“Hey, if I’m going to risk getting eaten by the product of someone’s bad dream, I wanna get paid!”

David stared at his friend. Mari was looking up at him, her eyes determined. Then she looked around. “And… I really want to find out about this. I mean, how many people our age get asked to do stuff like this?”

She’s got a point.

“Yeah. And like you said, we’ll get paid.”

“Presuming our parents agree,” Mari said.

“I think Mom will…”

“And all I have to point out is the self-discipline a job will give me.” Mari grinned. “Okay, let’s go tell’em we’re agreeing to be a part of their secret conspiracy.”

“Right,” David said. “By the way, whose fault is it if everything ends up on fire?”

“Well, it can’t be mine, so that leaves only one possibility,” Mari replied with a grin.

“Kado?”

Mari snorted. “Okay, that was good, and given that it was his dare that got us into this… Yeah, we’re blaming it all on Kado.” With that, David and Mari turned to walk back to Wilma and Antonio.

When they were standing in front of them, David glanced at Mari and nodded. She returned the nod. “You’ll have to ask our families, but yeah—we’re willing.”