Royal Spring, Colorado would not have been my first choice if I had known I would be homeless. Technically, I could still make it back to Columbus in time to pay my rent and not get evicted, but that would require transportation. Over a thousand miles from home, not only had my girl ditched me, but so had my truck. Some asshole had decided he deserved my truck more than I did, and helped himself to it. Sitting in a half-frozen parking garage, I felt like the start of some kind of new age country song; which is to say I hated myself.

It was a friday night, and the tech boom town was buzzing with people free from their respective offices. They mingled between nightclubs and dive bars. They got artisanal burgers in sit down restaurants or grabbed Mediterranean food from trucks. It should have been me and Jessica right there with them, but instead I was afraid I wouldn't have enough money to buy a bus ticket home. The thought of getting cramped into a Greyhound alongside pensioners, the mentally deranged, and who knew who else would be on a cross-country bus, it made my empty parking spot seem welcoming by comparison.

Still, I wanted a drink and I was kicking myself that I hadn’t gone to a liquor store before they closed. I had no idea how I would fall asleep with my ass on ice without a bit of booze in me. I’d heard that most homeless people just walked. They would pick a direction and go because if they stayed in any one place too long the police would be on them, so they walked until they were in a haze, until they couldn’t tell the difference between dreaming upright and reality. Then they’d drop, dead to the world for a few hours.

Lucky or not for me, I had a pity story and a police report number to go with it. My truck had only been stolen that day and they didn’t need to know I was unemployed, living on credit card debt.

When I heard other people talking, the clunk of their boots, the thought occurred to me that I might have to explain what I was doing there. They’d ask questions, or worse–they’d make assumptions. For all my hours moping, I hadn’t even a flimsy excuse for what I’d done because it had been so monumentally stupid. It felt romantic in the moment, like something a movie would have. My gesture of reuniting had ended with a door slammed in my face and then my truck stolen. I couldn’t bear the thought of explaining to anyone why I was sitting alone in a parking garage, without even power in my phone to browse the internet, so I hid.

The bottom floor had a grimy area beneath the lowest ramp. There were utility closets and semi-permanent construction barricades. No place for a car to squeeze in, but cubbies abounded for a loser to squeeze into. The voices of the arrivals echoed against the moldering concrete and I immediately realized the man and the woman were flirting. There was a certain slur of alcohol to their enunciation and too much laughter. When a car started, I was grateful the rumble of the engine muffled their voices so I didn’t have to listen to their fleeting happiness.

Behind a road barrier, the mountain air didn’t cut as deep and shadows cloaked me. I was able to jam my back to a piece of plywood and huddle my knees to my chest. I figured that so long as rats didn’t come take a bite out of me, that was as good as my night was going to get.

So I was a little peeved when more people showed up. The garage wasn’t very packed to begin with. April was late for ski season, so the seasonal surge of tourists had abated. That left the bottom floor of the parking garage sparse. Not to mention that bars should have been closing soon, so the people leaving were likely too drunk to drive. They should have been getting picked up.

That left me a little slow on the uptake as I realized the men speaking weren't’ drunk. They weren’t shouting at one another, their ears half-deaf from cranked club music. They sounded sober, so my mind immediately jumped to the fear that they were cops. That, or employees of the parking garage. Security maybe; people looking to ensure vagrants like me stay out on the street instead of their private property. kick people like me out on the street instead of their private property.

There were two men, which I dubbed Adam and Brad as I tried to sort out who was saying what. I was extra confused when my brain told me that they had East Coast accents, not quite New York but definitely not Colorado.

Adam was saying, “Tonight’s finally the night.”

“Isn’t this too many cars? Justinian was supposed to give the night off,” Brad said.

Adam said, “Cars don’t mean people. You know, these corporate guys like to skirt the rules. I bet most of these are spare cars being illegally parked here. They might just show up every now and then to move the car to another spot and trick the security team. Safer than leaving an unused spare at home and cheaper than storage. Nobody’s here.”

“We should scan,” Brad said.

I shrank, pulling my hood around my head and wondering if I might look like a trash bag. I wasn’t next to a dumpster–and my nose thanked me for that–so I doubted it.

Adam said, “Don’t. What’s it even matter? Tonight’s the night.”

Brad grumbled. “Alright, compromise. How about I pull the fire alarm, eh? We won’t have to write a report if I do that.”

Adam sighed. “Just get a bag on your hand first, alright? Those alarms spray dye when you pull them. You’ll never get it out of your suit.”

I listened, barely breathing, as one of them crinkled a paper bag. Another sucked on a soft drink. Curiosity, with a bit of self-preservation, won out as I peeked around the corner. Adam looked like a Ken doll; his skin as synthetic as the black windbreaker he wore. He chucked the empty drink cup at an overflowing trash can a moment before Brad pulled the fire alarm.

Sirens blared as the two men stepped over to one of the walls to get out of the water spray. I luckily stayed dry too, but only because the scaffolding was blocking the nearest sprayer. After a moment, Adam and Brad shrugged at each other. No one had come running out of the garage, and I was wondering if I should bolt for it.

I didn’t though.

Across the concrete, I heard half a dozen ball bearings scatter and roll. They didn’t bounce, they just grinded across the slush and stone, spreading out until they surrounded the parking garage. I caught a glimpse of one, about the size of a softball.

I should have ran.

It sprang open like a capsule and pulsed with light. Then, I was falling. There was no up or down and all I could see was darkness. My insides felt like I was being slung around in the grip of a tornado, but I didn’t feel so much as a breeze on my skin. I couldn’t breathe either.

As suddenly as it happened, it stopped. I felt like a bomb had just gone off in my face, but then I was just sitting on a carpet floor with my heart racing, my breath catching, and no idea where I was. I shouted something, which caused the two men to spin around and stare at me. The one I had dubbed Adam looked like an agent of the matrix, but his colleague, Brad, had a bit more humanness to him. Which was a bit ironic given that he seemed to be completely hairless. It might have been by choice, or he might have been a vat clone soldier for all I knew.

Adam lifted his sunglasses and squinted his eyes at me. “Where the hell were you?”

“Where the hell am I now?” I countered, because it looked like we were in an office building. The carpet I was sitting on was cheap, stain-proof nylon crap and the walls were drywall. The ceiling even had water stains in the tiles. The only issue was that the room had no doors as far as I could see.

The two men looked at each other and Brad asked, “What are we supposed to do with that? Aria, why did some guy get brought in with us?”

For the first time, I saw the silver-haired woman sitting at the lone desk in the room. She was tearing open a bag of fast food and unwrapping her burger. As soon as she had it out, she glared at Adam. “What the hell is this?”

Adam said, “It’s a combo seven like you asked for.”

“If you had gone to the right place, a combo seven would have been a quesadilla. Burgers are disgusting.”

Brad scoffed. “See? I told you.”

Adam put up his hands then pointed at me. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay sorry. Whatever. It’s food. Can we address the drunk in the room?”

“I’m not drunk. I’m confused but I’m not drunk,” I said, getting to my feet. I pulled out my phone and considered calling 911, but I didn’t have any cell service.

Aria rolled her eyes and took a bite of the burger. I didn’t blame her for not liking it, the greasy press of bun and ground up grime looked nothing like advertised. After she swallowed, she said, “He was like five feet away from you when you cleared out the garage, geniuses. What does it matter? Everyone’s about to know anyway.”

Adam looked at her, then at me, then back to her. “Well he’s not supposed to be here yet. Green, shoot him.”

Brad had an actual name, and a gun apparently. Thankfully, he didn’t draw it on me, he just cocked an eyebrow at the other guy. “I ain’t shooting a civilian for nothing.”

Aria held up a hand. “Don’t get blood all over my office, please and thank you.”

“Excuse me!” I shouted. “Who the hell are you people?”

The girl cleared her throat, thumped her chest and held up a finger before either of the men could speak. “I’ve got this. It’s my dress rehearsal,” she said, wiping a bit of mustard off her lip. Then she rose and flung her hair back over her shoulder. The instant she smiled at me there was an energy in her, a larger-than-life intensity that wiped away the mundane, bored woman who had been at the desk a moment before. In a booming voice, she pointed a delicate finger at me and declared, “The name’s Aria and I’m the tower master of installation twelve. Welcome to the… Mn, no, wait I guess you’re too early for that. Forget I said that. The name’s Aria and I’m the tower master, but really I’m the princess in the castle, kidnapped by these two jackasses. Oh, please won’t you save me?”

Adam snarled. “It wasn’t us that kidnapped you!”

She huffed and planted her hands on her hips. “Passing the buck already?”

Green shook his head. “We’re ISA, kid.”

“There’s no ISA,” I said.

Green and Adam had a short staring contest, which ended with Green saying, “I told you we should be using our parent department.”

I asked, “Are you guys CIA?”

Adam turned away from me and said, “Aria, this is ridiculous. Teleport him out of here.”

She sneered and shrugged. “With what generator? Everything’s warping the big boy in.”

“Then shoot him!” Adam roared.

Green put his hands in his pockets and walked over to me. “Kid, you ever thought about serving your country?”

It was my turn to sneer. “I’m not a kid. I’m twenty-two.”

Green pressed his lips into a line. “You play video games?”

“What are you getting at?”

“ISA stands for Interstellar Affairs. We were under the CIA until a few years ago. Now we’re part of Space Force. You dig?”

I furrowed my brow. “If it stands for Interstellar Affairs, wouldn’t your acronym be IA?”

Green rolled his eyes. “Come on, kid. All government agencies are three letters. You live under a rock or something?”

“I ain’t ever heard of ISA before.”

“That was the point,” Green said. “But you will… I suppose tonight. Tonight’s the night after all.”

“Aria!” Adam barked. He gestured at the table. “You got your food, the garage is cleared out. Show time is ready, isn’t it?”

The silver-haired girl groaned and sank back into her seat, flipping some hair out of her face as she refused to look at the fed. “I’d be more ready if you had gotten me Taco Town like I asked for! You bastards work all of me like slaves and you can’t even get a food delivery request right? Come on!”

Adam snarled. “Sorry, we’re only facilitating interstellar war! Not like we’re a bunch of rocket scientists or something. Oh, wait!”

“Food delivery pays less than minimum wage outside a city. The fact that you fucked it up means you’re less competent than somebody who failed to graduate high school, you know that? It doesn’t take a college degree to drive a car around and yet you overpaid goons got it wrong. Pathetic, really.”

Green cut in to say, “Aria, are you ready for the show?”

After a moment of glowering, she sighed and turned up her hands. “Aside from my wardrobe change, sure. Why not? You people have to give me the rewards though!”

Adam whipped something at her and she snatched it from the air. I saw what looked like a flash drive in her hand, which she didn’t seem enthused to see. The fed hooked a thumb at me. “You happy now? Do something about this guy.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Do something? I just told you all the teleporters are busy. I’ll just drop him in with the others when the party starts, alright? Speaking of which, the two of you can go now, alright?” she said, shooing them away as a portion of the wall opened up and revealed an equally bland hallway.

Adam and Green both shook their heads as they looked at me, then headed into the hallway.

I wondered if I should have followed them. Chasing after a guy who wanted me dead didn’t seem like a great idea though, which leadened my feet and left me standing there like a dunce. Before I could change my mind, the wall sealed back up and I was alone with Aria. She had planted an elbow on the desk, her cheek to her fist as she frowned at me. “You’re not going to kill me, are you?”

She asked, “What were you doing in the corner of a parking garage?”

I hung my head and stared at my feet. “My truck got stolen,” I mumbled. “I would have stayed with my girlfriend, but she’s not my girlfriend anymore, so I didn’t have anywhere better to be. I’m kind of like a thousand miles from home.” I didn’t know what about her made me honest. I just didn’t have the instincts to lie and make myself sound better.

She didn’t laugh at me. She just nodded and stood up. The annoyed sneer had vanished from her demeanor as soon as the agents left the room. “You drove a thousand miles to see your girlfriend and got dumped?”

I hung my head even more and said, “Yeah.”

“I guess there is something special about you, not just the fact you got sucked into the warp.”

I looked up and saw that she was walking across the room to me. “Didn’t you just say it was because I was nearby?”

Aria shook her head. “That’s not enough. Didn’t you notice that it was only people who got warped? The system has to recognize people as people, otherwise it wouldn't know where you end and the concrete you’re standing on begins. Think of that as your synchro-rate. Yours was high enough the sensors thought Tweedlee-Dee and Tweedle-Dum were one person and you were the other it was supposed to pick up.”

The closer she got, the harder it was to take my eyes off her. She had acted like an idol a moment before, and as she got within arms reach of me I couldn’t deny that she had the looks of one too. “I don’t understand.”

She sighed, then turned her head up to smile at me. Brushing her hair behind an ear, she stepped nearly against my chest and put her hands on my shoulders. “It would take a while to explain, and unfortunately, the end of the world as you know it is about to start. But hey, you heard what I said earlier, didn’t you? I may be the game master, but I’m also the princess stuck in the tower, you hear? If you’re a man, won’t you come save me? Ten floors is a lot closer than a thousand miles.”

I wanted to ask what she meant by the end of the world, and about kidnapping, and about ISA, and I definitely wanted to ask just what she thought she was getting at drawing so close to me; but, right when it looked like she was going to shut me up with a kiss, I fell through the world again.

When I hit the ground again, I was in a far worse place than an office.