Aemric closed his folding keyboard at last, and tucked it away in his desk. One more essay done. He checked the clock, and wasn’t surprised in the slightest when he saw it was an hour past midnight. With a sigh, he shut down his computer, stripped and switched to his pajamas, and lay down to rest.

  The moment his head hit the pillow, he was already dreaming.

  He blinked. No, this didn’t feel right. He didn’t blink, and he didn’t feel like he needed to, but he could definitely see. He didn’t feel like he was imagining what he saw; he had the presence of mind for that, and that told him he wasn’t dreaming. Was that how dreams normally worked? He could remember that he often acted as if everything in his dreams was normal, but it all switched back afterwards. Was there a way to tell?

  No, this didn’t feel like a dream. He didn’t feel right at all. After checking himself a little, he realized he didn’t have a cheek to pinch, no fingers to pinch with, no eyelids to blink with. There was nothing. He tried to look behind himself, but couldn’t look away from his present angle at all. He didn’t have a body. He saw from some other perspective. It was weird. He decided this was too real; it scared him. He needed to get a grasp on what was happening.

  He observed what was happening down on the ground: he was looking at an alley between old-city buildings, a dark space surrounded by bricks and trash. Three people were waiting in the alley, with two of them chatting quietly. Aemric could hear them even from where he was, many meters up.

  They weren’t talking about anything important, just what they were going to get to eat ‘when they were done.’ Burgers, pizza, whatever. They were all waiting there for something, though. They didn’t look homeless, and they didn’t act it either. They all wore matching clothes: leather jackets, red shirts, and black jeans. Each of them had a wooden staff by their side, too.

  Aemric knew to stay away from those kinds of people, especially at night. Everybody in Leansville knew that, or he’d tell them so if he heard otherwise. They were trouble, the kind of trouble he wanted to move away from the city to get away from. Then again, he didn’t really want to live around bears either, so he was still undecided on that.

  He then noticed five more people enter the alley. They weren’t in uniforms, but they were still trouble: they carried weapons. The first three stood up, picked up their staves, and faced them.

  “Are you the so-called ‘Dogs’ we were supposed to meet?” Asked one of the uniformed people, a serious-looking man with black hair.

  The man in the center of the second group nodded. “Yeah.”

  A moment later, two of the ‘Dogs’ pulled out revolvers from under their clothes, and between them six shots were fired. A nearby car swerved, pet dogs barked, and a police siren started up in the distance. The ‘Dogs’ left the scene quickly, ducked into another alleyway, and walked out casually.

  Aemric blinked; then, he remembered he didn’t have eyelids. No, his sight just disappeared for a moment. That was strange. He looked around; everything looked the same… No, again, he’d been wrong. He was in the same place, but the three people in uniforms were where they had started again, talking about food… they even said the same lines. Burgers. Pizza. The third stayed quiet.

  Then, she got up off the wall, and looked up at Aemric. He was surprised, and thought maybe she might point out the strange college student floating in the air in his pajamas, but he wasn’t there. No, she just… stared at where he was. Aemric stared back; he still couldn’t blink anyway. He really wanted to… and then she blinked.

  Strange.

  He tried to blink again. She blinked at that moment.

  Aemric was taken aback; well, he was already some weird invisible drone in the sky, why not? He commanded that black-haired woman to scratch her nose, by trying to get himself to do the same; his own lack-of-nose kind of itched. She absentmindedly raised a hand and did just that, not that it helped Aemric any.

  Very strange.

  Then, the Dogs appeared; Aemric saw them coming down the street. They weren’t in the alley yet, and wouldn’t be for about ten more seconds. They all looked exactly the same as before, too, and Aemric was starting to get the picture of what was happening here.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  They’d come in, they’d figure out they were talking to who they intended to meet, and they’d shoot. The leather jacket gang would be dead on the ground in less than a minute – well, maybe they’d just be bleeding to death, but it didn’t matter. Aemric had remote control of one of that gang, for some reason, and he’d had that premonition to guide them. He did what he thought was reasonable with that information.

  The girl with the black hair turned to her two companions, and spoke in a flat tone. “We need to leave.”

  “Huh? Why’s that?” The serious man asked.

  Aemric understood there wasn’t time to explain, and he got the girl walking. He realized after only a moment that he didn’t need to guide her muscle-by-muscle; she just did what he intended to do.

  “Just trust me. It’s a trap.” She said, still monotone.

  The other two followed after a moment’s hesitation; they thought it was weird, sure, but they moved out. The third one made the mistake of pausing and picking up the girl’s staff, though, and that cost him just enough time that the Dogs saw him just as he rounded the corner away from them.

  Aemric found his perspective moving with the girl as she walked down the street; the serious man started barraging her with questions – how did she know? What kind of trap was it? How many were there? To which Aemric avoided answering most of it; she said she didn’t know, each time in that monotonous voice. The serious man stopped, and grabbed the girl’s arm, demanding a better answer. He started realizing there was a more pressing issue, though, as the Dogs followed their quarry into the streets. He didn’t see a place to go… the street was empty, the next turn was a ways off.

  The girl pulled herself away and started running at Aemric’s command, and her companions didn’t follow up on that. The serious man shook his head. The Dogs rounded the corner, asked their prey a question, and the two gunmen pulled out their revolvers. They apparently weren’t above doing what they intended to right out in the open. They fired – seven shots this time, between the two guns, and the two men in leather jackets fell to the ground. Then, before the girl could round the next corner, another two shots.

  Aemric blinked. He checked where he was: it was the same place as the first time, the two men were talking to each other. Even though he knew his body was missing he could feel his heart racing. Maybe he was still back in his dorm while his mind did… whatever this was. Even though it wasn’t him down there, all the sights and sounds were too real. He knew this wasn’t a dream.

  The girl pushed off her spot on the alley wall and looked up again; Aemric looked down at her. She was about as old as he was. Pretty, too. No, more than that: she looked familiar. He’d noticed the first two times and he felt worse for it after having failed to let her escape the second time. He looked at the other two: the handsome and serious one that seemed to be the leader, and the other, a bald and typical looking guy who had a few shitty jokes in him. They were alive too, maybe more than the girl; they weren’t being remote-controlled.

  Aemric thought quickly. What to do? The obvious thing was just to run… if she collected her staff and they all left now it might work out. He’d need a good explanation, though, or the other two wouldn’t follow. What about fighting? They were all armed, and they were some kind of gang-members, Aemric was sure of it. But, the Dogs had guns, and there were five of them. Even to some typical guy like Aemric it was obvious it was a bad matchup. Would it at least give them a better chance? He wished that he at least knew whether this girl and her companions knew how to fight.

  He heard a faint murmur, as loud as if he’d spoken it himself. “We all do. I’ve been learning to fight since I was a child.”

  The girl’s lips moved, speaking the words to herself. It was then that Aemric realized he was hearing whatever she could hear, and that was why he didn’t just hear the wind whipping past him far above the city. He didn’t hear from her perspective, or see from it either… it didn’t matter right now. The Dogs were already coming.

  The black-haired girl grabbed her staff, and then continued to wait. The other two didn’t even seem to notice. The Dogs entered the alley in the same way as the other two times, and the serious guy stood up to greet them.

  The moment he stood, though, the girl was already moving. She only needed one command from Aemric – go beat up the Dogs. She did the rest; he trusted her better than himself for that, since he didn’t know shit about fighting. A quick jab with the staff struck one man in the head, and by the time the rest were reacting she was already following up with a heavy blow to another Dog’s arm.

  The other two leather jacket gang members were surprised, but they didn’t voice it; they just joined in on the fight. They closed in, and with their help the Dogs were all battered and on the floor in seconds, before they could draw their guns. Aemric was surprised to see it went so easily, really; clearly, his team knew what they were doing with their black staves. He wondered what was going to happen next. The scenario was over, right? Was he… surely he wasn’t just going to remote-control this strange woman for the rest of her life, right?

  A shot rang out, then, while Aemric was still wondering what to do. The bald guy staggered back, and the serious man moved swiftly to strike at one of the Dogs on the ground: the man had pulled out his revolver and shot. One swipe knocked the gun from his hand, and the other struck the Dog in the head and shut him down; Aemric would have thought for good considering the force, but he didn’t know shit about these things. Then, the serious man went for his companion… and Aemric blinked.