"WHAT DID YOU DO? YOU CUT US OFF!!!"

@Tracy Hyde gave the guy another kick in the side. He let out an ooof. We had him pinned to the floor of our breakroom hideout. And she was right about us being cut off. Ever since the nosebleeds happened, none of us could feel the gates anymore. In airports, we get a feel for the doors and jetways that are "open." It's like a steady background hum. But now we could hardly feel a thing.

"It's just a game," the guy said, trying to catch his breath. "It's a LARP. I met these guys online. They send me on phony 'missions' and I do what they say. It's harmless fun. We're just playing spy..."

"IT'S NOT HARMLESS YOU PRICK!" Tracy kicked him again.

This was bad. This was messed up. How could we fix this? And who was after us anyway? This kid seemed like a total douche, but he wasn't a hardcase. He probably believed the whole LARP story. I'd been pressing the button on the stupid pen thing he'd used, which was probably not a good idea, but it didn't seem to do anything. But maybe we could prevent it from happening in the first place...

So I told everybody my plan. Even though we couldn't feel the proper gates, if you squinted and turned your head just right you could still feel some of the rough edges. Those were smaller rips that were too small to fit through, and lead to short time hops backwards and forwards at DFA. We'd played around before pushing things through them with mop poles, and then find them a few hours in the future. Or we'd find a thing and know we'd need to push it through the hole to go back to the moment we found it. We'd never found much use for them except for fooling around.

The kid had a phone. We could text him through a rip, back to before he pushed the button, and tell him to stop. Call off his phony 'mission.' It wouldn't solve all our problems. And if we succeeded we still wouldn't know who was behind this. But at least we'd get our feeling back.

"Hey, can I have your number?" Tracy asked him. Then she kicked him again.

Has anybody seen Ami? We got separated leaving Winterland and even though we were roped together the lash snapped. It was a clean cut, just like last time.

Anyway so the rest of the Flight Attendants and I had to bail out of the tube and ended up at the Red Rocks portal, south side cravass. Some 80's band. Carved our names in wet cement and made some friends who gave us a lift to Stapleton Fictional Airport, which was ok because Ami and I ended up there once and she showed me the way in. Security was practically non-existent back then. Made it to DFA no problemo but there's dudes in suits staking out the Wolfgang Puck's.

What goes on?!