So what's the difference between an extractor from the black market and an extractor from the FBI? Aside from why we do what we do, not a whole lot, actually. We still go into the dreams of high profile people (our version being that they are under considerable suspicion of criminal activity) and pull some incriminating evidence from their subconscious. We then use that information to make the arrest down the line. The information could be criminal underworld contacts, plans for whatever crime they're going to commit next, or a number of other things. The only thing unique about this new assignment was one that I didn't realize until much later down the line. This could very well have been my last "routine" job.

Chapter 3

With no new assignments, and thus no new levels to create for the dreams for those assignments, Gallows sat back in the standard leather swivel chair in front of his simple, black-painted, wooden desk. Though he was ranked as Special Agent in Charge, and only done so fairly recently, it was really only one step above Special Agent, so all he had for a work area was a cubicle, but one of considerably larger size than what one would normally find in an office building. The walls that surrounded his desk were supposed to have vinyl lining, but nearly every visible square inch of his walls were covered in 8.5"x11" sheets of plain white printer paper that switched between complex mazes, drafting plans, and an occasional printout poster of acts by Harry Houdini and David Copperfield.

The condition of his desk was a tad bit tidier. He had a couple of manila file folders on his desk, a Dell computer set, a couple of grid-ruled spiral notebooks, and the same picture of himself and Susan Eurydice as the one on his nightstand in his bedroom. The two spiral notebooks were marked "Maze Drills" and "Gallows Originals: CLASSIFIED." The latter was a book of plans for magic tricks of his original design, but each one still had kinks to work out.

He reached for book marked "Maze Drills" and opened it, going through each page before finding a blank one. Each page had a maze drawn along the gridlines and had a couple of lines at the top right corner with a time written out, listed as two minutes or less, and the initials KG beside it. Some of the earliest mazes had a pathway going through them marked in hot pink highlighter and a time written below his own, listed as less than a minute, and the initials SE beside it. As Gallows went through each page, some of the mazes became more complex with errors made in the highlighted path and getting closer to the one minute mark. Further into the book of mazes, the times and highlighted paths stopped altogether.

It was a little exercise that he carried over from his college years and his participation in the private sector aspect of dream-share research. He often used it to keep his mind sharp in his spare time between assignments. However, once he reached the first blank sheet of paper in his notebook, he just stared at it, losing the desire to create another labyrinth for the time being.

Gallows sat at his new desk, barren of anything personal. He didn't have any new assignments which was fine by him since it gave him time to get adjusted to his new surroundings. He brought out two spiral-bound gridline notebooks and placed one of them on the desk. He then opened up the other notebook and thumbed his way to a blank page, drew some lines in the upper right corner, and began to draw a maze out on the page. "So how do you like new digs?"

He turned around to see the woman who had introduced herself once before as Susan Eurydice who was now trying to get a look at what he was drawing. "Oh, hey…Eurydice, right?"

"Call me Susan. It's easier."

"Okay, Susan. Well, it's pretty uh…"

"Empty?"

"Yeah."

"Ah, I'm sure you'll be able to fill it up as you go along."

"So what brings you over here?"

"Well, we don't have any new assignments, so I just thought I'd check up on you. By the way, what's that you're drawing?"

"Oh, this?" he replied, showing her the notebook. "It's something I picked up back when I was in college. Some of my friends and I would design a maze in two minutes, and the person working on it would have to solve it in under a minute."

"Sounds like fun. Mind if I try it?"

"Sure," he replied handing her the book.

"So what's with the other book," she asked, looking through the first maze.

"Magician's code. Trade secret."

"Oh come on!"

"No, I'm being serious. Or at least halfway anyway. It's a book of some ideas I have for magic tricks. Or at least hypothetical ideas anyway. I haven't exactly been able to put them into practice, so I don't know what kinks will have to be worked out. I'd like to be able to try them out sometime so I can have some of my own tricks to my na-"

"Done," she interrupted, writing down her time, initialing it, and handing the notebook back to him.

"Fifteen seconds? I must be getting rusty."

"It wasn't bad. I've always had a knack for solving puzzles like that."

"I guess that's what makes you such a good extractor, right?"

"Partially. So how many more do you have in this thing?"

"Are you planning on solving them all?"

"Well, what's the point in creating a challenging maze if there's no one to challenge it?"

"Point taken."

What is the point in creating a challenging maze if there's no one to challenge it?

"Hey. Hey, Houdini, you okay?"

Gallows snapped out of his reminiscing once he felt a hand shake his shoulder and a familiar voice call his name. Or at least by the nickname that only one person would have given him. "Oh, hey Reeve. Sorry about that. I was just working on a labyrinth."

"Without the pencil touching the paper? I figured magicians would be better liars than that."

"I actually was trying. I just didn't get very far."

"Still thinking about her, huh?"

"I know what you're going to say."

"What? That it's been a year and a half, and you still can't let her go? I know you've got some regrets. We all do. No one could have seen it coming, but you have to let her go. It's not healthy. She's –"

"You think I don't know that? You think I haven't tried?" Gallows shouted.

Silence filled the air the moment Gallows realized what he had just done. Finally coming back to his senses, he said, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone off on you like that."

"It's okay, man. Maybe you should just take a long vacation once this next assignment is done. You work way too hard anyway."

"Next assignment?"

"Well, I got word that Taylor's got something for us. Maybe you should go talk to him."

"Right. Oh wait! I just remembered that I forgot to tell Takkins to make a totem! Do you mind, Reeve?"

"Nah, I don't mind. She might, though."

"Give it time. Just because you have a knack for using your charm as a weapon doesn't mean it works on everyone, or not right away at least."

"Right. Well, you have fun with Taylor."

"And you with Takkins."

The desk was left was all but completely barren save for a desktop PC, but that's to be expected when one is brand new to the job. Takkins would have to figure out where the supply closet was so she could at least get the standard stationary things to make it functional. Personal decorations would have to come later. However, after having been inside two exciting dreams, she just felt like taking a breather. She simply sat in the black swivel chair and leaned her head back, closing her eyes for a moment. "Hello again, sweet thing."

She quickly turned to face the one person on her new team that she absolutely could not stand: Phillip Reeve. While Reeve had a sizeable grin on his face, Takkins's face demonstrated that she was getting tired of the nicknames quickly. "What are you doing here?"

"What's with the hostility?"

"What's with the flirty nicknames?"

"What's with the attitude?"

"What's with the indifference?"

"What's with the 'what' questions?"

"What's wi-" she stopped suddenly, realizing how she had just played right into his hands. "Ten seconds of you standing there and I'm already getting a migraine."

"Ah, loosen up a little. Anyway, Gallows asked me to swing by your way to tell you about something he forgot to mention in the initial training."

"And that would be?"

"It'd be a good idea if you made a totem for yourself?"

"A totem? You mean like some wooden pillar?"

"Maybe. It all depends on you. See, when you do this dream-sharing thing long enough, sometimes it gets hard to tell the difference between what's real and what's a dream. So we each carry around some sort of object with some sort of quirk at all times to help us keep track of reality."

"What kind of quirk?"

"Again, that all depends on you, but you have to be the only one who knows about the quirk behind your totem. It could be a particular weight, balance, or even some sort of trick. Gallows's totem, for example, is some sort of trick coin, but he won't tell me what the trick is. You know him. 'Magician's code.'"

"'Trade secret.' I get it."

"Anyway, since he's the only one who knows the trick behind the coin, it becomes a normal coin in someone else's dream, unable to do anything special."

"I see. So what's your totem?"

"This," he replied, brandishing a photograph from his wallet.

Although she could only assume that the event was a wedding reception or something along those lines, she recognizes the subjects that were both staring at the camera, both clearly happy. The first was Kenneth Gallows himself in a simple black tuxedo, white collared shirt, and a black bowtie. The second person was the redheaded woman she had seen in both Gallows's dream and her own now wearing an elegant white wedding dress with the veil pulled back. "I see. So that is his wife after all."

"His wife?" Reeve asked seemingly confused.

"Yeah. I saw her twice in the dreams Gallows and I were in. She seemed sad when she looked at him. I saw the rings on her left hand, so I figured that she was married. I should have known that-"

"That's impossible," Reeve interrupted.

"Huh?"

"This picture was photoshopped. Gallows and Eurydice never even dated, much less got hitched."

"So then why did she have the usual rings on?"

"Probably because Gallows wished she was. He's got some regrets when it comes to her."

"What kind of regrets?"

"Gallows had thought of asking her out from time to time. I tried and tried to get him to go for it, but he just kept getting cold feet. Then, low and behold, by the time he did get the complete resolve to ask her out…she died."

"I see…"

"Obviously, she's a touchy subject for him, so if you're going to ask him about her, be careful how you do it."

"Right."

Gallows stood in front of the oak door with a wire frame window and closed blinds that read "Rick Taylor: Supervisor" and knocked three times. "Come in," responded the older man.

Gallows opened the door and stepped inside Taylor's office, observing the off-white walls decorated with a wide array of books, photographs of family and friends, and even a couple of certificates of some kind. "Ah, Gallows," Taylor said, seated behind his polished redwood desk.

"Hey, Boss. I got word from Reeve that you've got a new assignment lined up for us?"

"I do, yes. Has he told anyone else about this job?"

"As far as I know, no. Even so, he only told me that a job was in the works. No details."

"I see. At any rate, this is your next target," Taylor replied as he handed the architect a manila folder.

Gallows took the folder and thumbed through some of the pages. "Harold Pallidino, huh? Finally calling the big guns on this guy."

"The Bureau has been trying to catch him for months. The circumstantial evidence against him is insurmountable, but every time the Bureau has tried to bring him in for questioning, he manages to slip away."

"I've heard that some of that circumstantial evidence ties him to several major gangs in the city. So I take it you want us to try and find out who his contacts are?"

"Precisely. If we can find out how exactly he's involved and who his contacts are, he'll have nowhere to run."

"And I take it your uneasiness about what I knew in advance is somehow connected."

"Indeed."

"I see…Well then, I'll get the team together."

"Be careful with this assignment, Gallows."

Gallows simply nodded as he exited Taylor's office. While he wanted to ask what Taylor was concerned with, at the same time, he was afraid that he already knew the answer.

Gallows sat back in one of the swivel chairs at one of the ends of the conference room table, playing with his trick coin once again. The first one to enter into the room was Landers, who decided to take the chair to the left of Gallows. "Never a moment's rest for you, huh?"

"Only on the job. How's the family?"

"James is kicking off first grade, and Sharon's still teaching."

"Same class as James?"

"No, thank Heaven."

"That's good."

Takkins was the next person to come in and took a seat next to Landers. Reeve came in shortly afterwards and took a seat on the other side of the table right across from Takkins. He gave her an easy-going smile as Takkins glared daggers at him. Russell was the last of the team to enter into the room and took a seat at the opposite end of Gallows. "Alright, now that everyone's here, let's get started," Gallows began as he slid folders to each member of his team which contained duplicate files and photos of the one he had been given earlier. "Our next target is Harold Pallidino; major stock broker and allegedly a major player in New York City's criminal underworld."

"I've heard of this guy," Reeve interrupted. "Supposedly, he's got connections to each of the Five Families."

"I've heard of him too," Landers also chimed in. "Apparently, he's rumored to have been leading some major shakedowns in some of the Latin Kings' territory over drug business. Narcotics thinks he's got some business in dealing illegal substances as well. Hence the shakedowns, but so far, they haven't been able to figure out where he's got his hand and how he's getting a hold of the product."

"If this guy has so many connections to organized crime, how has he not been brought in by now?" Takkins asked.

"It's all rumors and circumstantial evidence," Russell finally said. "There's still a missing link that's keeping the authorities from being able to put two and two together, no matter which two you're trying to put together."

"And that's where we come in," Gallows resumed. "Our job is to go inside this guy's mind and extract his contacts and specific means of involvement in each of these groups."

"So where do we start?" she asked.

"First, we need to a little more research. Landers, I want you to get with NYPD and see what you can come up with as far as the activities of the people Pallidino is connected with. Also, I want you to tail him and see where he goes. Russell, I need you to do some additional digging into Pallidino's personal information. Be on the lookout for any signs of whether or not he's been trained."

"Trained?" Takkins asked.

"If a person has the money, needless to say Pallidino does, he can hire an extractor's services on the black market and have that extractor go into his subconscious and teach the subconscious to defend itself against any other extractor that tries to get in. In short, if you thought the projections in a dream were nasty before, you ain't seen nothing until you've seen the projections of a trained subconscious," Russell explained.

"Takkins, I want you to try and get Pallidino's schedule for the next few months."

"Is the research going to take that long?"

"Not really, but I want to know what he's going to be doing that far in advance so we can figure out the best time to make our move."

"Gotcha."

"So what do you want me to do, boss?" Reeve asked.

"Nothing for right now. We'll wait until the others have finished their research before we try to figure out what you're going to be doing."

"So I'm guessing it's a forged personality you're looking for from me."

"Right. We'll figure out which one to do once we cross that bridge, but until then, go ahead and look through some of the known contacts. Somebody else in Pallidino's broker business may be in on his criminal activities as well."

"And what will you be doing?" Russell asked the team leader.

"I'll try to come up with some preliminary mazes, but I won't be able to have anything definite until Landers gets with me on the results of his research. Any questions?"

Russell raised his hand. "What's the method of extraction going to be?"

"I don't know yet. That'll depend on the information you and Landers come up with. Alright, team, you're dismissed."

With the tasks given and the day coming to a close, Gallows made his way back home. He opened the door to his apartment and checked the side of it. There doesn't seem to be any signs of forced entry here. Either the extractor had a key to my place or was able to use the windows. As unlikely as the windows might be, you never know with some people.

He then went inside his one bedroom apartment, which had a living room, a kitchen/dining room, and the one bathroom. He didn't have very many visitors come by, so he kept the place clean for his own sake. The living room had beige painted walls adorned with a bookshelf, a few pictures of family members, and a 32" HDTV supported by a simple stand made from five pieces of black woodchip boards with one of the boards horizontally dividing the stand in two to create shelf storage. In front of the TV was a futon bed, though it mostly stayed in the couch position. While many have commented that the place lacked a woman's touch, Gallows consciously tried to not bring that comment up.

He checked the window in the kitchen, but he didn't see any signs of forced entry there either. He then went inside his bedroom and examined the small window above his headboard. Again, he couldn't see any signs of forced entry, though someone actually being able to fit through such a small window was highly unlikely. Once he set his feet back on the floor, he looked at the queen-sized bed and his mind went back in time once more.

"So this is a taste of forever, huh?" Kenneth asked his partner in bed, the woman who just recently became Susan Eurydice Gallows.

"Yeah," she replied, entwining the fingers of her right hand with his left. "It won't always be as nice as this, though."

"It's okay. I know we'll get through the tougher spots."

With that, she moved her body closer to him, let go of his hand, and slipped both of her arms around him. "Hey," she softly began to say, "do you remember that line you told me? What a friend of yours said once?"

"I do, yes."

"Could you tell it to me one more time? I know you said you thought it was corny, but I liked it."

"Okay."

For the rest of that moment in time, he could only see his lips moving and her lips moving as if they were trading lines in a conversation. He couldn't make out what the two of them were saying until her final words broke through.

"We'll be together."

Gallows shook his head as he brought his mind back to reality, bending the trick coin back and releasing it over and over again. Once he reestablished his bearings, he decided to just crash on his bed rather than go through the nightly routine. Maybe I should take a vacation after all. Or maybe even see a psychiatrist or something. It's bad enough that my memories of her are haunting me more and more. It's even worse when I'm being haunted by memories of her that never actually happened.