Rob Lasser pulled out his Beretta pistol and pressed the cold metal to his temple. He closed his eyes as he gently squeezed the trigger. The bullet left the barrel and entered his brain, killing him instantly. He fell limply to the floor, his blood draining out of both the entry hole and the exit hole on the other side. His spirit left his body and entered the astral plane. This was where his day would begin.

Rob Lasser was a police officer, a member of the Intuitive Department of his precinct. Humankind had naturally evolved over the last few generations to the point where psychic ability was the norm for most people. There were very few non-psychic humans left in the world. Those who had the ability were referred to as Intuitives. But having psychic ability and being able to project oneself through the astral realm brought new and different challenges. Criminals were humans, after all. They used their own abilities to try to break down the astral defenses of other people. Every individual had a unique way of defending their minds against astral attack. Some mentally built fortresses, some relied on clever puzzles, and others still stayed to confront any danger themselves. It was the job of the Intuitive Department to patrol the astral realm psychically to make sure that no criminal ever attempted to get past an innocent’s defenses. Once through, the criminals could do almost as they pleased with their victim’s mind. The most skilled Intuitive criminals could even shut down a person’s entire neural processes, rendering that person next to lifeless. It was the job of people like Rob to make sure things like that never happened. There was just one problem.

Rob was the only non-Intuitive member of the Intuitive Department.

He had discovered the ability to project oneself into the astral realm without being an Intuitive by accident. He was a regular member of the police force doing a routine investigation of a robbery scene when he had stumbled upon the robber’s escape route. He followed the trail of clues, but he did not count of the fact that one of the perpetrators was waiting for him. He shot Rob in the head and killed him. Free of the confines of life, Rob’s spirit had left his body and it was free to roam the astral realm. He wondered what to do, and decided to follow this robber. It led to him finding out where the stolen goods were being hidden, but his spirit could not stay forever where it did not belong. It was pulled back into his body when he had been brought back to life miraculously by the best doctors in the city. His first words awake told of where the robbers and the loot could be found. The Department’s own Intuitives weren’t able to find that bit of information out. The robbers’ mental defenses were too strong for them to break through. That was because their spirits were still attached to their physical bodies. Being dead, Rob’s spirit had no such confines and he was free to do as he wished, as long as he could be brought back afterward.

Since that day, Rob kept his Beretta by his side and killed himself whenever he was needed. He was the only man crazy enough to undergo death in order to serve justice. He was the only man crazy enough to trust that the doctors would always bring him back to life. The number of doctors who still treated gunshot injuries was small, but Rob refused to kill himself by any other means. His handgun had belonged to his grandfather, who had been a policeman as well. He would not part with his gun, despite the numerous other lethal forms of weaponry that had been developed within the past hundred years.

Today, his mission was simple. Track down an Intuitive criminal wanted for killing several people and controlling several others. The chief suspected that it could very well be a member of their own precinct. Rob closed his eyes and let his spirit roam the realm on its own intuition. It would find what it wanted to find. Spirits could hardly be controlled by the mind, and that was why the Department’s Intuitives had such a hard time tracking down people. They tried to use their mind too much. But free of his body, Rob’s spirit controlled everything. It did not mean that he could not think or control himself, but his spirit gave him cues that were too hard to ignore.

He felt himself move forward at a high rate of speed. In the astral realm, travel could be as fast or as slow as one wanted it to be. All that was necessary was that one knew the destination. Rob’s mind did not know where he was going, but it seemed as if his spirit did. He felt himself stop suddenly and opened his eyes but was instantly blinded by a harsh light. He squinted until he became used to the glare and he focused on a figure standing in front of him.

It looked like a doctor.

“No…no! You weren’t supposed to bring me back yet! You idiot! How could you?”

The anger in his voice was unmistakable. He had been on his way to track down this criminal and these…doctors had brought him back to life at the worst possible time. He raised his hand to his temple and felt a thin bandage there. He sighed loudly as he got off of the bed, and ripped off all the monitors and lines attached to him. His own blood spewed from a line somewhere and he could feel a sharp pain at the side of his neck, but he did not care. He grabbed the doctor by the throat and started throttling him. The doctor suddenly pulled a scalpel out of his pocket and stabbed Rob in the chest with it. Rob staggered back with the scalpel sticking out of his chest, but all he did was shake his head and pull the scalpel out. His blood spewed out onto the floor in squirts corresponding with each heartbeat and he began to feel dizzy. As the doctor ran out of the room, Rob crumpled to the floor and passed out.

He awakened in a darkened room. The only light came from an open doorway beyond the foot of the bed he was lying in. The door opened wider and his wife walked into the room and lay on the bed, looking at him with a tear in her eye.

“They say you died again. It was harder than ever before to bring you back this time. Why do you do this to me, Rob? Why?”

Her voice conveyed a sense of distress and fear that he had never heard before. He shook his head and sat up in the bed, reaching across to the bedside table. He found his Beretta easily and turned it on her. Her eyes opened wide in fear and shock and her breathing started to get louder.

“Rob, what are you doing? You’re…you’re crazy. Don’t do this, please.”

She started to cry but Rob felt no remorse as he squeezed the trigger and put four bullets through her head. Her sobs ceased and he put his gun back down. The neighbours would have heard the commotion. They would call the police for him. But he was a policeman. He would go quietly and without making a fuss.

A few minutes later, the sound of the sirens stopped right under the bedroom window and the crashing sound of the front door being broken down echoed throughout the house. The policemen entered the building cautiously, and searched every room downstairs before moving to the second level. There they found the dead body of Rachel Lasser still on the bed. Standing at the foot of the same bed, with his gun pointed to his head, was Rob Lasser. They quickly disabled him by giving him a jolt of electricity that knocked him unconscious. It was never easy when one of the sworn protectors of freedom and justice committed a crime such as this one. They took his body downstairs and into a car, then carried him off to the station. He regained consciousness on the way there but said nothing until he was in the interrogation room.

Rob looked around the room. It was brightly lit and fairly comfortable. More comfortable than a jail cell, at least. The wall at the far end of the room was the one way mirror. Technology had advanced so far, but the world seemed to think that the old ways of questioning a person were best. It was against the law to use an Intuitive to probe a detainee’s mind without a warrant, and such warrants often took more than a day to get. Beyond that mirror, there would be a group of officers, all debating amongst themselves about who should do the questioning. They were taking a long time, and he was growing impatient. Murder meant death once they could prove that he did it. And there was nobody else within 100 miles who owned a Beretta handgun that used 9mm bullets. His wife had four such bullets inside of her head. Proof came no easier than that. Nobody needed to search, nobody needed to question. Just kill him permanently and get it over with. He was getting tired of the constant suicides that he had to do.

But nobody ever came to question him. He got to his feet and walked right up to the mirror. He knew that on the other side, all eyes were glued to him. He took a step away and lunged at the mirror with all of his force. Surprisingly, it shattered. Shards of glass penetrated his flesh and sliced bits away like tiny daggers. He landed on the other side and slowly got to his feet in the midst of a group of shocked officers. He was bleeding from head to toe and panting loudly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Smiling, he pressed a button on it and the entire room exploded violently. Rob felt himself being thrown into the air at a great speed. He closed his eyes and spread his arms out from his body.

“Rob? Can you hear me?”

Rob opened his eyes and they immediately focused on the familiar face of his doctor. Rob nodded and the doctor backed away. Standing at the side of the bed was the police chief.

“So, Rob…you find the guy we looking for?”

Rob smiled as he sat up.

“Of course I did. He had quite the mental defense, but he wasn’t as smart as those defenses showed him to be. It’s Holder, the new guy on the force.”

Holder had been assigned to the precinct’s Intuitive Department after graduating from the Training Academy with honours. He was a very adept Intuitive, but Rob knew that he was the man they were after. It had to be a police officer from the precinct because no ordinary person knew that much about police procedure and protocol. Holder’s defense against Rob’s spirit wandering the astral world was to place Rob in what seemed like a real life situation. The only flaw in Holder’s plan was that he was the only man at the precinct who had never been inside of the interrogation room. He did not know that the one way mirror was bulletproof. Rob’s crashing through of it meant that the situation could not have been real, and this was where the spirit knew things that the mind did not. The spirit told him to attempt to shatter the glass, while the mind told him otherwise.

The chief smiled at Rob and shook his hand.

“I have no doubt that you’re right. You’ve never failed this precinct, and I trust you. Now get some rest, and go home to your wife.”

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