I awoke without a headache, which was pleasant.

I was lying on a couch in a sweaty room with 1970s wood-paneled walls. There were no windows, and the three mysterious figures from the lab were sitting in wooden chairs pulled up next to me. The woman loosely held a gun in her right hand, resting the grip on her knee and pointing the muzzle at me.

Not so pleasant.

“Are you awake now?” the woman asked, annoyed.

I pushed myself to a sitting position, senses on high alert now.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Where am I?”

“Guess that’s a yes.”

She waggled the gun for emphasis just in case I hadn’t already noticed it.

“Don’t try anything. We’ve brought you here to ask you a few questions.”

“Like what?”

The woman pulled a funny-looking smartphone form her waist and showed me a face on the screen.

“Our sensors tell us you’ve been in close proximity to this person. Where is he?”

I examined the screen. A boyish face with a hipster-meets-beach boy haircut gazed back at me. In this picture, he was solemn and thin-lipped, but I still recognized him instantly.

“Michael?”

This was why I’d been tangled up in this? Because I’d met my mother’s roommate? Did he have some kind of dark criminal past I’d become caught in? Maybe he was ex-mafia, although his demeanor seemed too cheery for that. Maybe witness protection?

“So that’s what he’s calling himself here,” the woman mused.

“What does that mean?”

She ignored my question.

“Where is this person? Where is Michael?”

“I…wait. Please. At least tell me what’s going on. I’ll cooperate. I just want to know.”

The woman sighed with frustration.

“It’ll all go over your head anyways.”

“Try me.”

She didn’t move her gun, but she leaned back in her seat to get more comfortable.

“My name is Revella Keyes. These are my partners, Magrue and Kase,” she gestured at the men to either side of her.

“We’re from a different reality, and we’re chasing after this thing,” she gestured at the picture of Michael. “Because he’s going to destroy this world if we let him spread unchecked.”

“What did you say about reality?”

“I said it would go over your head.”

Revella scrabbled at her left wrist until something clicked. She slid a panel of her flesh away, revealing only a layer of transparent film that separated us from wires and cables intertwined with the muscles and tendons of her forearm. The native tissue and mechanical parts contracted and stretched in synchrony as she clenched and unclenched her fist.

“I don’t think they have biomodifications like this on your Earth, correct?”

I stared in awe.

“No, they don’t.”

At this point, visitor from an alternate reality was just about the only explanation that made sense.

“Anyways,” Revella continued. “We’re from Earth three alpha, one of about four thousand Earths that have been linked together through multiverse travel.”

“This,” she waved the picture of Michael in annoyance. “Is a radish demon.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

Jack would’ve been ashamed of my survival instincts, chortling at my armed kidnappers, but this was too ridiculous.

“What the fuck is the deal with everyone and radishes?”

“It’s not funny, Ms. Parsons,” Revella warned.

I thought about correcting my title to doctor, but decided I liked not being shot even more than being addressed correctly.

She continued, “Radish demons are parasites that live in the space between realities and will infiltrate them whenever given the chance. They take a human form and blend in until they’ve reproduced enough to suck the planet dry. They’re named for their attraction to radishes, which have a very particular stench. One that permeates into interdimensional space. These demons follow the smell to find vulnerable realities.”

I wondered if Revella understood what a strange image she was conjuring: Michael, that kiss-ass young lawyer, sitting upstairs in my mother’s house scarfing down raw radishes and plotting the interdimensional demise of this entire planet.

I changed the subject.

“Why couldn’t I hit you?” I asked the man who’d struck me down. Magrue, I thought was his name.

“Body shield,” he explained, gruffly. “Protects me from penetrating strikes and impacts up to two thousand pounds.”

Great. Not only were these people armed, but they were also walking around with personal force fields and a whole host of other futuristic technologies under their skin.

I understood why that mysterious voice on the phone had told me not to try fighting them.

The thought jarred the memory of the phone call before I’d been captured. I still had no clue who’d called me, but he’d insisted that these people wanted me dead. That sounded like an important topic to address before they decided to stop answering my questions.

“Are you going to kill me?” I asked Revella.

She sighed.

“It depends. Has the demon imprinted on you?”

“Imprinted?”

“When a radish demon enters a new reality, it imprints onto a specific person, using them as an anchor point adjust to the planet. Siphoning off their knowledge of this Earth through the connection. If someone’s been imprinted, killing them will disorient the demon and make it much easier to catch.”

I could feel the color drain from my face.

Fuck me, I knew exactly who Michael had imprinted on.

He could’ve picked any miserable post-menopausal woman in the state of Oregon, but he had to choose my mother.

“He’s not imprinted on me,” I said.

“Then who,”

“I don’t know.”

“How did you meet the demon?”

“We spoke at the grocery store for a while.”

It didn’t sound believable, so I added, “he asked me where the radishes were.”

Revella’s eyes narrowed.

“I don’t buy that.”

“It’s the truth,” I insisted in a voice that sounded unauthentic even to me.

“Who were you speaking to on the phone?” Revella asked. “We couldn’t trace the number.”

“I don’t know. They called me.”

That one, at least, wasn’t a lie.

Revella looked unhappy with my answers. She turned to Magrue.

“She knows more than she’s letting on. See if you can get her to talk. Kase and I are going to run the scanner around some more and see if we can pick up another trail.”

Magrue nodded, remaining seated while his compatriots left.

I peered through the doorway while they passed through, but all I saw was nondescript hallway on the other side. Nothing that betrayed where I’d been taken.

Revella and Kase slammed the door shut behind them. I turned to regard Magrue.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

He sat in the wooden chair backwards, straddling the stiles with either thigh and leaning forward to rest his forearms on the seat back. It was a pose reminiscent of a youth group leader or a summer camp counselor.

“You heard the woman,” he said. “You can tell us what you really know, or I can make you tell us.”

My mind was scattered. I fought desperately to compose my thoughts into an organized pattern. I needed to find a way to stall until I could get out of here.

“How did you find me?”

“Radish demons shed particles that are non-native to this universe. Helix neutrinos. We detected a signal from this reality. Somewhere around this part of the planet. We dropped onto the ground and followed the scanner. You’re covered in helix neutrinos. We know you’ve been in close contact with the demon.”

I couldn’t just admit that the demon had imprinted on my mother. They’d kill her. But I couldn’t waste forever here, if Revella and Kase were trawling the streets of Pendervale with that scanner, they’d find Jack and Violet eventually. If they threatened to harm Violet…my insides turned to lead at the thought.

“How did you get here? How do you travel between realities?”

“Stop stalling.”

He touched the watch on his wrist, and hot electricity flashed throughout the room. Magrue’s invisible body shield must’ve been an insulator – he didn’t flinch. I, on the other hand, was jolted with a surge of voltage. It seared through my limbs and arched my back like a springboard. I gasped in pain. The shock was only an instant, but I found myself tremoring for several seconds after as my neurons fired spasmodically.

“Are you going to start answering my questions now?”

“I…just give me a second.”

My eyes darted around the room. We were in a small office space. There was only one exit: through the door Revella and Kase had used. The only furniture was the musty leather couch I sat on, the three wooden chairs my captors had occupied, and a small desk on the other side of the room with a plastic trash bin lying on its side. There wasn’t much in the way of tools I could use to defend myself. On the desk were a few stacks of paper, a thin lamp which was being used mostly as a paperweight, my cell phone, and my car keys.

“Stop looking for an escape,” Magrue said. “Just tell me where the demon is and who was talking to you on the phone. Then we’ll let you go.”

He pressed his watch face, and a pulse of electricity flashed through the room again. I had a moment to tense in preparation this time, but it didn’t help. The electricity hurt. Bad. It forced the wind out of my lungs and left me disoriented.

It was annoying having my escape plan constantly rattled by excruciating electrical pain. I needed my mind to be a knife, and it was currently a burnt omelet. I wished this guy would ease up on his trigger finger.

“I’m adding more volts next time,” he warned. “Tell me what you know.”

I took a breath.

Focus.

I couldn’t touch this guy with his force field. Not unless I could muster up two thousand pounds of force with my bare hands. I went to the gym three or four times a month. I was pretty sure that task was beyond me.

Jack, when recounting his numerous old street brawls, had told me that the first second of a fight was the most important. The first strike was free, so it was critical to make sure it counted.

I could see a gun hanging on the side of Magrue’s hip. If I could get my hands on that, maybe I’d stand a chance.

Magrue began reaching for his watch again. I did not want to get zapped a third time.

“I’m feeling lightheaded,” I announced, swaying on the couch for dramatic effect.

He paused, examining me quizzically. I put a hand on my chest and grimaced.

“I think you did something to my heart when you shocked me.”

I coughed and leaned forward, supporting myself with a hand on my knee.

Magrue rose and came closer to examine me, reaching in his vest for a device of some kind.

“Lean back,” he instructed. “Let me do an anatomy scan.”

As his gun-slung hip came within arm’s reach, I lunged for it, leaping off the couch and grabbing for the weapon with both hands. I threw my shoulder into the man as I dove, hoping to bowl him off his feet and buy myself even more time.

My tactic mostly worked.

I managed to wrap my fingers around the grip of the weapon as Magrue and I tumbled over in a ball of limbs. I grunted in pain as my hip and shoulder bounced off the hardwood. Painless flickers of white light flashed wherever Magrue’s body touched mine or touched the floor – his body shield absorbing the blows. Magrue let out a noise of surprise. He wasn’t hurt by our fall, but at least he was momentarily off balance.

I pulled at the gun with all my strength, but it was clipped to the side of Magrue’s belt.

Fuck.

His right hand reached across his body, moving to slap the face of his watch and activate the electrical pulse again.

I abandoned the gun and grabbed his arm with both hands, fighting to control his movements and keep him from zapping me. More splashes of white holographic light spluttered silently in my hands. I wasn’t truly grabbing Magrue, I was grabbing the force field around his limb and fighting to keep him from reaching his watch.

Magrue was far, far stronger than he looked.

While still lying on his back, he lifted my entire body with his single arm, nearly flinging me aside. I clung to his forearm like a monkey on a vine. This strength wasn’t natural. It couldn’t be.

Magrue must’ve had biomodifications like Revella, allowing him to shake me around like a mosquito that had landed on his flesh.

He swung his other arm and thunked it into my ribs.

Pain exploded in my side. I was pretty confident I felt something crack. I released my grip and fell to the ground beside Magrue.

“Codknocker,” he snarled at me.

I wondered if that was an insult where he was from.

I saw him reach for the gun at his side as he pulled his legs underneath himself. Now I’d done it. I had approximately one second left before Magrue was going to kill or maim me for trying to jump him.

I recalled what the voice over the phone had yelled at me about using my spit. It was a stretch, but I was out of ideas. In the light of my opponent’s augmentations, maybe it would work.

I spat in Magrue’s face.

It splattered on his right cheek.

No sparks of light.

No deflecting.

Pure unadulterated saliva-on-skin contact.

“Urgh,” he grunted, reaching to wipe his face clean.

I whispered a silence prayer of thanks to the mysterious man on the end of the phone as I stuck a finger into my mouth. Before Magrue realized what I was doing, I thrust it into his eye. As hard as I could.

My spit-covered digit passed through his force field like it wasn’t even there, mashing against his squishy lens like a grape underneath a meat tenderizer.

Magrue screamed. Louder than I ever had during his electrocutions. Instinctively, he swiped his arm and knocked my hand away with a blow that nearly broke it.

Grimacing in pain, I made one more play for his gun, grabbing it and yanking with all my might.

It slipped free.

I rolled away as quickly as I could manage and fired a shot behind me.

I expected it would feel cool to shoot a laser gun, but the lack of recoil de-dramatized the entire act. It felt more like shooting a water pistol, even if the result was a beam of hyperfocused energy burning a hole the size of a dime in the wall behind Magrue.

I aimed again, blasting him.

The beam was absorbed by his body shield.

Guess it was still functioning after my spit trick.

That was an odd design that it could withstand lasers and not saliva, but I wasn’t an engineer. What did I know? As Jack would’ve said, I was rolling with the punches.

Magrue rolled away and pounced up onto to his feet. He flung something in my direction, and it exploded in the air. If it had detonated any closer, my head might’ve been blown off. As it was, I was merely thrown backward. A cloud of smoke burst into the space between us. I grabbed the couch for support but managed to stay on my feet as I blasted shots into the cloud, unsure if I’d hit anything. I was aware of the sensation of a bad sunburn on my hand and cheek that had been exposed to the blast, but I ignored those for now.

Another flash of electrical light erupted across the room.

As before, that shit hurt.

I fell to the ground as my legs gave out, but I managed to control the gun. A charging man emerged from the clouds of carbon. I turned the weapon on him and pulled the trigger as many times as I could, putting a shower of laser light between myself and the oncoming interdimensional traveler.

His body shield ate the first few blasts as if I actually had been using a water gun, but eventually, I broke through. A shot scorched his chest. Then another dropped him to his knees. I fired again and again until Magrue had fallen to the floor in a pool of blood. The smell of burnt meat filled the air.

The smoke dissipated. The room became quiet, and I was suddenly aware of how loudly I was panting.

The gun was hot in my hand. It had a small screen on the end of the barrel facing me that read, “warning, overheated.”

I set the gun down on the couch. Just in case it exploded.

Magrue was lying still on the floor. I couldn’t tell if he was still breathing. There were several holes in his chest, all spilling out red viscous.

I stepped closer and nudged him with my shoe.

I met no resistance. No white sparks.

The body shield had burnt out under my barrage.

I stood there, stunned by the realization of what I had just done.

I wasn’t a killer. I’d never been in a real fight before. That was Jack’s thing. And he’d never fought to kill. Not like I’d done to this man.

I nearly had an ethical crisis. Fortunately for my psyche, Magrue tried to kill me again.

With a sudden burst of movement, he swung a very-much-alive arm across my ankles, knocking me to the floor with strength that again was too out of proportion with his body size to be natural.

He roared in anger as he grabbed my shirt with a blood-drenched hand and slammed me against the ground.

I screamed in both terror and surprise, scrabbling for the gun I’d left on the couch.

“How are you alive!” I shouted, pounding on his arm in a bid for freedom.

With a reedy voice, he coughed up a shower of blood and declared, “cardiac mesh. Protects my heart and lungs.”

He slammed me into the floor again, sending spears of agony shooting through my shoulder. Magrue’s other arm lay mangled at his side. Snapped ends of wires spouted from the scorched hole over his elbow. He was throwing me around like a ragdoll while on his back and with only a single arm at his disposal.

He was more machine than human at this point.

Before he could slam me again, I freed one of my legs and swung it down, kicking him in the groin. He groaned in pain, and while he was stunned, I slipped out of his grasp.

At least he still had testicles.

It was good to know there was something that hadn’t been replaced by technology.

I grabbed the gun and blasted him one last time. He spat up more blood and gurgled, “bitch,” before he fell still.

I smarted at the audacity of him to call me such a name, considering he was the one who’d done the kidnapping and torturing. I wasn’t sure if he was truly dead or just playing again. Or if he’d shifted into some kind of hibernation mode. I skirted around the body on the floor, grabbing my phone and keys off the desk and dashing out of the room.

I assessed my surroundings as I moved, keeping the gun clenched tightly in my fist.

It appeared that I’d been brought to an abandoned warehouse. Empty rooms and concrete spaces lined the hall. I pressed on, following the fire exit signs until I burst out into the sunlight.

Based on my phone’s GPS, I was still within the city limits of Pendervale, maybe ten miles from the lab. I ran down the empty sidewalk, seeking to put as much distance between myself and the lair of the multiverse travelers.

I had four missed calls and a handful of texts from Jack that I didn’t bother reading. I called him while on the move.

He answered on the second ring.

“Laura? Laura, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I panted in between breaths.

“Oh my God. What happened? There was an attack at the lab. Nobody’s been able to find you for the last hour.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll explain it all to you later.”

“What does that…”

“Listen!” I urged. “This is important. You and Violet are in danger.”

“What?”

“There are people looking for us right now. I need you to take Violet, drive out of the city, and book a night at a motel or something. I’ll link up with you there, just get her far away from here as soon as you can.”

“You mean you’re still in danger?”

“We all are.”

“Where are you. I’m coming.”

I was way too close to the hornet’s nest. Jack and Violet coming this way would surely set off Revella’s radar.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll meet you there.”

“I’m not leaving you in danger!”

“Jack,” I snapped. “Our daughter is the biggest priority right now. I need you to get her out of the city. It’s not safe for her to be here.”

“I…”

“I’ll explain it all later. Please.”

He paused.

“Okay.”

“Thank you. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

I clicked the phone off and rounded a block. I slowed my pace to a walk and slipped into an alleyway, where I couldn’t be seen from the street in case Revella and Kase passed by.

I took a few breaths to get my breathing under control, searched through my recent calls, and then dialed number of the man who’d spoken to me in the lab.