The man answered on the fifth ring, almost when I’d given up hope.

“Revella?”

The tone was suspicious.

“No,” I answered. “It’s me. Laura.”

I heard a gasp on the other end of the line.

“Dr. Parsons? You’re alive? What happened?”

“I escaped.”

“Fucking mackerel,” he breathed. “Where are you now? Are you safe?”

“I shot one of the men and got away. I’m a few blocks away from their hideout. Putting more distance between myself and them.”

He started to speak, but I cut him off.

“Wait. I need to know. Who are you? How did you get my number? How did you know about Revella?”

There was a pause.

“I’m…oh boy. How do I start?”

An ironic chuckled rumbled over the line.

“My name is Lannon Lu. I’m from Earth twenty-seven delta. Revella and her team visited my reality for the same reason they’re in yours. Chasing down a radish demon. One that had imprinted on my brother.”

“Oh.”

“After they killed my brother, I dedicated myself to tracking their activities. Trying to protect people from them. Trying to fight for justice.”

“How did you know they were coming after me?”

“I followed Revella into this reality a few days ago and have been spying on her movements. I trailed her posse to the university campus this morning because I knew they’d found something with their scanner. They followed the helix neutrinos into the laboratory building. I ran my own scanner through the parking lot until I found your car. Also full of neutrinos. From then, it was a simple task of running your plate through the databases until I found your phone number.”

I frowned.

He anticipated my question.

“It’s technology from a different reality. Cybersecurity on this earth is pretty measly.”

“I…”

“I know you’ve got a lot of questions,” he continued. “And I know I promised you answers. I’ll give them to you, but if Revella’s hideout is nearby, then you’re still in danger. We need to get you farther away, where she can’t find you.”

A car pulled into the end of the alleyway. A black sedan with a fresh layer of gloss that glinted even under hazy cloudbeams.

“I tracked your phone’s location. I hope you don’t mind.”

The call clicked off, and a man emerged briskly from the driver’s side of the car.

Lannon was tall, dark-haired, and dressed in a long black jacket. He beckoned me forth like we were partners in a relay race, and I had the baton.

“Dr. Parsons, quickly! Revella and Kase will have already been alerted to your escape by now.”

I eyed the man and his car.

Maybe it was an exaggerated sense of security I felt having Magrue’s laser gun tucked in my jeans. Maybe it was a degree of trust I felt I owed this man for trying to warn me about Revella this morning. Maybe it was because I simply didn’t know what else to do or where else to go.

Either way, I obeyed his request and jogged forward, climbing into the passenger seat of the stranger’s car.

He peeled out of the alleyway and made a U-turn, accelerating away from the direction I’d come.

He noted the blood on my clothes.

“Are you injured?”

“I think so. Not sure how serious.”

He handed me a patch.

“Here. Put this on. It won’t fix you immediately, but it’ll dull the pain and get your mending process started.”

I eyed the patch. I’d already climbed into the car. I supposed that meant I was throwing my lot in with this Lannon guy. I peeled off the layer of film and stuck the patch on my arm. Warm pulsations surged down my limb and across my chest. The throbbing injuries I’d picked up in my fight with Magrue were instantly smoothed away. I could still perceive that I’d been hurt, but the pain didn’t bother me anymore.

Weird.

We drove in silence for a few minutes. Lannon’s car smelled fresh. Like factory-pressed leather and the cologne of car salesmen. I wondered how he’d gotten his hands on this vehicle, being from a different reality and all. It felt like a dangerous question to ask. Instead, I broached a conversation with a more innocuous topic.

“Where are we going?”

Lannon’s voice wasn’t as husky as it had sounded over the phone. I could pick up a twang in his speech. Probably just the dialect of wherever he was from on Earth twenty-seven delta, but it made him sound like a cowboy.

“Right now, I’m driving us in a loop all around the city. It’ll be harder for them to track our trail of neutrinos if it crisscrosses all over itself. After that, we need to find the demon that’s imprinted on you and kill it.”

“Wait, wait,” I interrupted. “The demon isn’t imprinted on me.”

Lannon frowned, whipping us around a block we’d just driven through.

“What?”

“It’s imprinted on my mom. His name’s Michael. He’s been living with her for the last couple months. I was just at her place yesterday. It’s how I must’ve been exposed.”

Lannon nodded.

“Makes sense. Okay, so our plan is the same. We’ll go to your mom’s and kill this thing. Once we kill it, Revella won’t have a reason to stay in this reality anymore. She’ll pack up and leave you alone.”

“It’s that easy?” I asked.

Lannon chuckled.

“You’ve never tried to kill a radish demon.”

“He didn’t look very menacing when I met him.”

“Believe me, it’s a carefully crafted front. They’re slippery. They’ve got a list of tricks longer than Revella’s body count, and they’re smart, too.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“You’ll have to go in first. Pretend like you don’t know any better and use an excuse to draw your mom outside. Get her out of danger. Then, I’ll go in and start blasting. With any luck, I’ll be able to catch it off guard.”

It finally dawned on me that I was going to have to pay my mother a visit.

Fuck.

This day couldn’t get any worse.

We kept driving. Lannon diverted us through the business district, further skewing the trail of neutrinos that were presumably spilling off me.

After some time, he spoke.

“Kind of a lot to learn in one day, huh? The whole existence of the multiverse.”

I chuckled.

“Honestly, it hasn’t really sunk in yet. I’ve had more emergent things to worry about. Not getting shot by Magrue. Not letting Revella kill any of my family.”

A wistful sigh from Lannon.

“Yeah. That’ll do it.”

“I do have one question.”

“Hit me.”

“Why the radishes?”

Lannon laughed heartily this time.

“You’re a biologist, right?”

I gave him a quizzical look, and he added, “I looked you up online after tracking your number down.”

“I am,” I replied.

“Then this should make sense to you. It’s an evolution thing.”

We trundled over studded pavement before crossing a bridge.

“The radishes themselves aren’t significant, but they’re a marker. The wild radish is nothing more than a weed, but it was domesticated by early humans and cultivated into the modern radish, which, on the other hand, has a very specific stench. One that’s so powerful these demons can detect it from within the interdimensional void. There’s nothing special about radishes, but they don’t exist except in places where humans domesticated them. So, any universe that reeks of radishes must have an Earth that’s compatible with human civilization. And if it can support human civilization, then the conditions are optimal for radish demons to invade and spread.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“That is…interesting.”

“I thought you might find it fascinating.”

“And what do radish demons want? What’s Michael’s reason for coming here and living with my mother?”

We lurched to a stop at a red light. Lannon anxiously peered out the back window, searching for threats.

“Radish demons, at their core, are simply a virus,” he said. “They want to do what any virus wants to do: divide and spread as rapidly as possible until there’s nowhere left for them to expand.”

“What happens when they run out of space?”

“If this demon isn’t stopped, eventually the whole planet will be swarming with its spawn. They’ll kill any other living thing, and multiply until every stretch of open space has a radish demon soaking up the atmosphere and basking in the gravity. The planet will be saturated. Lost forever.”

That didn’t sound good.

“There are hundreds, maybe thousands of Earths out there that have been lost to radish demons,” Lannon added. “Revella is right that they need to be exterminated whenever they colonize a new reality. We just…we differ in our approach, I suppose. I’m not willing to sacrifice innocent lives unnecessarily. It sounds like you aren’t, either.”

“Well, no. Especially if that innocent person is my mother.”

“I understand completely.”

The light turned green, and we rolled onward.

“What’s the address to your mom’s place?” Lannon asked.

“Seventy-seven Ivey Lane. Glemridge, Oregon. She’s an hour outside the city.”

“Got it.”

We shifted laterally into the right lane and prepared to make a turn.

“You know where my mom lives?”

“I’ve got a computer assistant installed in my eardrum. She’s reading off directions to me.”

“Oh. You’ve got biomodifications, too?”

He nodded.

“We had some of the technology for it on my Earth, but I travelled across the multiverse and had plenty of other gizmos and gadgets installed along the way. I’m not sure how advanced biomodding is in your world.”

“Um, not much,” I chuckled. “We’ve got fake boobs and cardiac pacemakers. That’s about it.”

Lannon smirked.

“Still in the early stages. Got it.”

“Are all the other Earths more technologically advanced than mine?”

“No individual Earth is much more advanced than yours. It’s the fact that all four thousand Earths have pooled their collective scientific knowledge that all this is possible. The multiverse multiplied the total mass of human knowledge by a thousandfold. New tools, new medicines, new ways of thinking. It’s a miracle, and it deserves to be shared.”

My phone buzzed, and I checked it. I had a new text message.

Jack: Booked a room at Cedar Way Motel. Violet and I will be there in 30. Please call me ASAP and let me know you’re ok.

I unlocked my screen to answer when Lannon reached over and slapped the phone out of my hands.

“Shit!”

“What is it?” I asked, alarmed.

“I forgot to tell you to get rid of your phone. They can track you with it.”

“Can they see my messages?”

“No, unless they have technology I’m not aware of, but they certainly can track your location if I was able to. You have to get rid of it. Now.”

“Right now?”

“Yes. Right now.”

He held his hand out.

I texted quickly, I’m safe. Will meet you there soon.

I handed the phone over, and Lannon chucked it out the window.

I winced involuntarily as it cracked on the cement.

“I’ll buy you a new one when this is all over,” he promised.

“You better. I’m just a researcher. I don’t make money to be buying new phones at the drop of a hat.”

“I’m a man of my word.”

We slipped into the stream of the interstate and began the journey to my mother’s. Lannon leaned back in his seat, visibly relaxing as we exited city limits.

We retraced the journey Jack and I had made yesterday.

I was worried about Michael, but if I was being honest with myself, I was more stressed about encountering my mother again. I still had a bitter taste in my mouth from our last encounter. I was not in the mood to play nice with her.

I’d do it, for the sake of saving this planet from an interdimensional radish-munching parasite, but I wasn’t happy about it.

Interstate gave way to country roads. Laminar asphalt transformed into pothole-ridden streets. Glemridge was a small town. A nice place, but sleepy and not particularly wealthy. It wasn’t the kind of community a woman moved to when she wanted to enjoy her later years. It was the kind she lived in when she had nothing going for her except already owning a house in the area.

Lannon pulled up to the curb down the street from my mother’s house.

“Ready?” he asked me.

“All I have to do is get her out of the house?”

“Probably a hundred yards away from the property to be safe.”

I exhaled long and slow, psyching myself up.

“Yeah. I can do that.”

Lannon frowned.

“Is something wrong? Are you afraid of the demon?”

“Of Michael?” I laughed. “Not really. I just don’t get along with my mom.”

“Oh.”

He patted my hand.

“Well, you’re saving her life. That has to count for something, right?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

I managed a bitter smile and let myself out of the car.

Walking to the front door was like trudging through hot tar. I fought against the magnets in my gut repulsing against the aura of my childhood home, plastering a neutral expression on my face and ringing the doorbell.

I heard the chimes play throughout the house. Nobody appeared at the door.

I rang again.

Still nothing.

I frowned. She wasn’t home?

That didn’t make sense. My mother never left the house. She had no job, no hobbies, and nowhere else to be.

I wondered if Michael had done something to her. Real concern flushed through my system as I walked back to the car. Lannon met me halfway.

“Nobody’s home,” I said.

“This is good. That means the demon is probably alone in the nest. No need to worry about your mom getting hurt.”

I nodded, still feeling uneasy.

“Is there a way for me to get in?” Lannon asked. “Don’t want to break the door if I don’t have to.”

“The key is under the little statue of the frog wearing a bowtie,” I said. “Michael lives upstairs in the attic.”

Lannon nodded.

“Okay. Wait here. I’ll come get you when it’s over.”

“What if something happens to you?”

He handed me the keys to his car.

“Then get yourself out of here.”

“I can help,” I said, reaching into my jeans and pulling out the gun I’d claimed.

“How’d you get your hands on that?”

“Magrue.”

He shook his head.

“It’s still too dangerous. If something happens to me, don’t try to engage the demon.”

“But if you can’t kill it, that means Revella is going to keep going after my mom. I need to at least be ready to help if I’m given a chance.”

“Okay,” Lannon relented. “But promise me you’ll be ready to run. This thing will reveal its true form when provoked. It won’t be pretty.”

I lowered the gun, pointing the barrel at the ground while we spoke.

“I’ll be ready.”

Lannon saluted me.

“Shield, on,” he ordered. Sparks flashed momentarily around his frame as he activated his own force field.

He jogged over to the house, dug around for the key under the statue of the stupid-looking frog, and let himself inside.

I crept closer to the house, sweat greasing my palms and making the grip of the handgun slippery against my skin. I was tense as a board, waiting for screams or an explosion or some other sign of violence. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a black hole opened up and swallowed the whole building, based on how dramatically Lannon had been talking.

Instead, Lannon emerged, alone, in the front doorway after a couple minutes.

“He made a run for it.”

I jogged up to him.

“What?”

“The demon knew it was being hunted. Convinced your mom to pack up and travel with him to a safer place to nest.”

“How do you know?”

“This was taped to the floor in the attic.”

Lannon handed me a piece of paper. In perfect script was a message.

To whom it may concern,

I’m going somewhere with Sally where you’ll never be able to find me. Go back to your own Earth. This one’s mine.

Michael

I handed the note back to Lannon. It took a handwritten confession from the fake lawyer himself to make it all sink in. My mother really had been living with a radish demon for months.

And she’d liked him. Enough to want to set me up with him.

I wanted to retch.

“Do you want to see the nest?”

“You mean there’s an actual nest in there?”

“Oh yeah,” Lannon said. “Eggs and everything.”

“You’re telling me that guy was laying eggs up there?”

I actually did retch a little bit. An acidic taste burned my mouth, and I swallowed hard, trying to force it down.

“Yeah. That’s his main prerogative, right. To replicate and spread.”

I hadn’t thought about how, mechanistically, that replicative process would’ve happened.

“Sure. Let me see it.”

I followed Lannon inside and up the stairwell to the attic. Our feet thunked on the old steps, crescendoing as we arrived at the doorway.

Lannon pushed the door open and immediately a stench washed over me.

“Ulgh.”

I gagged involuntarily and raised my shirt up over my nose.

“What is that?”

“Rotting vegetables, probably.”

I examined the room. Half-eaten radishes littered the space. Some looked fresh. Others had begun to liquify with decay.

“Why is it so warm up here? The thermostat must be set at eighty.”

“Because,” Lannon said, stepping forward and gesturing at the red orbs stuck to the wall. “It’s an incubator.”

It’d thought the orbs were decorative lights. At least two dozen of them were stuck to the plaster. They were dark red and the size of softballs. I examined one more closely. They were held in place with some kind of glue.

“These are…”

“Eggs,” Lannon finished. “Each one will grow a new radish demon with an incubation time of about sixty days.”

Lannon kicked aside remains of old radishes and walked over to examine the eggs with me.

“Your mom didn’t know any of this was going on upstairs?” he asked.

“I doubt it. She would’ve never had a reason to come up here.”

Lannon pulled a pistol from his jacket and held the tip to the eggshell. He fired a shot, and a beam of laser light cut through the contents of the orb.

Amniotic fluid hissed and boiled as undifferentiated slop from the egg sloshed onto the floor.

“Watch the walls!” I urged Lannon, gesturing at the dime-sized hole he’d blasted in the plaster across the room. He shot hadn’t passed through the wall, but it had scorched the paint and gouged a centimeter-deep crater.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll pay for repairs later.”

“Where’s all your money coming from?”

“I brought a few pounds of gold with me when I came here. It’s as common as quartz on Earth forty-four zeta. Exchanged it at a few different places here for cash.”

I supposed that explained how he’d acquired his car.

“I’ll pay you back,” he promised. He reached for the gun still in my hand. “Help me destroy these eggs.”

He took the weapon and turned a dial on the bottom of the grip.

“Here. It’s on the lowest power setting. Now you won’t shoot through the neighbors’ walls with each shot.”

I examined the weapon. I hadn’t even noticed that dial, but the ability to change the power setting was a useful one to have.

“Just shoot the eggs. Try not to touch them. These things are dripping with helix neutrinos. The less you get on yourself the harder it will be for Revella to track you after this.”

I accepted the gun back, and began blasting through the rock-hard eggshells, killing the growing interdimensional parasites inside. Lannon mirrored my movements across the room. I avoided looking at the slimy mass of organs and appendages soaking in the chocolate ooze. This day was already nasty enough.

“Make sure we leave nothing unturned,” he urged. “All it takes is one radish demon to slip past us, and this planet is bogged.”

“Bogged?”

“Sorry. Expression from my reality. What do you say here?”

“Screwed?”

“Yeah. Screwed. Big time.”

We parsed through the entire room, piercing demon eggs on the walls, under the bed, and in the closet. The entire attic reeked. I felt an urge to vomit, but the heaves never came.

Once we’d scoured the attic clean of any eggs, we descended the stairs and gave the rest of the house a quick sweep, just to make sure Michael hadn’t hidden any somewhere else.

The rest of the home seemed clean.

The suitcase my mother kept in her closet was missing, as was her toothbrush in the master bathroom. As far as I could tell, it looked like she’d had at least a short time to plan her travel and had anticipated being away for at least a few days.

I asked Lannon to try calling her number. I’d had to memorize it as a teenager and the numbers stuck. He went straight to voicemail.

I wondered what she thought was going on.

There was no way she could still think Michael was just a friendly young professional who enjoyed having her as a landlord. Nobody could be that clueless.

Of course, I reminded myself, this was my mother I was thinking of.

Who knew what was going on inside her head?

I entered my childhood bedroom to search for eggs. The bed was made, and the posters of my favorite artists when I was seventeen were still up on the walls. It made something in my chest hurt to be in that room. Like a mix between heartburn and getting kicked in the sternum.

I didn’t like it.

I stayed there only long enough to change into a pair of old jeans and a shirt that had been left in the closet. The clothes were musty and probably hadn’t been worn since I was in college. The waistline certainly hugged me tighter than it had back then. But these clothes weren’t splattered in bloodstains from my fight with Magrue, and that made them the best option at the moment.

When I emerged, I found Lannon in the living room, crouched beside a window.

“Get down!” he hissed when I came into sight.

I dropped into a couch and scuttled over to join him.

“What’s happening?”

He pointed at the window. Outside was a white van with a female figure sitting inside. I didn’t have to see her face to know who it was.

Lannon cranked the dial on his pistol all the way up to the max.

“We have company,” he said.