“Damn she’s fast,” Lannon lamented. “I’d figured we had at least a few hours before she found our trail.”

I peered across the windowsill. Revella was staring at the house, waiting for us to emerge.

“Let’s sneak out the back door,” I said.

Lannon shook his head.

“I’m sure she’s got infrared capabilities. She’s definitely seen our heat signatures. She probably can see us hiding here at this very moment.

“What does she want?”

“I don’t know.”

He sighed in frustration.

“Well, sorry Dr. Parsons. The fact that she’s found this place means now she knows who the demon’s imprinted on. She’ll be able to correlate your mom’s name with this address. And the neutrino signal coming out of here is going to be unmistakable for anything but a radish demon’s nest.”

Well, that was a bit frustrating, considering I’d almost died several times fighting Magrue in an effort to avoid divulging that information.

At least I had the laser gun as a consolation prize.

“Is she going to try to kill us?”

Again, Lannon shrugged.

“Wish I knew, but it looks like a confrontation is inevitable. I say we just get it over with.”

“How?”

“Well, she and I both have body shields, which means neither of us can kill the other immediately. It would take a drawn-out fight to blast through either of our protections. You, on the other hand, have nothing but cotton.”

He pointed at my shirt.

It was actually a polyester blend, but I didn’t mention that aloud.

“You don’t have any other tricks to beat her shield? Like the saliva thing from before?”

“You won’t be able to spit your way out of this one if a fight starts.”

Lannon rolled back the sleeve of his jacket and revealed four different watches strapped to his arm.

“Sheesh. You sure you know what time it is?” I asked.

Lannon ignored me and pointed at the first one.

“This is the control panel for my biomods. I can administer analgesics or increase my heart rate. The next one is emitting a scrambler radiofrequency that makes it harder for people like Revella to find me. The next one controls my flight suit. And this last one,”

He pulled it off and offered it to me.

“This is a deflector field generator. Think of it as a shield like medieval knights used to carry.”

“You had the Middle Ages on your Earth, too?”

“Our Earths haven’t diverged from each other that much. Here. Take it, and I’ll answer more questions later.”

I strapped the watch onto my left wrist.

“Just press the big red button if we get into trouble and hide behind the barrier,” he said. “It can take a few shots before the battery drains.”

I eyed the piece of technology with trepidation. It looked like a plastic block attached to a Velcro cord. I would’ve liked something a little more high-tech looking if it was going to be the barrier between Revella’s laser blaster and my flesh. This thing didn’t even tell the time.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“Just stay behind me. Activate the deflector field generator if things get hairy.”

“This thing better work.”

Lannon rose and pushed open the front door, letting it swing wide before stepping through the entryway.

I followed, shadowing his movements to stay close behind.

Lannon sauntered down the front steps. Revella had climbed out of her van and advanced to meet us. She stopped about ten yards away.

They squared off like two outlaws before a gunfight. I stood awkwardly behind Lannon’s frame, peering over his shoulder.

“I should’ve known it was you messing with our operation,” she said, addressing Lannon.

He sneered at her.

“‘Operation’ is a nice way to describe murder.”

“I’m sorry about what happened, but it was a necessary harm. Joining a terrorist organization isn’t going to solve anything.”

Revella put her hand on her hip, fingers inches away from the gun at her side. She didn’t make a move for it, but she let her digits brush the holster of her weapon like tentacles of a jellyfish. Ready to sting at a moment’s notice.

Lannon had also stowed his weapon inside his jacket pocket. He looped his thumb over the lip of fabric and let his hand hang loose.

I half-expected a ball of tumbleweed to roll between them.

“And you?” Revella demanded, turning to me. “You tried to kill one of my men and now you’re running with him?”

I felt more confident addressing her from behind Lannon.

“He was the one who kidnapped and tortured me,” I insisted. “I hope he’s okay. For what it’s worth.”

“He’ll be fine. Eventually. Kase hooked him up to our life support machine and brought him back to Earth three alpha for treatment.”

I nodded. It was a small relief not to have that on my conscience.

“Well, considering Lannon wants to catch this demon without killing my mom, I’d say it makes lots of sense that I’m running with him.”

Revella stared down Lannon.

“Give up your little charade. Why don’t you tell her why you’re really here?”

Lannon shrugged, unbothered.

“She knows my history. Dr. Parsons is just doing what anyone with a conscience would do in this situation.”

Revella stared at me, aghast.

“You know what this man is willing to risk, and you’re still taking his side?”

Well, it sounded like a radish demon infestation was pretty dangerous, but I wasn’t going to sacrifice my mother’s life if it was possible to catch this thing without hurting her.

“You broke into my lab, shot my intern, and tried to beat information out of me,” I said. “I think that means you’re not allowed to play the good guy card.”

Man, having Lannon to hide behind really empowered me to speak my mind.

Revella looked disappointed.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Interdimensional Response Teams are not ‘bad guys.’ We’re surgeons. We go in, we make a quick maneuver to remove the diseased tissue, and we move out, leaving the body as intact as we can. We want to disrupt your world as little as possible.”

“That’s nice, except for that fact that my mom counts as disease to you, apparently.”

“Even the best surgeons need to cut some healthy tissue to get to the unhealthy parts.”

“I don’t like this analogy.”

“Well then chew on this. Perhaps you should consider that your Earth has something close to eight billion people living on it. You’re being awfully selfish to play with all their lives like this.”

I felt a strange kind of rage bubbling up within me when I considered how easily this woman had decided it was necessary to kill my mother.

“Maybe you should just be better at your job. You’ve got all this training and technology, and you still can’t catch one radish demon without killing innocent bystanders?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe I don’t, but if you wanted to have a civil conversation, maybe you shouldn’t have kidnapped me.”

Revella looked pissed.

I wondered if I’d overstepped a bit.

Lannon took over.

“Why don’t you let us take care of this demon? You go home before anyone else gets hurt.”

“You know I can’t leave you alone on an un-integrated Earth. You’re a wanted criminal.”

Lannon’s fingers curled around the fabric of his pocket, bringing his gun just a smidge closer to his grasp.

“Well, there’s two of us and only one of you. I don’t think you have many choices right now.”

I eyed the button on my new watch.

“My body shield is an eighth-generation professional-grade model,” Revella said. “My gun has double the kinetic power of anything on the market. I don’t think you want to test your gear against mine.”

Well, when she put it that way, I wasn’t crazy about our odds either.

Lannon also seemed to be having doubts about our chances in a gunfight.

“Drop your weapons,” Revella commanded. “If you come peacefully and give us some names, you’ll be free after just five or ten years of prison time. Ms. Parsons, you might be able to avoid legal trouble entirely if you surrender.”

I was under arrest, too? I hadn’t even done anything.

Lannon seemed to have a similar threshold for bullshit.

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

He turned to glance back at me.

“When I say ‘now’, I want you to press the button.”

“What are you planning?” Revella demanded.

Instead of answering, Lannon turned his back to her and pressed a button on one of his watches. He threw off his jacket as a pair of silver wings snapped out from a small backpack. Lannon grabbed my shoulders and spun me around, wrapping his arms around my midsection and pulling my backside tight against his body. With his augmented strength, the wind was knocked out of me as his biceps constricted around my abdomen. God damn, these people were strong. I kept forgetting that.

“Gollonwalker!” Revella shouted at Lannon.

I saw a blast of laser light skim over our heads and punch a scorching hole through the wall of my mother’s house.

“Now!” Lannon shouted at me as a roaring whine began to drown out all other noise.

I slammed the button on my watch, and a ring of translucent blue light pulsated from the box. The ring radiated outward, eventually fading away after growing to a diameter of five feet or so. By the time the first ring had dissipated, another had pulsed outward from the generator. In this fashion, the rings of light formed a glowing shield attached to my forearm.

While this was happening, small turbines at the edges of Lannon’s wings and in his shoes began compressing air with a high-pitched scream. We were blasted skyward.

Lannon squeezed me so tightly that I feared my organs would be bruised, although I certainly preferred that to slipping from his grip.

The lawn of my mother’s house was sucked away. Black spots twinkled on the edges of my vision like TV static as acceleration pulled all the blood to my feet. Revella, still on the ground, aimed her gun at us.

“Deflector!” Lannon shouted over the whine of the engines.

I angled my forearm toward the ground, placing the deflector field between Revella and us.

Two laser blasts missed us, but a third one headed for my legs was caught by the deflector field and spat away at a ninety-degree angle, vanishing into the horizon.

Lannon guided us upward in an arc, halting our descent once Revella was just an ant on the lawn below.

She didn’t follow us.

We soared over streets and neighborhoods. I focused on breathing while Lannon’s iron grasp held me secured against his body.

We didn’t speak. It was hard to yell over the engines. The atmosphere whistling past would’ve snapped up my words anyways. I pressed the button on my watch, and the deflector field faded away.

It was difficult to tell our speed. I estimated that we were moving at a similar pace as the cars on the highway. I waved at an elderly couple I saw staring at us in awe. They didn’t wave back. Understandable, given the situation.

Once we’d left my mother’s house far behind us, Lannon descended.

He dropped us down to earth on a soccer field at a local park. The trimmed grass made for an easy target from the sky.

As our feet touched the ground, he released me. I sucked in a greedy breath of air and relished the joy of packed soil pressing against my soles.

“Holy shit,” was all I managed.

“Good job with that deflector field,” Lannon said.

“Why couldn’t she follow us?”

“Revella wouldn’t have brought a flight pack with her on this mission. It’s bulky, and everyone can see you from the air. The opposite of what you want when you’re trying to be discrete.”

“Yeah. A lot of people probably just saw us.”

Lannon winked.

“Congrats. You’re guaranteed to make the news tomorrow. It’s okay, though. I don’t think this Earth has cameras powerful enough to identify you from the altitude we were flying.

Great. I’d always wanted to be a UFO.

“So now what? I assume Revella can still track us with her neutrino scanner.”

Lannon pressed a button, and his wings retracted into their backpack.

“She doesn’t need to track you anymore,” he said. “Now that she knows the demon’s imprinted on your mom, that’s where she’s going to go.”

“But we don’t know where my mom is.”

“Not yet. But I guarantee you, Revella’s trying to track her down right now. We need to do the same.”

He pulled out a smartphone-looking device from his pocket and began typing commands.

“Wait,” I said. “I need to see my husband and daughter first. I need to let them know what’s going on.”

Lannon hummed doubtfully.

“I don’t know if we have time for that. Every hour counts right now.”

I put my foot down.

“I need to see them. I think we’re a few miles north of Glemridge, so we shouldn’t be too far from the motel where they’re staying.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes. It’ll only be an hour. And you can work on tracking my mom in the meantime. We just need to catch a ride to the Cedar Way Motel.”

I patted my pockets before forgetting I’d lost my phone.

“Can you call us a taxi or a rideshare?” I asked.

“We don’t have time for that. Plus, we’re going to need a car if we’re going demon hunting.”

He took off at a jog toward the parking lot of the soccer field.

“Come on.”

I hurried after him. Even Lannon’s jog was superhuman. He trod effortlessly across the manicured grass. I sprinted to keep up, wishing I’d agreed to work out with Jack more often.

Spending all day typing into a computer was not conducive to all the running, fighting, and trying not to wet my pants that I’d been doing today.

Lannon flagged down a stranger who was climbing out of their car. A four-child SUV with lawn chairs loaded into the trunk.

“We’re buying your car,” he said to the bewildered soccer mom.

“What?”

He reached into one of his pants pockets and withdrew a few wads of hundred-dollar bills, stuffing them into the woman’s hands. He topped those off with a handful of small gold coins.

“That should cover it.”

“But my…”

Lannon showed her his gun.

“We’re buying this car,” he said, voice hardening. “Got it?”

She swallowed, handing him the keys.

“Okay.”

Lannon looked over at me.

“Dr. Parsons, you drive. I’ll work on tracking while we’re on the road.”

He tossed me the keys. I fumbled the catch but managed to snag them before they dropped to the concrete.

“Sorry,” I mouthed to the stunned woman as I climbed into the front seat. Lannon joined me, and we peeled out of the lot. According to his GPS, the Cedar Way Motel was just over twenty-five minutes away.

I tried to cut it down to twenty.

“You can call me Laura, by the way,” I said.

Lannon looked up from the smartphone-like device he was fiddling with.

“Huh?”

“You keep calling me Dr. Parsons. Nobody calls me that except the interns in the lab. Laura is just fine.”

“Thanks, Laura.”

I chewed my lip, deciding exactly how I wanted to word my next question.

“Revella said you joined a terrorist organization. What did she mean?”

Lannon pressed a few more buttons on his device.

“I thought you might pick up on that. She calls us a terrorist group. I think of it more as a liberation force.”

I didn’t respond, opening up the conversation for him to elaborate.

“After Revella killed my brother, and I escaped Earth twenty-seven delta, I found other people like me. People who disagreed with the way the United Earth Republic conducts business. We’ve devoted ourselves to protecting innocent Earths from the cruel methods used by Revella and other agents of the Republic. So yeah, she may call us a terror group, but really, we’re just trying to protect people who can’t protect themselves.”

“How many of you are there?”

“A few thousand.”

“That’s a lot.”

“Not when you consider how many people live in the connected multiverse. We’re quite small, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make a big difference.”

I nodded.

“I appreciate you risking your life to help protect my mom.”

“Don’t mention it. If we can kill this radish demon and keep your mom safe from Revella, your story will be a victory for all of MEAD.”

“That’s the name of your group? MEAD?”

“Multiverse Expansion And Democratization. Yeah.”

I nodded.

We kept driving. The highway was starting to swell with early afternoon traffic. Trucks and sedans gummed up the road, eating precious minutes that Revella could be using to get ahead of us. It was too late to back out at this point. I couldn’t leave Jack in the dark any longer. I’d committed to losing a slight advantage to make sure my husband was in the loop and armed with enough knowledge to keep himself and Violet safe.

Lannon tried calling my mother one last time while we drove. Still nothing.

I finally pulled up to the Cedar Way Motel with a squeal. It was one of those places that popped up every few miles down the interstate. A few rooms. A sign with fossilized letters. And a general sense of permanence. Like this place would still be serving dirt-flavored coffee in the lobby five hundred years from now.

Lannon and I hurried out of the car and found the room Jack had rented.

I knocked on the door, and my husband opened it in seconds.

“Laura.”

He rushed forward and squeezed me in a bear hug. Again, the wind was knocked out of my chest.

“You’re okay,” he breathed.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry for scaring you.”

He pulled away and examined me.

“You’re covered in blood!”

I examined the congealed splashes on my arms that hadn’t washed away with a quick scrub. Stains from my fight with Magrue.

“It’s not mine. I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

I exhaled a bitter chuckle.

“It’s a long story.”