“You shot Michael!” my mother shouted, finally gaining enough wherewithal to dig in her heels and prevent me from dragging her away from the farmhouse.

“He’s not who you think he is!” I insisted. “He’s dangerous!”

“What are you talking about!”

She ripped her arm away from my grasp.

“Mom, we need to get out of here. We can talk later.”

“I need to see what that explosion was.”

“No. You don’t. It’s dangerous.”

But she was already hurrying back to the house, moving at a half-walk, half-jog. Her already unsteady gait destabilized further by the soil quivering underneath our feet.

“Mom!”

I deactivated the deflector field generator and ran after her.

“You’ve got to get away! There’s about to be a gunfight outside.”

She pushed the back door open.

“Michael!” she shouted.

There wasn’t an answer. I heard another crash from Lannon’s direction.

I caught up and peered over her shoulder at the living room.

A huge crate of radishes sat next to the crackling fireplace. Discarded stems from freshly eaten bulbs lay in a pile beside the crate. And a pair of shiny red eggs were stuck to the wall near the fire, soaking up the heat as they incubated.

I shot them both with my handgun, splattering nutrient-rich goop all over the floor.

“Laura!” my mother shouted.

“Look!” I exclaimed, pointing at the cracked eggs. “See what he’s been doing? That’s not natural.”

“Those were his art project!”

I stared at her with newfound disappointment.

“Are you kidding me? His art project? Mom, open your eyes. This is not normal behavior.”

“So what?”

“Michael is dangerous. He’s been using you. I’m here to get you somewhere safe.”

“Laura, I know you’re upset about yesterday, but you’re talking crazy.”

The earth shook beneath us. I lurched forward, putting a hand on the wall for stability.

“Look!” I insisted, pointing at the window that overlooked the main road.

We approached, and I swore.

The SUV was on fire. Lannon was on the ground several yards away. He was covered in blood and curled up underneath some kind of shimmering dome. A last-ditch force field.

Revella was here.

Perched in a tree across the road, she was raining down a barrage of laser blasts at Michael. They were passing through him like he wasn’t there.

The holographic projection of Michael vanished, dissolving into nothing.

The earth underneath Revella’s tree rippled and splashed like crests on a turbulent coast. The trunk of the oaken behemoth snapped under the strain from invisible hands. The whole mess of leaves and branches swung down across the road like the crossbar of a railroad crossing.

Revella leapt from her perch, descending a few stories through the air and solidly on her feet, body shield sparking bright around her boots as it absorbed her impact with the earth.

The falling tree splashed into the rippling gravel, sending rocks and soil flying. Again, the earth rumbled beneath us.

The real Michael emerged from the shadows. The dirt roiled and squirmed beneath his feet.

“Michael?” my mother murmured, confused.

“See,” I whispered. “We need to get out of here.”

Revella was up on her feet in an instant, keeping a stream of laser fire on Michael. Tendrils of earth lashed upward before him, eating up the blasts of light before they could strike their target.

“Come on!” I tugged on her arm, but she was entranced by the scene outside.

Michael flew forward, running far faster than I’d seen Lannon or Revella move. Every stride extended like he was a sprinting ice-skater, moving like a knife over a stream of boiling earth.

Revella had just enough time to discharge a burst of electricity from her watch – the same device Magrue had used on me this morning. Tendrils snapped and arced in all directions, connecting with the burning SUV, the trees nearby, and Michael himself.

For once, the demon was stunned, if only for a second.

It was enough time for Revella to throw a handful of plastic balls, which snapped into a chain, connected by an electric current. The crackling cord spun toward Michael, who raised a hand and blotted out the electricity. The balls clattered into the gravel and were swallowed by the heaving soil.

A wave of muck and weeds crashed into Revella, knocking her away. Michael again lurched forward like a spring-loaded downhill skier, smashing into Lannon’s force field with the kind of impact that made dinosaurs go extinct.

My gut wrenched, but miraculously, the glowing dome held its ground.

I tugged my mother’s arm more forcefully.

“Mom, I want you to run away as fast as you can. I’ll catch up in a second. Okay?”

It seemed like I’d finally broken through. Her eyes connected with mine.

“Will you…”

“Go!”

She obeyed, hurrying out the back door.

I ran through the front.

Not my smartest move, in terms of self-preservation, but I needed to do something. As much as I enjoyed watching Revella get her ass handed to her, I couldn’t afford to let this thing injure Lannon any more than he already was.

Michael was pounding on Lannon’s protective dome like he was Mike Tyson. He was probably punching harder than Tyson ever could, too.

The dome was straining. I could see Michael’s fists gouging a little deeper into it with each strike, like he was sinking his fist into freshly kneaded dough. It wasn’t going to last much longer.

I crouched behind the waist-high garden fence, struggling to keep my footing under the bubbling dirt, and fired as many rounds at Michael as I could. I managed to shoot him in the back four or five times before he turned around.

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem that I’d hurt him at all.

His eyes met mine. They narrowed. He didn’t address me. The time for speaking was done.

Michael flew towards me like a rollercoaster over the part of the track with built-in accelerators.

I activated my deflector shield and braced myself. I hadn’t read the owner’s manual, but I recalled Lannon saying this thing could withstand a few laser shots before draining the battery. I wasn’t an engineer, but I didn’t think this device was certified for the kind of smackdown Michael was about to drop on me.

I held my breath, ready to get slammed with rib-shattering force through my shield, but a flash of red light struck Michael just before he bore down on me, knocking him sideways into the wall of the house. His flying frame punched a hole through the bricks to create an open-air kitchen.

I turned.

Revella cradled a long rifle in her arms. She discarded it and ran toward me, keeping a stream of blaster fire on Michael.

She was still a bitch, but I was grateful for her timing.

I took advantage of the distraction to run to Lannon. He was on his back, right hand over his upper left chest, where blood was still oozing. A pool of the stuff was soaking his shirt. It conjured an image of someone who’d poured way too much ketchup on their side of fries.

He saw me and pressed a button on the fob clenched in his other hand.

The dome vanished. I approached and knelt beside him as he reconstructed the barrier around us.

“What happened?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

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“Revella,” he grunted. “Set up a short-range teleporter and laid an ambush here. For us and for the demon.”

“What did she do to you?”

“Teleported in with a spearlight rifle and tried to kill me as soon as you left. Can’t believe she wasted an armor-piercing shot on me. Only reason I’m still alive is because she missed my head. She probably just took out a lung and some major vessels instead of my brain. I just barely got out of the car before she blew it up.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

He grimaced.

“I don’t know. The mesh over my lung is shot. Probably down at least one lobe. I’ve got my hemoglobin resuscitator on the most conservative setting to make it last longer, but I think I’m bleeding from my subclavian. The coagulators in my blood won’t be able to clot off a tear in a blood vessel that big. I’ve probably got an hour or two to make it to a life support machine before I run out of reserves.”

“We can do that. We can get you to a hospital.”

Outside our transparent igloo, the earth shook again. I glanced up to see that Revella was still engaged with Michael. She was running along the rooftop of the farmhouse while he brought the structure down, wall by wall, swallowing it with gaping bites of mud and clay.

Lannon sighed.

“I don’t think a hospital on this planet can get me what I need.”

“Why not?”

He lifted his hand to show me the injury. A hole the size of my fist was blasted through his chest. Only a tight wire mesh around his heart and lungs kept the organs moving. Shredded muscle and fragments of bone flailed as the writhing lung mesh fought to keep oxygenating his system with what remained of the organ.

I was too stunned to be disgusted.

“There has to be something we can do.”

“The only hope is for me to get to a life support machine. It sounds like Revella had at least one, which she used for the guy you beat up. Maybe she has another. If we can use her teleporter, we can get back to her base.”

“Where is it?”

Lannon pointed with his free hand.

“Behind the tree line. Somewhere over there.”

I nodded.

“I need your wings.”

“My flight suit?”

“Yeah.”

With a tremulous hand, he pressed a button on one of his watches, and the straps over his chest unlatched. He half-rolled onto his side, and I slipped the slim backpack out from underneath him. Some of the straps were obliterated by the laser blast. I would have to hope what remained of the harness was enough to secure the wings to my body.

I hurried to put on the watch and pack while Revella played cat-and-mouse with Michael. He still hadn’t discarded his human form. Clearly, he thought of her more as a nuisance than a threat.

I pulled off my shoes and put on Lannon’s. They were too big, but I could keep them secured to my feet if I pulled the laces as tight as they would allow.

I pressed the start button on the watch, and the wings snapped out to attention. Lannon dispelled his force field to let me lurch skyward as the shearing whine of the engines drowned out the sounds of fighting.

Michael looked my way, but decided Revella was more interesting, hurling her a dozen feet into the air with a geyser of dirt and watching her slam back into the rigid bed of gravel he assembled beneath her.

White sparks again showered off her body shield.

I hoped eight-generation professional-grade was strong enough to handle being thrown around like a plush toy in the jaws of a frenzied dog.

I soared over the house and skimmed over the field of crops. The flight suit was remarkably easy to control. Probably the AI smoothing out my movements and coordinating the thrust from the shoes and wingtips.

My mother had only covered a few hundred yards since I’d sent her running.

“Mom!” I shouted in warning before dropping behind her.

I stumbled to a landing, crushing a row of radish stalks underfoot. My mother turned to face me, and I stepped forward, closing the distance between us.

“Hold on!” I instructed, hugging her tightly as she wrapped her arms around me in turn.

I lofted us skyward, more gently this time.

My arms strained with the effort of holding my mother against me. I reclined in the air and flew backwards. We moved more slowly, but I could support some of my mother’s weight with my chest the way an otter carries its offspring while drifting backwards through the water.

This was, by far, the closest and tightest we’d embraced since before Dad had died.

It was very uncomfortable. And sweaty.

I was grateful for the scream of the micro jets drowning out any chance of conversation or reflection while we were in the air.

I carried us back over the tree line until I found what could only be the teleporter. A six-by-six-foot metal hexagon in the grass with a waist-high control panel mounted on the edge. I quickly descended and released my mother.

“Wait here,” I told her, taking off before she could slow me down with more questions.

I returned for Lannon, scooping him off the ground.

He roared in agony as he used his good arm to tightly grab my waist.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Ran out of analgesics,” he grunted.

“I’ll get you some pain meds soon,” I said. “We’re almost there.”

I took off again.

This time, Revella realized that Lannon was escaping.

Before we were twenty feet off the ground, she ripped off a spray of potshots our way. Her barrage was interrupted by Michael grabbing her leg in a fistful of white sparks and slamming her into a tree.

One of the shots tagged Lannon in the back. With no body shield left, it buried itself in what was probably one of his kidneys.

Lannon gasped and lost his grip, falling to the rumbling earth. He smacked into the ground with a sickening thud.

I hurried after him.

“I’m sorry! Are you okay?”

His teeth were chattering.

“No. Ugh. Fucking codknocker. No.”

His leg was obviously broken. And the smell of burst flesh was fresh on my nostrils.

“Can you still hold on?” I asked.

He grabbed my shirt in answer.

I put up my deflector shield and carried us upward again.

I looked toward the fight and realized I didn’t have to worry about Revella shooting us again.

Michael had discarded his human form.

A blood-and-charcoal figure towered over Revella. He was twice her height and slimy with interlocking scales. Still roughly humanoid in proportion with a grinning face perched atop a serpentine neck. He beamed at all three of us.

“Ah.”

His voice curdled with venom, cutting through the drone of my engines.

“Feels good to stretch my legs.”

The earth fissured and cracked beneath his feet. He waved a hand, and I was buffeted by an invisible force. The whine of my engines spluttered, and Lannon and I nearly plummeted into the trees, just barely cresting over the clawing branches.

We tumbled into the grass, landing near the teleporter.

Behind the trees, the fully-realized radish demon let out a satisfied roar.

“What is that?” my mother shouted at me.

“I’ll explain later. Lannon, we’ve got to go.”

I pushed myself to my feet. Lannon didn’t rise.

Uh oh.

I could see through the window Revella had cut in his chest that his heart and lungs were still working. He was just unconscious and continuing to water the grass with his blood.

I hooked my elbows under his armpits and dragged him the remaining dozen yards to the teleporter. I had no idea how to work this thing, but at least we were in position.

Before I could busy myself with the controls, Revella appeared, scrambling through the tree line. She froze when she saw the trio of us on her teleportation pad.

I glanced at Lannon and my mother.

Two people Revella wanted dead. And I knew she wasn’t crazy about me either.

I pulled my gun out and jammed it against the teleporter control panel.

“Don’t move!” I shouted. “Or you’re not getting out of here.”

“Are you crazy? We’re all going to die if we don’t evacuate right now.”

“You’re running away?”

“He’s too strong. And he got through my shield.”

She held up her right hand, and I saw that her fingers resembled a ball of spaghetti.

As nasty as the injury was, I was grateful. An injured Revella was an opponent I might be able to deal with. And if her body shield wasn’t working, we were on roughly equal ground.

“Drop your gun,” I ordered. “And empty your pockets.”

That probably didn’t cover all of her weapons and other tools, but I hoped it would offer some security.

“We don’t have time for this,” Revella said.

The massive trees behind her began to shake and sway. When I didn’t respond, she dropped her gun and spilled a garage sale worth of gadgets from her front pockets before approaching.

I didn’t stop her, but I did keep my gun trained on her.

“Laur…” a voice beside me began to speak.

“Mom, shut up.”

She did.

Revella stepped onto the pad with us.

“Can you get us out of here.”

She sighed.

“Yes.”

Lannon was stirring at my feet, digging deeper into his blood transfusion reserves to keep his brain oxygenated.

“Get us out of here,” he croaked.

Revella twisted a knob as the demon burst through the trees.

My mother screamed in terror at the sight of Michael as the world around our hexagon blinked and transformed.

In the same second, we were back inside the warehouse I’d been kidnapped to that morning. I recognized the square-plated tin ceiling. And the moldy smell.

My mother was still screaming from the sight of Michael’s true form. She choked off her cry as it echoed around the empty space.

My gun was still locked on Revella.

“We need a life support machine.”

“Sorry. Only had one, and I already had to use it, thanks to you.”

She shook her head.

“Isn’t irony sweet?”

“Then get us out of here,” Lannon grunted.

“We’re already back in Pendervale,” Revella said. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, get us off this Earth,” Lannon intoned through gritted teeth.

Revella laughed.

“Even if we did use the portal, you’d be arrested the second we landed anywhere in the connected multiverse. Your choices are to die here or spend the rest of your life in prison.”

“I won’t get arrested,” Lannon said. “Not where I’m taking us.”

Revella frowned, puzzling over what Lannon was saying.

“Take us to the portal,” he commanded.

I raised my gun to emphasize his point. Revella rolled her eyes.

“Alright, I’m excited to see how you plan to get past the security waiting at literally every portal in the multiverse.”

She stepped down from the teleporter platform and led me to a musty curtain that had been hung over the wall. She pulled down the curtain to reveal a pure black circle the height of the wall. I stared into it and sensed the light draining from the room as it was gently tugged into the void.

“There it is,” Revella said. “Not a bridge. Just the temporary thread we created to get to this Earth.”

My mother was helping Lannon limp across the floor to join us. In this case, the term “help” meant that Lannon was leaning his entire weight on her shoulders as she dragged him across the room, grimacing as blood seeped into her shirt.

“I know what this is,” Lannon grunted. “I snuck through it while you were away last Thursday.”

“You’re not in any place to gloat,” Revella warned.

“Just tell us how to get to an Earth with medical care,” I said, reorienting the conversation.

Revella removed a handheld device from a table beside the black hole.

“This is the spare, since you made me toss my original controller back at the farm.”

I shrugged.

“Good thing you planned ahead.”

She handed the controller to Lannon.

“I’m assuming you know how these things work. This portal is a temporary access point that jumps into this Earth off a major interdimensional bridge. If you know the coordinates, you can align the trajectory of this portal to any Earth connected on this bridge system.”

“Including Earth two hundred seventy-one kappa?”

“I think this bridge system connects most Earths in the two and three hundred range. So, yes.”

“Good.”

He entered the coordinates and handed the controller back to Revella.

Revella peered at the screen in his hands.

“This isn’t two hundred seventy-one kappa,” she said, confused. “Where are you going?”

“Me?” Lannon grinned through his agony. “You’re coming with us.”

I still held the gun at Revella’s head. She decided not to argue.

She pressed a button, and the portal opened. Swirling starlight appeared in the blackness, smearing along the walls of a tunnel. At the end, a bright pinhole of light awaited.

“The pathway’s been aligned,” she announced unenthusiastically.

“You first,” Lannon said, holding out a blood-drenched hand for the controller.

Revella handed it to him, and he jerked his head toward the portal, urging her to enter.

Revella gave him a middle finger with her uninjured hand and stepped into the portal. As soon as her foot crossed the vertical boundary, she was sucked in like swirling water down a drain.

Lannon looked me.

“Will you come? You’re going to need to gather reinforcements if you want to stand a chance against this demon. Plus, I told you I’d show you the multiverse.”

I was nervous, but he was right. Even Revella hadn’t stood a chance against Michael. I’d need Lannon’s help recruiting assistance to stop this thing before it started spreading.

“I’ll come.”

I added, “will moving my mom off this Earth have the same effect as killing her, in terms of weakening the demon?”

“Excuse me?” my mother said, alarmed. “Killing me?”

We ignored her.

“It should,” Lannon said.

“Okay. Mom, you’re coming with us, too.”

“Through there?”

“It’ll be like your vacation with Michael, but better.”

“What’s going on?”

“Will you just trust me? For once?”

A long pause.

“Okay.”

I helped support Lannon’s injured side, and together, the three of us stepped into the portal.