Mom’s words fell to the carpet, the bass from 2B thumping softly like the only real thing in the world.

What the fuck did she just say? I scanned her face for signs of a smile creeping up to betray her, a twitch of the eye, anything. But she only stared back impassively, humorless as an empty backpack when homework’s due.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“That dumpster you found the game system in? It’s a portal. You and I came through one like it when you were little and we fled to this world. I’ve been working low-profile jobs and looking over my shoulder ever since, dreading the day Otokotronics finds us.” She kneaded her thighs, the guilt practically sheeting off her now.

I tilted my head this way and that, my chest tingling. Portals from other worlds … inside dumpsters? Seriously? You couldn’t make this shit up. “I’m sorry, this is … Have you been hitting the Chardonnay?”

“I know this is all a little much to take in.” She laced her fingers, pleading. “Ko, please.”

I waved my hands. “A little much to take in? Jesus, Mom. You can’t just casually drop, Oh by the way we’re all from another world. What in the actual fuck.” This was more than Mom’s usual paranoia, like taking me to her book club pharmacist friend when I was sick instead of an actual doctor. Or refusing to fly because of the security screening machines. No, this was some next-level delusion. Did I need to worry about her?

Her shoulders tensed. “Please, just listen. You asked how we’re able to stay out of Otokotronics’ reach. These portals between worlds form randomly every fifteen years or so. Super rare. Natural phenomena as far as anyone knows. You and I transited through the last one almost fifteen years ago to escape Otokotronics. But a new portal formed last week, and we’re no longer safe.”

I sagged back into the futon, my hands open in my lap. Another world? Why couldn’t I secretly be from Canada? “If Otokotronics is really from some other wo—” Just saying that made me gag. If there was any truth to what Mom was saying, why had she kept it from me for so long? But no, I couldn’t entertain this.

Mom patiently regarded me from her chair.

She wasn’t joking. Why wasn’t she joking? I looked over the room in a new light. Our homely media center, the slumping futon, Mom’s reading chair. All the artifacts of our life. Except those robots didn’t seem like they were from … around here. “Another world? Really?”

Color returned to her fingers. “Really.”

“What does that mean?” Was it … like ours? Or completely different, with robots connected to game systems and other crazy shit? I didn’t even know where to begin.

Mom leaned back in her chair, eyeing her watch. “Don’t worry, we’re not aliens or anything. It’s a parallel Earth with a divergent history. A lot like this world, only … more so. More people. More technology. Better gyoza. The same problems, though. The climate was pretty out of control when we left.”

Even with my feet flat on the carpet, I could’ve sworn the floor was slanting away. “Like … how out of control?”

“Like, our landlord had to cut down the drought-ravaged trees around our house so they wouldn’t fall into our living room. Like, I couldn’t take you outside without breathing assistance half the year due to wildfire smoke. All of this while corporations fought over portals to uninhabited worlds for the water rights.”

Jeez. It sounded like some futuristic hellscape. And yet, disturbingly familiar. “So is my dead twin with the regrettable haircut … the version of me from the other world? Or this one?”

Mom scoffed. “It doesn’t work that way. The two worlds diverged long enough ago to preclude present-day doubles. You won’t be getting any hot stock tips from the other side.”

“You’re telling me this other world is—what?—a big secret here?”

“Just as this world is over there.” Mom gave a weary shrug. “Moneyed interests like it that way.” She glanced at her wrist again.

“You got somewhere to be?”

“My LYPD contact had to push back our meeting. Last I heard, he got roped into a shooting investigation near Washington Park.”

My cheeks burned. “Ah.”

“We were planning to discuss Otokotronics. But I’m going to stay here with you, make sure you’re alright.”

Mom was talking about escaping from another world, hiding from her former employer, and now she wanted to hunker down and wait for trouble to come to us? “We’re staying? After everything you’ve told me?”

She huffed. “I’ve triple-checked the console for trackers. I’ll talk to my contact in the morning.”

“Who is he?”

“His name’s John. From book club.” She crossed her legs, smoothing her tee. “But I know him originally from the Otokotronics employee union.”

Maybe this friend knew something about Beard Dude or Ko Prime—or this other world Mom was on about. Maybe he could convince her of the imminent danger. At the very least, we’d get out of the house so we weren’t sitting ducks. I met her gaze. “You can keep your meeting with this John guy. I’m coming with you. And to be clear, I’m not saying I believe all this. I just don’t want any more fricking secrets.”

“No. You need to let me work through this.”

Anger bubbled in my veins. Here Mom was treating me like a child as per usual. The only way she’d change her tune is if I forced the issue.

I steadied my breathing. “If you won’t leave town, then I will. Find somewhere safe to stay on my own until this is over. Matt can drive me. He has an uncle in Modesto.” I wasn’t bluffing, even if I hadn’t exactly consulted Matt. Getting murdered in bed wasn’t on my fall bucket list.

Mom rose, panic in her eyes. “Absolutely not! Matt is a good kid, but he’s not equipped to keep you safe. I can only protect you if you’re with me.”

“Then bring me to this meeting. Let me hear what we’re up against.” I wasn’t proud of the thrill I got at her dismay. At me holding the cards for once.

She searched my face. “I really don’t appreciate being threatened.”

My guilt swelled, but I shoved it away. “Let’s just talk to this John dude, okay?”

She massaged her temples, finally shaking her head. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re taking a sweater.”

#

It was almost eleven, and I couldn’t decide what was weirder. That my mother was driving me to meet her secret cop friend from another world—or that it was happening so long after her bedtime.

My cheek was pressed against the passenger window of her jellybean-shaped minivan, a halo of fogged glass around my head. The lights of Las Yerbas streamed past, a whirring constellation of colors untouched by my EMP. They were different now. Dimmer, more sinister. Out in the darkness, there lurked armed robots and shadowy megacorporations. Oh, and dumpster portals leading to other worlds—one of which I’d come from.

It almost made sense. Matt and I had wondered how the dumpster trash had vanished mid-gunfight. Maybe the whole magic trash wormhole idea wasn’t as bananas as it sounded. It might even have explained where Ko Prime’s body had gone days earlier. I mean, it wasn’t much crazier than real-life robots operated via game controller.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Street lights pulsed against Mom’s beat-up leather jacket, the one she always wore to book club. The arc of her jaw was fixed, the gray around her bun glinting in the low light.

My fingernails dug into my own jacket, the one I’d thrown on instead of a stupid sweater. Mom had hidden so much from me for so long. She’d probably wanted me under her thumb at home, dutifully doing homework. There was this whole side to her I knew nothing about, like a Mom-shaped stranger lived in our apartment. “Is Janice Scanlan even your real name?”

A neon sign flashed against her frowning profile. The tick-tick-tick of the turn signal filled the van as we swung onto Arroyo. “It is now.”

As we drove, I peppered Mom with questions about this Otokotronics company from the other world. Apparently when she worked there years ago, she found a document some executive sent to the wrong printer—laying out a secret plan for management to come to this world. I guess to escape a DOJ criminal probe or something. And on their way out, Otokotronics was going to wipe out their employee union so they wouldn’t interfere.

I could tell from the tremble in Mom’s voice she was still freaked out about it. She said Otokotronics needed the Talisman microchip to remotely control bots and murder the union members with them. So with the feds moving too slowly, Mom and the union resorted to stealing the Talisman to save themselves.

I chewed on that as we sped past empty intersections and darkened strip malls. My conclusion: It was all pretty fucked up. “But why did they need bots to take out the union?”

“We were the labor. They couldn’t run factories without us, much less put down an employee revolt. But if they took remote control of armed robots via the Talisman—a unique master key the bots had been keyed to at manufacture—well … The execs could do anything. Forcibly stop us from squealing to the feds, for instance. But only with that original Talisman.”

“So why is it floating around Las Yerbas now?”

She smacked the wheel. “Because we failed. We didn’t extract it. We only escaped with our lives because we fled to this world using a portal in Otokotronics R&D. I didn’t fully appreciate the risks, and not all of us made it. Your father—” Her voice cracked in two like a dry branch.

Mom’s anguish seeped through me. She almost never talked about Dad. He was this mythical figure I only saw in glimpses, making me long to learn about him all the more.

When she met my gaze, her eyes were misty. “Your father stayed behind to close the portal using Otokotronics’ equipment. Permanently. I couldn’t protect him, and I have to live with that every day.” She pushed back a lock of hair. “This is why we need to stick together, Ko. It’s just the two of us now.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, a shiver flitting down my spine. Dad was locked away forever in another world. I couldn’t leave town without Mom, could I? But we also couldn’t stay.

She eased off the gas. “Someone—I can only hope it was your father—must’ve succeeded at stealing the Talisman all those years ago and kept it hidden on the other side. Because Otokotronics never migrated to this world despite mounting prosecutions in theirs. They knew we’d be waiting here to turn them in.”

I squeezed my seat belt. Through my baseline anger at Mom keeping secrets, my heart ached at her having to sit on this all these years. At both of us losing Dad. “And now the Talisman has surfaced in this world. If Otokotronics gets it back …”

“Exactly,” she said, heat in her eyes. “Forget the bearded man and the advance team already here, the handful of bots they can control without the Talisman. If Otokotronics finds it, they’ll also take control of thousands of other bots already in this world. They will find us, and they will kill us. We’re a threat to their migration staying secret. We know too much.”

This was the reason for Mom’s long-standing paranoia. “But how do you even know it’s here?”

“My LYPD contact has a source on the other side who said the girl transited to this world carrying the Talisman. Unclear where she got it. But lo and behold, you find her dead in a dumpster.”

“Only without any Talisman.”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out—where it went.” Mom frowned. “The portal cycle peaks Sunday night, the best opportunity for successful transits in fifteen years. Afterwards, it gets increasingly unsafe. Otokotronics is already sending consoles and equipment through the dumpster in preparation. If they’re going to risk transiting to this world, it’ll be on Sunday.”

The van was suddenly sweltering. “So we have to find the Talisman before then.”

She nodded gravely. “We have a fighting chance against the few bots they already control here. But we can’t deal with thousands. The only way to outrun Otokotronics is to stop them from coming en masse.” She gave me a knowing look. “Here. In Las Yerbas.”

I shoved my quivering hands into my hoodie’s pockets. If this was true, we really couldn’t run from an interdimensional megacorp with murder bots; these didn’t seem like the kind to keep diaries. How could we possibly find the Talisman first?

It was starting to sound like Ko Prime was at the center of this. Maybe she was transporting the Talisman as Mom said—when someone killed her for it. Like that bearded dude with the Oakleys, glowing gun, and athleisure outfit. Even if everyone thought Garrett had taken the Talisman from her.

My stomach rumbled audibly. Had I even eaten dinner? “Mom, do you have any food?”

“Granola bar.” She eyed her mirrors again. “In my purse. Outer pocket.”

“Found it.” I yanked back the wrapper, ravenous.

“I always keep one in there. You never know. Got some hand wipes too. You need a hand wipe?”

“I’m good,” I said, my mouth full. Crumbs rained onto my lap.

She pulled to the curb outside an Irish pub, a sign reading The Worldly Hen with a strutting chicken in garish colors. But what caught my eye was the thrift store next door, all boarded up. Last time I’d been inside it’d been packed. Odd.

Mom eyeballed her lipstick in a mirror and rifled around in her purse. “Where did I put it?”

“I said I don’t need any wipes.” The only thing that’d help at this point was a vacuum with a crevice tool.

She continued digging.

“Mom, seriously. I’m good.”

“Ah, there it is,” she said, withdrawing a smooth, ceramic handgun.

I stopped mid-chew.

She pressed a notch on the side, her mouth twitching up. The barrel lit with a diffuse amber glow. “No more secrets, right?”

My jaw fell. This night just kept getting weirder. And yet, after everything today, I was all out of surprise. Empty. My mother had a gun direct from the set of the same low-budget sci-fi show where Bearded Athleisure Guy got his. I definitely would’ve remembered if she’d ever showed that to me at the range. It had the sleek shape of a standard pistol, only made of tan stone and putting out light from the muzzle. And, like Beard Guy’s weapon, this one didn’t look like it had a stun setting.

I wet my lips. “W-What is that?”

Mom’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, this ol’ thing? Just an Iriguchi P44 Anti-Robot Hand Cannon. They don’t make them anymore. You can think of it as a railgun. Basically, a projectile is accelerated via—”

“I know what a railgun is, Mom.” Although in most of the books I’d read, it’d been mounted to a spaceship. “Where’s the rail?”

“Elsewhere. Once sufficiently accelerated, the projectile appears within this gun and exits the muzzle.”

Woah. “Appears, like things appeared in that dumpster? It has a portal?”

“Very good.” She smiled. “The bots and consoles have even smaller ones, only good for communication, paired on the fly. They’re actually mined from rocks, unlike the unstable dumpster-sized ones.”

I thumbed a metal button on my jean jacket, wiggling it like a loose tooth. This kind of boggled the mind. “What was the game system actually designed to do?”

Mom pushed open her door, the thrum of cars spilling in. “Pilot robots across portals where humans can’t easily transit. To explore uninhabited worlds, initially for gaming. More recently though, the market has … shifted.” She pocketed the weapon and stepped from the van.

My mother was armed with a railgun. I shut my eyes, gathered myself, and slid out. The pub beckoned cheerily before us, bright casement windows bleeding into the night. Mom knew perfectly well I’d never get into a bar.

She caught my expression. “Just stick with me.”

Maybe I could stay here in town, help find this Talisman, keep Otokotronics from coming for us with more killer bots. It’d let Mom feel like she was keeping an eye on me. But then Matt and I could also do a little investigation of Ko Prime on the side in case that turned up any Talisman clues. Sorta the best of both worlds, right?

Mom breezed past the bouncer, a weight apparent in one pocket of his bomber jacket. I trailed behind, agape. Inside, the pub shone with hanging lamps and lacquered wood, just like in the old country I guess. Mom finger-gunned the barback, nodding at half a dozen faces as we strode in, men and women around her age. Many white, but Black and Hispanic too. Boots and denim, tattoos and piercings, a squarely working-class crowd. Voices stilled as we approached, hard stares making me shrink into my jacket. The barback saluted with his soda gun.

What was this place? “Is this where you’ve been going all these years when you said you were at book club?”

“Well, yes.” She shot me a smile. “But they also have a book club.”

“Is everyone … from the other world?”

“From the union, mostly. We started meeting regularly once portal activity picked up a couple weeks ago.” She led me to a table in the back where a man with a flannel shirt and athletic build huddled. He cocked his head, listening as we drew near.

“John, there’s someone I want you to meet.” Mom laid a hand on his shoulder. “This is my daughter, Ko.”

His gaunt face turned toward us, a tumbler to his lips.

A chill came over me when I saw who it was—Officer fucking Laramee, the human cop from that alley, his neat street clothes worn like a uniform.