Matteo froze when he saw the contact ID.

The message was from his neighbor, Eli.

Good to hear from you. Alex and Naomi are safe. We are taking care of each other. It’s a big mess over here, but we are okay. Power’s out, but Jacques has that generator. Red Cross set up a solar station, but it’s busy. We take turns charging stuff. Network comes in and out. They’ve been dropping food and water, too, and the army’s doing patrols. Police, too. There’s some stuff happening. Been hearing weird stories. Marlene swears she saw some kind of demon, but you know what she’s like. Hard to know what to believe. We’re playing it safe.

Some of your team came by asking after you.

Alex’s job hasn’t been open, and my workplace disappeared. So did one of the police stations. I saw that one. Got a buddy who was one of the patrollers when it went.

Alex is out right now. I’ll get her to send you a message. They’re talking about going to your father’s old place. He has some kinda off grid setup? A few of us are thinking of going with them.

Don’t worry about us here. We are okay.

Godspeed and good luck. I’ll get Alex to ping you.

–Eli

Relief coursed through him. Matteo sagged, letting out of breath. Beside him, Prince Nales cocked ahead in question.

“My family is safe,” he explained.

Understanding smoothed the prince’s face. Like Matteo, his shoulders relaxed.

Despite the ping, things were still quiet on the other side of the dimensional break. They were waiting for someone else, apparently. And wasn’t that just the damn theme of service? Hurry up and wait.

He eased himself back down. They’d stolen a few chairs from the dental office, which made the waiting more comfortable, anyway. The back of his eyes had begun to ache, mostly from the strain of accessing so much on his HUD. After barely using the thing for nearly a month, suddenly reading his way through massive amounts of reports, videos, feeds, and chatlogs was taking a toll.

The setting, however, provided a nice contrast.

Inside, his HUD was bristling with things for him to read and analyze. He’d downloaded so much in such a short time it felt like someone had taken a magnetic to his frontal lobe and stirred.

Outside, it was quiet. Eerie, yes, but peaceful. The night had deepened. No moon, yet, but a few stars scattered across the sky, dimmed by a slight haze. Millerville’s streetlights had come on, casting quiet glows throughout its dead streets. Closer, the campfire’s orange light cast a lively flicker over the immediate surroundings, the flames providing a hearty warmth to the cool air.

He faced away from it, toward the glowing slice of the dimensional break.

And beyond? Barely three feet of crumbling concrete, then darkness.

It felt like he was sitting on the edge of the world. And the void was singing with frogs and insects.

A silly notion, but he didn’t feel like switching on his night vision to disavow it.

He had too much to think about.

Somewhat less to worry about, however. Eli’s message had relieved… quite a lot. Both Alex and Naomi were safe. Eli was with them. They were okay.

Alex had a good head on her shoulders. By the sounds of things, getting out of town might be the better idea. Dad’s old homestead hadn’t been used in a few years, but she could figure it out. Especially if Eli went with them. And if they went now, they still had enough time to plant.

He hoped they took others with them. If demons were about… well, there was strength in numbers, and they knew more than a few retired soldiers who’d likely be looking to hole up somewhere.

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He could stop worrying about them for the moment.

Beside him, Nales had closed his eyes again, head tilted to listen to the occasional murmurs from the dimensional break.

They were still waiting, it appeared.

Matteo let out another breath, relaxed further into the chair, and began sorting through his downloads.

*****

It had been chaos over there, pure and simple. Hell, it still was chaos, but people’d had time to take stock and organize.

He sifted through dozens of video clips capturing the event on Earth. Like what he’d experienced, there’d been that light. Cameras captured it as a soundless blue-white glow, stupefyingly bright and rippling outwards until it vanished. It reminded him of timelapses of lightning seen from space.

Two of the videos showed something appearing in the middle of the glows. Others showed nothing at all.

Eight showed entire neighborhoods vanishing, replaced by completely different geology—and the stunned beings that came with it.

The world didn’t have nearly enough military or police to contain it all.

Like in this world, demons had come through on Earth, too. However, they had been in the minority. Instead, there’d been…

Well, there’d been a lot.

Aliens, apparently, were the main problem. That, and ‘doppelgangers’. That’s what they were calling people from the alternate versions of Earth. As far as he knew, only a few actual doppelgangers—identical replicas of the same person—had been found. They did exist, but most of these so-called ‘doppels’ didn’t have a local twin.

He supposed that made sense. Even if two worlds were extremely similar, there were simply too many variables to produce a bunch of the same people. If his grandfather hadn’t missed a bus and shared a table at an overcrowded cafe with a young lady, he would have never met his grandmother.

Just one missed bus, and Matteo wouldn’t have been born.

The doppels had provided a lot of information about what had probably caused this whole World Shift problem, though. He suspected the military had wanted to keep that under wraps, but there were too many people involved, and the world was in chaos.

There’d been no containing it.

According to one group of doppels—coming from an alternate Earth the government was classifying as ‘Earth 1.1’—a brilliant, celebrated scientist had theorized about travel to other dimensions. He’d been building a gateway. It had been a big event, televised around the world, like New Years in New York, with everyone counting down until the ball dropped.

He’d watched the clip several times now. There it had been, a circular gate standing in the middle of San Francisco bay, the Golden Gate behind it.

The countdown finished, and the gate had activated.

For a second, a mercurial film had rippled across. Bright and glowing, like something out of a science fiction show.

Then, it had exploded.

The clip ended with a very familiar flash of blue-white.

They’d acquired it from a doppel’s occular implant, apparently.

Now, everyone was picking up the pieces.

The scientist, a man named Newton, was naturally nowhere to be found. Not in his world, and not in Matteo’s, either. Rumor had it he was in hiding. Matteo didn’t blame him. Given the shit show the dude was facing, it was the logical thing to do.

He ground his teeth, a sour taste filling his mouth.

He’d like to lock the guy in a room with Catrin. Just for five minutes.

It might not change anything, but it’d make him feel better.

God. Just one guy—one mad scientist’s bad decision—and he’d thrown hundreds, probably thousands, of worlds into complete and utter chaos.

When he told the others, they had similar reactions.

“Just one person caused this?” Doneil said, his tone of shocked disbelief. “One human?”

“Why not?” Catrin said, baring her teeth in an angry grimace. “One human sealed a world off from this one. Historically, they’re capable of it.”

“That wasn’t a human. That was a demon. Or accomplished using demon magic, at least.” Doneil glanced to Prince Nales. “Apologies, Your Highness.”

Nales didn’t appear to have heard him. The man looked like thoughtful murder.

“Maybe this human and that one are related,” Catrin said. “One of these… ‘doppelgangers.’”

The word sounded odd coming from her mouth. From what his translator app had discovered, Janessi, their trade language, was some sort of Slavic patois. Having a Germanic word come from her lips—it made it sound closer to English.

He nearly rolled his eyes at the thought.

Doppelganger is an English word, Matteo. A loan word from German, but still absolutely English, so of course it will sound like she’s speaking English—because she is.

Gods. His head was spinning.

“Got any otherworldly relatives, Your Highness?” Doneil asked.

“None I’m aware of,” Nales said, proving he had been listening. His upper lip curled back, mirroring Catrin’s grimace. “If I do, I would love to have a chat with them.”

Matteo smiled.

Then, he realized he was understanding them.

Holy shit! The translation app he’d downloaded was actually working. Hallelujah!

The exact words were coming across as stilted and janky, the app filling in the blanks like broken subtitles across the bottom of his field of view. He’d been reading them nearly subconsciously, used to checking the bottom translation by now.

And it’d only get better with time.

Yes!

He still needed to keep figuring out how to say the words, though. Without fluency, direct attempts to speak what the HUD provided him usually sounded like a first grader attempting to read.

A massive step forward, however.

As the group continued to discuss the Event, another ping hit his HUD, sounding more official than the last one.

Dropping out of the conversation, he leaned back in his chair, making sure he had the full signal for the incoming message.

Sergeant, it said. Here are your new orders.