A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1) (10 page)

Mid-May, previously unexplored parallel
world, DEPOT designation L-78416K, corresponding Texas.

Monday morning, Liv walked through a drizzly alien version of Texas. R &
D had finished analyzing the pitch ball compounds from Fluffy Bunny World, and
T36 now carried wildfyre grenades on their belts. General Mace thought that
since they’d discovered the chemical, and Trent, with his weapons and
engineering expertise, had been instrumental in their development, they should
also be the first to test them.

Dr. Rettin, one of the research scientists, had assured Trent that the
casing was unbreakable. “They’re calling it wildfyre,” he had reported when he
briefed them on the weapon, “because it’s like the dragon wildfyre in
fairytales; completely destructive and unstoppable.”

“Great!” Ben had said, throwing one up in the air and catching it. “Press
the button, throw it far from your friends and neighbors, the unbreakable
casing pops open, and flambesto!”

“Think it will really work that way?” Connor had asked Trent.

He had responded, “I guess we’ll see.”

Now Liv fingered the “unbreakable” casing of one of the wildfyre grenades as
they explored. L-78416K was the complete opposite of Fluffy Bunny. This world
had obviously been inhabited by humans, since they walked on a paved road
between skyscrapers.

From a distance, the city had reminded Liv of New York; huge and sprawling
and packed with human infrastructure—high-rises and overpasses and sports
stadiums and bridges.

But close-to, everything was broken. Overpasses were collapsing, high-rises
were crumbling, and some of the buildings were just heaps of rubble. Windows
were blown out and glass chunks lay everywhere. Cracked slabs of concrete lay
amongst the hundreds of vehicles abandoned in the roads.

Liv couldn’t help but think of Necropolis.

“What do you think happened here?” Gin asked.

Ben said, “Hell of a party. Except I don’t think the participants made it
through alive.”

Connor said, “We’ll split into two teams and search the city. Liv and Jordan
with me. Trent, Gin, Ben, head south. We’ll meet back here in four hours.
Maintain radio contact, fifteen minute check-ins.”

Trent’s group headed off to the south, and Liv and Jordan followed Connor
north.

“Any thoughts, you two?” Connor asked.

“This damage is far too extensive to be natural,” Jordan said. “I’m thinking
world war, missile launch, sabotage by a rival nation.”

Liv nodded. “We did see that faint trace of alpha radiation on arrival. It
could be from a quickly decaying radioactive isotope. Advanced, relatively safe
nuclear weapons,” she said to Connor’s blank look.

“Right. No danger for us?”

“Not unless you plan to move in.”

“Not likely,” Connor said. “All right. Standard grid search.”

Jordan and Liv spread out, looking through empty windows and doorways. In
most cases, the rubble was more extensive inside the buildings, but they saw
little structural damage.

“Con,” Jordan said, “These buildings look safe enough to enter. I think
there are probably people here, but we’ll never find them unless we look a lot
closer.”

“What makes you think anybody’s here?” Connor asked.

Jordan pointed at a scuff mark in the dust of a doorway. “Boot prints.
They’re not very old, maybe a couple of weeks.”

Connor came over to take a look. “They could be boot prints, I guess. If you
squint and hold out your hand so you can’t really see them.”

Jordan sighed.

“Hey, you’re inarguably the best tracker I’ve ever met. If you say they’re
boot prints, then they are by damn boot prints. I just wish you’d tell me where
you got so good.”

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah,” Connor said, at the same time Liv said, “Yes.”

“My father is an archeologist. He took us to a dig in Australia for two
years when I was eight. My mother is a sociologist and decided to study the
nearby Muruwari bushmen. We lived with them, and one of them taught me.”

“Really?” Connor asked. “I always thought it would be something more
exotic.”

Liv laughed. “That’s not exotic enough for you?”

“Lead the way, Bushman.” Connor swept his arm toward the doorway.

“See, this is why I didn’t tell you.”

Connor smiled. “No, it’s cool. I’ve never met anyone who can track like you
can.”

“I was nothing to Nyulumbi, trust me. The Muruwari are like magicians.”

The three of them entered the building in spearhead formation, Jordan at the
point. Liv pushed back her wet hair and shook the drops off her fingers while
Jordan followed the trail to a pile of rubble that had once been part of the
ceiling. A chunk of column lay on the ground in front of a blasted reception
desk. Jordan clambered over the stone and debris into the relatively open space
behind the desk.

Liv couldn’t see any sign of a trail, but Jordan was sure following
something
. Once again, his boots were
silent in the grit as he led them down the hall, sidearm in one hand pointed
safely at the floor. Once again, Liv’s boots crunched with every step, although
the sound was muffled by dust. Liv held her sidearm in the safe down position
as well, but her eyes darted in every direction. The place was eerily quiet,
and dusty objects glowed in the dimness as if lit from within.

Jordan led them to the middle of an empty room and pointed at the dusty
floor with his gun. Liv narrowed her eyes in question; there were no scuffmarks
on the floor, no sign of anything as far as she could see. He traced the shape
of a square with the gun, then pointed to a depression in the floor. Connor
reached for it, his hand sinking into an invisible pocket. It was like watching
one of those Magic Eye stereogram posters come into focus.

Connor lifted the trapdoor, and Liv and Jordan brought their guns up to
cover the opening.

The hole was black as a tar pit. Jordan aimed downwards as he peered over
the edge, and Liv tensed, half-expecting something to pop out like a vicious
Jack-in-the-box. Nothing did.

Connor held up a finger—
wait
—and
stepped into the hallway. Liv heard the click of the radio. “Trent.”

“Go ahead.”

“We’ve found a trapdoor. There’s a hole. We’re going in.”

“Yes sir. Ahh, be safe?”

Connor laughed. “Thanks, gutter-mind. Out.”

Connor trained his gun on the trapdoor again as he re-entered the room, and
cracked a light stick taken from a vest pocket. A ladder led down into murk. He
said quietly, “I’ll go first, Liv follows, and Jordan brings up the rear.”

He started down. Liv followed, rung by rung by rung. She craned her neck to
look downward, but the hole was too narrow to see beyond her own body. Finally,
her foot stepped onto something that wasn’t a rung, and she turned, noting that
she was standing in a three-sided alcove with the opening now in front of her.

The first thing she saw was Connor, just outside the alcove, with his empty
hands in the air. Liv looked past him to the crowd of filthy people that hadn’t
been immediately visible in the murk.

She took a breath to warn Jordan, but a black-haired man said, “Speak and
die.” Liv recognized the gun he held on them as Connor’s Beretta, and she let
the breath out in a sigh as she held up her hands. The man motioned her
forward, and she took a step out of the alcove.
 
Someone plucked her Sentinel out of her hand.

Jordan reached the bottom and turned. “Hello.”

The black-haired man said, “Give us your weapons.”

“We’re not enemies,” Jordan said.

The man snarled, “Now!”

“All right.” Jordan handed his guns over.

“All your weapons.”

Liv handed over her clutch piece and knives, while Jordan and Connor did the
same. They had just handed over enough weapons to arm the whole crowd.

“What are you doing here?” someone snapped. She was a woman of indeterminate
age, covered in smears of dirt and grease that further darkened her chocolate
skin. Her black hair was barely visible against the black wall behind her.

“We’re Travelers,” Jordan began. “Explorers. We don’t intend any harm.”

“How do we know they’re not with the demons?” somebody called from the
crowd.

“Demons?” Connor asked. “What do you know about demons?”

“Nothing.” The spokeswoman tensed.

“Listen,” Jordan called. “Just tell us who you are. I’m Jordan, this is Liv
and Connor.”

The spokeswoman said only, “Follow me.”

Liv and Jordan both looked at Connor. He nodded once and turned to follow
her. Liv and Jordan followed him, and the crowd followed them, covering them
with their own weapons.

Within a minute, there was an outcry behind them, several voices exclaiming
at once. Liv smiled.

“The weapons! They’re gone!” the black-haired man cried.

Connor clucked his tongue. “Man, I hate it when that happens.”

The dark-haired woman rounded on them with a snarl. “Explain.”

Jordan said, “We told you, we’re Travelers. We’re not from this world.
Without physical contact, our belongings go back where they came from.”

She stared suspiciously. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“Why would we warn you that our weapons were useless to you?” Connor asked. “You
already outnumber us, and you haven’t been very hospitable so far.”

“Hmph.” The woman turned and continued forward, obviously following a route
she knew well, since there weren’t any markings on the walls.

“What is this place? Why are these tunnels here?” Liv asked.

“They were originally connections between this building and others, so the
owner could move in secret from his business offices to his gambling house to
his mistress’s apartment. There is also storage. We’ve converted them into our
own living space.”

“Why?” Liv asked.

“Where is your world?” the woman countered.

“It’s kind of…alongside this one.”

“Then perhaps you will understand what happened here.”

“What did happen here?” Jordan asked.

“We live underground because we don’t want the demons to find us. If they
think no one is left, perhaps they will stop coming to take us away.”

Liv asked, “How can they take you away? You have to be a Traveler to cross
into another world. Or do you mean they’re taking you to another place in this
world?”

“It’s just ahead.” The woman pointed to where light spilled into the
corridor.

They followed her into an open area where several tunnels converged. Groups
of people lounged against the walls and on the floor, finishing a meal of bread
and soup. Occasionally, someone entered or left through one of the other
tunnels, but they only gave the Travelers semi-curious looks. A lot of them
huddled with an air of confusion or disbelief, and some wore expressions of
shock, as if they thought—or hoped—they were dreaming. They
reminded Liv of the survivors in Ganja.

Their guide sat and invited them to do the same. When they were seated in a
circle with the residents arranged on the outside, the woman began to talk.

“About two cycles ago, we opened a Way into a parallel universe. We thought
we were wonderful geniuses. We had been trying to find any means to increase
our wealth, our knowledge, our country’s prosperity.

“I was head of the project, and I worked tirelessly to make those dreams
reality; we would gain access to another world and all of its resources would
be our own. Perhaps there is an All Mighty Power, because we succeeded, Father
help us.

“The Way we opened led into the world of the demons.”

Liv glanced at Jordan—his dismay mirrored her own. Connor wore his
usual poker face, although the set of his mouth was particularly grim, his eyes
riveted on the dark-skinned woman.

“Instead of allowing us to rape the world we opened, the Way allowed our
world to be raped by the demons. It is poetic justice,
n’est-ce pas
? We fought them with all our weapons and technology,
but with a ready-made crossing, they came in droves like locusts. We were
defenseless. They took people, food, machines, and we have not seen them since.
They come once or twice per moon, and we live in terror of being murdered,
stolen, and eaten by the monsters of our nightmares.”

“Why didn’t you just close the Way?” Connor asked.

“Do you think we haven’t tried?” She turned on Connor with scorn and despair
etched into every line of her face. “We have tried everything! Unsuccessfully.
We hide here now because the demons don’t fit into the tunnel with the ladder,
and the other openings are sealed by fallen buildings. But we aren’t safe. We
are being exterminated.”

Jordan broke the silence. He turned to Liv with a plea in his eyes. “Could
you help them?”

At the moment, she wanted nothing more. She glanced at Connor, who gave
silent permission. She turned to the dark-skinned woman. “What’s your name?”

“Polly. I used to be Dr. Dupont, but we’re more informal now.”

“Polly, I’m Liv.”

“I remember.”

“I’m an expert on parallel worlds. I may be able to help. You have notes,
research logs, data on what your team did to open the portal?”

The woman nodded, a grudging look of hope on her face. “They are at the
Institute. You may inspect them there, but first, you may see the Way, if you
wish.”

Liv was incredibly curious about what the rip between worlds looked like.
Plus, a visual might help her grasp what they had actually done, and hopefully
give her some ideas on how to fix it. “I think I should.”

“Mallet,” Polly said, gesturing imperiously. A young man with curly auburn
hair stepped forward. Polly continued, “This is my senior assistant. He knows
the answers to the questions you will have. He will take you to the Way.”

Mallet smiled brightly. “Shall we go then?”

The team and Mallet headed back to the exit tunnel. Connor took point up the
ladder. He called “Clear” as he emerged into the room above.

Liv followed Mallet out, and when Jordan emerged through the trap door,
Mallet turned and shut it carefully, making sure it was sealed. He led them to
the doorway of the room where he flicked a hidden switch. A hum of machinery
proved to be a concealed fan; dust blew up from the floor and swirled around
the room. Mallet flicked the switch back off, and the dust slowly settled.

“Camouflage,” he explained. He continued casually, “How did you find our
trapdoor?”

Connor glanced at Jordan. “Some of us are just that good.”

Jordan beamed at the rare compliment.

Mallet nodded good-naturedly. “This way.”

They passed through the front door, hurried down the steps, and followed
Mallet into the street.

“Where are we heading?” Connor asked.

“To the Test Center. That’s where all the labs are. And where the Way
materialized.”

“Where exactly is it? I need to call the rest of my team.”

“How many of you are here?”

“Six.”

Mallet recited nearby landmarks, and Connor clicked his radio. “Trent, come
in.”

“Where the hell have you been?” Ben sounded as mad as Liv had ever heard
him. “We’ve been trying to raise you for the last twenty minutes.”

“It’s a long story,” Connor answered. “Have you found anything?”

“Uh, yeah. I don’t think I want to discuss it on the air. You?”

“Yeah, we’ll fill you in when we meet you at the Test Center.” He gave Ben
the directions that Mallet had given him.

“Connor, you just described our location.”

“Really. Then we’ll meet you there.”

“Out.”

Connor turned to Mallet. “When was the last time the demons came through?”

“About a week ago. They shouldn’t be back for another week or two. They’ve
been raiding steadily, but there’s not much left for them to take. Now, they
often burst out of the Way and disappear for hours or days. Although we have no
way of knowing, we think they’ve raided our whole world by now.”

A short while later, Mallet led them into a street that ended at a large
building with broad marble stairs, towering columns, and a soaring façade.

“The Experimental Institute,” Mallet said reverently. Liv heard the capitals
in his voice when he spoke. “It houses the Test Center, but also the
Departments of Physical and Psychological Testing.”

As they got closer, Liv saw that the street didn’t end at the Institute but
made a ninety-degree turn, which they followed past the building.

“I thought the Way was in the Institute,” Liv said.

Mallet laughed. “Thank the Father it isn’t. It would have destroyed
everything.”

Now they were heading toward a mountain of rubble with a weird shimmer in
the air above it.

Trent, Gin, and Ben came bounding down the heap as Connor’s group got
closer, and they met at the bottom of the rubble hill. Liv decided it was the
remains of a building. At the very base of the hill, Mallet stopped and turned
one hundred eighty degrees. He gestured the others to do the same. Liv turned
and froze.

In front of them was a black hole.

“It’s a black hole,” Connor said.

“That’s what I said!” Ben, on her left, stared at the anomaly as if he
hadn’t already seen it.

“It can’t be,” Liv protested. “It has no gravitational field.”

“It’s enormous,” Jordan said from her right, craning his neck to see the top
of the giant black disc.

“I didn’t mean a real black hole,” Connor said dryly.

Liv craned her neck too. Connor’s black hole was at least a hundred feet
high, its lower edge sitting only a few feet above the ground. She walked
toward it, watching the disc narrow, narrow, narrow, and then disappear. She
back-tracked, and it was a thin black line. Took a step forward, and it was
gone.

She shook her head, returning to her position next to Jordan while still scrutinizing
the disc. Now she noticed slow swirls of purple and green on its surface, like
colors in an oil-slicked puddle. As she watched, a bird flew into the hole and
vanished with no sound.

“Why is it swirling like that?” Gin had joined them on Ben’s other side.

Liv shook her head. She didn’t know—yet. She turned to Mallet. “Did
you have any control over the size?”

Mallet shook his head. “No, nor the location. As you can see—” he
gestured to the rubble mound, “—it exists where an office building once stood.
Luckily, we decided to experiment at night. Less protest. The building was
empty.

“It was rather awe-inspiring, actually,” he continued. “We were standing at
the proposed event site, on the other side of the Institute but within visual
distance of this spot, and nothing was happening. Someone shouted and pointed
this way, and we all ran over.”

Liv held up her electrical probe as she listened, watching the energy output
readings, then held up her radiation scanner. Zero radiation.

Mallet continued, “A shimmer only about five meters in diameter had appeared
in front of this office building, but then it started to expand. First, the
building’s wall bowed in as if it was being melted and forming to the Way, then
it just imploded as the Way burst outward.”

She pulled out the scanner she thought of as the Other-Energy reader, which
registered non-visible light, radio waves, and particle emissions of
non-radioactive types. The readouts fluctuated as the swirls of color moved in
hypnotic patterns even though the air was still.

Jordan asked, “How long did it take for the demons to come through?”

Mallet answered, “Actually, some of us went through first. We drew the
demons to the tear in the barrier between universes. Then we couldn’t close the
Way. Once the demons found how unresisting we were, it was as if they had
declared us free sport.”

“This is seriously messed up,” Gin said. “I saw a
Twilight Zone
episode once where there was this monster in town,
and it sucked everyone in until there was just this one girl. She ran down the
street screaming and yelling for help, but she was the only one left alive.”

“Thanks for that, Gin,” Ben said. “That’s nice. Real helpful.”

Jordan turned to Liv. “I think we’d better start looking for a way to fix
it.”

Liv tore her eyes away from the swirling disc. “Yes. Can I see your research
now, Mallet?”

Mallet nodded, gesturing toward the Institute. Liv and the rest of the team
followed him back to the marble stairs. The Experimental Institute was
unaffected by the turmoil in the rest of the city: there was no debris on the
outside walks and stairs, and the façade was still smooth and clean.

Gin said, “You guys must have had one hell of a cleanup party. What did you
do, sweep the sidewalks and wash the walls?”

“Yes,” Mallet said.

Liv and Gin exchanged a glance, and Gin mouthed,
Oh.
Liv bit her lip to keep from laughing. Apparently, they took
their Institute seriously.

Mallet stepped up to the ornate double doors, opened a concealed keypad and
punched in a code.

The doors whooshed open, and Liv nearly jumped back. “You still have power?”

Mallet nodded proudly. “Reserve power from the city generator, to the
Institute and the Seat of the Federation Building. The Institute must remain
sealed.”

Liv stepped through the doors into a room free of dust and debris. She realized
he had meant
sealed
, with air locks
and positive pressure and who knew what else.

Ben asked, “How did this building escape the destruction?”

Mallet answered, “It was built to stand against shockwaves in case of
terrorist attack. Advanced microbe and dust protection systems keep
contaminants out of the labs. There was nothing here the demons wanted, so they
didn’t try to break through security. Not that they could.”

Jordan asked, “Why don’t you live in this building instead of underground?
It’s better protected, and must have better accommodations.”

“We couldn’t possibly! It would be…that would…it’s sacrilegious!”

“So logical,” Connor said under his breath, and Ben snickered. Jordan
frowned. Liv agreed with Connor on principle; she saw no point in these
people’s sacrifice in the name of some sacred devotion to scientific research. But
long association with Jordan’s open-mindedness had made her more tolerant to
differing beliefs.

“The Physical Dislocation Lab is this way.” Mallet led them down a maze of
corridors and into the lab. There, he went directly to a filing cabinet on the
wall. Gin wandered over to a computer console mounted on the wall while the
rest of the team tried to stand out of the way. There wasn’t enough room for
that, so they crowded behind Mallet and Liv instead.

“The computer files were corrupted when the power supply backsurged during
one of the attacks, and our backups are in a secure location cut off from this
building. There is no power there. But the hard copies are here.” Mallet drew
out several thick manila folders, handing them one by one to Liv.

She felt the excitement of impending discovery, and glanced at Jordan
standing next to her. He just looked dismayed by the amount of information they
would have to wade through. She flipped through some of the folders,
anticipation making her buoyant.

Gin, meanwhile, had sat down at the computer terminal and was starting to
poke at the unfamiliar keyboard. The monitor hummed to life. “The computers
still work?”

Mallet turned to her. “Of course, but don’t touch that!”

Gin smiled. “I can get your corrupted files back.”

Mallet’s expression changed instantly from outrage to hope. “Really? That
would help us so much!”

“Yeah, us too,” Jordan said, still eyeing the folders.

Gin grinned at Connor, who was leaning against the wall with his arms
crossed. He nodded. “Do it. Meanwhile, Liv, get going on those files.”

She turned back to the files. A preliminary scan of the data had already
turned up several technical diagrams detailing the machine’s workings. “I’ll
need Trent to help me figure out the machine. And Jordan might find something
useful on the demons or this world’s culture.”

Connor nodded. “Go.”

She glanced around the crowded room, which held no desks. “Uh, we could use
a little more space.”

“Yeah,” Gin agreed. “I need another terminal to parallel to this one, and I
need room for my own to sit in the same general space.”

Mallet brightened. “While I cannot allow you to remove any of the
documents—they are our only copies, and they mustn’t leave the sealed
environment of the Institute—we have large labs as well.”

“With multiple computers?” Gin asked.

“Certainly. This way.”

They followed him to a room with several white molded chairs scattered
around a white cutout cube that served as a table. Other tables lined the
walls, a bank of computers occupying the ones to the left.

Although it reminded her a little of Medical with all the white, Liv nodded.
“Perfect.”

She, Trent, and Jordan took the main table, and Liv spread Mallet’s folders
across its surface. Jordan reached for one, Trent another, and Liv a third.

Gin occupied herself with turning all the computers on, then whipped out her
laptop, a compact but thick little machine with gray casing that had weird
ridges and designs patterned on its outer surface. Closed, it was about the
size of a hardcover book. When she folded it open, it hummed to life, and she
quickly connected several cables between it and the Demon Rift machines.

Connor sighed. “You guys do what you do. Ben and I are going to report back
to General Mace. Since we’re here, we’ll retrieve our weapons first.”

“Cool,” Liv said. She didn’t look up.

“See you soon,” Ben said.

Liv had barely started reading when Gin crowed, “I’m in! Now let’s get us
some information!”

Liv immediately left the technical diagrams to Trent and pulled up a chair
alongside Gin’s. “Can you do a search?”

“Please. Can a fish breathe underwater?”

“Technically, they don’t breathe,” Trent said from behind them, “so no.”

Gin sighed theatrically. “Ninjas take the fun out of everything. What do you
want to search for?”

Liv grinned. “Try ‘demon.’”

Gin typed it in. “Zero search results.”

“Try ‘Way.’”

Gin looked sideways at her. “You’re kidding, right? We might as well search
for ‘the.’”

“Right.” Liv tried to think of something more specific.

Jordan said, “How about ‘Advanced Particle Acceleration Laser.’”

Liv turned to him. “Where did
that
come from?”

“From this page right here.” He held up a sheaf of papers.