A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1) (11 page)

Gin typed it in and a search bar showed on the screen. They waited. And
waited. Liv looked at Gin, and Gin looked at her and shrugged. Liv was about to
go back to the paper documents when the screen changed.

“Finally,” Gin muttered.

Liv was disappointed at the number of search results: 25. Then she looked at
the amount of data: 36 TR.

“What’s TR?” she asked Gin.

Gin typed something, another window popped up, and she typed some more. A
screen showed her some rows of numbers. “Uh oh.”

“What?”

“They measure a single bit as a ‘reo.’ Ten reos to a rotor. TR is a
terarotor.”

“How big is that?”

“One thousand rotors in a megarotor, one thousand megarotors in a gigarotor,
one thousand gigarotors in a terarotor. It’s big.”

Liv turned back to the data, trying not to let her heart sink at the amount
of information. “Sweet. Can I have my own computer?”

“Be my guest.” Gin gestured to the one next to her. “We’ll need weeks to go
through all this.”

Connor said from behind them, “You have two days.”

Liv whirled, but her outrage was derailed as Ben held out her sidearm. She
took it and turned her attention back to Connor. “What do you mean, two days? That’s
not nearly enough time!”

“General Mace’s orders. Report what you have in two days.”

“Guess I’ll get to work.” She turned back to the computer and started reading.

*
         
*
         
*

Two days later, Liv and her team briefed General Mace.

“Sir, there’s a lot of information. It would take us months to go through it
all.”

“If you think it’s worthwhile, we’ll send in T52.”

Liv nodded. T52 was the long research team, the one that went in once a
world had been initially explored, and catalogued all the information about
their culture, history, writings, and environment. “It might be best,
eventually. But we have a problem. I need more data to be sure, but based on
Demon Rift’s initial readings, and the readings I took when we encountered the
Rift, I think it’s spreading beyond the two worlds it initially affected.”

General Mace’s eyebrows rose at the use of Demon Rift’s new name, but he
didn’t interrupt. Liv continued, “I need permission to Travel to the world next
door to Demon Rift and test there.”

“Have we been there?”

Liv frowned. “I don’t know, sir. We haven’t met any Travelers yet in Demon
Rift. We don’t know what’s next door.”

“We’ll have to send the jump team first. It will take at least a day to set
up.”

Liv’s heart sank a little. She hated sending them in, even though they were
just doing their jobs. The jump teams Traveled to a previously unexplored
world, tested the atmosphere and the ground, made lightning-fast visual
surveys, and jumped back out. Their initial stay was usually less than ten
seconds, and they wore protective clothing against airborne or contact toxins,
but they were still occasionally killed in the line of duty. The last deaths
had been just last year, when the corrosive atmosphere of one of the worlds had
eaten through both team members’ suits in the space of their eight-second
visit. They were poisoned and burned, and neither survived.

Liv tried to remind herself that these guys were adrenaline junkies who
loved what they did and thought that life without insane risks was too boring
to live.

“Is there anything else?” General Mace asked.

“If I’m right, we have to close the Rift.”

General Mace nodded. “I thought you were going to say that. Can it be done? You
said they’d been trying for months.”

“I don’t exactly understand the technology they used to open it yet. I do
know they used their whole store of the element that powered the reaction. They
haven’t found an alternative.”

“And you know of an alternative?”

“There is an unstable element on their world that they haven’t been willing
to try. It doesn’t exist here. Trent thinks that he can stabilize it enough to
make it work.”

“How?”

“With a gold alloy containment unit, sir,” Trent said.

“How much gold do you need?”

“About five hundred pounds, sir.”

General Mace choked. “Five hundred
pounds
?”

Trent nodded, face impassive. He might soon rival Connor for poker face of
the year.

“You realize what that would cost?”

“Roughly thirteen and a half million dollars at the current exchange rate,
sir.”

Liv said, “Sir, we know a wound in the fabric of the multiverse has
consequences for the worlds involved, but it would eventually affect all
worlds. If it continues to spread, Home World will basically be connected
directly to Hell, and maybe worse places. Assuming the multiverse doesn’t just
collapse into a giant multidimensional black hole. We need to close it.”

Connor sat forward. “There might be something in it for us, sir. Aside from
saving the multiverse, of course.”

“Such as?”

“Advanced, relatively safe nuclear weapons, I’m told.”

Liv said, “And more efficient energy-producing nuclear technologies as
well.”

“They have some pretty advanced aeronautics too,” Ben said. “Personal
subsonic aircraft with some kind of novel propulsion system.”

Connor said, “We’re taking one out tomorrow to look around the rest of their
world.”

“I’ll take this to the Joint Chiefs,” General Mace said. “We’ll get the jump
team out tomorrow. Report back in two days. Until then, continue your
research.”

*
         
*
         
*

Two days later, Liv and her team were back in the briefing room. They’d
hardly slept in the flurry to learn all they needed to know by the deadline.
After a week of camping out on the floor in the Institute, all Liv wanted was a
shower and a hot meal. And her bed. Well, and to fix the Rift, she supposed.

General Mace walked in and sat at the head of the table. “Can you do it?”

Liv raised her head blearily. “Yes sir. We figured out a way.”

“Good. But the Joint Chiefs have approved this expenditure only if you can
prove that the technology we’ll gain will offset the loss.”

“It will more than offset it, sir,” Trent said. He looked fresh and awake
despite having gotten even less than the four hours of sleep Liv had managed in
the last two days. Ninja bastard. “I’ve been studying some of the data for the
fusion laser they used, and it demonstrates great advances in the study of
particle physics. Gin got us into what limited information the Institute had in
its records on their energy-related nuclear technology. It’s just as advanced. Probably
twenty years ahead of us.”

The sound of his voice washed over Liv. Maybe ninjas didn’t need sleep. Lucky
bastards. Or maybe lucky her. Without Trent, she’d never have figured out a way
to close the Way. She laughed in a silent huff. Way to close the Way. How long
had it been since she’d slept anyway? Thirty hours? Forty?

“Doctor Greenwood?” General Mace said.

“Wha—” Liv snapped upright. “Yeah, here.”

“The Rift, Liv?” Ben said.

“Its effects, Dr. Greenwood?” General Mace added.

“Yes.” She struggled to direct her leaden thoughts. “My trip to T-2469S has
shown conclusively that the Rift is affecting it as well. The effect is
spreading. We have to close it before it rips through, because I don’t think
we’ll be able to stop the reaction if it goes that far. I’ve also got some new
information on how the Rift was created. They used a fusion laser aimed at the
border between worlds.”

“A what?” the general asked.

“A fusion laser,” Liv repeated. “Aimed at the border between worlds.”

“How did they aim anything at the border between worlds? Where is it?
Travelers can’t even see it, can they?”

“No, sir. Their notes on that part are vague. Also, we don’t have the
technology to make a fusion laser. This is more like sixty or seventy years
ahead of us, and beyond our present capabilities of even reverse engineering. But
we have to close the Rift.”

“How?” General Mace asked.

Liv looked at Trent, who answered, “We simply have to reverse the polarity
of the laser they’ve already built.”

“It’s still intact.”

Trent shrugged. “Mostly.”

“And you still need the gold shielding?”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned to his right, where Connor sat. “You saw the rest of their world.”

Connor said, “Yes sir. Ben and I flew one of their subsonic jets to corresponding
Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China, and Spain. The whole planet has been hit pretty
hard. Apparently the demons can pilot their jets too.”

“Are the propulsion systems as advanced as you thought they were?”

“Yes, and so is the neural interface and the anti-gravity landing gear.”

General Mace nodded. “Do it. Close the Rift, and study whatever they’ll let
you look at while you’re doing it.”

“Yes, sir.”

It took Liv a minute to realize that the briefing was over. Jordan lifted
her out of her chair by the elbow. “Come on, Liv. I’ll give you a ride home.”

She made it through the labyrinthine hallways, across the echoing marble
main entrance, onto the tram line that brought them to the covered parking lot
at the Ranch, and into Jordan’s Toyota Forerunner. The next thing she knew, he
was carrying her into her house. He must have found the spare key in the crack
of stucco underneath her window.

He slid her into bed, and she was dimly aware that he was stripping off her
boots and jacket before she sank into sleep.

“Good night, Liv.”

She wasn’t sure if she responded out loud or just thought it:
thanks, Jordan.

She slid downward under the weight of entire solar systems.
Hey, I never got to take a shower…

Before the thought could continue, she was out.

Late May, previously explored parallel
world, DEPOT designation L-78416K, codename Demon Rift, corresponding Texas.

Liv stood with her team a block from the Rift. The swirls in the surface
were visible even from here. Polly and Mallet had joined them, but the rest of
the Demon Rift inhabitants were hiding; it had been nearly four weeks since the
last demon raid, and another was overdue. However, many of them hid within
sight of the team and the Rift, desperate to see it closed.

Liv, Gin, and Trent had managed to reverse the fusion laser’s polarity. Gin
had hacked it so Trent hadn’t needed to engineer modifications from scratch,
which was why it had only taken them two weeks instead of two months. The
technology was ridiculously advanced.

“Here goes nothing,” Trent said, and flipped the switch.

Nothing happened.

Gin craned her neck to see the gauges on the side of the machine. “Did it
work?”

Trent glanced over. “It’s charging.”

“I wish we could have tested it first,” Liv said.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Jordan asked. “It won’t work, right?”

Trent blew out a nervous breath. “Or we could blow up. Or rip the world
apart.”

“So, the usual,” Gin said.

Ben laughed. “That’s why I love you, Nagano. You’re so positive.”

Without warning, four subsonic jets blasted through the Rift, a demon
visible inside each one.

“Take cover!” Connor yelled. “Fire at will!”

Liv scrabbled back from the laser, following Jordan’s retreat into an alley.
She took the left side of the opening while he took the right. They both aimed
for the nearest subsonic jet, but they might as well have fired cap guns for
all the damage they did.

Jets continued to stream through the rift, and the laser had barely started
to charge. Soon the sky was filled with aircraft.

One jet fired on Trent and Connor, who had both stayed to guard the laser.
They dived out of the way behind a nearby pile of rubble. The missile barely
missed the charging machine.

As she and Jordan ducked away from raining chunks of rock, Liv caught
movement out of the corner of her eye.

Elachai popped into existence next to Jordan and spoke into his ear. She
leapt toward him, trying to knock him away before he could melt Jordan’s brain
the way he kept doing to her.

Before she could get to him, he exploded into a whirlwind of molecules. A
split-second later, so did Jordan.

“No!” Liv screamed, straining to close the gap between them. She got her
hand on Jordan just as he dissolved into nothingness, and she pushed herself
along the same path, following the flow of his elemental self to the next
world.

*
         
*
         
*

The first thing Liv saw was Jordan’s shocked expression. His shock turned to
astonishment at the panic that must be showing on her face. She shoved the
panic down and slammed a door on it even as she recognized what she called his
‘ah-hah’ expression. He had just understood something. No time to wonder what.

She registered their surroundings were an empty, sun-baked desert plain as
she pulled her gun on Elachai.

“Liv, what the hell are you doing here? How did you follow us?” Jordan
asked.

“Jordan, what the hell are
you
doing here? The rest of the team is under demon attack and you just waltzed off
with a dangerous threat!”

“He needed my help.” A quick glance at him showed Liv he thought this
explanation was sufficient.

“Your team needed your help.”

He frowned. “That’s true. I don’t think I thought this through.” He turned
to Elachai. “I need to go. I’ll come back and help you once we’ve figured out
the demon attack, okay?”

Liv glared at Elachai over the sight of her Sentinel and moved her finger to
the trigger. “Why shouldn’t I blow your head off right now?”

“I mean you no harm, and I will let you stay,” Elachai answered mildly.

“Oh, you’ll
let
me stay. Good.
Great!”

Her finger squeezed slightly on the trigger, and Elachai’s expression became
concerned, as if she was his sick or confused friend. “Liv, you do not want to
shoot me.”

Liv felt her hand float down to her hip and reholster her gun, and heard her
mouth saying, “No, I don’t.”

The next second, control returned to her. She grabbed her gun again and
leveled it on Elachai. “You son of a bitch!”

Elachai said, “Liv, we could do this all day. Put the gun away.”

Her hand obeyed his command rather than hers. How was he doing this?
“Jordan, we’re leaving. On mark.”

Jordan nodded.

Liv counted down, but she stayed a second longer than her mark, just to make
sure Jordan followed her. Or led her. She wasn’t letting him out of her sight,
because if she went back to Demon Rift and he didn’t, by the time she came back
here, they might have gone anywhere with no path for her to follow.

Jordan did not disintegrate into a whirlwind of molecules.

Liv clenched her teeth. “What are you waiting for?”

Jordan looked genuinely bewildered. “I don’t know. It’s like there’s a lock
on my mind, and I can’t get through to the place where I Travel from.”

Liv recognized the feeling from about ten seconds ago when her gun had
returned to its holster against her will, only her locked door had been marked
Shoot the Puppeteering Bastard.

She rounded on Elachai. “Let us go.”

She tried to draw her weapon again, but couldn’t even get her hand on it.

“Will you listen?” Elachai asked. “I am not going to hurt either one of you.
I need your help.”

Liv growled through her clenched teeth, “You might find us more willing if
you weren’t forcing us. People don’t like having their free will taken away.”

Elachai’s expression suggested a polite drawing-room query about a subject
that only mildly intrigued him. “If I release you, what is the first thing you
will do?”

“Draw my sidearm and blow your damned head off!”

He nodded as if she had proven his point. “And how would that encourage me
to let you? I meant what I said. You are in no danger. I will release you when
we have finished talking regardless of the outcome. You have my word.”

When Liv only glared, he continued with a gesture to their surroundings.
“Look. I have brought you to Desolatia, where you are safe. You have not been
harmed or threatened, although I have. But I have locked Jordan in this world,
and you do not want to leave without him, do you? Killing me will not release
him. We are at an impasse, do you agree?”

His manner distracted her from her anger, so formal and civilized in the
midst of…where were they? Liv looked again at the barren sand plain blurred by
heat ripples, the lack of any sign of human life.

“It’s Safe World,” she said. Their Safe World, which meant they
were
safe, at least from anything
besides Elachai.

“Desolatia, you called it?” Jordan asked eagerly.

Liv glared at him, grinding her teeth. “Another time.”

“Now you will listen?” Elachai asked.

Liv flicked her gaze back to him, nodding reluctantly but completely of her
own free will. Her body was under her control again, but she didn’t reach for
her sidearm. If Jordan was stuck here until Elachai released him, she wouldn’t
risk stranding him. Elachai had been right about that.

“Good. Demons are hunting me, most likely because of what I can do. You have
just seen a small demonstration of my ability. But what you probably do not
know is that demons hold my family captive. I have made multiple attempts to
rescue them, both with others and alone, but with no success.”

“What, you can’t push demons?” Liv snarled.

Surprise flashed across Elachai’s face. “That is what I call it too. And
yes, I can push demons, but I cannot get to their leader.”

“Why not?” Jordan asked.

Liv glanced at him. He seemed like his usual self: trusting, engaged, eager
to help.

Elachai answered, “He is very intelligent. I cannot get to him when he is
alone, if he ever is, and I cannot act fast enough to push him or the demon
guards before they attack. Twice I have been nearly killed. Now he has
threatened to flay my children alive while my wife watches if I try again to
force him to my will.”

“And you believe this threat?” Liv scoffed.

Elachai leveled grave eyes on her. “He looks human but I am not sure he is.
He is pure evil. His demons discuss how he murders children. Years ago, before
he came to power, he murdered many at once in a play area. He shot them with a
weapon as their parents watched them run and swing and build huts with rocks.
The demons brag of it. He did the same at an education center. No one stopped
him. He is in absolute control of several worlds. I believe him.”

Liv saw a little girl pitch forward into her sand castle, and her skin went
cold, her lips numb. Her feet reported contact with the ground from another zip
code. The color leached out of the world, and her voice sounded from at least
as far away as her feet. “Do you know his name?”

“Yes. They call him the Wolf. Raul Woolfe.”

“Oh.” Icy insect feet crawled over Liv’s scalp and down her temples. Black
swirled at the edges of her vision.

“Liv?” Jordan’s voice was far away too, but it was closer than hers had
been. His hand on her arm felt like a warm coal. “Jesus, you’re freezing!” His
arms closed around her, warm and solid, holding her up. “Liv, what’s wrong?”

“Liv, you’re fine,” Elachai said, and her chest unlocked so she could take a
breath. The fading world leapt back into over-bright sharpness as everything
came closer.

“I’m fine.” She nodded to Jordan and he took a step back, keeping a hand on
her arm. She was still floating outside herself on a Novocaine cloud. “You
don’t know who he’s talking about, do you?”

Jordan shook his head.

“Jordan. I know you don’t watch the news, but you must have heard of Raul
Woolfe. The Big Bad Wolf? He shot up a beach and a schoolyard. That was the
education center—an elementary school.”

Her voice shuddered despite her iron grip on it, and Jordan gently squeezed
her arm where he still held it. She floated numb above it all.

Liv continued talking, unable to stop. “The police finally caught him, but
he killed something like forty children. He had done them singly until the
beach. No one knows how he got away from there.”

“This happened in your world?” Elachai asked.

Liv nodded, still looking at Jordan as if holding a lifeline with her gaze. “It
was a huge public trial. As big as O.J. Don’t you remember any of this?”

He shook his head. “This is why I don’t watch the news. I don’t want a
nightly reminder that the world is ending bloody.”

“Well, Raul’s world was the one that ended. He got a lethal injection about
a year ago. I watched.”

“Then this is not the same man,” Elachai said.

“How many Raul Woolfes do you think have gone out and shot up school
playgrounds?” Liv snapped at him.

“Possibly infinitely many.” Elachai’s voice suggested he was pointing out
that the sun was bright, although his expression was sympathetic.

“Yeah,” Liv said, struck by the infinity of the multiverse as she hadn’t
been in years. She put a hand over her eyes. “Shit, that’s true.”

She took a shuddering breath and continued, “How did he get to Hell?”

“Liv.” Jordan spoke as if she was made of spun crystal and a single loud
sound would shatter her. “It’s not the same Wolf. You said Home World’s Mirror
is dead. But his Mirrors would have done similar things in other worlds. One of
them could have escaped and gone to Hell.” He smiled bleakly at the feeble
joke.

“You think he’s a Traveler?”

“He is,” Elachai confirmed. “That is why he is able to hold my family in
Hell.”

“Or,” Jordan continued with another ah-hah expression, then stopped, his
face suddenly blanked like a shuttered window.

“Or?” Liv prodded.

Jordan sighed. “Remember how I said there were other forms of life in Hell?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe there are humans in Hell.”

“So this Raul Woolfe could have originated there?” Liv didn’t like that
prospect at all.

“Possibly.”

“Great.” Liv blew out a breath. Having something else to think about had
apparently started her heart again. She wasn’t frozen anymore. Turning to
Elachai, she asked, “He is human?”

“Looks human,” Elachai corrected.

“And you want us to do what, exactly?”

“Help me save my family. I have two young children. I fear what the Wolf may
do to them. He holds them hostage to encourage me to turn myself in. But even
to save my family, I will not work for the Wolf. I cannot even imagine the
horrors he would force me to force on others. I do not force anyone against
their will.”

“Really?” Liv snarled. “We decided all on our own to come for a little
daytrip in the middle of a firefight?”

“How can we help?” Jordan sent a quelling glance at Liv.

“I believe your whole team will be needed. It was my hope to convince
Jordan, who could then convince the others…”

Liv snorted. “Convince him! It’s wrong to go around pushing people’s minds
into new and interesting shapes! Don’t you even know how wrong it is to take
away free will?”

“Yes, which is why I would never normally do so. Even now, I will not push
either of you to fight or die for my family, but I need help. I have watched
your team on some of your recent missions, and your teammates have the
qualities I believe will ensure success.”

“And those are what—pushability?”

“No, those are integrity, stealth and combat training, high levels of
technology, access to weaponry, and a grudge against the demons.”

“We don’t have a grudge,” Jordan said.

Elachai looked mildly surprised. “But they have attacked your team. Twice
now.”

Jordan shrugged. “They attack everybody. We want to stop them, but we’re not
taking it personally.”