A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1)

by Cassy Campbell

  “Seven-thirty.”

  “No.” Liv glanced at the clock again. “It’s four forty-five.”

  There was a pause. “Sorry, my watch must be broken. I’ll let you go back to sleep.”

  “No, I’m awake now. I might as well look at whatever it is. You’re at your lab?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, see you in a bit.”

  “See you. Sorry again.”

  She hung up the phone and remembered it was Saturday, and her family reunion was in a couple of hours. She groaned and flopped back into her pillow. Time for the once-a-year onslaught of This Is Your Life And It’s Not What Your Family Would Choose. She would never be satisfied to settle down and be a doting mother and supportive wife. She wanted success of her own, on her own. And she was successful; she was a world-renowned (although top secret) expert on Travel, she was top in her field, especially as cognitive neuroscience pertained to her own research on actual structural function of the brain, and her yearly salary was more than her sister Lorie’s husband the dentist.

  Unfortunately, her family judged her by none of her measures of success.

  She sighed, dragging herself out of bed. It was probably best to get it over with. At least Jordan could provide a diversion until it was time to leave. She wondered what he was so excited about; she hadn’t thought to ask.

  She climbed into the shower, and after the water woke her, decided she’d better dress for the reunion in case she didn’t get to come back home and change. She had to meet Ben at the base to get her ride to Georgia later this morning anyway—he kept a jet at the Ranch, a special honor his former Air Force brigadier general had granted when he was still a First Lieutenant there.

  At least she would get to spend her wait time with Jordan instead of pacing her living room while second-guessing her outfits. She had, of course, packed the night before. She grabbed her suitcase and headed out the door.

  When she got to Jordan’s lab, he was busy on his computer, and the usual chaos prevailed. If possible, she thought it was even messier than usual.

  “Knock knock.”

  Jordan started talking before he looked up. “Oh good, you’re here! You’re going…to…”

  He trailed off as his eyes rose from the mountains of paper on his desk and fixed on her. Liv looked down at herself, making sure she wasn’t living a naked-in-school dream. Nope, just the dress. She raised an eyebrow and Jordan shook his head like someone who’d just been sucker-punched. Then his gaze landed on his computer screen, and he focused again on his work. “What was I…oh right, you’ll love this. Come look.”

  She shifted a huge stack of scrolls and sat on the counter behind his desk so she could see the computer screen over his shoulder. “I’ll love what?”

  “I’ve been running simulations since you told us about Elachai, and I finally figured it out!”

  “Figured what out?”

  He turned in his chair, beaming at her. “I figured out how a Singularity arises.”

  She leaned forward to better see the computer. “Really? There’s a natural explanation?”

  His smile disappeared. “Actually, no.”

  He brought up multiple screens on his computer, charts and data flows that Liv read easily through long familiarity with the evolutionary extrapolation program Jordan had developed and written himself, with a little input from Gin. He pointed to a fluctuating 3-D graph. “This is nature. There’s no way that in an infinity of worlds, a Singularity simply happens.” He pointed to another, distinctly different graph. “He had to be made into a Singularity.”

  “Made.” Liv stared at him for a minute as he stared gravely back. “But Jordan, the number of worlds is infinite. There would never be a way to make something happen only once. It’s inconceivable. Infinity means all possibilities exist.”

  “Including the one where a Singularity happens?” He gave her a sly smile. Leave it to Jordan to speak her own language—logic—to trap her in an argument.

  She smiled despite herself. “Possibly. Or including the one where a Mirror is created through some freak chance.”

  “I thought of one scenario that would significantly reduce the odds of a freak chance Mirror in some other world. A Traveler mates with someone not of his world. As long as none of his Mirrors are Travelers who find the same Mirror in another world and do the same thing, a Singularity is born. If that Traveler planned this, if he used force and picked a potential mate that none of his Mirrors would ever get to, it might have happened.”

  Liv considered, but then shook her head. “No. If he did it, so would at least one of his Mirrors. Mirrors think alike. They hatch the same plans in different worlds.”

  “Okay, then there is another explanation. It might be tough to take for a physicist operating on the Many Worlds hypothesis of string theory,” Jordan warned.

  “I think I can take it,” she said dryly.

  “There isn’t an infinite number of worlds.”

  Liv was inclined to disbelief given all the evidence for infinite worlds, but she always gave Jordan the courtesy of treating his side of a scientific debate as factual. He did the same for her. They each had enough working knowledge of the other’s field to make a perfect foil for defending a hypothesis. She sat back, reaching for impartiality. “What’s your evidence?”

  “A Singularity exists.”

  She sighed. “That’s not scientific proof, Jordan.”

  “I know. Would he be able to tell he was Singular, do you think? I mean, how would he even know?”

  Liv was startled. “I don’t know. I never even considered that.”

  Jordan smiled grimly. “I know. But I did. And I think this could be important. If there’s somebody out there engineering people…”

  “We don’t know that someone is. Given all the evidence, I’m going to continue on the assumption that the multiverse is infinite.”

  “So we’re back to an infinity of possibilities means a Singularity could exist.”

  She thought it through. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean someone is responsible.”

  Jordan looked steadily at her. “My program says otherwise. It takes into account everything anyone has ever known about the multiverse and evolution, including my own not-inconsiderable first-hand research, and yours.”

  Liv stared back, allowing the possibility to penetrate. “Who would do such a thing?”

  He gave her a relieved smile. “We know one group that’s hunting a Singularity.”

  “Demons.”

  Jordan shrugged. “It makes sense.”

  “Yeah, it does. Thanks for the info.”

  “Anytime. Hey, do you want to go get breakfast? It’ll help make up for waking you so early.”

  “Sure, but then I have to get to my stupid reunion.”

  “Ah, that explains the—” Jordan waved a hand at her “—ensemble.”

  “Yeah.” She hid a smile as they walked out of his office and turned toward the elevator. She knew Jordan missed nothing, but it was nice to catch him off guard. “What were you doing here so early, anyway?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. I figured I may as well be doing something useful, and this has been bugging me. I couldn’t think of any natural way it could happen, even though I hoped I’d come up with one. The idea of demons…engineering…this guy, it’s enough to keep anyone awake.”

  “I’ll say.”

  They walked into the cafeteria on level two, chose food from the buffet, and found an empty table in the corner of the room.

  “So, family reunion?”

  “Yeah,” Liv said with a grimace. “I tried to play the I’m-working card, but I did that last year and the aunts got suspicious.”

  Jordan shifted in his chair, hesitated, then said, “If you need any moral support, I could, you know, fly interference.”

  Liv smiled. “Run interference?”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  “Well….” She thought of Aunt Dottie and her crazy UFO conspiracies, Aunt Darma a
nd her garden fixation, Uncle Dale and the creepy way he liked to carry candy in his pocket and offer it to all the girls as if they were still five, Uncle Darren who pinched her cheeks every time he saw her and told anyone who would listen about the time she had wet his couch when she was three. She pictured her three married sisters ganging up on her and asking when they would get to be her bridesmaids. Then there was the fact that the aunts’ eyebrows would practically fly off their heads if she showed up with a new guy.

  She said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea. You don’t want to meet the Lancasters anyways. They’re a bunch of nutjobs. Seriously.”

  Jordan shrugged. “Maybe I do.” She had the uncomfortable thought that his incredible blue eyes could see into her mind.

  An image of Nathan intruded, from a place in her mind she’d kept locked tight for years. He had always made her feel like he was catching her in a lie when he looked at her like that. Turned out he’d been the liar. Bastard. Her stomach was seriously considering rejecting the couple bites of bagel she’d just eaten.

  Get out! a faint voice screamed.

  “I should go,” she said, jumping up. “See you Monday.”

  Jordan looked both startled and worried. “Yeah, Monday.”

  She left the remains of her breakfast and fled.

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

  Chapter 11

  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, ru
ng 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.