“Druck!” I shouted. “What the hell?"

  Leaning past David, he pulled the plasma rifle back in through the window. “Just solving the problem,” he answered, David looking like he wanted to die with the soldier of fortune pressed against him. “Or maybe it’s the new way. You said that sigil stuff is old tech, right?”

  I heard the echoing crash as the helicopter hit the ground. Looking back, I saw the pilot climbing out of the wreckage, the copilot flinging the other door open and hopping out, both thankfully unharmed. “You could have killed those cops!"

  “So?“

  “So they’re not the bad guys.”

  “They’re chasing us.”

  “Because they think we’re the bad guys.”

  “Well, why does everybody always think we’re the bad guys?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because we keep shooting people?”

  “Bad people. They shot at us first.”

  “The cops don’t know that. We might have been able to weasel out of this before. No chance now.”

  “Then I guess we shouldn’t get caught,” David said, surprising me. “Pick a direction, hop on the Interstate, and keep driving.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked, looking over the seat at him.

  “There are six dead guys on my neighbor’s lawn, and I just aided and abetted someone who shot down a police helicopter. I assume by your recklessness and total disregard for anyone’s sleep that you have experience with this sort of thing and somewhere to hide.”

  I opened my mouth, flabbergasted by his outpouring. “Well, uh…”

  “You also used that ring to push two things out of the way, which confirmed everything I suspected about my father but seemed too crazy to believe. Not to mention, that gun fires freaking plasma bolts. Whatever it is you’re doing here, I am so totally in.”

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence,” I admitted. “But how do you know we’re not the bad guys.”

  “You said you killed my father, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s good enough for me.”

  CHAPTER 10

  We drove for over an hour, clearing well out of Palo Alto, passing San Jose and finally pulling into the parking lot of a Fairfield Inn in Hollister, California. We had all remained mostly silent during the drive, save for a short conversation between David and Druck where David explained the history of Sailor Moon to the soldier of fortune. Druck found the whole thing pretty ridiculous. As far as he was concerned, a very real Gia looked a lot better in a short-skirted sailor outfit than a cartoon. I had to agree.

  Thankfully, we didn’t cross paths with any more police, though I was one hundred percent certain they were already looking for us and would get our description out to other departments within the next couple of hours. I figured every PD in the state would be on the lookout for the Mustang by the time the sun came up.

  But we couldn’t go all night. We were all exhausted, Matt especially, though I wasn’t far behind. Using the ring hadn’t paralyzed me, but the effort still drained my energy and left an opening for my other symptoms to make a stronger appearance. I was dizzy, lightheaded, and physically weak. We needed a short break.

  “Just give me a minute,” David said as we got out of the car. He stretched out on the back seat, quickly pulling on a pair of sweatpants and a Spirited Away t-shirt, along with a pair of velcro sandals.

  “Seriously?” Druck said. “That took you fifteen seconds. You couldn’t do that back at your house?” He glanced at me. “I think he likes walking around in his Gia underpants.”

  “Fifteen seconds is a long time during a firefight,” David replied. “You said you were a soldier. You should know.”

  “Maybe, but how do you know?”

  “Fortnight.”

  “Is that a famous battle or something?”

  David laughed. “No, it’s a video game. Where are you from, Mars?”

  “A lot further than that,” Matt said. “Come on, we have two hours tops.” He paused as he got a good look at the front panel near the tire. At least a dozen bullet holes marred the formerly perfect surface. “My poor baby.”

  “Look on the bright side,” I said. “It really is the Wickmobile now.”

  “How long have you been waiting to say that?”

  “Since we started taking fire.”

  “Funny,” he huffed as Druck got out, slinging his plasma rifle across his back. "Come on, Druck. Let's leave that here." He pointed at the rifle and started for the rear of the car, keys jingling in hands as he picked out the trunk key.

  Druck grunted his displeasure as Matt lifted the lid. He dropped the rifle in the trunk and slammed the lid shut. We headed across the parking lot and through the front doors to the front desk.

  Matt took the lead. He was the one with the credit card. “Can we get a room, please?” he asked the attendant, an overweight older woman with silver hair secured in a tight bun.

  “One room?” she replied. “For all of you?”

  “Yeah. Can we do that? I can’t afford two rooms.”

  “Maximum occupancy in a room with two queens is four adults, with children it’s six. I’m sorry.”

  “Druck’s like a child,” David said, drawing a stern look from the woman.

  Matt exhaled painfully. “Please, ma’am. It’s been an awful night. We’re on our way to a funeral for a good friend from college. We already broke down twice. And I’m almost totally broke. You could completely save our lives if you bend the rules a little? I promise we won’t make a lot of noise. We’re just going to crash for a couple of hours and then be on our way.”

  She stared at Matt before her eyes flicked to the rest of us. I did my best to look sweet and innocent. So did David. Druck couldn’t look innocent if he tried, and Alter seemed kind of shifty.

  “I should probably ask the manager,” she answered at last.

  Matt sighed again, feigning an even deeper level of exhaustion. He played it well. “Please? It’s two hours. No more.”

  She bit her lower lip, hesitated, and nodded. “Okay. But one complaint from anyone and you’re out, no refund.”

  Matt picked his head up and smiled. “Deal.”

  He went through the check-in process, scoring a room on the ground floor close to the exit. I guess the hostess was pretty sure we would garner a complaint and she didn’t want to have to walk too far to kick us out. Entering the room, Matt immediately went into the bathroom and relieved himself while Druck jumped onto the bed closer to the door, dumping his head on the pillow and closing his eyes.

  “Nighty-night Team Hondo,” he grumbled.

  Matt came out of the bathroom and pulled down the blankets on the other bed before taking off his shoes and climbing in. “Are you all going to stand there, or are you going to sleep?”

  “Sleep,” Druck announced without moving or opening his eyes.

  “I don’t require sleep,” Alter said.

  “What?” David asked. “You don’t sleep?”

  “No.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “It’s a long story,” I replied.

  “I’ve got a long story for you, too,” David said, shaking his backpack. “I know you’re tired, but I feel like I need to tell someone before the cops or those biker-ninja goons show up again.”

  I glanced at the spot next to Matt on the bed. I was beat, but David was right. I had gone to him looking for information, and it seemed like he had something he wanted to share, though I had a feeling it wasn’t what I was hoping for. “Okay. I want to hear you out. Alter, can you keep an eye on these two? I’ll contact you if there’s any trouble on our end.”

  “You want me to just sit here?”

  “Yeah. Boring, I know. But necessary.”

  “It’s not a problem, Ben. Just be safe.”

  I nodded and led David back out of the room. We wandered to the closed dining room, where I took a couple of chairs off a table and placed them close enough to one another we would both be able to see the screen of his laptop. He had just put the computer on the table when the hostess approached.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “The dining room is closed.”

  “It doesn’t look closed to me,” David replied before I could answer, waving his arm toward the entrance. “There’s not even a door or a rope or anything to indicate closure. I understand you aren’t serving food right now, but this seems like a perfectly good peaceful and quiet place to sit and have an intellectual discussion about quantum physics, multi-dimensional chaos theory, and anime. Possibly in that order. You’re welcome to join, if you’re interested.”

  She stared at him, unable to come up with an easy response to his argument.

  “Besides,” I added. “If we’re out here, the room only has three in it. No occupancy problem.” She frowned at me and walked away without another word. I looked sidelong at David. “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Who are you?” he replied. “I mean, you’re the one with the plasma rifles and the magic ring.”

  “Yeah, but I think you have some idea who we are. You suspected your father was into some things, and now you know those things are real. What does that tell you?”

  “That there’s a more than even chance that you’re from another part of the universe,” he replied. “And that is so amazing I can barely stop myself from freaking out like a fourteen year-old at a BTS concert.”

  “Well, at least you have clothes on now,” I replied. “Believe it or not, I’m from Earth. So is Matt.”

  “Oh, I believe it. You’ve got the pop culture down. Those other two? No way.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “But they’re human, right?”

  “Druck is.”

  “Alter looks human to me. But she said she doesn’t sleep. Do all aliens look just like humans?”

  “No. I have a friend that looks like a cross between a flying squirrel and a sloth. He’s also venomous and blue.”

  “Does being blue denote that he’s poisonous, or are the two features unrelated?”

  “Unrelated. You’ll meet him once we get back to the farm. I can tell you everything about us later, but you wanted to make sure your story doesn’t die with you, so…”

  “Right. Yeah.” He opened the top of his laptop and turned it on. Of course, his background image was from Macross.

  “You really like anime,” I said.

  “I do. That was last in my list of discussion topics though.” He closed the lid again, confusing me. “I should probably give you a quick backstory before I show you my work. If you can picture all of this happening in the style of Into the Spiderverse, it’ll sound a lot cooler.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I kept my mouth closed, waiting for him to talk.

  “Right,” he continued, once he realized I wasn’t going to acknowledge that request. “Here goes.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Wait,” I said, before David could get going with his story. “You aren’t going to start where your mother gave birth to you or your first memory, right? We don’t have time for that.”

  He smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m going to give you the short version. Really, not much is all that interesting until about three years ago. Before that, I was just the only child of a single mother. I didn’t even know who my father was outside of the money he deposited in my mom’s bank account every month.”

  “I thought you said you met him when you were four?”

  “If you want to call it that. I told you, he called the cops and made our lives miserable. I was too young to remember what he looked like or where he lived or anything like that.”

  “Okay, but you aren’t just an only child. You’re at least six years accelerated in school. Ready to graduate Stanford University at eighteen. A part of their bio lab. That’s impressive.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe it sounds impressive from an outside perspective. For me, it became a means to an end.”

  “What end?”

  “To solve the unsolvable equation.” He laughed. “At least, I thought it was unsolvable until I saw you use your ring. Somebody already figured it out.”

  “You’re talking about how to create a sigil?”

  “I might be. I’m still starting in the wrong spot in the timeline. Let me back up. Picture this. I’m fifteen years old, already out of high school and a junior at Stanford undergrad. Whoop dee doo. It was my mother who wanted me to go there. She said with my intelligence the only things I needed to succeed in life was a good school on my resume to get my foot in the door and the motivation to keep it there. She managed to convince me of the first thing, but you know the second was a little harder to come by. Not because I couldn’t handle the curriculum. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging because really I couldn’t care less, but it all came too easily. I didn’t need to study for anything, and I found most of it boring. I was going through the motions, but what I really needed was a challenge.”

  “Sigiltech?” I guessed.

  “Exactly. But I didn’t seek it out. I guess you could say it found me. One night, I’m trying to order the newest season of Attack on Titan and the payment is declined, so I go down to ask my mother about the issue and happen to catch a glimpse of her entering her login credentials for her bank account. After she fixes the account info for me, I go back upstairs and order the episodes without thinking much about it. Have you ever experienced that phenomena where your primary consciousness is engaged in one thing, and your subconscious is processing something else without you really being aware until it reaches a conclusion?”

  “Probably,” I answered. “Though I can’t think of an example right now.”

  “Well, it was like that. I’m right in the middle of the episode when bam! I have this sudden urge to login to my mom’s bank account. Not to steal from her or anything. I would never do that. But I know she gets money from my father each month, so I look for the deposit in the account, and then go into the details to get the routing and account numbers. Next thing you know, I’m reverse-engineering my way into figuring out who my father really is. It didn’t take me long to realize the payments weren’t coming from a personal account. They were being made from a business.”

  “Let me guess, Exotic Mining Group?”

  “Yes. They started sending the cash about three years after the incident with my father, around the same time my mother regained custody of me. She always said it was because he felt guilty about what he had done, but I never went for that. If he had felt guilty, he would have tried to initiate contact and admitted I was his kid. I don’t really know why he started sending it.”

  “But it came through EMG?”

  “Yeah. That fact of course led me right to him, especially since I could see some of my features on his face.”

  “So once you knew who he was, did you try to contact him again?”

  “No. He already burned me once. Why would I set myself up for that again? I didn’t want to fight for a relationship with him. I wanted to hurt him the way he hurt my mother.”

  “That sounds familiar,” I said, thinking of Gia. “What did you do?”

  “I learned as much as I could about computer hacking and started messing around with his company’s network, looking for a weakness. Their security was better than I expected, but some old-fashioned social engineering did the trick. I got into his servers and started poking around, with an intent to destroy anything I thought was valuable. What I found was too interesting to delete.”

  “Sigiltech,” I said again.

  “Of course. Like I said, at first I thought my father was in a cult. The lines and diagrams looked like pagan symbols to my untrained eyes. Intrigued, I downloaded the data instead of deleting it, and then went on a hunt for similar sigils online. But the mainstream search engines all came back empty. Same for the darknet. The diagrams didn’t exist on the internet, so I raided the college library, still coming up empty. I couldn’t figure out what they were, but by that time I just had to know. So I did the only reasonable thing I could do.”

  “Called Alonzo to ask him about it?” I guessed.

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re joking, right? I hacked into his home network. That’s where I found the motherlode. Instead of meaningless sigils, I found symbols surrounded by mathematical equations, each line a complex calculation I needed to understand. It was right then and there that I realized I had found the challenge I was looking for. I decided that I was going to figure out what the symbols were and how they worked. And then I was going to upload them so that anyone could make a copy. Whatever intellectual property EMG was working on, I would open-source it and destroy them in the process.”

  I couldn’t help thinking about how hard Keep had worked over the last thousand years to prevent sigiltech from falling into the wrong hands. And David Morgan had planned to plaster it all over the world wide web. “That’s pretty harsh,” I said.

  “Yeah. Cool, right?”

  “You never uploaded any of the data, did you?”

  “No. The thing is, I’ve spent the last three years working on the equations. About a year in, I had a breakthrough where I mentally wrapped my head around the theoretic purpose of the sigils, but it seemed so crazy I couldn’t believe it was true. I tried to quit then, but I just couldn’t give up the chase. The problem had me by the balls. I needed to solve it.”

  “Have you solved it?” I asked, starting to get a little excited by the path the conversation was taking.

  “No. Not completely. I mean, I have some of the math down, which I used to create a simulation program that I believe renders accurate effects. But it’s a far cry from mastery. There’s just something missing. A few weeks back, I decided to break into the EMG servers again to see if I could find any clues, but they were gone. Completely offline. I thought maybe the company went out of business, but when I checked the news I saw their primary mineral processing facility had blown sky high, that Alonzo and my sister were caught in the blast, and that EMG was no more.”