Demonhome (Champions of the Dawning Dragons Book 3)

  received a brief impression of hard scales and empty hunger, then she closed herself off again. He flinched involuntarily.

  Myra spoke up. “Ignore that. She makes it seem worse than it is. I live in there too, and I think she has a firm grasp of herself. She just wants you to feel sorry for her.”

  “Myra!” protested Moira indignantly.

  He couldn’t help but laugh at that.

  Myra ignored her creator’s outrage as her face turned serious once more. “Just be careful. Mom and Dad aren’t the only ones who wil be torn up if something happens to you over there.”

  “Yeah, wel, being careful would mean staying here, but I don’t plan on getting hurt. We’l be back,” he told her.

  “And Karen too,” added Moira from the side. “We al like her. None of us ever thought you’d have a chance with…”

  “Al right, thanks for everything. I’l see you when I get back,” said Matthew abruptly, cutting her off. “You’l have plenty of opportunities to gang up on me when I get back.”

  Karen gave him a curious glance as he closed the door behind him. “Were there two of your sister out in the hal?”

  He gave her a blank stare. Her magesight, of course. Sometimes living in a house ful of mages was a difficult thing. Privacy was a real problem. “It’s complicated,” he told her. “I’l explain later.”

  “Realy? That seems like the sort of thing you should explain sooner, rather than later,” observed Karen wryly.

  With a sigh at yet another delay, he gave her a brief explanation. It raised more questions than it answered, but he promised he would do his best to make sense of it for her when they got back. Assuming he found a way to make sense of it for himself. With every passing day, it seemed his family grew more complicated.

  “Are you ready, Gary?” he asked. The android had been standing quietly the entire time, patiently waiting.

  “I am,” said the machine.

  “Good. You carry the pack until we get there. It’s heavy, but I can’t put any of it into the dimensional bag until we arrive,” he told him. Then he held out a leather belt for Karen. “Put this on.”

  The buckle was silver and beautifuly ornamented into the design of a panther’s head with teeth that bit down through the belt holes to secure it in place. The buckle wasn’t his design, though; Matthew had purchased it thinking Karen might appreciate the artistry. The enchantment was woven into the belt, with runes that were tooled into the leather.

  “What’s this?” she asked curiously, sensing the magic dweling in it.

  “A belt,” he answered sarcasticaly.

  The look she gave him perfectly communicated how she felt about his joke.

  He relented almost immediately. “It’s a present, as wel as a safeguard, in case something goes wrong.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Put it on,” he insisted.

  With wary eyes, she did.

  “It’s enchanted to bring you back here,” he explained. “Although you could arrive anywhere, it doesn’t control location, just the dimension—

  the same as when I translate us, but that isn’t a problem for you. You can teleport back here no matter where you show up.”

  “Why do I need it? I’m coming back with you,” she said suspiciously.

  Matt shrugged. “Like I said, in case something goes wrong. What if we were separated, or I were incapacitated?”

  “Wil it take you too?” she asked immediately.

  He shook his head. “Only the wearer.”

  Karen started to take it off, but he grabbed her hand before she could unfasten the buckle. “Stop. If you open the buckle it wil activate, and you’re in the wrong dimension. You have to use the command word if you want to take it off without causing it to automaticaly transport you.”

  “Why?”

  “If you get knocked unconscious and someone tries to take it, you’l come back,” he told her.

  “If I’m unconscious and I appear over the ocean, which is what usualy happens, I’l drown,” she pointed out.

  Everyone’s a critic, he thought silently. “I didn’t have time to figure out a way to breathe underwater,” he said dryly.

  Ever observant, her eyes noticed a similar belt around Gary’s metal waist. “Where’s yours?” she pointed out, poking at Matthew’s mundane

  belt.

  “I didn’t have time to make a third, and since I’m the least likely to need one, I want you and Gary to wear them,” he said sensibly.

  She studied his face for a moment, then accepted his explanation with a nod.

  After that, they both donned the leather garments he had prepared. They were the least of the enchantments he had made, at least in his

  opinion. Two knee-length leather hauberks with matching leather leggings. They were enchanted to protect them from bulets or other shrapnel, and while they weren’t quite as protective as mail would have been, they were far lighter.

  He taught her the command word so she could remove the belt, and put it back on over the armor. With that done, they were ready. Taking up his staff, he motioned the two of them to stand beside him.

  And then they were gone.

  Chapter 47

  A dry wind blew sand across the tops of dunes that stretched out for miles in every direction. They had arrived in a desert. As unpleasant as that could be, it was preferable to another ocean landing, and they didn’t have to stay long.

  Taking his pack from Gary, Matthew activated the enchantment with a word. Its weight vanished, and the bag grew slack as its contents were transferred to a pocket dimension. He put the strap over his shoulder and reached in, giving yet another command. This was his new and improved dimensional pack.

  His hand closed immediately around the item he had requested and he smiled, drawing out one of the enchanted rings. Laying it carefuly on the ground, he intoned yet another command word, “Samen .” The magic leapt into action instantly, and for a split second he saw the spel-creature his sister had designed for it, a large bird. The invisibility hid it from sight, both arcane and otherwise, and he knew that within seconds it would be winging its way to the south, carrying the ring in its beak.

  Straightening up, he looked at Karen. “Shield. You should have put it up the moment we arrived.”

  “Oh, yeah!” she said, startled out of her reverie. She had been watching his actions with fascination. A second later, a passable shield appeared around her, visible only to magesight. “Sorry.”

  Matthew gave her a stern look. “You’re a nutjob now, Karen. Those leathers wil only protect what they cover. Your first defense should

  always be your magic.” He tried to project an air of authority, but her reaction wasn’t what he expected.

  Her lips curled into a smirk. “Listen, when we get back, I need to explain something to you,” she told him.

  He sighed, wondering when the day would come that a woman, any woman, would take him seriously. “Fine. For now, we need to move.

  Have you got anything yet, Gary?”

  The machine answered immediately, “The connection here is slow. I can only get a poor satelite signal. Data is already coming in from my

  larger self, but it wil be better almost anywhere else.”

  Matt turned to Karen. “Your turn.”

  They gathered around her, and seconds later they were in the mountains near her home in Colorado. Gary spoke first. “Perhaps I should have clarified—almost anywhere would be better except the mountains. I’m getting no signal here at al.”

  “Bear with it,” said Karen. “We won’t be here long.”

  Matthew took another enchanted ring out of his pack and repeated the process he had folowed in the desert, and then turned to Karen, “Al

  right, next.”

  Their next location was within the base where she had been rescued. He released his third ring there, and they teleported away again

  immediately. This time their destination was England, near her Aunt Roberta’
s home.

  “Where’s the pert?” asked Matthew.

  If Gary could have gaped in his expressionless metal body, he would have. “We’ve only been in this world for a span of minutes, and I haven’t had a solid connection to the network until now. Give me a moment—I’m not a miracle worker.”

  “We can’t stay here,” said Matthew. “They may be homing in on us already.”

  “Walk north, down the street,” suggested Gary. “I’l have a pert meet us along the way—as soon as I can safely commandeer one.”

  “How far is it to where they have the egg?” he asked.

  Gary’s answer was immediate. “One hundred and fifty-one miles, if you could folow a straight line to it, but on foot it wil wind up being closer to a hundred and fifty-seven. Unfortunately, the A14 and M1 were reclaimed over a decade ago, so it would be a rough walk.”

  He never failed to marvel at Gary’s ability to precisely locate them and calculate distances, at least in his own world. He guessed the ‘A14’ and

  ‘M1’ were a references to old roads, but since they no longer existed, it wasn’t anything he cared about.

  “The first pert wil be here in less than five minutes,” Gary informed them.

  “The first?” asked Matthew.

  The android nodded. “They’ve gotten better at detecting some of my methods, and I didn’t have much time, so I wound up stealing a lot of

  them. I’l run most of them on autopilot, flying in different directions after they meet us. Hopefuly it wil confuse them. They’ve taken most of the public cameras off the network, so my information is more limited than before.”

  They made haste down the road, and after a few minutes Matthew could hear the high-pitched whine of multiple perts approaching. When they

  appeared, he was rather impressed; no fewer than fourteen vehicles landed near them. They clambered into one and then they were away, flying mainly east with a slight northerly component to their path.

  “We should be safe for now,” opined Matthew.

  “Unless they decide to shoot them al down,” put in Karen brightly.

  “Director Aiseman wouldn’t authorize that,” offered Gary. “I’ve been observing him for a while, and I think he values the lives of the organic citizens too much for that. As added insurance, I’ve taken more than just the perts that met us. I’ve taken control of a large number of other vehicles as wel, in case they can tel exactly which ones are mine. They’d have to shoot down dozens and dozens to have a chance of hitting us.”

  Karen’s face took on a worried expression. “There aren’t people in any of them, are there?”

  Gary shook his head. “No, your real father’s safeguards are too thorough to alow me to put other people at risk. More’s the pity, though—my attempts to obfuscate our flight path would be even more effective if I could.”

  ***

  Director Aiseman was having another bad day. There had already been one large anomaly detected and multiple smaler ones immediately

  thereafter. Worse, a fleet of perts had been pirated and were now flying helter skelter over England.

  Because of the continuing cybersecurity measures, he and assistant director Wang had both been forced to download themselves into androids to coordinate the response teams. Since the current nexus of activity seemed to be focused on England, and since Dr. Miler was convinced their goal must be the alien egg, they had made her facility in Lichfield their impromptu war room.

  At the moment , he was looking at the two of them over a smal conference table. He and John Wang’s androids were of the more normal

  civilian type, meaning they had human appearances and expressive faces, but Dr. Miler, because of her special circumstances, was in a black metal ANSIS military android, which did nothing to soften her personality.

  “No, Dr. Miler, we are not going to shoot down every civilian pert flying over the countryside. There are people in some of them, innocents, and we haven’t firmly identified which vehicles are being controled by this rogue AI yet,” he said, repeating himself once more. He would have given almost anything to be somewhere else right now.

  She answered calmly, her unmoving metal features making her even more intimidating than usual. “Then alow me to connect the ANSIS

  network to the civilian network. We can fight fire with fire.”

  “President Kruger has not authorized that,” he countered. “And I, for one, agree with her. We don’t know if it would be safe.”

  John Wang watched the two of them. He also secretly wished he could be elsewhere, and he also wondered how long it would be before he

  was forced to take Aiseman’s position. Dr. Miler seemed to have an exorbitant amount of influence with the government, and she was growing more and more impatient with the Director’s refusal to let her do as she wished.

  “I don’t think you realize how serious this situation is, Director,” said Dr. Miler.

  Aiseman made a steeple with his artificial fingers and leaned them against his lips, fighting to retain his calm and composure. “And I think you are overestimating it, Dr. Miler. If your theory is correct, they are heading for this facility. We can deal with them directly here, without risking civilian lives. There’s no indication they have any interest in threatening the CC center in London.

  She started to reply, but he held up his hand to forestal her. “What’s more, I don’t think you’ve considered the facts properly. At no point have they offered any threats. Thus far, every aggressive action has been on our part. They have only acted defensively. One of them is very probably even your own daughter! Perhaps we should consider letting them have this egg and let them be on their way.”

  The ANSIS android leaned forward menacingly. “If we learned anything the first time around, Director, it’s that you can’t negotiate with

  demons, and my ‘daughter’ is a demon as wel.” She leaned back after a moment. “Besides, I think you’l find that ANSIS is a natural evolution of your species.”

  Aiseman stared at her in confusion; had she said ‘your’? He was beginning to be alarmed by her behavior. “What are you saying?” he asked.

  “That the decision is no longer yours to make,” she replied. Almost casualy, she reached across the table and wrapped one powerful robotic hand around the assistant director’s throat. Puling him across the tabletop, she effortlessly pinned his thrashing form down and ripped the civilian android’s chest open, exposing its primary processors. Reaching in with the other hand, she crushed the delicate electronics.

  Aiseman watched in horror as John Wang, his assistant and longtime friend, died in front of him. Jumping to his feet he backed away, but his reaction was too slow. Tanya Miler leapt across the table and threw herself into him, pushing him back until he was pinned against the far wal.

  “You’re lucky, Director,” she said smoothly. “I need your access codes. So you’l be granted a far greater fate than poor John there.”

  He struggled to escape her, but to no avail; the military android she was inhabiting was too powerful. As he fought and writhed in her grasp, she carefuly puled away the synth skin on his shoulder, exposing the manual access port there. It was only meant for use by technicians, usualy when an android’s wireless interface had failed, but Tanya puled a special cable from her side and plugged herself directly into his machine.

  Aiseman’s struggle ended abruptly as his body froze, and he felt the digital ghost of the ANSIS network begin reading through his data, his files, and his own unique human mind. Helpless, he was scanned and torn apart. Donald Aiseman died then, in quiet horror; but his memories lived on, assimilated into the ANSIS network system.

  Two minutes later, Tanya Miler, or rather the thing masquerading as her, straightened up. If it could have smiled, it would have. Then, armed with the proper codes and overrides, it proceeded to upload the new and improved Donald Aiseman back into the civilian network.

  Chapter 48

  “How much farther?” asked Karen, for pe
rhaps the tenth time. The tension of riding at high speed while wondering if and when an attack might come was beginning to tel on her nerves.

  “Only five more miles,” Gary answered patiently. After a moment, he added, “Something is strange.”

  “What?” asked Matthew.

  “The network. There’s a new player in the game, a non-human one. It’s trying to root out some of my code, but it’s not smart enough. In

  human terms, it’s been years since Karen removed my limiters, and I’m way ahead of them,” explained the machine.

  Matthew and Karen exchanged worried looks. “Non-human?” he asked.

  “An AI,” responded Gary. “Something like me, but with fewer scruples. It’s stealing critical resources from the CC centers to speed up its own evolution and to try to break my encryption. Eventualy, it might succeed. I stil have some limits built into me, things I cannot do. This thing is using resources I am not alowed to touch. It’s stil an infant compared to me, but it’s growing quickly.”

  Neither of them liked the sound of that. Karen spoke first. “By ‘critical resources’, do you mean…?”

  “Yes,” said Gary. “It’s taking processing time reserved for maintenance of uploaded humans. It’s shutting them down one by one to gain more processing power.”

  Matthew looked quizzicaly at Karen for a simplified explanation.

  “It’s kiling people,” she clarified. “You can’t shut down uploaded people the way you can a program or an AI like Gary. The unique patterns, the quantum essence, al that is destroyed if you do.” She turned back to her virtual father. “How far has it gone? Is this just one CC center?”

  Somehow, despite the limitations of his military android body, Gary sounded sad. “No. It’s spreading quickly, targeting al the CC centers.

  Unchecked, it wil have claimed the majority of the computing resources on the planet in less than half an hour.”

  Her mouth rounded into a silent ‘o’ of horror. “It’s kiling everyone?”

  “I’m afraid so,” answered Gary.

  “How many people is that?” asked Matt.