“Please proceed to the bunkers in a quick and orderly fashion,” said a robotic-sounding voice from the speakers of the hangar. “I repeat, please proceed to the bunkers.”

  The individuals who were residents of the Station scattered immediately from the hangar. Non-residents of the Station—who had come in from outside solely for the race—looked confused. Several of them re-entered their pod, attempting to leave the hangar. Asa thought: it must be nice to be able to leave.

  Rose shook off Asa’s hand, his face contemptuous. Rose had never looked at him like that when they were kids, when they had run around the Station together stealing wallets from tourists and candy from shops, known collectively as The Terrors in the Garnet Market. Asa used to have Rose’s respect. He didn’t know how to get it back. Asa’s chest felt tight and heavy as he watched Rose turn and then stride off into the Station to go to the bunkers assigned to the Golden Seal Syndicate.

  The alarm continued, the robotic voice repeating, “Please proceed to the bunkers in a quick and orderly fashion.”

  Asa locked up his pod first because he didn’t want anyone stealing his work, even as the hangar quickly emptied of people. PQ-9 wasn’t yelling at him to hurry up, and Asa had a humiliating feeling that it was because PQ-9 felt bad for him after Rose had beat him in the race. “Come on, let’s go,” he said to PQ-9, scooping him up from the floor to carry him in his arms.

  The bunkers for his apartment building were shitty, but whatever. Hopefully the bunkers would continue to hold. Asa exited Hangar 3 and walked further into the Station, where other people were already running to their bunkers. The lights flashed crazily in the darkness of the Station, even as the alarms sounded louder.

  The port housed ten separate hangars on the outer rings of the Station with a small trading market that connected the port to the middle rings. The emergency red lights had turned on, which lent the corridors a red glow that reminded Asa of the Vermilion House. Asa knew these streets like the back of his hand, having made the trek from the downtown to the hangars and back a million times.

  The outer rings of the Station had few amenities other than the port market and the Nexus. The middle rings of the Station had entrances to different parts of the Station center. Asa exited the middle rings onto Cyan street, which was located in the Sapphire District. The administrative buildings in the Sapphire District were closed and empty of government employees—Asa guessed they had already entered their specialty bunkers, which were additionally spelled against demonic interference. Several people scurried across the street, heading in the same direction as Asa toward the Onyx District, where much of the Station’s housing was located.

  The buildings became smaller and shabbier as Asa walked down Cyan Street all the way to Pitch Street, bypassing the Pearl District. The alarm was just as loud and shrill here, ten minutes’ walking distance from his apartment, as it had been in the hangar. Asa couldn’t count how many times he had walked home from the hangar in the last two years. It had become autopilot to turn onto Cyan Street, and then Pitch Street, and then he would turn right onto Jet Street, which was the street where he lived. There were other ways to navigate to his apartment from the hangar, but this involved the least number of times that Asa had to cross the street.

  There weren’t many people on Pitch Street, having presumably already entered their bunkers. Graffiti lanced across the walls of the apartment buildings, ranging from philosophical to the extremely dumb. The Onyx District was colder than the rest of the Station and had very few greenhouses, which made the air more stale and still. Asa had been walking quickly, and his side was starting to burn from exertion. He had to step up his cardio routine, at least according to his mother and PQ-9. Asa would rather stick a screwdriver in his eye than run in place for an hour.

  But Demons moved fast, after all.

  Asa reflexively turned right at the next intersection at Jet Street, which was where his apartment building was located. One more block. The streets were completely empty. Asa had never been so late to his bunker when the alarm sounded. He had never been so far away from home in the first place. Asa crossed the street to the next block and then turned down the path to his apartment, which was taller than the other buildings that were next to it. He faced the ID scanner for the building, and the machine scanned his face. Then it turned red. The scanner said, “Your identity is not recognized. Try again.”

  Asa frowned before pressing the button that would repeat the scan. The machine turned red again. The scanner said, “Your identity is not recognized. Try again.”

  Asa looked down at PQ-9 in his arms to find that PQ-9 was in the process of powering down and restarting, which was what he did when entering a location with new satellite connections.

  “Fuck,” he said, pressing his hand to his face. Asa had wandered into another time-line. Again. He was going to have to retrace his steps.

  Asa turned to walk back toward the Sapphire District, the alarms in this new time-line still sounding. He wondered what else in this time-line was different. Was his mother in this time-line doing the same things that she was doing in his time-line? Did she even exist in this time-line? He could imagine her in the bunkers underneath the House, using this time to read through articles that she usually didn’t have time to read. PQ-9 beeped his start-up theme song, as he re-calibrated to the new time-line.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Have a nice nap?” Asa said dryly, even as PQ-9 beeped chidingly at him.

  Asa turned the corner onto Pitch Street when suddenly he found himself on the ground, his entire side scraping against the street. Asa had been upright, unsuspecting, and now he was pinned to the ground because demons moved fast. Asa had stupidly been so distracted by being in the wrong time-line that he hadn’t noticed the threat. Asa frowned when he looked closer at the entity who was scrabbling at his neck. This wasn’t a demon. This was a girl, and she was trying to steal his specialty House collar that his mother had given him when he was four years old.

  “Hey, you can’t have that!” he said, throwing her off. She had been able to partially undo the complex clasps, and he clutched the collar to his neck. “That’s mine!”

  She didn’t back off at all, just launched herself at him again, and they rolled across the floor into someone’s rock garden. The girl played dirty, scrabbling at his eyes and kneeing him in the balls while he kept tight hold of the collar. Asa finally managed to get a good grip on her collar to wrench her away from him before standing up. The girl punched and kicked air while he looked at her, frowning. She was actually pretty small and bony and had an angry look on her face like a wet cat. Her long curly black hair was in little buns on both sides of her head.

  “You’re just a little kid,” he said, baffled. PQ-9 scolded her in binary, which was a nice change from PQ-9 scolding him. “Why are you by yourself?”

  She fought against his hold on the collar of her lavender jumpsuit, but she didn’t have the reach—and she had lost the advantage of surprise. “None of your business!” she declared. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small pink laser gun. “Give me the necklace.”

  “Absolutely not,” he said grimly. “I’d rather get lasered.”

  Her face screwed up in a glare. “That can be arranged,” she said, before she clunked him in the head with the gun--which surprised him enough that she was able to snatch the collar from him. “Aha!” she said, triumphant. Asa quickly grabbed her wrist, but then she really did laser him with the gun.

  “Ow!” he yelped, reflexively letting go of her wrist as the laser singed his side. This allowed the girl to start running off with his collar in the opposite direction of where Asa had been walking.

  Asa raced after her immediately, following her into cramped little alleys and then climbing little metal ladders onto roofs. She was just so fucking fast. Asa pushed himself harder, his eyes locked on her back, so focused that he didn’t see the inter-dimensional shimmering patch of air until he was already caught in it.

  Fully fledged demons were mobile, fast, strong—but when they were still developing, they appeared as stationary swirls of energy. If Asa had been paying more attention, he could have avoided it. But he had fallen into a small inter-dimensional pocket, which had glowing green walls and no visible way out. PQ-9 was inert again, knocked out for the second time by the change in satellite access. Asa groaned, cursing himself, as he tried to leave the inter-dimensional space pocket by running as fast as he could forward.

  Instead, he just ended up re-entering the dimensional pocket from the other side.

  A small, glowing gem was embedded in the center of the ground. The gem was square-shaped and so saturated in purple color that it almost looked like a jellied dessert he had seen on the holo. But Asa knew the heart jewel of a demon when he saw one.

  Asa shouldn’t touch it. He didn’t know what would happen. Very few people had the opportunity to access a demon’s most precious item: their heart jewel. But Asa had heard of people trapped in these one-way portals for many years before someone else stumbled upon it. He couldn’t afford to be one of those people. Asa had too much to do, too many obligations that he had to fulfill.

  Asa touched the small gem—which felt surprisingly warm and alive.

  The heart jewel pulsed once, twice, three times, and then it expanded. It became bigger and bigger until Asa was forced to step back or be crushed. “Thanks for completing the energy transfer!” the demon said cheerfully. The demon was large and grotesque with the face of an abstracted lion and the body of an enormous, old-fashioned industrial train. Asa felt absolutely winded, which was when he realized that the demon was right—the demon had taken a sizable amount of his energy.

  The demon started whistling cheerfully, and when Asa looked down, he realized the demon was phasing through the floor. “Hey, wait, you can’t just leave me here!” Asa said, panicking.

  “Why not?” the demon said, sounding genuinely curious.

  “Because I’m the reason you get to leave!” Asa said.

  “You snooze, you lose,” the demon said casually, which was when Asa grabbed the demon with both hands. “Hey, let go, I’m gonna get your human germs on me!”

  Asa found his hands sinking into the demon, although strangely it didn’t feel like he was losing his grip. “Why not?” he said, mocking the demon.

  The demon shot a golden light-beam out of his mouth, and Asa ducked. He could feel the extreme heat of the light-beam as it surged passed him. Asa’s hands were still stuck inside the demon, sinking deeper, and he couldn’t pull away. The demon’s limbs grew longer and longer in order to wrap tightly around Asa until Asa couldn’t breathe, and then the demon tried to rip Asa from the demon’s body.

  “Don’t touch me!” the demon said, his voice deeper than sound, burrowing into Asa’s brain. Asa couldn’t pull his hands away, even if he wanted to, his hands trapped inside the demon’s chest like a fly inside amber. The demon pulled harder at Asa, and Asa felt if the demon used any more strength, Asa might rip in half. Asa could feel the warmth in the center of the demon’s body, something that compelled Asa to reach further, even through the pain that made him sweat and clench his teeth.

  “Get out, human!!” the demon screamed, as Asa finally grasped the heart of the demon in his hands.

  The demon wailed as Asa held the demon’s heart, which burned Asa’s hands as he held onto the heart with all of his strength. The demon’s body started to lose shape around Asa’s hands, as if the demon’s organs were rearranging themselves, the demon’s bones cracking so loudly that it sounded like the trees on the holos falling. Asa pulled his hands toward himself until he pulled out the small purple jewel he had first seen in the inter-dimensional portal.

  The demon’s limbs disappeared, and Asa fell to the ground, except the ground was shifting as it transformed into a shapeless energy field. So Asa fell further, downward into the energy field, and he curled into himself, clutching the burning hot heart of the demon in his hands.

  [Timeline: 002]

  [Pocket Dimension: ???]