Shield of Innocence (Alternate Places Book 4) (39 page)

Zack
thought about where they were, and figured it out, smiling.

"We're
on the Moon?"

Tor
looked at them both, and bowed, as if it
wasn't
strange not to know
that.

"Second
City. In the above ground portion? It's made of magic. This is the secondary
operations base. The prime one is on Earth, in the Noram Capital city. My son,
Dereg, is in command there. It's really the space port outside the city, but
that's his area."

The news
got Gwen to go wide eyed for some reason, her voice pleased when she spoke.

"You
have
kids
? That's amazing. How old is he?"

"Fourteen.
He's part of this. Fighting the Adversaries. They killed friends of ours. Just
scouts... I don't know how to explain it, really."

It took
a while, but they got what he meant. Here, in this world, there was a war
starting. An invasion it seemed, from the beings that wanted to destroy
reality. Clearly they were connected to the attacks on Lesser Shia and Zack's
Earth. What they'd sent seemed to be arch-demons to him, probably having
possessed people, but Tor seemed to think it was different, from the
description. He couldn't really remember his point of contact with them, so it
could be anything.

From
Zack not being right about what he thought, to Tor being incorrect, to the
reality just being presented in a different fashion in this part of the
multiverse. It was probably
that
one.

The big
difference was that here, in this place, thousands of people were preparing to
fight. They didn't know how, and were floundering that way, but they were
willing to
try
. Including some that came from space.

After a
while, they all bowed, the others doing it better than he did, and he had Gwen
teleport home.

She
nailed it on the first try, naturally.

Then all
he had to do was take her everywhere else, so that she'd know how to find the
other worlds that were needed.

It was
easy, really.

The next
trip was to see Brian Yi, on his military base thing. This time they both stood
out, and it seemed to be early morning, rather than whatever time it was back
home, which Zack had no clue about now. His guess would be something around two
in the afternoon, but that was a guess.

Gwen
looked around, and smiled, seeing buildings that she pointed at.

"Now
that's
better. This looks almost like home. I mean no houses, but I
could imagine this being where I came from, you know?"

He
nodded, "where I come from, too. I think that building is the one we
want."

It was
off to the side, and not the one that he'd been to before, but he could feel
Brian inside of it, his shadow a bit worried over something. That didn't come
through very easily, but had to do with a woman, or girl, which was normal
enough. Not in a standard fashion, however. He wasn't worried about not getting
a date, or what to do in bed, so Zack just walked in.

Inside
there was a lobby, but no elevator, just stairs on two sides of the building.

"Three
floors up?" He thought that was correct, anyway.

The man
was there, being busy talking through a door. On the outside, thankfully, since
that meant he could see them walking up. He spun, but smiled when he got it.

"Hey!
I... Is this important? There's a bit of an issue here. Sara is afraid to come
out, which is silly, since we're all friends here."

Zack
looked at the door, and nodded.

"That's
true. May I speak to her?" He didn't really know that he was going to be
able to help, since the shadow inside was tiny, and young, but he'd run into
the sense of this being before, once or twice.

Basically,
whoever this girl was here, she was also Chris. Ginger the vampire, too.

Brian
looked at him funny, not certain that Zack was a good choice for the job,
meaning the man was pretty bright, but stepped away, not wanting to be rude.

It
was
probably a bad plan, and the man with him, dressed in military tan fatigues
with a pattern all over them, and his name over the left breast pocket, seemed
to think that he was just going to announce that Brian had to leave now.

As if
the most important thing at the moment wasn't the girl inside the room.

"Sara?
You don't know me yet. I'm Zack. Zack Hartley? Basically I'm your friend Brian,
but from a different world and not as good looking. We have Gwen Farris with
us, who is also him from a different world. Anyway, we need to have a meeting,
and I think that you need to be there, too. Is that all right? It might mean
going to a different world."

The door
opened almost instantly, and a nice seeming dark haired girl, who had tan skin
looked out. Her face was very suspicious. Untrusting even, as if he wanted to
trick her. She was dressed up in a small version of the military uniform, which
was kind of funny, but opened the door more when she noticed that he
wasn't
.
That let her see the nicely dressed Gwen, who stood there trying to smile. She
really wasn't good at it.

Yi was
looking at Farris, shocked to find out that she was him too.

Sara
noticed that part, but spoke to Zack.

"Is
any of that real? Other worlds and all? I mean, I know that they exist, but are
you from one for reals?" It was kind of clear that she thought he was
helping Brian lie to her, just to get her out of the room in the stupid looking
outfit. She was seven, but technically in the IPB, her shadow told him.

That
meant that sometimes she had to wear the stupid thing she had on. It wasn't bad
when she was big, but seemed like a joke on her tiny form.

Zack
tilted his head as she told him that, her inner self exasperated.

"Yes?
You look fine by the way.
I
wouldn't have thought anything of it, except
that you were thinking about it now." He was about to explain the idea
that he could kind of do things like that, when she nodded, understanding
without asking about it.

Some
people read minds.

"Thanks.
I guess. It's Ms. Turner. She made me do it." Then she pointed at Gwen.
"You're her? I thought you were Brian?"

Yi
looked at Gwen and nodded, "that seems right. Anyway, there's a meet
up?"

Zack
took a deep breath and let it out, then waved for them to follow, not knowing
where they were going.

"Can
we find her, too? We should at least tell the people involved."

There
were more of them than he would have figured, and he didn't recognize all of
them at all, since that made sense. Here they had an organization, so some of
the people that could be called in weren't really the ones he would have listed
off himself.

A few of
them were people that he did know however. Gwen too, since she gave a dark
skinned woman named Penny a hug, almost instantly.

"
Beth
?
Or, I mean, other world Beth?"

The
woman, who had blond hair, and tan skin, didn't get it as they moved into the
main office. She'd been behind the front counter, but had come around, to look
at Sara when she was ambushed.

"Penny
Cooper. Um..." She stopped, and looked at Gwen. "
You
look
familiar though. I take it we're closer there than here?" She was still
being hugged, but didn't push the other woman away, returning the move instead.

There
was a smile from both of them, but a slightly different version of Gwen's body
coming in distracted the rest of them from the meeting.

"What
fresh hell?" The woman, Turner, Zack guessed, seemed youthful, fresh faced
and tired, without her body being that way in the slightest.

There
was just a sense of her being sick of things.

Brian
made a noise that was a bit strange, and choked off.

"She's,
actually me, from a different reality?"

The
whole explanation came then, and after a while, they were settled in a meeting
room. The same one that Brian used as an office most of the time. It had a nice
big table in it and fairly decent soft chairs. Like the meeting with Gwen, he
handled this situation carefully, like he was dealing with kids. He also needed
to take Brian around it turned out, so he could find things. That meant redoing
a lot of them, and taking them to meet with Glenda last, in case she was being
attacked or dead.

Sara had
wanted to come along on all of it, but Zack realized that it would make more
sense for him to bring Chris
there
, to meet her. Later. They were both
cogs in the wheel, but Sara was so young that it felt wrong to involve her yet.
She could, in theory, learn to line walk, but doing that would functionally end
her childhood. It might be needed, but it wasn't kind to think about. So he
didn't.

Instead
he retraced everything, did introductions, and then was surprised to find
Glenda, who looked like a younger version of Heather, sitting in a room alone,
meditating. That was an improvement on the last time, and he was happy to see
she was still alive.

"Hello?
I brought friends. Gwen and Brian." He spoke gently, and wasn't surprised
to find that the woman stood instantly, spinning to face them, with a weapon in
her hand. That got Brian to go for a gun, which was in a holster on his back,
and Gwen to point her finger, which looked funny, but was just as deadly in its
own way.

Only
Zack was able to stay calm, holding his open palm up much more slowly than the
others had done it. Not that he couldn't have done the same, reflex wise. It
was just that adding a fourth sudden movement to the volatile mix seemed like a
poor plan.

"Friends.
We're all the same person, so... Yeah. Put the weapons, and uh, fingers,
down." He looked over at Glenda and then Gwen. "
Don't
underestimate the finger. She's at least as well armed as you two are."

On the
good side they were all fairly reasonable, and not
scared
, just
reactive. Zack could see that, knowing that he too, was sort of like that.
Instead, as soon as things were smoothed, he ran over the whole thing, which
had its first very different answer. The others had all been either already
fighting the darkness, or willing to help.

Glenda
simply shook her head.

"I'm
right in the middle of a war here. We all are. This... I don't know how to
explain it, but things have gotten bad. There are about a thousand of us,
trying to stop the combined governments from enslaving us all. I don't know if
I can help, really."

That
made sense to him, but it was kind of clear that Riley was going to have a
problem with that, if she didn't do her bit.

"There's
some part for you in this, but don't lose your focus here, on our account. We...
What are you facing? That robot swarm?"

The
Heather looking blonde woman stared at him directly, her blue, not green, eyes
locking with his. There was a sense of focus and connection, coming off of her.
Her inner self was calm, and nearly under total control, for a regular person.
It was a part of her world.

Looking
around Zack noticed that the place they were in had a primitive feeling to it.
Like a log cabin, with an uneven stone floor, set in concrete. It looked good,
but it wasn't the kind of place that you would have expected to find robots, or
whatever the woman was fighting.

The
story took a while, and Zack was a bit shocked to find out that only about half
of the things that Glenda and her people had to face regularly were machines.

"Most
are armored troops. We can't really beat them, straight up, in a fight. Not
even us Cymeds here." She waved around, like she wasn't alone. They were,
however. No one waited in the walls. There were people nearby, however. Most
also mentally quiet. One was even almost silent, which was unique, outside of
the void. That was a man, but Zack didn't recognize him. Not exactly. There was
a thread that ran from the sense of self to someone that he'd met, but that was
all.

Turning
his mind back, talking to the woman, who was more muscular by far than was
normal for a female, and probably about as powerful as some vampires, on the
shadow level. One of the big problems they had here was that they didn't have
weapons that could take out the armored forms very easily. They had some, but
they were basically these large, air powered, super rifles. Big, slow, and
while they worked, they didn't do it very well.

After a
bit he started to nod, since he had an idea of where they could get some things
that might help.

"Lesser
Shia. We can get better weapons there, and they won't be traceable here.
I..." He looked at the others, and shrugged.

"These
two need to get home anyway. I'll take you by now, and see if we can find
anything?"

The
others didn't wait, vanishing from there, since they knew that Zack could get
home on his own. They didn't make plans to meet again, but they knew where he
worked
,
so it was doable. The timing of things was up in the air, but open, now that
they had the void back.

The
woman, not being all that trusting, still allowed him to lead her off into the
distance, into the forest that surrounded the cabins that her people were
working from. It looked like a nice place to take a vacation, compared to the
combat zone from earlier. His last trip. Forever ago.

It took
a while for him to get someone in Lesser Shia to come and take Glenda around,
and Zack ended up working from there, on a night shift basically, until Troy
came. His pal seemed shocked to see him, for some reason.

"Zack!
We all thought you were off on vacation still. Claire mentioned you coming
back, and um, Merry said that her big thing with you was done now? I hadn't
known there
was
one, but she seemed pretty relieved about it." He
looked away a bit, feeling sheepish.

Probably
since Merry had gotten him into bed shortly after that. It could have been
shocking, but honestly Zack had to force himself to recall that
he
was
the one married to the Elth woman, not Troy. For his part, he liked the small
red haired woman, but wasn't upset with her having fun. She didn't sleep, so
that left her with extra time each day, a lot of which was spent with
Troy
,
not him.

"I've
been spending time in different realities, so continuity isn't flowing smoothly
for me. You probably get some of that, working here all the time. I never
really noticed it, but I bet there's some drift. Probably ten minutes every day
or so." He looked at his friend, speaking silently, letting his buddy know
that he wasn't upset with him over sleeping with his wife.

Especially
since this made two of them.

Glenda
came back, loaded with about five hundred pounds of gear, and a bill, that was
carried by Hathe, the leader of the shopping city outside the doors. They didn't
let him in, since danger seemed to follow him when he did.

"Troy,
this is Glenda. She's in a war right now. Basically, she's me. So try not to
seduce her, if you can help it? It would be creepy." He was joking, not
caring at all, but his buddy snorted.