Didn’t help.

The first shortcut she created inadvertently opened on an empty barn in Idaho. It was silent, too, but for the keening of the wind. Not even the shuffling of hooves or the lowing of cows to break the eerie quiet. Where had the livestock gone? Where was everybody? She gave the wind blowing in from halfway around the world a quick sniff, testing it for fresh manure, but couldn’t be sure.

Ray said, “Oh, so that’s what a barn looks like on the inside.” He looked pointedly at the pile of dented battered slot machines lying abandoned on the dirt floor. The chipped Cyrillic lettering, the shattered teeth, and the blood-crusted crowbar gave the scene a postapocalyptic grace note. “I always thought barns contained things like hay and animals and maybe a tractor. The things I learn on this job.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Mollie said.

She killed the portal. Tried again. And got slapped in the face by a very confused koi riding the water that gushed into Babel’s makeshift office from the basin of a Paris fountain. In seconds the torrent doused everything. It rose to ankle level while everybody climbed the furniture and cursed at Mollie. The fish that smacked Mollie with its tail wasn’t the only one flopping on the floor when she finally closed the spacetime rift.

Nobody said anything. The only sound was the wet slapping of koi convulsing on a ruined carpet. The office stank of fountain water and pigeon shit. The AC kicked in, causing Mollie to shiver. Soaking wet and humiliated to the bone, she could feel the others’ eyes on her, feel the judgment raking her flesh. She wanted to pluck their eyes out. How dare they judge her failures? She—

“It’s okay, sweetie.” Michelle laid a hand on her shoulder. Mollie started, hard enough to bite her tongue. “We’re all scared. You’re not alone. We know you’re doing the best you can. We know you can do this.”

Babel said, “Do you want to try the sedative?”

Mollie shook her head. “No. Save those for the people who’ll really need them.”

Save the drugs for the Talas Suicide Squad.

A crowd of Russian soldiers and SCARE agents gathered outside Babel’s door. They’d traced the torrent to its source. A few chuckled when they saw the koi. It was the dull, forced laughter of men on death row.

Babel shut the door. “Just ignore them.”

The next shortcut opened on a T-shirt shop in Half Moon Bay. Police tape fluttered on the ocean breeze while a crime-scene cleanup crew scrubbed blood from the ceiling.

Mollie screamed.

Light spilled from Babel’s makeshift office in Baikonur to the rooftop of a prison five time zones to the west. A humid Brussels night wafted into the Cosmodrome.