“I’ll believe my enemy is dead when I see their corpse in the ground.”
~ old American proverb I2—2053
Day 205/365
Year 5 of Progress
(July 24, 2069)
Central Command
Third Continent
Prime Reality
With a vicious kick, the door to Locker 666 crumpled outward. Rose unfolded herself from the locker, black dust billowing around her like the birth of an avenging goddess. Nemesis in all her glory would have laid down her sword and bowed at Rose’s feet.
Growling, Rose strode into the main hall and headed for the control center. Everyone moved. Techs scuttled to the side. Operatives and agents stepped back. Her furious steps echoed through the building like the drums of doom.
The gene lock slowed her down for only a moment, then she threw open the door.
Emir was stepping through the portal. She calmed herself, moderately mollified. At least she’d returned before Donovan had a chance to abandon her in that wayward iteration. He would pay for that. Prime only needed one Warrior, and they had MacKenzie.
She put her hands on her hips as she watched Emir turn with a little smile. He was coaxing someone through the portal, pulling her out of the light.
A woman with a mass of unruly black hair tripped through, falling in a gangly sprawl like a washed-up jellyfish.
Emir left the woman there as he walked to office with a smug smile.
Ire building like the rage of a volcano, Rose stormed down to the landing platform. “Who are you?”
The woman looked up, and Rose took an involuntary step backward. There was a bruise on her cheek, and far too much weight on her, but it was her other self. Another Rose from another iteration. The audacity and hubris—
“Rose?” Emir stopped and stared in horror.
It was worse than she’d thought. He’d brought an iteration of her home and not known the difference.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.
“It means you missed. You brought one of their nodes home with you.” She pulled her gun, not entirely sure if she wanted to shoot Emir or the sniveling other-her first.
The woman surged to her feet, ramming Rose in the chest with her head, then danced through the portal as it snapped closed.
Rose turned to Emir. “What were you thinking?”
“I thought you were testing security measures!” He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “You were complaining that the anomalies weren’t secure. When you didn’t come back, I assumed you were trying to make a point. The rogue iteration didn’t collapse, so I went to find you.”
“I was missing because Donovan changed the jump location, and no one told me! I spent four days in that hellhole waiting for a convergence point. I ate things growing on trees and, and . . .” She didn’t know how to describe the meat cylinder wrapped in stale bread that someone had offered her when she stumbled into a group gathering. Her only excuse for eating it was that she’d been delirious from hunger and dehydration. “I had to break back into the facility to use the machine and escape. You are lucky that it didn’t collapse as scheduled.”
Emir descended the stairs slowly. “Donovan didn’t give you our new location?”
“He did not.” She was wary of the fury on his face.
“He told me differently.” His tone grew cool. “He gave the location to Senturi, and Senturi was meant to relay it to you.”
“He lied.”
Emir took a deep breath. “He risked an einselected node in an act of hubris.” He turned to one of the scrub-clad techs who was watching the drama unfold with wide eyes. “Sound an alarm. Lock down the building. No, the whole city. I want Captain Donovan found and brought to me immediately.”
“If he was planning a coup,” Rose said, “he couldn’t have worked alone. He would need support from the ruling party.”
Emir’s eyes narrowed. “Senturi didn’t return. “ He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I thought they could be trusted past the decoherence. I wanted to let them run things a little longer, but they have forced my hand.
“Commander, it is time for the culling to begin.”
Donovan saw red. For a time, he wasn’t in his right mind. He came back to himself washing blood out of deep gouges in his hands and forearms. There was probably a dented recycler somewhere in the building. He splashed cold water on his face, then stared at the mirror.
Rose was back.
The rogue iteration hadn’t collapsed. If anything, it had grown stronger with Rose’s presence. The entangling spiral had cut away, and for a few brief moments, the universe had breathed a sigh of relief. Donovan had gone to Rose’s memorial service, said all the proper things, gone through all the right gestures even as Emir raged.
Then the rogue iteration had plummeted down to the baseline, inverting the probability fan.
It had felt like dying. Lying in his bed, sweat-soaked sheets tightening around him like a noose, he’d dreamt of every possible death and woke gasping for air. The command center had been in a panic. Emir vanished for nearly an hour, and when he returned, the probability fan had collapsed to just the two iterations, and Rose had returned.
Men he’d trained with for nearly a decade were avoiding him. Even the non-nodes had felt the shock as the iteration had lost dominance. Emir’s standing had grown overnight. No one was willing to experience that again. If that was a taste of decoherence, then he knew what hell felt like.
Donovan dried his face and dressed with a singular focus. With a vicious tug, he secured his boots.
It was time to attack.
Mac rubbed a hand over the two-day beard on his chin.
He wasn’t sleeping at night, not well. Every time he rolled over, Sam was missing. She was gone, and the nightmares were back. This morning he’d woken up choking and spat blood into the sink after biting his cheek to keep from screaming. It didn’t matter that someone had shelved him in an abandoned cubicle down an empty hallway with nothing more than a cot and a three-legged stool. Showing weakness here would be like dumping blood in the water. The sharks were always looking for a meal. They didn’t need an invitation.
Mac jumped at the sound of sirens followed by the insistent tattoo of someone’s hammering on his door.
“Wh—?”
Donovan pushed inside before Mac could finish the word. The other man slammed the door shut and glared at Mac.
“What?”
“Rose is back.” Dark circles under his eyes and sunken cheeks said Donovan was circling an abyss.
“That’s nice,” he said. Unfortunate, because it had looked like Emir was close to caving, but it meant he’d finally get out of this fishbowl of a room he’d been locked in.
Donovan started pacing. “I’m leaving.”
“Good-bye?” Mac wondered if he should break it to Donovan that he didn’t care what happened. The world would probably be a better place without him. Easier for Mac if nothing else.
Pivoting, Donovan glared at him. “Rose needs to die.”
Mac shook his head and shrugged.
“She promised you she’d get you back to your iteration, but it will never happen,” Donovan said. “Emir would never let it happen. Rose is lying to you.”
“It’s time travel,” Mac said. “I’ll figure out a way home.”
“In thirty-six hours, there won’t be a home for you to go to. The rogue iteration, your iteration, is in a death spiral. They can’t survive much longer without you. Once it dies, you can’t jump back in time to when it existed. It ceases to have ever existed.”
Mac’s gut clenched in fear.
“I need to leave.” Donovan’s face warmed with cruel emotion. A smile as sick and sadistic as any murderer’s grew on his face. “My next return window is in thirteen hours. If Rose is dead when I arrive, I’ll get you home. Your iteration will have a fighting chance at survival. If she’s alive, I’ll kill you. But not before I sort through time and find your wife and kill her. You get to pick who dies, MacKenzie.
“Choose a Rose.”