“What would the Borgias do?”
~ engraved on a family crest created in during the Neo Renaissance I3—2061
Day 206/365
Year 5 of Progress
(July 25, 2069)
Central Command
Third Continent
Prime Reality
She was shaking again. Even the sleeping pills couldn’t stop her nightmares. Every time she slept, she dreamt of dying. The memory of her death haunted her waking hours. Colored every shadow.
The only thing that offered her a respite was running, burning all her energy until she collapsed into the cold bed at night. With the gym closed as part of lockdown, she’d taken to running in the empty service tunnels under Central Command. Her footsteps echoed, a steady cadence completely at odds with her racing heart. It will soon be over, she repeated to herself. It will soon be over. It will soon be over.
Decoherence is coming.
If she could just hold on to her sanity for a few more days, everything she’d done would be worth it. The deaths, the lies, the losses.
She slowed, stopping at one of the old watering fountains to take a drink. The water wasn’t as well filtered on this level, and it tasted of rotten eggs, but she found she didn’t care. Not about the water, or Donovan, or even Emir. She stared at the brick walls painted white and let her fears soak into the stones.
Shadows flickered down the empty tunnels. A flash of light was followed by the tread of heavy boot steps.
Donovan turned the corner, blood dripping from his nose.
“What happened to you?” Rose demanded, terror rushing back like the recoil of a gun on her shoulder. Fear of invasion and erasure pumped her with adrenaline until the world snapped into sharp focus.
Donovan looked up, and it seemed like he wasn’t seeing her at all. His gaze roved through the shadows, catching on the lines of the brick and the shine of the water dispenser. “She’s mine!” The shout bounced off the walls.
“Who’s yours?” Rose took a step forward before realizing he’d fallen into the abyss he’d always teetered on the edge of. “Captain, report to the infirmary.” Her voice cracked with fear.
Donovan charged her, raging forward with his fists leading.
Rose ducked under his initial punch, stuck her leg out and tripped him. That ruined his momentum but didn’t knock any sense into him.
Donovan came back, twisting and rising up with a fist aimed at her torso.
Rose took the blow on her shoulder and drove her fist into his gut.
It didn’t slow him down. Donovan lashed out with a left hook, a textbook response straight out of their training drills. He always had been stupid.
Catching his arm, Rose pulled, using Donovan’s own momentum to throw him into the wall. “I will kill you,” she warned. “I might not want to, but I will.”
“You ruined it! She’s dead. Senturi is dead. This is your fault!” He pushed off the wall, trying to tackle her.
Rose stepped to the side and used her boot to send him sprawling onto the floor, where his head bounced. She took off her belt and tied his hands behind his back while he was still stunned. “You’re not in your right mind. I’m going to get the guards. If you’re still here when I get back, I’ll tell Emir this was pressure brought on by decoherence. If you try to escape or come after me, I’ll tell him exactly what you said.” She peered at his hands. There was more than his blood there.
Kicking him in the back so his kidneys would remember her threat, she stood. “Think very hard, Captain. Is this really how you want to die?”
With a heavy sigh, she turned . . . only to see herself watching the tableau with a curiously blank expression.
Rose blinked, shaking her head. She had the nauseating sensation of being in two places at once. Memories that weren’t quite hers buffeted her. And then she saw the dog.
“You’re Commander Rose?” her other self asked.
“What are you doing here?” The other iterations didn’t know about decoherence. All non-Prime threats had been removed. And if this was decoherence . . . it was wrong. She wasn’t supposed to feel like multiple people. She wasn’t supposed to feel anything.
Her other self smiled. “I’m here to pick up my husband. I may arrest someone in connection to a series of killings, but I consider that a secondary goal.” The woman leaned to the side to look around her. “That man on the ground, what size shoe would you say he’d wear?”
“What?” Rose clutched her stomach as a wave of nausea twisted her insides. Drinking the water down here had been a poor choice.
“Doesn’t matter,” the other-Rose said with a shrug. “He fits the description of my murder suspect. If he’s alive when I’m done, I’ll arrest him. If he’s not, then I’m just picking up Mac and leaving.”
Rose shook her head as she fought the pain. “You can’t. He’s our node.” She hesitated and shook her head again, growing angry. This is not how I die. “You should be dead. I collapsed your iteration. I collapsed all the iterations. This morning, the machine was showing only one line.” Emir had told her so himself.
He’d sworn it was over.
“Is that what you were trying to do, destroy us?” her other self asked. “You’re not very good at it, are you? This makes, what, three attempts? Four? Maybe you should have outsourced to the Marines. You know, for when it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight?” There was a lilt in her voice, a sense of dark humor that stole the foundation of Rose’s hate.
“What are we doing?” The memories were growing. Rose stepped back. Maybe the water was poisoned. That would make sense. Fatigue, dehydration, and chemicals in the water were conspiring to make her hallucinate.
The dog stepped forward.
“Why do you have an animal?”
“Because I like dogs, and leaving him with my neighbors seemed like a bad idea since I wasn’t sure I’d get back to my iteration,” her other self said. “I couldn’t leave Bosco alone.”
“That’s not right.” Rose felt dizzy and confused. “You can’t just step through like this. You can’t change anything. You’re a reject. A rogue. Impossible.” She shook her head. “You’re wrong. Everything you do is wrong.” She grabbed her head. It hurt. Everything hurt.
Her other self shrugged. “Next time I go to confession; I’ll be sure to mention this.” She raised her splat gun with a smile.
“You can’t!”
But she did.
Sam watched as Landon caught the other-Sam. Bosco sniffed her, then sat down in disinterest.
“Bit heavier than I was expecting,” Landon huffed. “Now what?”
“He needs to be secured for transfer. She needs to be hidden for a day or two. I’ll need her uniform and any ID cards or keys she has. Do you think she brought a day planner?”
“To go jogging?” He sounded skeptical.
She untwisted Bosco’s leash from her wrist and went to help Landon move the unconscious other-Sam. “I can hope, right? I’m going in with no information about this building, no idea of the layout, and no clue where my husband is. If he were here, he’d kill me.”
Landon looked up sharply.
“It’s an expression. He wouldn’t actually kill me. He’d just be very frustrated with my choices right now.”
“He wouldn’t be wrong.”
“Of course not. But, then again, if he were here, I wouldn’t be hunting him down. Would I?”
“Suppose not.”
They hefted the other-Sam to a metal sledge that they’d found in the corridor.
Sam rubbed dirt off her hands as she walked over the man her other self had beaten and tied up. He was glaring. “Donovan? I thought I recognized you.”
“I am going to kill you.” His words were calm and cold. It was a fact in his mind, not a guess.
She squatted down as Bosco trotted over to stand guard. “How many women who looked like us did you kill?” she asked. “Lexie Muñoz is the only one I can tie you to right now—there were witnesses—but I bet my badge your boot fits my other victims.”
“They were nothing. You are nothing.” His pupils were dilated to pinpoints of darkness. Wherever Donovan was, it wasn’t reality.
“Where’s Mac?” Sam asked.
Donovan squirmed, trying to stand. With a scream of inarticulate rage, he spat at her.
Sam stood up, wiping the spittle off her cheek. “The urge to kick him in the face is really quite strong,” she told Landon.
“It’s going to be a pain pushing her back. With him on there?” Landon shook his head. “Do they need to live?”
“I’m generally opposed to murdering people.”
“It’d be easier is all I’m saying.”
“Very pragmatic.” She frowned down at the sleeping Commander Rose. “Do you still have that Taser?”
Landon nodded. “You want to go first?”
“At this point, it’s like shooting a rabid dog,” she said over Donovan’s shouts of protest.
“So you want the real gun?” Landon said, reaching for his pack.
Sam shook her head. “No, just tase him. I do not have time to hide a body.”
“Why hide it?” Landon asked as he pulled the Taser and shot Donovan in the leg. “Soon as the next opening comes, me and mine are leaving for the Shadow Prime. You’re leaving. So who would track us down?”
“Dead bodies get noticed.” Sam nodded to Donovan’s hands as she reached for his legs. “You leave one lying around long enough, it’s bound to cause trouble.”
They carried Donovan over to the sledge and dropped him beside the other-Sam, his feet dragging on the ground.
Landon shook his head. “Wouldn’t get noticed before we get gone is all I’m saying.”
“You’re going to push the same button to haul them out as you’re going to push to haul yourself out,” Sam said. “The extra weight won’t slow you down. Now, I need her uniform, I think.” Shooing Landon around the corner, she unlaced the commander’s boots, stripped her down to her base layer of jogging shorts and tank top, then switched clothes with her. The uniform was heavy. How the other-Sam had run comfortably in it she wasn’t sure. But it fitted, and that, she told herself, was the main thing. “Oh!” She reached down and grabbed Melody Chimes’s truncheon from her pocket. The faded Auburn sticker gave her hope.
“You can come back out,” she called to Landon.
He turned the corner, did a double take, then frowned. “Your hair is wrong.”
Sam pulled hers into a high bun on her head. “How’s this look?”
“Anyone who knows this lady well is going to know you aren’t her. Not once you get close.”
“As long as they don’t notice until I’m close enough to knock them out, it doesn’t matter. I still have me splat gun. I could use it.” Could being the operative word. If she could get away with not hurting anyone else, she would. “And I have Bosco.”
Landon didn’t look convinced. “How many of those little magic bullets you got? Besides, that dog may look fierce, but he’s not vicious.”
“The splat gun has nine bullets left.”
He nodded. “So, I’ll expect you to come running with a fully armed battalion chasing you?”
“It will only be because they want to remind me of their love.”
Landon’s eyes went wide as his lips rolled into his mouth and vanished. After a long moment, he asked, “Is everyone in your reality this crazy?”
“Nah. I’m one of the normal ones.”
“Is that supposed to reassure me? ’Cause it doesn’t.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sam said. She realized she was using the voice she usually reserved for tourists and felt a little guilty. With a little placating smile, she said, “Everything’s going to be fine. If all goes well, I won’t even bother you again. You can jump to the Shadow Prime. I can go back to my life. It’ll be great.” She rubbed her neck. She had a headache building and an uncanny sense of déjà vu about this whole place.
He grunted and shook his head. “Fine. Help me load him up?” He nodded to the cursing Donovan.
“Tase him first,” Sam said. “Otherwise, he’s likely to bite.”
Five minutes later, both the unconscious other-Sam and Donovan were loaded up.
“I’ll get them to the rail line, load them there, and the auto transport can haul them the rest of the way.”
“Be careful with them,” Sam warned. “I don’t trust either of them farther than I can throw them.”
“One of them is you!”
Sam nodded. “I know, that’s why I don’t trust her. I fight like a mongoose when I’m cornered.”
In Florida—her first time through 2070—Sam had found a warehouse full of paintings done by Dr. Emir. As Mac walked into Emir’s private office in the Prime, he realized this was the parallel. The paintings weren’t all the same. There were more cities and fewer depictions of Sam, but the thought behind it was the same. Emir had tried to capture the memory of the worlds he’d destroyed in his conquest of time.
Emir watched him as he walked a circuit around the room before coming to the oversized desk Emir hid behind. The doctor steepled his fingers together. “What do you think?”
“What a waste,” Mac said.
Emir cocked his head to the side. “Of paint? Of time?”
“Of life. Of possibility. Look,” Mac pointed to a painting of a glass-and-steel building shaped like a ship’s sails. “Where was that? Who created it? What happened to the architect and the builders? To all the people who worked or lived there? They’re gone, aren’t they? Lives wasted. Because of you.”
“There can only be one iteration of each person,” Emir said.
“Why?”
The doctor blinked in surprise. “It is a matter of logic.”
“Of hubris,” Mac argued. “I know two variations of the same person can share a timeline because I’ve been living side by side with my younger self for five years. We shared an apartment for a few days. Neither of us imploded.”
“It isn’t safe,” Emir said. “All these worlds were flawed.”
“All worlds are flawed. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Because something’s gone wrong in your perfect world?” It was supposition only. The command tower had been quiet for the past twelve hours. The cantina had been empty when he’d gone for food. Jane was missing. Everything about the situation said trouble with a capital T. Emir’s summons was all the confirmation he needed that the Prime had just gone to hell in a handbasket.
Emir turned at his desk. “We reached decoherence this morning. These pieces of art are all that remain of those worlds. My memories have become imaginings.”
The spark of hope that had kept him going was extinguished with one thought: Sam was gone.
Mac couldn’t cry. He couldn’t even find a nameable emotion. Only a coldness that swallowed him whole and left him empty.
The last time he’d felt like this, he’d been carrying a dead soldier across his back in the deserts of Afghanistan. Then, all that mattered was putting one foot in front of the other as he tried to outrun death. Now there was nowhere to run. His eye twitched.
“You shouldn’t have said that.”
“I shouldn’t have warned you?” Emir’s patronizing grin seemed to mock him. “You would have wanted to know. The decoherence was softer than I imagined. The iterations ran parallel for several hours this morning until they showed up as a thick black line on my machines. There’s no more probability fan. We only have one choice, and that is to go forward as we are, with what we have right now.”
Mac’s hands became white-knuckled fists. It didn’t matter what happened. He was going to kill Jane for this. Donovan, too, if he had the chance. Emir. It didn’t matter. They’d taken him away from Sam. They’d destroyed the life he’d worked so hard to put back together.
Emir’s explanations became white noise.
Memories of Jane Doe’s broken body slipped through his mind like a mission briefing. A hit here. A boot there. It all fit.
The dehydration and abuse he’d seen on her corpse wasn’t from imprisonment as he’d assumed, it was from living here. This iteration had leached the very marrow from her bones. Now they were weak enough for him to snap them with icy precision. Only, this time, she wouldn’t be buried in Alabama District 3 because she had destroyed it.
Humanity better pray there was a probability fan Emir couldn’t see, some rogue iteration spinning off by itself, because he was about to burn this one to the ground.
Donovan rolled sideways as the auto transport rattled away from him. He stayed still, hoping no one noticed, and as the auto transport turned a corner, he stood up. He was torn, for a moment, between chasing after the unconscious Rose and the man guiding the sledge, or going back to Central Command. The need to treat his injuries won out. There’d always be another Rose to kill.
Especially today.
His head was still ringing when he had returned from the rogue iteration to the Prime, but he swore he’d seen two Roses after the commander tied him up.
Gripping the belt strap between his teeth, he pulled it loose, freeing his hands.
At a steady jog, he could reach the lower levels of the command tower in good time. He knew the tunnels better than anyone. Knew where the old medical bays were, where the supplies were. From there, he could plan his assault.
It took him less than an hour to clean up, take a few stimulants to clear his head, then he was ready to deal with humans again. He ran a hand over his short hair and looked in the mirror. A little worse for the wear, but he’d looked rougher after a hard day in training. Soldiers weren’t meant to look clean cut. Not if they were fighting men.
Donovan pushed a heavy shelf to one side and pulled out a metal wall panel. When he’d brought the old comm kit down here, he’d meant to use it for listening in on Emir’s plans. But he’d also given Senturi permission to use it to contact the Council as needed. He punched in the code from memory.
Gray waves appeared on the screen, then the tight face of an older woman. “Who are you?”
“Captain Donovan, reporting in for Senturi.”
She nodded, iron-gray curls catching the light. “Is he ready for us?”
“Yes.” The lie slipped off his tongue with ease.
“Do we have the coordinates?”
“As soon as we have the control room, coordinates will be provided.” The second door in the badlands worked well for getting in and out of the Shadow Prime, but he needed to find the red-haired woman. He swayed on his feet, the memory of his dead-self holding her mixing with the memory of the same woman trying to cave in his skull as he rescued her from himself.
“Captain?” the Councilwoman asked. “Are you in good health?”
He wasn’t, but that was not for her to know. “Yes, ma’am. When will your troops arrive?”
“They are in place and will breach the command tower in eight minutes.”
“I’ll go meet them,” Donovan said.
“To the Council goes the victory,” the woman said as she signed off.
“And the power.” He remembered that line from training. Wiping away fresh blood from his nose, he stared at the metal walls of the medical bay. In retrospect, he should have waited to kill Senturi. It would have made retaking the control tower easier.
He shook his head and went to the stairs.
Decoherence was coming—it was the ache in his bones and the confusion in his mind—and there was much to do before the probability fan closed completely.
“Right or left?” Sam asked Bosco. They’d been following signs of habitation—stairs, open doors, litter—and she was fairly certain they were near the top of the tower. But she’d stopped counting floors after thirty.
He sniffed at a door that looked no different to her than the other dozen doors they’d passed.
“Okay, doors are good.” She waved the stolen ID in front of the lock, and it swung open revealing six rows of heavily armed SWAT with weapons. There was a moment of stunned silence from both parties, then Sam dodged to the side and hit the lock again. Someone had called in reinforcements.
“Wrong door. Bosco, chay.”
They skidded around the corner as gunfire sprayed down the hall.
“I told Landon dead bodies would cause trouble. They weren’t even dead!” She opened another lock, slammed the doors behind her, and searched desperately for something to barricade it with. The hall was as empty and sterile as an abandoned hospital. “St. Jude, St. Samantha, help. Oh, golly, Bosco. Why did we leave home?”
He sniffed at the door and growled.
Sam snapped her finger and took off running, looking for a side hall or an exit. Anything that would get her away from the police.
Up ahead, a door swung open and slammed shut. Unbelievably, MacKenzie—or at least some version of MacKenzie—turned to her.
The rattle of gunfire swallowed her cry.
MacKenzie walked toward her, eyes burning with fury.
“Mac.” He didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t even sure it was her Mac. “Bosco, tân công.”
The sound of gunfire drew Mac into the hall. He saw Rose running toward him, face full of fear. He was going to push her back at the attackers. Drag them both into the hail of bullets.
Then Bosco knocked him to the ground.
The dog licked his face.
“Off, Bosco, off. You’re crushing me.”
“Oh my . . .” Sam shook her head in stunned belief. “It is you. I found you,” she said, as she choked on tears.
Mac held up a hand, and she helped him up.
“Sorry. You looked very not yourself.” She ran her hands across his face. “Mac . . .”
There was so much more she wanted to say, but a percussion grenade went off in the distance. She took a deep breath. “I love you. It’s good to see you again. Where is the exit of this insane place? There’s a SWAT team after me, which is really overkill considering I only knocked out two people.”
“What are you doing here?” Mac demanded, grabbing her arm and pulling her away from the sounds of fighting.
“Rescuing you—kind of.” She smiled apologetically. “The SWAT team was not planned. I was going to try to sneak in and out.”
Emir stepped into the hall, looking around in confusion. “MacKenzie, Rose, what is the meaning of this?”
Sam looked up at Mac, then back at Emir. She shrugged. “There seems to be some technical problems with this evening’s entertainment.” It was a joke from a TV show she liked, and it went straight over Emir’s head.
With a frown, Emir stormed back into his fortress of an office.
“He’s going to call for help or come back with a weapon,” Mac predicted. “We need to get out of here. The jump room is down this hall. Do you have a key?”
Sam held up Jane’s ID. “I borrowed this when I showed up. She’s alive, if you’re wondering.”
“I really don’t care.” He took the lead, unlocked the jump room, and pulled Sam close as the heavy doors silenced the coup outside.
She was here.
She was here.
With him. Gently, he tilted her head back and kissed her, claiming her. Reassuring himself that she was alive and his Sam. Tears stung his eyes and blurred his vision. “You’re here.”
“I am.” She ran a hand through his hair. “I love you.”
“I love you, and nothing else matters.”
A look of panic suffused her face. “Oh, no. Other things matter. Like the fact that we are leaving, Linsey Eric MacKenzie. I don’t care how much this little military-complex life appeals to you. I have eaten the food here. We’re not staying.”
He laughed. “I don’t like it here.”
“Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” She sighed with relief and smiled. “I saw all the uniforms and everything and thought you would probably fit in.”
“I do fit in, but that doesn’t mean I want to stay here. There’s no beaches. The beds are awful. And you’re so right about the food.” He shook his head in disgust.
She nodded. “Okay. Do you need to pack anything? Bring a souvenir gun or whatever it is husbands pick up on vacation?”
He brushed her cheek with his thumb. “No. I’m good.”
Bosco rubbed against his leg. “You brought the dog?”
“I didn’t want to leave him alone if we didn’t make it back to the right iteration.”
“According to Emir, there are no more iterations.”
Sam grimaced. “There was when I left last night.” Her face suffused with horror. “Did I kill us? Do you think I caused the collapse by jumping over?”
“I don’t care. Emir and Jane kept saying that after decoherence, there was an expansion. I’m willing to believe in that. Come here. I think you can get this machine to work,” he said as he walked to the inner door and jiggled it. “Locked.”
“Try the swipe card.”
The light glowed red.
“Wait,” Mac said, “This is a hand-scan door. You have to do it. Um, left hand. Jane always used her left hand here.”
Sam reached out her left hand. “It’s warm.” With a muffled click, the door slid open. “It worked!”
“Of course it did. There are two more doors, and a lock on the machine itself. Left hand for all of them.” He checked the corridor behind them, made sure Bosco got through, and forced the door shut. This wasn’t a defensible position, and getting caught was out of the question. He looked around, lifting the chairs to see if they were heavy enough to work as weapons if Emir woke up and came after them.
“Here,” Sam said with a put-upon sigh as she held out her backpack.
He unzipped it. “Ah, honey, you brought my gun.”
“And my splat gun.” She unlocked the inner door to the main jump room with the spiraling floor. A dull, purple light filled the room with a sickly glow. “And there is my least favorite piece of technology.”
Mac gently pushed her through the door. “Right now it’s my favorite. Start it up.”
“Do you know how to set where we’re going?”
“The last time Jane’s team used it, they said there was a convergence—our iteration and theirs are spiraling around each other.” He shrugged. “At least we’ll be at home.”
“But when?”
“Does it matter?”
Sam looked at him, then at the door locking behind them. “Guess not.” She held up her hand. “Here we go. Open sesame.” She scanned her hand as she’d done on the locks.
The light glowed green, the portal began to swirl faster, and a red light flared on the lock.
“Um . . . Mac . . . it just rejected me.”
“Try it again.” His heartbeat sped up like the rhythm of soldiers running. Even through the thick walls, he could hear the percussion of the fight. “I think someone is using grenades.”
“Not helpful!” Sam said. She scanned it again and shook her head. “It’s saying something about 83 percent match?” She looked at him in confusion. “Mac, how can I only be 83 percent me?”
“Maybe this one scans more than genes?”
“But Jane and I are identical. Right? According to Emir’s theory, that’s what all the parallel evolution was. Same diseases. Same life history. Same broken bones. Same DNA.”
His mind raced through a mental file of Sam’s life history. He looked up. “The baby.”
“What baby?”
“You were pregnant.”
“This is not the time to discuss the miscarriage,” Sam said angrily.
“I’m sorry, but that’s why you aren’t identical. That’s where you diverged. You married me, and you were pregnant. You’re a chimera now.”
“What?” She shook her head. “I love being compared to a mythological creature as much as the next girl, but you’re gibbering, Mac. I need you to focus.”
He shook his head. “During pregnancy, the genes can go both ways. The baby’s genes can pass to the mother, making her a mix of her own DNA and her child’s.”
“And her husband’s.” Sam grimaced. “That’s just weird.”
Mac nodded in agreement. “But that’s why. Probably. Maybe. This could also be a trap.”
Sam gave him a frustrated look. “We should leave. We can go hide out somewhere. Come back another day.”
The building shook under them.
“We’ll have to fight our way out,” Mac said, hefting the handgun for reassurance. He checked the magazine for ammunition.
Sam rolled her eyes. “It’s loaded, but the safety is on.”
“Carrying a loaded gun? I’ve corrupted you.”
“Focus, MacKenzie, give me exits,” Sam ordered as she pressed her hand against the lock.
“There’s a service lift, two stairwells, and the main lift that they’re coming from.”
“Stairs, then. The lift will be a kill box in a few minutes.”
He could have kissed her for that. “What would I do without you?”
“Probably get yourself killed.” She pushed him. “Move, MacKenzie. I am not dying in this iteration.” She clicked her tongue to grab Bosco’s attention, and they ran for the stairs.
Donovan stepped into chaos. Sirens were blaring, people were running, and a medical team was swarming Emir’s office. He went to the jump room, following the soldiers in riot gear. Someone had tried to break in.
How MacKenzie had gotten through the locks, he didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. The machines here had what he wanted.
His computer terminal still accepted his access codes. Emir was so fragging arrogant, he hadn’t even considered what would happen if a node led a coup. Even if he’d used small words, it wasn’t likely that Emir would have understood.
A machine angrily spat out papers with a wildly oscillating sine wave. Expansion and decoherence chasing each other. If this measured the heartbeat of the universe, the universe was having a heart attack.
Donovan tossed the synthpaper to the side.
Right now, he needed to open a gate to the red-haired woman.
He’d knew where she was. His wife. The perfect woman. With cinnamon freckles and red hair that curled in the humidity . . .
It was going to be a complicated relationship. He could see that. Most relationships fell short of the literary ideal, but that didn’t matter. He could explain why his other self had attacked her. There would be questions, but in the end, all she would remember is that he had saved her.
In a few years, they’d be laughing about how they met. Because she loved him.
She had to.
Working quickly, he pulled up the necessary programs to calculate the exit coordinates. Arranging for a portal to open near the Council was difficult. It would require opening multiple portals, with numerous anomalies. The results would be catastrophic in some areas. Already, the computer was warning him of tsunami risks and earthquakes.
Shock waves would obliterate Central Command.
The idea made him smile.
With a quick, light touch, he dismissed the warnings. And then he smiled.
The doors to the control room cracked open, glass spilled in with the sounds of heavy fighting.
“Donovan!” Emir stormed into the room. “What are you doing?”
“I’m doing what nodes are meant to do. Making a choice. Opening the portal.”
The machines screamed a warning as the portal turned white.
“Decoherence is here,” Emir screeched. “You must stay!”
Decoherence was here. Which was exactly why he had to leave.
The worlds were collapsing. Darkness was closing in, and Donovan stepped into the light, leaving the chaos of destruction behind him.