TICK.
TICK.
TICK.
I am moving on autopilot, allowing the conversation to wash around me like white noise, lost in my own thoughts.
My body is crammed into Nari’s Pegasus with Finian and Scarlett.
We are crawling through the waste disposal.
I am in the morgue, stealing the passkey from Pinkerton’s corpse.
All this we have done before. A dozen, a hundred, a thousand times.
My mind is freewheeling, spinning through every loop I have lived.
We have attempted to eject the core sixteen times, and every time we have failed.
We approached the task with stealth, and we were detected.
We experimented with brute force, and we were outmatched.
We even attempted logic, not once but twice. We appealed to the station commander, laying out the facts of the matter as simply and nonthreateningly as we could. Reason did not succeed where cunning had failed.
I close my aching eyes and let my mind slip loose of its bonds, allow it to explore. My intellect is extraordinary, I have always known this. Though I have stretched it, challenged it, I have never found its limits. But now, everywhere I turn, I slam up against one of two walls.
On the first, engraved in large letters, the words:
YOU CAN TRY A THOUSAND TIMES MORE, IT CANNOT BE DONE.
And carved into the second, even larger:
YOU ARE OUT OF TIME.
This is our last chance.
We stand once more in Pinkerton’s office. A broken half circle of us. The massive storm of dark matter churns out there beyond the station’s hull, our future waiting to pulse within. Our path out. Our journey home.
If only I could see the way …
Finian’s desperate voice brushes past my consciousness. “If we could modify the Stun setting, get the disruptor to emit a broader pulse …”
“Medical personnel required immediately, Deck 12,” calls the PA. “Repeat, medical personnel, Deck 12.”
I let him drift away. A labyrinth unfurls around me as I try every possible permutation of the facts, but each time I meet a dead end. Every what-if and perhaps-we-could trips up somewhere. And all the while we are following the same steps that have killed us every time. Marching toward the same fate, going knowingly to meet our doom.
“Maybe there’s some way to secure the probe chamber to give me time,” Nari says, the same note of desperation in her voice. “Something manual that station security can’t override.”
“But that will mean you’re locked in when the core blows,” Scarlett says. “You have to get out, Nari, or all this is for nothing.”
This is unacceptable. We cannot be in a no-win scenario, or we would not have come from a reality in which Nari founds the Aurora Legion.
There must be a way for her to survive.
There must be.
There must—
And then the numbers suddenly stop scrolling. The endless fractal of possibilities stops unfolding. And I see the answer.
I open my eyes to find Scarlett studying me intently. Even now, exhausted, worn thin by grief and fear and relentless pursuit, she cannot hide the gentleness in her gaze. Despite her carefully cultivated outer shell, she has a limitless heart. I am glad she has discovered the same is true of Finian.
“You figured it out?” she asks quietly.
“Yes.”
She simply stares. Part of her already understanding. And I begin to see the genius in her ability to do that. Here at the last. At the end.
I am sorry I shouted at her.
I am sorry for many things.
TICK.
TICK.
TICK.
“Nari,” I say. “The hallabongs your cousin brings to your halmoni’s house. They’re good?”
“Delicious.” She’s startled. “But what … ?”
I look into her eyes. And when I do, I know… .
I am not feeling nothing.
“I would like to taste one,” I tell her.
I would like to be in a home like that. With a large family coming and going. With traditions, and family jokes and stories, and fruit so juicy it runs from your wrists and drips off your elbows.
“I wish you could,” she frowns. “But—”
Finian finally begins to understand what Scarlett already knows.
“Zila, no. No.”
“What?” Nari protests, looking between us. “What’s happening?”
Scarlett shakes her head. “Zila, there must be another way… .”
“It cannot be done alone,” I say simply.
Finian’s voice joins Scarlett’s in protest. “No, Z, we’ll figure it out. We still have time, we—”
“With the current force arrayed against her, Nari cannot survive to eject the core. She must survive if she is to found the academy, or we will never come here, never plant the seed for Aurora’s victory against the Ra’haam. Eliminate the impossible, and what remains, no matter how improbable …”
I look to Fin
“… or painful …”
then to Scarlett
“… or sad …”
and last to Nari
“… is the truth. Someone must stay behind and help you.”
I let their voices drown each other out.
“—left Cat behind, left my brother behind, and if you think—”
“—just have to think again about the way we’re using the—”
“—this time I can—”
I stand. I stare. And eventually they are silent. They have argued themselves out. They see the simple truth, plain as I have. And they know in their heart of hearts, each of them, that we do not have the minutes to waste.
So I speak again. “Many years ago, I watched from my hiding place as raiders threatened my parents and friends. If I revealed myself, they would be shot, and I would be taken. So I remained hidden, hoping a solution would reveal itself. Eventually, our captors tired of waiting, and killed my family anyway, and left. Never again will I allow those I love to die through my inaction. This time, there is something I can do.” “You were a child, Zila,” Scarlett whispers. “You don’t have to make that right.”
“I cannot,” I reply. “And I know it does not rest on me to do so. But I have lived this story before, Scarlett, and this time I will change the ending.”
“We can’t just leave you here.” Finian’s pain is in every line of his face. In the catch in his voice. “We can’t just leave you alone.”
I look to Nari again. “I will not be alone.”
“But you’ll be two centuries in the past!” he cries.
“Someone must be,” I say. “Someone was always going to be. Both of you must return to our time to fight the Ra’haam. You may be all that remains of Squad 312. You must not fail in our duty.”
“And you?” Scarlett whispers.
“I will set everything in motion,” I say. “We cannot expect Nari to do it all. Someone must leave briefings for the heads of the Aurora Legion. Everything from Björkman’s snoring to the gifts in the vault. There is only one way Magellan can know all that he knows.”
“You’re going to write his program,” Finian says softly. His eyes are wet. “Leave it for Scarlett to find on that shopping node.”
“Her weakness for handbags is easily exploited.”
Scarlett smiles, although she is already beginning to cry.
“This is why we are here,” I tell them, plucking the tiny fragment of crystal from Pinkerton’s trove and holding it up in front of Scarlett. “Why this was left in the vault for us to find. To drag us back here to this place and time so that I could remain. Magellan told us that his knowledge of events extended only to a certain point in the future. The point where I left.”
Finian shakes his head, lip trembling. “Z, we already lost Cat… .”
“And we must do so again. Everything must happen exactly as it has happened. We must lose Cat so she can save us on Octavia. We must allow the Starslayer to take the Weapon before we do, so that he can fire it and throw us back in time. Because I must always return here, to the beginning of everything. I must remain in the past to safeguard our future.”
Scarlett weaves her fingers through mine. Like Finian, she is crying. “We love you too, Zila,” she whispers.
I am glad she understands.
“I’ll keep her safe, I promise,” Nari murmurs, and the shake and the certainty in her voice both warm me. “I’ll get her out in the evac. Grab a lab coat. Hopefully things will be confusing enough for me to cover for her.”
“They will be,” I tell her. “I believe in you.”
“You should take Magellan,” Finian says, voice rough as he shifts in our small space to dig inside his bag. “He’ll be full of useful information if you can repair him. Maybe you can even bet on some sportsball games, build up the bank balance.” He pauses then and slowly draws out Shamrock.
He looks at Scarlett. She nods. He hands our mascot to me.
“Extra company,” says Scarlett, her voice breaking. “Okay, don’t forget our original Longbow will need a crate Auri can hide in, and—shit, we don’t even know what Tyler’s boots from the vault are for, how will you … ?”
“He was in Terran captivity when we left him. I will provide him a means of escape. I have a keen intellect, an excellent memory, and the rest of my life ahead,” I tell her. “Nothing will be left to chance.”
Scarlett is silent a long moment. “Oh, Zila,” she murmurs.
“I know,” I say quietly.
“I wish … ,” says Finian, but he does not finish the sentence.
“We have one more chance,” I say. “After this, the loop will end before the quantum pulse, and you will have no power source to get home before the loop collapses entirely. Everything depends on the next fourteen minutes. Everything that is now, everything that will be. Our last chance to stop the Ra’haam. To protect every planet, every colony, every species, every life that is to come.” I hold out my hand, one last time. “We can do this.”
Scarlett takes hold and squeezes. “We the Legion.”
Finian wraps his silver fingers around ours. “We the Light.”
Nari puts her hand on ours and nods. “Burning bright against the night.”
“Squad 312 forever,” I smile.
TICK.
TICK.
TICK.