Decoherence is the winter of time. All things die until spring returns. In the spring of time, we have Expansion, a million possibilities bloom in front of us, and we are blinded by the brilliance of our future.
~ Dr. M. Vensula head of the National Center for Time-Fluctuation Studies
Thursday March 27, 2070
Florida District 8
Commonwealth of North America
Iteration 2
Static filled the radio as the map led Donovan and Gant deeper into the fetid swamps. Gant turned it off with an angry slap. There wasn’t good music here anyway. Something buzzed past his ear. A high-pitched annoying hum that made him want to break things.
Without warning, Donovan slapped his own arm.
Gant looked over at him.
Donovan lifted his hand to show him a splattered bug.
“This place is disgusting.”
Donovan grunted agreement.
It wasn’t enough. Gant could feel himself unraveling. Losing his focus. “Don’t they drain swamps at home?”
“Yup.” The car bucked as they drove over another muddy rut in the road.
“This is like driving through a sewer. I can feel things crawling all over me.”
“Noseeums,” Donovan said. “Read about them in the guidebook. They’re little bugs that crawl on you.”
“How informative,” Gant said dryly, eye twitching. It struck him that Donovan was having fun in this nightmare. In a strange way, it made sense. Even hell had to seem attractive to someone. He pulled Detective Rose’s briefcase onto his lap and snapped it open. With a frown, he checked the GPS clipped to the front dash of the car. “Is that readout entirely right? Another hour to drive ten miles?”
“The roads aren’t good,” Donovan said. “No sense breaking the car trying to get there fast.”
“We could walk faster.” He did the calculations in his head. “Perhaps not. But there must be a better way to navigate this . . . jungle.” No word had ever crossed his lips with such loathing.
Donovan grunted again. “I see dirt bike tracks.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Means the locals probably don’t drive a POS car stolen from an old lady to get out here.”
“She was on a respirator and had cataracts. We did her a favor by recycling this old heap,” Gant said virtuously. “Besides, an old woman who can’t get out of bed won’t report a missing car from her garage. The caretaker was on his phone playing video games. Not the conscientious type.”
Under normal circumstances, Gant would have been just as happy to leave both of them dead. This, however, was not the time to get sloppy. Gant didn’t consider himself a superstitious man. Nor did he spend much time reflecting on the truths of God or the possibility of judgment after this life. Those things were beneath an intelligent man such as himself. But, in the privacy of his own mind during the dark watches of the night, he’d begun hypothesizing his own little theories about Detective Rose. There were certain things about her survival that didn’t quite add up.
And there was the word “clone” floating around now.
Sure, he had heard of cloning. A kidney here, a bone there, that sort of thing. But this hell of an alternate reality seemed to have taken cloning past the point of sense and started cloning full humans. If that were the case, he was facing the impalpable possibility that there were multiple Detective Roses to deal with. It made the idea of escaping all the more desirable.
Donovan tapped the window. “I can see a roof over there. Bit of green that doesn’t fit. You see it?”
Gant leaned forward. There was something out there across a deceptively flat field. “Can we drive off-road in this?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s swamp,” Donovan said. “No telling how deep the water gets. But the road should loop back around.”
The GPS now estimated their arrival time in twenty minutes. He pitied the criminals of this world. Inefficient tech. Dirt roads. There wasn’t a hint of refinement in the entire place.
Nothing good ever came of 3 A.M. phone calls. Sam rolled over, obstinately ignoring her ringing phone until Hoss put his cold nose to her leg. She growled at him and reached for the phone before the ringing woke up Mac in the living room. “Who is this?”
“Are you Rose?” The voice on the other end sounded faded, distant, and fevered and not at all familiar.
“No,” Sam said. “Are you drunk?”
“You are Detective Rose.”
“Agent.” Sam yawned. “I don’t go by Rose, and my friends don’t call me Rose. So—QED—you aren’t a friend. Which begs the question why in the name of Saint Mary you are calling me at 3 A.M. Are you dead? Probably not. If you’re dying, try nine-one-one. Good night.”
“I’m coming for you,” the voice said, as she took the phone away from her ear.
She sighed. “Yeah?”
“Does that frighten you?”
“At three in the morning, nothing frightens me. You could tell me a giant spider is trying to break through my window, and I wouldn’t care. I’m tired. If you want to threaten me, call me in the morning.” She hung up.
The light flipped on.
Sam threw her pillow in the general direction of the door and flopped over on her stomach. “Go away.”
“Did someone just call and threaten you?” Mac’s voice was low and far too calm to actually be calm.
“Yes.”
“And your reaction to someone’s walking into your room is to throw a pillow?”
Sam pointed at the dog. “I have Hoss.” She heard the dog wiggle across the room to get a belly rub from Mac.
“Fearsome.”
“I’m not dead yet.”
“Where’s your gun?”
“In the safe in my closet, locked away from idiot mastiffs who think guns look like chew toys.” She pushed the blankets back and propped herself up on an elbow. “Can I have my pillow back? I’m tired. This is bedtime. We can talk tomorrow.”
Mac folded his arms over his chest. “Safety should be a priority when someone is hunting you. Not sleep.”
“No one is hunting me.”
“Someone just called you, Sam.”
“So? If they meant to do something, they would have just done it. Calling means they’re not ready, even if they are planning to do something.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not an idiot, MacKenzie. I take threats seriously when I need to, but at this moment, I don’t. Go to sleep. I will not die between now and when the alarm goes off. Swear on my father’s grave. But if you don’t let me sleep, I am going to tie you up in the kitchen and gag you.”
“Really?” He handed her the pillow.
“Really?”
“I’d love to see you try.”
“Don’t make me get my handcuffs, MacKenzie.”
He chuckled and turned out the light.