Decoherence (19 page)

 

CHAPTER 32

“If one is ruled by destiny, then every choice one makes is pre-­scribed into the foundation of the universe. It presupposes that the individual has no choice. Destiny is finite. It is only through the belief that the individual choices we make determine our future that one can grasp the infinite and the divine.”

~
Treatise on the Divinity of Science
by Lara M. Rushell I3—­2071

Monday January 20, 2070

Florida District 8

Commonwealth of North America

Iteration 2

S
am leaned against the hood of her rental car while Bosco hung his head out the window, panting in the chilly sixty-­degree weather. A sizable puddle of drool had collected in the pothole by the car. He whined, and Sam reached out to scratch his ear. “Wait for it. Henry should be out in a few minutes.”

Ten minutes later, Henry appeared, walking through the glass-­lined hall leading out of the correctional facility. He'd grown a scraggly beard and was wearing a pair of slacks with a white undershirt. Probably the same clothes he'd been arrested in. The desk clerk scanned him out, handed him a receipt for something—­possibly his shoes since he was shuffling in prison slippers—­and he stumbled to the door.

He stepped outside with a bitter glare at the clear, afternoon sky.

“Henry!” Sam waved her hand.

His shoulders slumped, and he shuffled across the broken parking lot. “I told Devon I'd pay the gas.” He stopped a few feet from the car. “Agent Rose?”

“In the flesh.” Sam put on her friendliest smile.

He stepped backward. “I really was hoping my roommate would pick me up.”

“In the car, Henry. We need to talk.”

“Do I have a choice?” he asked as he skulked closer to the car. “This is about the machine, isn't it?”

Bosco's tail thrummed on the roof of the car. He leaned out, trying to lick Henry.

“Ni-­nice dog. Agent Rose, I'm sorry. I'm tired, and I'm . . .” He let out a deflated sigh. Shaking his head, he said, “This is too much. I'm going to the apartment, buying the plane tickets, and flying home to Palawan. It doesn't have the kind of physics research the Commonwealth has. It doesn't have much except for views, but it's home, and it's safe. I can let things calm down. Maybe get a job somewhere else. Start over.” He shot an angry look at her. “Did you have to tell them about Krystal?”

Sam waited for him to finish whatever it was he was ranting about, resting her elbows on the roof the car. When he was done, she asked, “Do you believe in destiny?”

Troom frowned at her in derision. “What?”

“Do you believe in destiny? That you have no choice in what the future holds? That every action is set in stone, even before it happens?”

“No. That's utter nonsense. You can only believe in destiny if you don't believe in science. It's nonsensical. Ridiculous. Why do you ask?”

Sam snapped her fingers and pointed to the rear seat. “Bosco,
tr
ô
lai
.”

Bosco climbed into the backseat and lay down.

“You are destined to die in nine weeks. I know, because five years ago, I was the agent called to the lab to identify your body.”

Henry opened the car door and sat inside. “Nine weeks in the future was five years in your past?”

“Yes.” She dropped into the driver's seat, shutting the door behind her. “Want to close the door, so I can turn on the AC?”

He shut it. “You're talking about time travel.”

“Yes.”

Henry buckled his seat belt. “Dr. Emir never achieved time travel.”

She was glad he caught on quick. “Oh, he did. He just didn't know what he had.” She turned on the car and drove toward A1A. “The Emir you worked with didn't fully understand what he'd created. He thought he could send messages to the past, to warn himself about upcoming events.”

“To warn the government,” Henry corrected primly.

She shrugged. “Either way, he meant to send messages. His machine didn't work like that.”

“I know!” Henry huffed and crossed his arms across his chest. “One of my biggest regrets is that he never got to see that dream come true. He worked so hard for it. It kills me he couldn't have it.”

“Oh, he got it,” Sam said. “That's what killed
him
.”

“Huh?”

“The machine doesn't connect a single stream of time—­it connects with alternate versions of reality. In some realities, Emir is alive and well. In some, I'm a psychopathic husband-­napper. In some, things are really terrible. And, probably, in some of them, things are really great.”

He held up a hand. “Go back to the bit where Emir fulfilled his dream, and it killed him.”

“Another Emir from another reality killed our Emir,” she grumbled. “Well, technically, he convinced Marrins to kill our Emir by promising Marrins a chance to go back in time and stop the nationhood vote. But then he betrayed Marrins and left us for dead. Except now he's back, I think, and someone's kidnapped Mac.”

“Mac?” His expression had grown more and more confused as she spoke, and it was clear he had latched onto the last piece of information to formulate the first question he could think of.

Henry shifted in his seat. “What are you doing here?”

“I need you to finish rebuilding Emir's machine. You started it, didn't you?”

He looked out the window.

“Henry . . .” Sam drawled his voice as if she were talking to a rebellious child. “Lying doesn't work. I've been to your future. I know you have.”

“I could have built it in that iteration of time and not this time,” he said. “Emir explained the probability fan to me. If you were moving around the flow of time, you could have diverged multiple times. You probably did.” His confused frown turned to a glare. “You probably broke time.”

“I accept that,” Sam said with forced cheerfulness. “Regardless, I need to get Mac back. And I need you to help me. So let's make this easy; tell me what you need to finish the machine, and I'll get it for you.”

“I need the core Dr. Emir used on the original machine. It's a rare material, and you can't legally source it in the Commonwealth. Not even for research. The best I can do will probably lead to an explosion.”

Sam nodded to his feet. “Check my purse, the zipper pocket.”

“Okay . . .” He reached down and opened her purse. A pale glow illuminated it. “Is that . . . is that what I think it is?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Sam glanced at him, then turned her attention back to the road. “Don't ask. Check the outer pocket. There's a notebook there.”

“This is mine,” Henry said. He turned through the pages. “This is not mine. It looks identical, but the dates here are wrong. I didn't journal in prison. I never did half of this. What is this math back here?”

“Calculations that allow you to target where the portals can open. Which leads me to project two.”

“Wait, what was project one?”

Her palms were sweaty on the car wheel. “I need you to rebuild the machine and program in coordinates that will allow me to enter the timeline Mac is trapped in, so I can get him out. Having something to help me get back out would be great, but I'm not sure we can do that. But, something you said made me think about this case I'm working. You said you tested the machine, and little dust devils popped up?”

“More like sand fountains. You could recreate the effect with sound waves or magnets. Sand grains are very responsive.”

Sam nodded. “Look at the back of your notebook. I tucked a map in there. Tell me what you see?”

Henry unfolded the paper. “Lots of red dots.”

“Look for a pattern.”

“Can I draw on this?”

“Sure, the stylus is—­”

“—­in your purse. I figured.” He started connecting the dots. “It's rings. A spiral pattern. But if you were looking for concentric rings, this would be the intercept points where a moving pattern would overlap.”

Sam blinked.

“Think of throwing a rock into a pond. The kinetic energy from the rock produces concentric rings that ripple through the water. Now, throw multiple rocks in a neat line, each landing a little closer to shore than the last. There's a ring around each one, but they overlap, interacting.”

She nodded. “That fits.”

“What do you think is happening?”

“I think someone is using those fountains of energy to cross over from somewhere undetected. You were traveling, so the machine was traveling. Once you held still, a cluster formed around here, but at different points.”

“Oh,” Henry said. “So the person is using a different door each time.”

“If we have those points, though, it's just math. We can calculate backward and find where they came from. Right?” She stopped for a red light and looked at Henry. “Am I right?”

He shrugged. “I need to look at the maps, but, in theory it sounds good.”

“I need to be right. If I'm wrong, the price is going to be too high.”

 

CHAPTER 33

“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

W
ith 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.”

D
onovan 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.

M
ac 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.”