Decoherence (3 page)

 

CHAPTER 4

“Who am I? What am I? Why am I? True peace comes from knowing that the answer to all three can change with a breath.”

~ excerpt from the
Oneness of Being
by Oaza Moun I1—­2072

Day 160/365

Year 5 of Progress

(June 9, 2069)

Central Command

Third Continent

Prime Reality

T
here was a knock on the solid door of the mediation room, a sound that rasped against her soul. Rose snapped her eyes open to the sight of the brown-­and-­green air recyclers molded and painted to look like trees. “Yes? Come in.”

The “leaves” didn't flutter like frightened butterflies as the door opened with a gasp of cold air from the hall. These leaves were metal, far too heavy to ever fly.

“Commander Rose?” the quiet voice behind her was Donovan's.

“Yes?” She stayed in half lotus, right leg folded atop her left knee, and closed her eyes again. She would keep her eyes closed, her senses locked, until she found the sight of the recyclers less offensive. “Is there an emergency?” she prompted, when Donovan didn't say anything.

There was a rustling sound to her left as he sat down on the cement boulder smoothed into the shape of a rounded chair. “I need advice.”

“From me?”

“From anyone.” His sigh was heavy.

It made her skin crawl. Donovan always had. He was a large man with the precise physical control of a sniper, but he always seemed a hair's breadth from diving into some unseen abyss.

Even his psych profile had a red flag for obsessive behavior. Then again, so did hers. But while she made every effort to keep herself neutral and emotionally distanced, so she wasn't tempted by obsession, Donovan openly courted the madness. The man was one bad day away from sending Emir an engraved invitation to replace him. Although—­of course—­Donovan didn't see it that way.

And right now, she was ready to help him with the engraving.

More fidgety noises from Donovan. “You were very generous at Wagner's memorial ser­vice. I didn't think you liked her that much.”

“I had no opinion on her,” Rose said. Which was true enough. She was good at keeping her opinions to herself. “She did her duty and sacrificed herself for the good of humanity. I respect anyone who makes that choice.”

“She died for fake trees.” Donovan's growl bought her attention.

Opening her eyes, Rose glared across the reclaimed-­plastic lawn and clinking minirecyclers with petals painted an obscenely bright pink. “I wouldn't complain, if I were you. Maybe you didn't take the time to review the census data of that iteration, but I did. You don't exist there, not as an adult. Your other-­self died in infancy because his father had an undiagnosed mental health issue that resulted in uncontrolled rage.”

“So what?”

“Wagner died so you could live.”

Donovan crossed his arms. “Is that supposed to reassure me?”

“Is there any reason it wouldn't?”

He stood, booted feet crushing a minirecycler with his careless behavior. “Emir is locking me out. Telling me less and less every day. He's paranoid, and I'm worried he's growing delusional. I want to know the endgame.”

Rose found herself glaring at the crumpled metal flower. There should have been a scent released. She was certain she'd read that somewhere. “
The flower releases the sweetest perfume when crushed.
” It was probably from a motivational poster, but that was irrelevant.

The techs need to fix that—­add a pocket of scent that would evaporate whenever someone stepped on a
minirecycler.

Donovan's pacing brought him in front of her, scant inches from the reach of her foot if she lashed out with a kick. “Are you listening?”

“Yes,” she said, suppressing the sigh she felt. “Emir is hyperaware of the possibilities going into a decoherence event. Including the possibility that
someone
”—­she gave him a significant look—­“might betray him. There are rumors about the Ruling Council's having ideas above its station. Central Command isn't as popular as it was in the early years of Progress. ­People who openly voice doubts in the path of history aren't being given a chance to steer it.”

Their eyes met, and she could see the rage sizzling off him. If looks could kill . . .

“I am loyal to Central Command.”

“You need to be loyal to
Emir
. Everyone else can be replaced. You and I, we're nodes, but he can always train more. Workers? He'll let them die by the thousands if that's what he thinks is required. The elite hiding on their island? After decoherence, they'll all be gone. You don't need to be in the inner circle to see that. Emir doesn't like being challenged.”

“Has he calculated a date yet?”

She shrugged and turned away. “Less than a year is the rumor, but I don't think he has an exact date. What you're seeing from him is fear. He can't pinpoint which event will trigger decoherence. It makes him nervous.”

“Emir? Scared of the future?” Donovan snorted with amusement, but his eyes stayed cold. “I thought he trusted his machine.”

“He does. He fears what he can't control. That fear leads to distrust of us.”

“The soldiers?” His shoulders rolled back as his chin lifted. The soldiers were his, their honor was his honor and name.

Rose shook her head, half at his blind pride and half to assuage his concerns. “Emir fears the nodes. One misstep from us could topple everything. We are the ones who can deviate. That's why he doesn't confide in you. He doesn't want to put power in our hands that he doesn't have himself.”

His lips curled in a sneer. “But he tells you everything?”

“Emir tells me nothing. I'm the Paladin. My skill is understanding ­people. I watch. I see. Remember, I was recruited by Emir before Progress began. He may have forgotten those early days, but I haven't. That's why he has my loyalty. Because he picked me when everyone else discarded me like trash.” The hunger for acceptance burned through her like a cold fire, turning her veins to ice and her spine to steel.

“I don't see how we could change anything.” But she could hear in Donovan's voice that he wanted to. That scared her almost as much as it probably scared Emir.

“None of us know how.” She unfolded her legs and stood, carefully staying out of reach of Donovan's long arms. He had a tendency to gesticulate wildly when upset, and his expression was already stormy. “We never know what choice matters and which ones change nothing but our mood.”

Donovan watched her like a drowning man looked for the safety of the shore. “Then how do we do this? There's no preparation. One day I was in training, getting my team ready for a night mission in the badlands, and this man showed up. I was pulled out of my unit, given a big, empty bedroom, and told I'm a node. You handle it. How?”

“I'm not afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of anything. Fear is always an irrational emotion. ­People fear spiders, bats, dark closets, and creaking hinges. None of those can hurt them, but do you know how many requests the Ministry of Defense sees daily asking Central Command to obliterate all future iterations that might contain arachnids?”

“Humans are not a rational species,” Donovan observed, his shoulders untensing.

Rose nodded in agreement. “But still the dominant one. It's our job to keep it that way.” She stepped back, dusting imaginary specks off her loose, black gi pants. “If you need nothing further, Captain, I need to get ready to teach this afternoon's combatives class.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “One more question. What end state is Emir steering us toward?”

She hoped her loose hair covered the telltale fluttering of her pulse in her neck. Fear was irrational . . . except when it wasn't. “There is a plan, and it is need-­to-­know.” That was a direct lie told with a straight face and even tone. A familiar lie she'd been repeating for years.

The truth was that the jump teams were pruning other iterations ruthlessly. Emir wasn't steering so much as he was mercilessly destroying every iteration he saw. His endgame was to be the only game left.

It was getting out of hand. Emir wouldn't ever admit to a mistake, though, so they kept pushing forward into the darkest unknown. All she could do was maintain a balance until decoherence leveled the playing field, and she could safely redirect Emir's manic energy.

“You shouldn't worry about it,” she told Donovan in her blandest voice. “The future will be ideal.”

Maybe it was the blandness of her tone, or the intentional emptiness of her expression, but something triggered him. His nostrils flared as his shoulders rose to his ears.

Donovan swung his arm wide. “Ideal?
Ideal?
Do you even hear yourself? You're sitting in a room with metal and plastic plants pretending it's a garden because the air outside this building is so toxic it is corroding the walls! Rations were cut again this week. Too many mouths and not enough food.”

“Fewer deaths,” Rose countered, holding her own fury in check. “Fewer accidents. No one is jobless. No one is hungry.”

“No one is free,” Donovan said with a guttural sound in his throat. “No one is creating. No one is thriving.”

“Humans as a species are too apt to make poor choices. This way is better. Safety always means sacrificing some freedom. Selfish instinctual mandates are pushed aside for the safety of the whole. You know this, Donovan. You went through the same schooling regime I did. Emir's program, the MIA—­it's keeping you safe. It's protecting you from your own stupidity.”

He pivoted on his heel, hands balled into angry fists.

“If you won't accept that, try this: During decoherence, there is only one possible future. There no more infinity, only the binary of survive or die. Only the Prime iteration survives to become the seed of the new expansion. We're the starting point of infinity.”

Donovan stopped and stared at a wall.

“Take a walk,” Rose said. “Cool off. And think about it: Would you rather be alive, or would you rather have a tree?”

His eyes were bitter when he turned. “I want both.”

Rose shook her head. “That was never an option.”

 

CHAPTER 5

“The future is endless, our souls eternal, so while there is a sunny day, let me rest in your arms and dream of our forever love.”

~ excerpt from the poem
Eros Eternia
by Deyan Yanes I5—­2073

Wednesday October 30, 2069

Cannonvale, Queensland

Australia

Iteration 2

T
he door to the back porch opened and closed, bringing the scent of the ocean, Australian summers, coconut-­scented sun lotion, and wet dog. Sam waved without looking up. “How's the beach?”

“Almost as beautiful as you,” Mac said. He laid a hot kiss on her neck. “What's with the papers? I thought inventory at the shop was last week.”

Sam raised a shoulder and dropped it. “This is a side project.”

“Rose, your badge is showing.”

That made Sam turn. She'd cut off her old surname, and it had felt like chopping off her hair after a bad breakup: cathartic. There was nothing from her family or life before Mac that she wanted. He'd argued—­rather predictably—­that having two MacKenzies would confuse everything. Especially since she persisted in calling him Mac instead of his first name, Linsey, like his mother had; or Eric, his middle name that his army friends used.

He called her Rose only when he really needed her attention.

“My badge is not showing.”

“That's a Commonwealth case file you're giving a death glare to.”

“So? It's not like I hacked into their computers. I logged in with a valid code. They practically granted me permission.”

Mac shook his head—­she would have never used this kind of circuitous logic before they'd met. “We
just
agreed not to worry about this. Remember—­
yesterday
.”

“I'm not looking up the Jane Doe case,” Sam protested. “This is completely different.”

He crowded her, trying to persuade her to ditch the autopsy files to go play with him.

Sam nudged him with her shoulder. “Go play fetch with Bosco, he's got too much energy.”

“I don't want to play fetch with the dog,” he teased. He pulled a chair up next to her. “What's the case?”

“Agent Parker has more information on the woman found in District 3.” she said. “It was right on the district line, so District 4 probably caught the case the first time. At least, that's what I'm hoping. There would have been no reason for either of us to know about it, and there's no way to check.” A fact she hated more than she could say.

Mac sighed in defeat. “I'm not going to convince you to let this go, am I?

“Nope.”

“You still planning on making dinner?”

“Grilled shrimp and lime sorbet sound good?”

“Sounds like heaven.” He sighed. “Sam?”

“Hmm?” The silence condemned her. She looked up into his worried eyes. “I am not obsessing. I swear, this isn't even about Jane.”

“You kind of are.” His body language invited her to lean on him, to trust him. She always had. “I just want you to be happy.”

Sam closed her eyes, leaned against him for a moment, breathing in the scent of coconut suntan lotion and the beach. “I'm living in paradise with the most perfect man alive. I am happy.”

“But not really.” A strong arm wrapped around her, cradling her. “You're bored.”

“Well . . .” That she couldn't deny. “Working twenty hours a week at an empty surf shop is kind of dull.” She sat up, aware of Mac's lingering hand on her shoulder. “This is just a hobby. Like reading a murder mystery.”

Mac raised an eyebrow skeptically.

“I promise, by the time you're done wearing out Bosco, I'll be ready to put this up. It's not a difficult case. Once Agent Parker finds the victim's boyfriend, he'll have it wrapped up by dinnertime.”

“All right. I'll go finish up outside. Try not to break Parker's brain.”

“No promises,” Sam said as she opened Parker's e-­mails. The new senior agent in Alabama District 3 hadn't done much work on the case. And something about it was niggling at her. She couldn't put her finger on it yet, but something she'd seen when she skimmed Parker's case notes had kicked her survival senses into overdrive. She just had to find it again.

Twenty-­three-­year-­old Elissa Morez was attacked late Monday evening. She'd bled to death behind the Dumpster for the restaurant where she worked and hadn't been noticed until Tuesday morning. That was frustrating—­if someone had noticed her missing earlier, she might have gotten to a hospital and lived.

Of course, if it was domestic violence, then the lack of notification made sense.

Sam clicked through the notes Parker had taken. Elissa lived alone in an apartment on the edge of District 3. She was taking online classes for a master's in business, running a small custom-­art company from her home, and waiting tables three nights a week to make ends meet. No significant other or spouse mentioned, which killed Sam's original theory.

Elissa's family lived outside Mobile. Phone records showed two or three calls a month home, but it didn't look like any of them had traveled to visit her, and there was no history of domestic violence on record. On paper, Elissa's life looked almost idyllic.

Pulling out her data pad, Sam started scribbling down ideas. An irate customer, a junkie—­although those were rare in District 3. It could have been a random passerby, but that didn't make sense. Murders were rarely crimes of opportunity unless there was a serial killer, and that seemed unlikely.

But she was curious . . .

Sam pulled up the list of recent crimes in District 3. Elissa's death was the only unsolved case on record. The younger other-­Sam who worked Melody Chimes's case had closed it with the same steps Sam had used the first time around. Mac had warned her to stay out of it, but Sam had allowed herself some judicious stalking to make sure their time-­twins stayed on the right path to a happily-­ever-­after relationship.

She shook worries about her other-­self out of her head and widened the computer search, looking for recent assaults in the neighboring districts. By the time Mac came in, showered and dressed for dinner, she had a color-­coded map spread across the dining table.

“So, is this a no to cooking dinner?” Mac asked as he pulled out a chair, flipped it backward, and sat down.

“I'll cook,” Sam said, only half hearing him. She placed another blue dot on the map.

Mac made a clucking sound. “So . . . want to fill me in, love? This little armchair investigation looks a lot less hypothetical than I was hoping for.”

“I found a string of murders possibly related to the Elissa Morez case Agent Parker found. Red marks are where the bodies were found. Yellow was the last known location. Blue is the home of record.” The map covered western Georgia, the whole of Alabama, and the two bodies found in the Florida panhandle. “I'm trying to figure out who the first victim was.”

“Um, wouldn't that be the first body found chronologically?”

Sam shot him a frustrated glare. “Yes, smarty pants, it would be if they'd all been found at the same stage of decomposition.”

“What about a timeline based on when they were reported missing.” He tipped the chair so he could have a better view. “How do you know the victims are related? Do we have a nifty ritual killer?”

“Nifty ritual killer?” Sam asked in disbelief. “You watch too many bad TV shows. No, I'm linking the cases based on phenotype and cause of death. All are Hispanic, or Hispanic-­looking women, ages twenty through twenty-­six, long black hair, dark eyes, and all were beaten to death. There are no signs of a weapon's being used. This guy likes to punch.”

Mac's eyes narrowed as he caught the scent of prey. “You have a suspect.”

Bosco, their long-­tailed South African Mastiff, wiggled past her legs, jostling everything on the table, to sit between his two favorite humans.

Sam reached down to scratch behind the dog's ear before he lay down. “I'm guessing the killer is male. Call it gut instinct right now. I don't have evidence, but for a single person to deal this much damage, they need to have considerable mass behind their blows. Statistically, serial killers who favor physical attacks are male. Women usually use something subtle, like poison. But, you know, it could be a woman, or a nonbinary person. I'm open-­minded.”

“I'm sure the killer appreciates that,” Mac said with a grin. Sam punched him in the shoulder—­ none too lightly. “Ow!”

“You deserved it.”

“Fine,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “Do you think the killer is stalking his victims?”

She shook her head. “If he is, he's really good. None of them filed a complaint with the police, had a restraining order against anyone, or even seemed to tell anyone they felt uncomfortable. There's no business connection between any of them. They're from different religions, different political parties, use different forms of social media. I can't find one place where they would have overlapped.”

Mac grimaced. “Which is why no one else is looking at this as a serial killer case.”

“Right. The range is broad. But, statistically, what are the chances that all these victims would die the same way and look so similar?”

Mac's forehead wrinkled in a frown. “In that part of the Commonwealth? A good 60 percent of the female population is Latina. The age range is a little specific, I'd expect some older or younger outliers, but the body type is average. Average height. Average weight. Statistically, a majority skin and hair color combination.”

Sam raised a dubious eyebrow. “You don't think any of them look a little like me?”

He fanned the flatpics out and shook his head. “Aside from the obvious skin tone, no. The noses are different. The eye shape is different.” He glanced sideways at her. “How much trouble will I be in if I admit that, statistically, you're average? I mean, I love you and know you're one in several billion, but . . .” He trailed off with a shrug.

Sam rolled her eyes with a huff. “Are you saying I'm paranoid?”

“Maybe, but I'd never say that was a bad thing.” He kissed her temple. “Any ideas on how the killer is covering this large an area? Businesses maybe?”

“I looked. There's no commonality.”

“Not enough.” She pushed away from the table in frustration. “There's a connection here. I know that. The same bones broken. The style of bruising. Like . . . there's a rhythm?” She stood up, trying to figure how the attacker might have come at the girls. “Come here.”

Mac stood up and held his arms open. “Okay.”

“You're coming after a smaller opponent, what's your first move?” Mac had been a US Army Ranger before the Commonwealth formed, and he'd trained in a variety of fighting styles.

He shrugged. “Why am I attacking them?” He moved behind her, held one arm over her head and one by her chin. “If I need a quick kill and the person is much smaller, I snap their neck unless I can use a weapon.”

“Right. A splat gun would be better if you want to immobilize someone.”

Mac stepped in front of her again. “You're sure this isn't a ritual of some kind? Initiation? Hazing? There are still gangs that use a group beating to welcome new recruits.”

Sam shook her head. “The bruises are uniform across the bodies. Same size handprints. Same size boot tread.”

“Did you find out what kind of boots? That could give us something.”

“No. It's not coming up on any of the databases.” She tried taking a step toward him and a step back, trying to imagine how the killer caught the victims.

Mac held his hands up as if to choke her. “Defensive wounds?”

“On some of them. Blood and skin under the fingernails, but that's not flagging anything in the system, either.” She put an arm up to block. “How would this work?”

“Him knocking a victim down? Hit them hard right away?” He faked a punch that missed her nose by a good six inches.

She leaned back anyway, slowly staging the crime.

“Are you assuming he doesn't know them?” Mac asked. “That changes how I would attack someone.”

“Right, if you knew them, it would be easier to strangle them, but you don't choke someone, then beat them, do you? Unless you had a personal grudge, you don't attack a dead body.”

“So they're attacked first? All the bruises are antemortem?”

“A majority, yeah.” She nodded and motioned for him to throw another mock punch. “You swing.”

Mac shook his head. “I corner you first.” He marched up to her so their toes touched. “A stranger does this, you back up.”

She stepped back. “Right, the killer is big. Physically imposing.”

“The killer encroaches on the victim's personal space, then they punch.” He backed her into a corner and held his fist near her face. “Now what?”

“I drop, curl up.” Sam moved down.

“And then the killer starts kicking.” Mac mimed the motion. “Where were the victims found?”

“They were all killed in public places while alone or isolated. Work, school campus, bus stop . . . oh, no, the teacher was killed at home.”

“All places with corners, trees, walls. The killer is controlling the environment. Picking the hunting grounds.” He held a hand out to help her up.

Sam stood and made a note. “Controlling the environment, picking his targets, but which comes first?”

Mac nodded as he thought. “No victims found in cars?”

“Or in parking garages. Which is odd. That would be a good place to corner someone.” She sat back in her chair, resting her chin on her hand.

“There is steam rising from your head,” Mac said as he rubbed her shoulders. “Stop thinking so hard. We don't need to solve this tonight.”

“But—­”

“But what? Even if we solve this, how are we going to tell anyone?”