by Damien Boyes
I’m instantly uncomfortable and try to calm my rising pulse by taking a few more shots at the target. I miss the first two, but the third one hits dead center and blows the brick off the wall.
“Do you want to know about her?” he asks once I’ve knocked another brick off its perch.
“Who?” I ask, playing dumb. I know exactly who he’s talking about. Her. The other Jasmin.
“You know who,” he says, playing right along.
How could I not? Other than training and trying not to freak out about the mission I’m about to be tossed into, I’ve thought of little else. There’s a Jasmin-shaped hole in this place and I’m not near big enough to fill it. Everyone looks at me like I’m her. Even Alpha—who’s started to come around a bit—still treats me like I’m her. It’s like they think it’s an elaborate prank I’m playing, pretending to not remember them.
“What do you think happened to her?” I ask, and check my weapon over again to hide my rising dread. “If she died going after Thrane, why didn’t she ever come back from the Aperion?”
He grows quiet. “We don’t know. Maybe she didn’t die. Maybe Thrane still has her.”
I think about this for a second but it doesn’t make sense. “Thrane didn’t talk like he captured her, it seemed more like he killed her.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to show her face again after running off,” he says, and there’s an edge to his voice.
“I’d—she’d never do that.”
“How do you know what she would or wouldn’t do?” he says, and takes a step toward me, ready to argue. “You said it yourself, you’re not her.” He seems to catch himself, and his shoulders drop. “She hadn’t been you for a long time. Before she jumped to fight Thrane she’d become reckless. Pushing herself too hard.”
“Of course she was,” I say, and feel my cheeks flush. “She’d probably had enough. She wanted to stop Thrane, and from the sounds of it none of you were interested, so she did what she had to—”
He laughs, but I can hear the pain in his voice. I remember what Alpha said about him and where he came from, all the terrible things he’s been through, and I suddenly regret snapping at him.
“We were ready to go,” he says. “Gibzon figured out how to reverse the entanglers but none of us could get there. Our only option was to wait for Thrane to launch an attack on a timeline and try to get to the entanglers just before they triggered, but with Dhemant and Einarr protecting them, we could never get close enough.” He looks down at his weapon for a moment, rechecking it as though trying to distract himself from something. “After she left I went after her, tried for days, jumped over and over, trying to reach Deadworld, but I slid off every time. I could never get closer than ten or fifteen years from Thrane’s present. The interference that singularity’s putting out is just too powerful.”
“How can I get there, then?”
Delta shrugs. “Gibzon explained it as your connection to the Aperion being especially coherent or something. You’re stronger.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know,” he says and blows out a lungful of air. “Jumping is harder for some people, like altering gravity is harder for others. We’re just like everything else in the chronoverse, variations on a theme. Does that answer your question?”
All this universal creation stuff has been hard to accept, even when Alpha and I were playing catch with balls of energy. And it feels like the more I find out, the less I understand.
“Not really,” I say.
“Right?” He blows out a breath. “And why should you? You just got here. I barely understand any of this myself and I’ve been boundless for, what? Years? Decades? I don’t even know anymore. Sometimes it feels like it all just happened yesterday.” He blinks into the distance and then comes back to me a second later. “It means you can jump higher than everyone else here. Someone’s got to be the highest jumper, right? You’re it. I can punch through a building, but”—he points to the metal band on his wrist—“without one of these to help direct my jumps, I could take days to get where I want. Alpha’s not bad, but the rest of us are crap at it. You’re the only one we know of who can get over the wall into Thrane’s timeline.”
“So the singularity blocks everyone but me?”
“Everyone who can’t harness the power of the universe to subconsciously determine precise space/time coordinates in their head and then transmit themselves there, yeah.”
When he puts it that way, it does sound impressive. At home I only ever held everyone else back. Maybe here I can do more than just skim across the surface of life.
I bend and lift the weapon once more, check the status and lower my head over the sights. Three bricks are still standing on the wall. I line the sights on the first, exhale and squeeze, bracing for the recoil, and before the first brick has hit the ground I clip the corner of the next brick and send it flying, then explode the third with a direct hit.
Delta claps behind me.
“We’ll make a soldier out of you yet,” he says.
“Who says I want to be a soldier?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” he asks, obviously perplexed at the very idea of not wanting to join them. “It’s an honor. Even among the boundless, not everyone is cut out to join the Omega Guard.”
“I’ll pass,” I say. I’ll help them take Thrane down, because that guy sucks, but after that my life is my own. I lost everything but my freedom—I’m not about to give that up too.
32
Save it for Later
It’s go time.
I get suited up and into the conference room early. In addition to the armor Gibzon gave me earlier, he made me special boots that look like my cherry Docs, which was a nice surprise. I don’t get much in the way of human emotion from him, but maybe there’s someone behind those blank eyes after all.
He’s called us all in for one last briefing before the mission, and my nerves are apocalyptic. I’m staying calm on the outside, at least I hope I am, but my head won’t stop whirring. I have to jump to a hostile timeline, breach an impenetrable shield, and face down a demigod or three to shut down the miniature black hole that’s preventing the rest of the team from jumping in, all so we can hijack their technology and steal their worlds out from under them.
Sounds simple, right?
Seems like only yesterday I was worried about college applications.
I can’t think about it too much, it’s half terrifying and half absurd, and the more I think about it the harder it is to hold on to. Instead I stare out the window, watching the city. This New York is like a paradise. Peaceful, safe, clean. The skies are blue and people still swarm along the streets below, going about their lives.
I still haven’t had a chance to explore it for myself, between the training and sleeping—which I still need to do for some reason. You’d think an upside of having superpowers would be not needing to sleep as much, but if anything I’m more tired than I’ve ever been. I’ve barely had time to eat, let alone do any sightseeing.
My eyes go fuzzy and the view of the graceful buildings in Gibzon’s Midtown blurs, and a vision of Thrane’s golden obelisk replaces it. That’s what we’re fighting for. If we lose Thrane will take all this. All those people gone forever, chewed up and spit out as another version of Deadworld. The thought of it is terrifying, but I have no other choice. Either I succeed or billions of people will cease to exist.
No pressure.
Gibzon arrives first. He’s carrying a bronze, cone-shaped device that’s about three feet long and a foot wide at the base and he sets it on the display table with the pointed end facing up. The rest of the team files in, one by one, and they’re all geared up too. They gather around the display without their usual banter—even Gamma’s perpetual smirk is absent, but I can tell what they’re thinking: this is an impossible plan, destined to fail. They know it, I know it, but no one wants to be the one to say it.
Suddenly I don’t want to go, don’t want to die again. Even kno
wing I’ll come back through the Aperion, the thought of dying fills me with dread. I don’t know if I can do it.
Gibzon said he has a plan to get past the shield, but even if we do, then what? Thrane will be there, protecting his tower, probably with the other two Remnants, and I’ll be on my own. Three against one—how am I supposed to survive that?
Sure, I have a better handle on my powers now, but even with the training I don’t think I can beat him, and there’s no way can I beat all three of them by myself. Maybe there’s still another option we haven’t considered, something that doesn’t rely on me to succeed?
“I’ve been thinking,” I say quickly, and all the eyes in the room focus on me. “Why can’t we jump back and destroy the singularity sometime in the past? That would give plenty of time for the Resistance to prepare. We have all of time to work with, don’t we?”
Gibzon looks at me like I should understand this already. “Because the past is far less likely to exist than the present,” he says. “Even if you were to travel to Thrane’s past and destroy the entire world before the singularity was erected, reduced it to ash with no hope of recovery, and even if you did that with an infinite army over infinite timelines, your actions would be in the past. This is the present, and the probability of something having happened is always lower than the probability of something already happening. What’s gone is gone—now is what matters most. Without a boundless to anchor them all, those destroyed branches would simply collapse back into the foam and Thrane’s timelines would continue. He wouldn’t even notice.”
“Right,” I say. So much for that idea.
But Gibzon continues. “In addition, Thrane’s entanglers only work at the leading edge of the timestream. It isn’t possible to entangle a timeline from the past, only the present, as reality emerges from the quantum foam.”
“Okay,” I say. I get it. Suck it up, buttercup, it’s this or nothing. “Let’s run through the checklist and get on with it.”
Here Alpha takes over. She points to the Destiny Matrix, and the display zooms to show the centermost white dot on the flattened plateau of Thrane’s massive collection of timelines. “Jasmin is going to jump to Thrane’s True Line,” she explains, “carrying the device Gibzon developed to pierce the shield. She’ll meet up with the Resistance in their present and with their assistance she’ll get inside the bubble.” She looks at me to make sure I’m following.
“So the plan is to pop the bubble with a big pin?” I ask, angling my head toward the pointy device on the table.
Gamma snickers.
“You couldn’t pop a negative energy shield of that density with a nuclear weapon,” Gibzon says. “However, this device is tipped by a highly focused negative energy emitter, a spike sharp enough it can pierce the shield just enough to make a hole you can blink through. I’ve included instructions for the Resistance technicians. It will interface with their translocation technology.”
If it makes a hole, why do I have to jump through it? Why can’t I just walk?
Then I remember what he said: “just enough.”
I turn and glare at him, not sure I even want to hear the answer. “How big is this hole we’re talking about?”
He blinks at me, his blank eyes giving nothing away. “Nanometers,” he finally says. “Perhaps a little more.”
What’s a little more than a nanometer? Another nanometer?
“How am I supposed to jump through a hole that small?” I ask, keeping my voice hushed. I don’t want the others hearing the tension in my voice.
Delta leans in, cocks his head at me, and gives me his lopsided grin. “How big are the holes through time and space you usually jump through?” he asks, and lets that hang.
Now that he’s put it that way, maybe a few nanometers is enough.
“That is helpful,” I say, and try not to roll my eyes. “I feel much better now.”
“My pleasure,” he says, then smiles and glances at Alpha to take over again.
“And how do we get close enough to the shield to use that thing?” I ask.
“Improvise,” Alpha says. I glance at her to see if she’s being pissy with me, but I don’t think she is. I think she’s trying to be helpful. “Once you’re inside, infiltrate Midtown, get into Thrane’s building, and destroy the singularity. We’ll take it from there.”
“Great. Any hints on how to take out a singularity?” I ask.
“Up to you,” Alpha says. “If you can figure a way to get enough explosives into the place, I’d say take the entire structure down, but I don’t think that’s likely, given its size. You’ll probably have to get inside, get close, and figure out a way once you’re there.”
“More improvising,” I say. “Maybe they’ll have a big ‘off’ switch.”
“No one said this would be easy,” Alpha reminds me.
Gibzon takes over. “Once the singularity is disabled the communication channel we established with the Resistance will be clear. We’ll send a message, signaling the assault. The rest of the team will jump in through nullspace to the opened timeline, and together you’ll help the Resistance commandeer the entangler facilities across as many timelines as you can manage, open rifts to this world, and then reverse the entanglers to steal Thrane’s worlds away from him.” As he speaks the Destiny Matrix runs through a simulation, showing the branches of Thrane’s timestream peeling away while Gibzon’s swells and grows until they’re close to identical in size.
I glance outside at the city, and a thought hits me. The people out there aren’t defenseless. I haven’t had the chance to explore it for myself, but I’ve been here long enough to know Gibzon’s world is like something out of a comic book. They’ve got teleportation portals for moving people and goods over long distances. And while I thought the flying cars were cool, that was nothing. They’re out exploring the galaxy, and if they have the resources for that, they must have plenty of soldiers.
“Why can’t you get the people here to help you too?” I ask. “This is their world you’re protecting, isn’t it? A war would be a lot easier if we had an inter-dimensional army of our own.”
“The Omega Guard doesn’t only protect this world,” Gibzon clarifies as he gazes out at the NY skyline. “We protect all possible worlds. We protect the integrity of the chronoverse itself. And as for their assistance—I have it, albeit in a limited form. I have alerted my contacts, and preparations for defense are in motion. But we must be cautious—were the general population to learn of the existence of extra-dimensional timelines it could cause a civil disturbance greater than any invasion.”
“A civil disturbance sounds better than everyone not existing anymore,” I point out.
“Even if we had every gun on the planet on our side, we know we can’t beat Thrane completely,” Alpha says, steering the conversation back to the mission. “Even with the global defenses on high alert, he’s got the soldiers from a few hundred thousand timelines ready to pile on us. There’s no stopping that, but we can slow him down. Our timeline is strong enough it’ll throw off branches as the Deadworld soldiers first start opening rifts. They won’t be able to capture our True Line so easily. And each one of us is stronger than any army. If we can push Thrane back, once his resources are depleted he won’t have the power to stage another invasion.”
The display changes once again to show a rotating picture of Earth. Glowing dots are arranged around the surface in a sort of grid, twelve in all. Five of them have been labeled with members of the team, but I don’t see my name anywhere.
“You have each been assigned an entangler facility on Deadworld,” Gibzon says. “After Jasmin has deactivated the singularity in her destination timeline, it will act as a beachhead. Once you’re inside the timestream we’ll send the signal to the Resistance to begin their assault, and each of you will jump to your entangler and do whatever’s required to help the Resistance take over and deploy it. Thrane has hundreds of thousands of worlds, but the barriers separating them should be thin enough you
can jump between them and assist in capturing as many entanglers as possible, in as many lines as possible. If we succeed and entangle sufficient worlds with our own, the sheer mass of probability should anchor the events and Thrane’s timelines will be absorbed into our own. If not completely, then enough to repel him. There’s five of you, three need to succeed in capturing an entangler to override the network.”
“There’s six of us,” I interrupt. “Why don’t I have a target?”
Alpha takes a breath and her eyes grow soft and distant at the same time. Like the look doctors get on their face before they deliver bad news. “We don’t know what condition you’ll be in. You might not be in any shape to continue.”
“You think I’m going to die.” I say. I think it. They think it. Everyone here knows I’m not coming out of this alive. They aren’t even planning for the chance I might survive. But if I die, then the plan ends there. Unless somehow with my last breath I’m able to destroy the singularity, if I’m dead it’ll mean I didn’t get it down. And if that happens, the plan ends there.
“You’ll have done enough,” Alpha says. I think, in her way, she’s trying to spare me from something. Though I’m not quite sure what that is.
I can’t think like this. I can’t leave here already convinced I won’t win. I’m going to get that singularity down. Whatever it takes. If I don’t, billions of people will die.
“Either Thrane kills me or I take out the singularity,” I say. “If I do, I’m sure as hell not going to sit around and wait to see what happens next.”
Alpha squints at me, and then she straightens, so slightly I hardly notice. She nods at the globe. “There’s an entangler facility in Jersey.”
“I saw it when I was there,” I say.
“When the singularity goes, that’s your target,” Alpha says. “We’ll stay in contact over internal comms.” The rest of them all have a miniature device implanted in their heads each time they return from the Aperion. It’s hooked directly to their brains and lets them communicate even across timelines. They’ve got Gibzon directing them, and the collected information of this entire world is fed directly to their eyes and ears through their loops, no matter where they are in time and space. Gibzon offered to implant a set for me too, but I turned him down. I don’t like the idea that he could be hearing my thoughts. Instead I’m wearing a pair of contact lenses I can’t feel, and I dropped little black bugs of microphones into my ears and haven’t heard from them since.