Decoherence

by Liana Brooks

“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

  With 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 th
ey have forced my hand.

  “Commander, it is time for the culling to begin.”

  Donovan 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.

  Mac 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.”

  CHAPTER 34

  “I made one choice, then another. They fell like dominoes, each as inevitable as the last, pushed by the gravity of inevitability until I no longer had any choice, I was only falling into the future. Ever falling.”

  ~ excerpt from Everfall, a work of fiction by Del Eya Monsien I2—­2063

  Monday March 3, 2070

  Florida District 8

  Commonwealth of North America

  Iteration 2

  “And what did I say about the cemetery?” Sam grilled Nealie for what seemed the millionth time as he roasted a tarpon fillet over the campfire.

  “Go with Connor, talk with my dad, don’t pick up hitchhikers or strangers.” He flipped the fish, and Bosco whined. “What are you expecting me to see, miss?”

  She’d never figured out how Nealie met Donovan or Gant. “Just . . . be careful. There are mean ­people out there.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on him,” Connor promised.

  “Even at the college?” Sam pressed the point.

  Connor nodded. “Watch him, keep an eye on Henry, and if I see an Officer Clemens, I’m supposed to treat her with respect.”

  “Good.” Sam nodded. “That’s all I need.”

  A car driving along the dirt road to the camp scared up a flock of barn swallows that nested under the eaves of the derelict building they’d been using. Sam had a tent in the back that she’d moved into after Maribel tried to drag her into a sweat lodge. It probably was only a few degrees cooler than the lodge in the middle of the day, but it made her untraceable. The last thing she needed right now was for Ivy to stop by Tickseed Meadows looking for her.

  She and Bosco had been there more than a week before she realized it was the same building she would eventually chase Gant to before arresting him as his mind shattered. Gant’s future was likely hers. She knew the risk was there once she crossed over into the other iteration.

  A half-­forgotten prayer to St. Jude skipped across her mind, and she crossed herself.

  “You okay?” Connor asked.

  Sam shook her head. “Probably not, but I don’t have many choices left.”

  On the far side of the hedge, a cloud of dust heralded Henry’s arrival. He pushed through the indigo bushes and waved.

  Sam waved back in welcome. “How was work?”

  “Awful.” He sat down next to Nealie. “Not because of Krystal. I don’t know how you did it, but they’ve swept the whole thing under the rug.”

  “I might have hinted that Krystal was an undercover agent working to infiltrate radical groups who posed a threat to national security.” She shrugged. “There’s no proof she wasn’t.”

  Henry raised an eyebrow. “And, being suspected of murder? I expected that to come up at least once.”

  “You stayed silent because you didn’t want to put Krystal at risk,” Sam said. “Making you look very noble and patriotic.”

  “You used to be worse at lying,” Henry said.

  “I used to be a normal person,” Sam said. She tossed a twig in the campfire. “Why was work so awful?”

  “I couldn’t sleep last night. I keep having these car-­wreck dreams. This morning, I was up at three with a sore neck, half-­convinced there was a piece of glass in my eye. My roommate would probably think I was crazy if he’d been home to see me stumbling around.”

  “It’s memories from the other iterations,” Sam said.

  “I know, I read the journal you brought back.” Henry took his satchel and pulled out both copies of his private journal from his bag. “This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Sam smiled and held up her plate for Nealie. “You say that six times a day, Troom. Find some new material. How is everything tracking?”

  “Good.” He grimaced and shook his head. “Not good good, but everything is still lining up. The d
reams are all the same. The timeline doesn’t seem to be damaged by your arrival.”

  She hmmphed in annoyance. “I’m trying to change the timeline. I’m not giving you all this information because I want you two to go kill yourselves again.”

  “I don’t kill myself,” Nealie said. “You said someone else kills me. I don’t have suicidal tendencies.” He smiled proudly.

  “Right.” Sam looked to Connor for help.

  “She doesn’t want you to get killed. That’s why she’s telling us this. If you don’t listen, then you’re a fool, and you got yourself killed,” Connor said. He flipped hoe cake on another cast-­iron griddle and swore as the wind picked it up and threw it in the dust.

  Sam laughed. “Bosco, tân công.”

  The dog leapt up and attacked the hoe cake with enthusiasm.

  “Good boy, Bosco. Good boy!” Sam rubbed his ear and gave him a bite of her carefully deboned fish. “Henry, did you ever come up with a theory of what will happen to Bosco if he crosses over?”

  Henry shrugged. “Without experimenting, all I have is guesses.”

  “And?”

  “And, nothing bad should happen. You’re stepping between places, like stepping from one slat on a bridge to the next. There’s a gap, there’s a risk that the next slat is rotted and will crumble, but physically we’re not talking about breaking you into atoms and reassembling you. Your physical integrity remains intact throughout the process.”

  Nealie and Connor shared the confused look they always had when Henry started talking about advanced physics.

  “What about mentally? A crazy mastiff is never a good thing,” Sam said.

  Henry shook his head as if he could rattle the ideas into place. “This is just a hypothesis, you understand.”

  Sam made a hurry-­up motion with her hand.

  “From everything you’ve provided me with, it looks like the ­people who experienced the most dissonance were those who were fully aware of the changes. For the Gant gentleman you told me about, he faced extreme cognitive dissonance between what he expected as the outcome of events and the actual reality he faced. For me—­or the possible iteration of myself—­I was experiencing the psychological fallout of the collapse of other iterations. A form of psychological radiation poisoning almost.