by Anela Deen
Pulling up the holographic grids, she examined the timelines floating before her. They threaded across the map like roads upon the Earth. In some ways, that was exactly what they were, only the origin and destination could be changed. Her fingers sifted through the faintly glowing strands, adjusting the causal chain, testing outcomes.
When she was satisfied, Indra accessed the time dilation module. It took a moment to make the calculations and adjust for the jump coefficient, after which she removed the band from Ree’s arm and attached it to her own. Ree’s band was much bigger than the one she usually wore. The flexible cuff encased not just her forearm but most of her bicep. Somehow she’d forgotten how much bigger he was than her. He carried himself with such casual grace and economy of movement it was easy to overlook his size.
Her eyes settled on him again and for a fleeting instant, she imagined what it would’ve been like to have those great arms around her, to feel his hands—made rough from a life at sea—holding hers. Then she let it go, released it into the ether of events that would never come to pass.
Calibrating the settings to her body’s physical parameters, Indra activated the dilation module. She rose and took a step back from Ree. She didn’t bother with a final glance around her. She was done with this place and this time. The Sequencer pulsed, ready to draw her into the wormhole above.
She triggered the event with a single command. “Jump.”
***
“This is the place, Admiral Patel.”
Indra blinked against the glare of daylight and tried to orient herself to the surroundings. It had been a long time since she’d done this type of jump. She’d once compared slipping the consciousness of the present-self into the body of a past-self with opening a bookmarked page. That was a better description for physical jumps. This sensation was like tightly wrapping a thousand rubber bands around one’s skull and then bashing it against the wall. Such was the consequence of forcing the cerebral cortex to suddenly accommodate an influx of memories the past-self’s body hadn’t lived yet. The Quorum’s jump technology ensured her brain didn’t hemorrhage or glitch itself into a stroke, but that didn’t mean she felt like dancing afterward.
“Is something wrong, Admiral?”
Indra focused on the man beside her. The sense of discombobulation eased to see Ree standing there, alive and well. Which of course he would’ve been three years ago when the two of them embarked on this mission. She glanced down at herself, at the deep red sari and matching dupatta draped over one shoulder, the pattern of flowers embroidered in a riot of golden thread. Her dark hair flowed freely down her back.
She smiled. “Everything’s fine.”
They stood at the curb of a small Ranch style house in a New England suburb. With its white picket fencing and rose bushes lining the front walk, the home was similar to most of the other houses in this cheery neighborhood. Here in the 1950s, it symbolized the dream life for many. Of course, Indra knew this particular home offered nothing but nightmares to those living inside, its tranquility skin-deep. With its windows closed and curtains drawn, no one could hear the screams occurring within right now.
“Did we arrive too late?” The hint of concern in Ree’s voice had her turning back to him. Naturally, he noticed her hesitation. It was uncharacteristic of her. The first time she’d stood in this moment Indra hadn’t hesitated. She knew better this time.
She gestured to a stone beside the mailbox on Ree’s other side. “Not at all. Hand me that rock, would you?”
His brow furrowed with questions but he didn’t voice them. When he placed the stone in her palm, she took a few steps up the drive, then leaned back and sent it flying through the front window of the house. The glass shattered noisily and startled shouts sounded inside. Indra had no concern they’d be seen. On missions of this sort, they kept the cloak on their Sequencer bands activated until they located their target.
“Has our objective changed?” Ree asked quietly.
“It has.”
A man wrenched open the front door, sweaty and half dressed. He swayed somewhat, obviously drunk, knuckles smeared with blood. By his side, he held a pistol. He surveyed the street, face twisted in bewildered anger.
Their Sequencer bands trilled with a notification. Ree frowned, bringing up his arm to check it. Indra didn’t bother. She knew what it meant.
“Events have changed,” Ree said, eyes tracking over the information floating above his band. “The broken window interrupted a pivotal moment. It appears now that—”
“Yes, I know.”
Indra watched as a few of the neighbors approached the house calling out concerned questions. The man at the door tucked the pistol into the waistband at his back.
“A few minutes before we left, our Quorum approved mission was to recruit David Hobson to be our newest Warden,” Ree said with a nod at the house. “I’ve seen you alter plans before but never like this. If we’re not recruiting him, what are we doing here?”
“Fulfilling a promise.”
A car turned the street corner at high velocity and screeched to a halt at the curb of the house. David bounded out of the driver’s side, panic carved into his face. He took in the scene at the house, and slowed.
“His sister was supposed to die today,” Ree said. “Instead, two weeks from now, our recruit will confront her husband. David will be shot to death in an altercation and the other man will spend his life in prison.”
“Yes.”
David may have thought she’d forgotten the reason he joined her Wardens, but he’d been wrong. She tried to find the thread that would save his sister’s life, but in each eventuality, her survival meant his death instead. The Quorum refuted the idea of fate but Indra had come to believe there were powers greater than those able to alter the course of time. She had come to respect that power. Sometimes one could not avoid lightning when it struck.
“You’ve got that look in your eye.”
Indra glanced at Ree who regarded her with a slight upturn to his mouth. “What look?”
“The one that says you know something I don’t and have no intention of telling me.”
“I have a look like that?” she asked, allowing herself to meet his gaze, to see the light in his dark eyes and banish the image of when they’d stared into nothing.
She wished she could tell him the truth behind all this but soon she wouldn’t remember it either. Before they returned home she would adjust the shielding on her Sequencer which protected her memory. She would forget that future, syncing her mind with the consciousness of the Indra of this timeline. The Quorum might suspect a deviation but she doubted they’d find the underlying cause. It didn’t matter. She owed this to David even as it saddened her to know they would never meet each other.
“You have a look for many occasions,” Ree answered. “I sometimes think you have a file of them stored in your head that you access depending on the situation.”
This time she did give him a look. “And which one am I wearing now?”
With a crooked smile, he held up his hands as if to ward her off. “The one that says I’m entering dangerous seas and ought to adjust course.”
“A wise maneuver,” she said, returning the smile.
“That’s why I’m your second-in-command, Admiral. A well-honed sense of survival—I mean, strategy.”
“Is that why you think I keep you around?”
“Were there other reasons?” His eyes glinted, a spark that drew him a step closer, skirting the border between companionable and intimate distance. She didn’t move back, for once allowing herself to enjoy the nearness of him.
“You brew an excellent tea as well.”
“Ah, so not my sage council and pleasant company then?”
She pretended to consider the idea. “No. It’s the tea.”
He tipped his head back and laughed, a low, belled sound that sent warmth curling through her chest. She tore her gaze away, reluctantly ending the moment.
“We shoul
d be heading back,” she said, turning her attention to her Sequencer.
He fell silent, then squared his shoulders and looked to his own band. “The Quorum will ask questions about what happened.”
“I’ll handle them.”
“And we’re still short a Warden.”
“We’ll look into the other candidate we considered.”
His eyebrows went up. “That one? Really?”
“It’s worth another look.” Indra turned slightly to the side so he wouldn’t see her alter her temporal shield before inputting the return coordinates. She felt the effects instantly—a stiff wind cascading through her mind, sweeping pieces of her away.
Ree nodded. “True, though it might be a hard sell.”
She watched as he readied himself for the jump, his whispered words to her in the barn fading. Without thinking, she reached out and gripped his hand. He froze, his breath catching.
“Ree, I wanted to tell you—to thank you for always…” She paused, frowning. What had she wanted to say? It was on the tip of her tongue.
“What is it, Indra?”
She blinked, startled to find herself clutching his hand. Hastily, she pulled it back. “I can’t recall now.” The more she concentrated on it the more it slipped away. She exhaled quietly, trying to ignore the lingering heat his skin left on hers. Why had she done that?
“It’s nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
The odd feeling abated, her thoughts settling back into place.
She met his searching gaze evenly. “Yes. Time to go home.”
###
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Read on for an excerpt of Failsafe
There is only one rule: Never leave the settlement
Nobody remembers when human civilization fell to the living computer known as the Interspace. Trapped within its massive expanse, what remains of humanity struggles to survive. There are no maps to the outer grids, and drones patrol the network. Escape is impossible.
Except seventeen-year-old Sol can access the network's secrets in her dreams. The information comes at a physical cost, but with food and medical shortages threatening her community, it's a small price to pay for survival. The supply runs are also the best way to prove she can still contribute, especially after her recent epilepsy diagnosis took away the role she'd been training for.
When a grave mistake alerts the drones to her trespassing, Sol finds herself running for her life. She never expects to encounter Echo, a stranger who may hold the key to humanity's freedom.
Together, Sol and Echo will attempt to reach the central core of the Interspace and shut down the system. To survive the journey, they will need to evade drones, signal towers, and a dangerous enemy known only as the Override. Even with Sol's access to the network and Echo's incredible abilities, they may still fail. The Interspace is always watching, and if they're discovered, it will mean the final extermination of all mankind.
Failsafe: Chapter One
If the world hadn’t ended generations ago, the broken stabilizer on my hoverbike wouldn’t have been a life or death problem. Sure, I’d gotten myself in this jam through a delightful combo of pride and stupidity, but it still didn’t seem fair.
The back-half of the bike sagged to the ground under the faulty stabilizer and I crouched beside it, examining the cracked casing along the cylinder with a deepening sense of dread. The tools dangling at my waist wouldn’t save me this time. I spotted the problem immediately—towing too much weight in the container hooked to the other end. What was I thinking? I’d let my excitement over finding that cache of supplies and foodstuffs override all engineering sense. As if the settlements’ desperation could convince an inanimate object to hold out longer than it had the capacity to do. Idiot me.
Solution-based thinking, Sol. Come on, girl, you can do this.
Right. As if my plucky optimism would fix the thing.
A string of profanity my mother would have been shocked her seventeen-year-old daughter had knowledge of stampeded through my thoughts. Not a peep slipped past my lips. Not out here in the network where the Interspace’s drones terminated any human they found.
I scrubbed shaking hands over my face as I considered my options, careful not to bump the cortical node affixed to my right temple. Wouldn’t want to add more flavor to this craptastic situation by throwing off its alignment and aggravating my condition. Halfway back to my home settlement, I’d marooned myself in grid one-thirty. Towering structures of dark metal and blinking circuitry surrounded, power conduits as tall as the skyscrapers in the cities of the Time Before. They reached toward the decking and interconnect bridges of the higher levels, and somewhere beyond that, the roof that sealed us all inside with the machine. Cables neatly embedded in the deck crisscrossed the broad rail paths I traversed like roots in a cybernetic forest.
The mind-numbing maze of the Interspace defied memorization, even for a photographic memory like mine. My dreams of the network—or visions since they were as accurate as holding a map—displayed the innards of a horizonless superstructure too immense to fully absorb. The solution? Narrowing my focus to the only grid that mattered; the one containing the twelve separate human settlements. Still massive, but doable.
I coaxed the memory of this area forward. Had there been somewhere I could hide until the drones completed their circuit and moved on? The gear didn’t matter. They wouldn’t pay attention to that. After three months of doing these supply runs, I had their directive figured out: Patrol the area, scan for life signs, and extinguish any found. This meant I had to get my pulse out of their way. On the other side of the rail path, I spotted a recessed panel on a circuit tower with an access door to a maintenance alcove large enough to slip behind. That would do perfectly.
I grabbed my pack and quick-stepped it toward my hiding place. The rubber boots quieted my steps, the threadbare fabric of my patchwork trousers hissing between my legs. I shivered, having forgotten to grab my jacket off the bike, but I wasn’t going back for it. The network always held a chill. Leithan, my community’s physician, and a talented engineer, taught me that even small electronic devices exuded heat while activated. Too much and things malfunctioned. For a machine as massive as the Interspace, whose network compound might well encompass the entire world at this point, the brisk environmental levels made sense but they bugged me all the same. I wondered if the mechanical sentience behind the Interspace could feel the temperature too, if the chilly air kept its sprockets and gears comfy while the remains of humanity withered in their designated settlements.
I set the thought aside. Anger and fear made you reckless. Besides, if my mysterious dreams of the network meant one thing for sure, it was the Interspace didn’t control everything. Too bad I still hadn’t figured out where the dreams came from or how and why only I got them. Yet another topic to ponder later.
I’d nearly crossed the wide swath of the rail paths when a shiver that had nothing to do with the chilly air went down my back. My gaze went to the silent
towers surrounding me, my skin prickling with the sensation of being watched. Oh good. Paranoia. Drones did the watching for the Interspace, and if they knew I was here, they’d be on me in a flash. Humans were prohibited from wandering around the network. Rule number one of the Armistice my ancestors established with the machine and an edict I violated every time I did these runs. But what choice did we have? The Interspace had stopped delivering the supplies we needed to survive months ago.
I did a quick check of the countdown on my wrist patch. Plenty of time to get hidden. The situation wasn’t ideal but still manageable. I had no idea know how I would haul the supplies home without my bike. I’d figure something out. Everything would be—
Behind me, the puff and grind of failing machinery cut through my thoughts. I swung around. The front stabilizer on my bike gave out with a death-wheeze, and the whole contraption crashed to the ground with a deafening bang.
Sun, stars, and sky, I’d forgotten to power it down.
Above that terrible realization came the high-pitched whine of drones speeding this direction. I whirled and sprinted for all I was worth, the panic so sharp in my gut it was as if I’d swallowed shards of glass. A shrill alert went up, echoing across the network. They’d spotted me. I groaned, a scared, pleading sound. It’d be impossible to get away now. I might as well stand there and wait to be incinerated.
Instead, I threw myself behind the access door and slammed it shut. In the darkness, I crawled into the far corner and curled into a ball. The space was only a few meters deep, and that flimsy panel wouldn’t stop them. Crushing futility made me ill inside.
Gears whirred and screeched as the drones came in close. Laser bolts punched holes in the door and seared the wall over my head. Terror locked the screams in my throat and I tucked my head under my arms. The shine of their sleek oblong shapes and the red light of their targeting eye glared in at me.