by Lola Dodge
Quanta and Devan stood back-to-back on a skybridge, glowing blue and yellow while Helixes advanced from both sides.
As Quanta fell to her knees, the Seligo lifted their weapons.
“Kill them both,” Ming said.
I wanted to close my eyes.
I couldn’t.
Gunfire sounded.
Blue and yellow lights exploded. The cams shook and cut off. I stepped forward.
Every screen was black. My hands started to shake.
Where is she?
“Get eyes on them!” Ming shouted.
The building rumbled. The lights flickered.
“What was that?” The clone’s eyes slipped out of focus.
Only the harbor cams were still working. A drone slipped down, giving an angle into the ship’s cabin. Marquez and Dex were down.
Cipher crouched over their bodies.
Her face was out of view, but lightning crackled around her. A bolt hit the drone, and the vidscreen blackened.
A more distant cam showed a ball of electricity spreading from the boat. The control room lights flickered again, and another rumble shook the ground.
As the energy crackled, cam after cam cut off on screen, and the cold truth spread through my veins.
Quanta was destabilizing. Cipher and Devan were letting go of their control.
All three of them were lashing out.
The building rocked.
“This can’t…” The clone gripped her temples. “How? I didn’t see it coming. How…”
“What do you see?” My voice rasped. I grabbed her shoulders. “Tell me.”
“The Citadel. The whole island. It’s too late to—” Her gray eyes widened. “I saw us—But that doesn’t make sense.”
“What did you see?” I should focus on what she was implying, but my attention kept flicking to the blackened screen. The Greens shouted and rushed, trying to cams get back online. I hardly processed their voices as the disaster unfolded.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she repeated.
“What?” I gripped her shoulder, starting to lose control of the panic that was closing in on me.
I never heard her answer. The screen behind her flickered back to life.
Quanta lay limp.
Bleeding out in a pool of red.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
QUANTA
Blue covered over my vision. One last pair of timeghosts materialized as everything else faded.
Me and the clone stand face-to-face. Both of us grip our temples, expressions twisting in pain.
I reach out to her—
But real pain seared through my nervous system.
Blood.
Fire.
I’d been shot.
I couldn’t breathe, but I heard myself choking. Spluttering.
I’m dying.
I reached for the layers of the past, but I could feel myself fading too fast.
As much as I wanted to keep fighting…
My time was up.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
ALTAIR
Dead.
I stared at the screen, but I couldn’t feel a thing.
Dead.
Someone was shaking my shoulders. “—Citadel. All of it. I don’t know how to fix—”
I blinked at the person shaking me. It was Quanta’s face, but not Quanta.
Quanta was dead.
The building’s power cut, plunging us into darkness.
“—still a chance. But it doesn’t make sense!”
“Chance?” I spoke the word, but it sounded hollow. A world away.
“The past. I can see the past in the future.” The clone’s coral-tipped fingers dug into my forearms. “How is that possible?”
The past. In the future. If we could just go back—
A warm light bloomed in the darkness of my heart. I gripped her shoulders hard. “Take us back.”
“What?” The clone tried to pull back.
I gripped her chin and brought my gaze to hers. My mind started processing as the path to salvation spread in front of us. The air returned to my lungs. “You can rewind time.”
The clone’s brow creased. She didn’t believe me.
She would soon.
“The past in the future. We’re sitting on the sofa in your room again, aren’t we?”
“How do you—”
The building shook again. Harder. “We froze that moment in time. You have to bring us back before their powers destroy the island.”
“How?” Rapt, she gazed up at me.
“Focus on that moment harder than you’ve ever focused on anything.” I did the same as I held her, hoping my concentration would facilitate hers. “Keep it fixed in your mind and rewind us through everything that happened from now to then.”
Her face scrunched up. “I can’t.”
“You can.” I softened my grip and cupped her chin. “You have to. Can you see what happens if you don’t?”
She nodded. “Cipher’s blowing. There’s a tidal wave. And Devan… And the other one…” She pressed her forehead to my chest.
Even now it hurt. Quanta but not Quanta. I comforted the clone as best I could. “Bring us back. We have to save the island.”
I had to save Quanta.
“I—”
A deafening boom sounded.
We clutched each other tight. If this was it…
Shockwaves rippled through the room.
And froze.
Then the nightmare started to rewind.
The clone was pulling us back to the reset point.
We rewound. The building no longer shook, and the vidscreens came back to life. Quanta and Devan stood. Then the clone and I were reversing. Back down the hall. Back to the holo room.
Time roared in my ears and soul, but my heart soared.
There was still a chance to survive this day.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
QUANTA
I squinted against the light.
What…?
A bright seascape spread out in front of me. As dizziness washed over me, I found myself gripping the railing of a boat.
But…
I was supposed to be dead.
I remembered dying.
Definitely.
Turning around, I tried to keep my grip on the rail, but my hands shook and sweated. I stood at the back of the smuggler’s boat. We were coasting over the waves.
On the way to Theta Citadel.
What? Was I getting confused on what was real?
I’d just told everyone we were changing the plan. Devan and I would go in alone. After convincing them, I went onto the deck to get air.
This was now.
But I couldn’t shake the hazy half-memory of blue and yellow light exploding. A ball of lightning. The shaking ground.
Bullets in my chest.
Losing my grip on the rail, I slid to my knees. I wasn’t the only one who’d died.
But I hadn’t wound time back.
I let down my walls, trying to glimpse the past, but all I could see were the same old timeghosts. What might’ve been was just an echo.
I stand face-to-face with the clone. She grips her temples. I reach out to her with shaking fingers. A skyscraper looms behind us—
It hadn’t happened, but I knew I’d seen these timeghosts before. The clone and I together.
I hugged my arms to my stomach as I curled against the railing. What’s happening?
Vague memories whispered like ghosts. Cipher and Devan going supernova. My head finally splitting.
And the dying part.
It felt like I’d rewound time, but I hadn’t. I couldn’t without Tair.
And the clone. Why was I seeing h—
I jerked upright.
The clone was with Tair. The two of them could timewind.
I’d died. All of us had died.
Somehow she and Tair had bought us a second chance.
I scrambled into the ship’s hold, half
falling through the door. “Change of plans.”
“We just—” Knight started.
“No.” I collapsed into a seat as my vision swam. “We definitely need to change plans again.”
Cipher groaned. “What now?”
“We all died the first time.”
The four of them stared. I didn’t blame them. “I’m not positive what just happened, but I know Devan and I went into the Citadel alone. You guys got pinned down in the harbor, and—” I shivered. I’d spare them the details. “Cipher and Devan and I all exploded. I think we took the island with us. But the clone reversed time and—”
“You’re making zero fucking sense right now.” Cipher clutched her stomach.
Knight rubbed her shoulders. “Reversed time? You want to explain that?”
I let out a breath and tried to remember what they needed to know. “Tair and I can reverse time to a specific reset point. Apparently he and the clone can do the same, because I think they just saved our lives.”
“Dude.” Dex ran a hand through his hair. “Can you own up to that shit sooner?”
“Now you know. And now we need a new plan.” I was still hazy on how to survive when the last attempt had ended just about the worst possible way.
“We shouldn’t split up,” Knight said. “That was a mistake from the beginning.”
“I don’t know…” Everything looked fuzzy when I tried to zero in on what had gone down. The clearest image wasn’t a memory, but a future timeghost of the clone and me, reaching out to each other in front of a stumpy glass building. “The buildings!”
“What about them?” Knight asked.
“The glass tower and that zigzag one.” I grabbed his tablet and started flicking through the images he’d shown us. “Devan and I went to the first two, but I didn’t pick up any hints of Tair. He has to be at the third building.” I flicked to the image of a shorter building with a spire.
“What about Kiri and Aliya?” Devan asked.
“I haven’t seen them yet.” I tried to work through the fuzz and pain in my head, but all that jumped out were timeghosts or my own half-memories. “I didn’t not see them, either. If they’re in the Citadel, that’s probably where we’ll find them.”
“Then we go in together. Straight to the target,” Knight said.
I tossed his tablet back to him. The future still looked like chaos—the little bit I could see in the timeghosts I was trying to keep back—but flashes of us all going supernova were still in the mix. And I hadn’t seen anyone else in the image of the clone and I facing off.
They weren’t going to like this idea any more than I did. “I have to go in alone.”
“No.” Devan’s hands glowed.
“Are you suicidal?” Cipher glared like I was crazy.
Maybe I was.
I focused on the image of the clone and me together. We stood in the shadow of the building with the spire, gripping our heads like both of us were tearing in half.
Was someone else standing nearby?
I was reaching for someone. Was it really her? Or maybe Tair was there, too?
I pushed and pushed, straining my brain, but I couldn’t flesh out the rest of the scene. I had to work with the info I had.
The image seemed solid and about as likely as any future ghost I’d ever seen. So this timeline was both possible and super likely.
The clone would come out to meet me if I went to meet her.
But why? Why would she open herself up to danger when she could just get the Seligo to shoot me again?
I focused on the image, trying to squeeze every drop of info I could from it. Both our faces twisted like we were in pain, but all we were doing was standing there. We glowed a little, too.
Both of us.
Why?
There had to be an answer.
Pain gripped my head as I tried to dig, and I lost sight of the image in the teeming crowd of timeghosts. I fought to keep my walls up.
At this rate, I’d crack before I got to the Citadel, let alone had a standoff with the clone. Faster and faster, I could feel myself unraveling. Cracking. Splitting.
Maybe that was what I was seeing in the future. Not a literal image of the clone and me, but just me, fracturing in half.
No.
I could fracture a million times, and I’d never wear a sundress.
It was definitely the clone I was seeing, and she was in as much pain as I was. But she had no reason to destabilize. She’d just come out of a tube somewhere and—
Prickles danced up and down my arms. There really only was one reason we’d have a standoff, right?
Because she was in as much pain as I was. We were both headed down doom creek—and maybe I was a little farther along in my boat, but she had to be catching up fast.
I’d been stable enough for years, even after all of Nagi’s tests. Things had only gotten dicey really recently. Mostly after meeting Tair. Of all the clones in Darren’s creepy lab, only the one was a functioning copy—and she’d clearly met Tair, too, so…
I didn’t know exactly what was happening with the three of us, but I knew if I went to her building, the clone would come out and meet me. It would be the wrong move. She should definitely just have me shot on sight.
Still, I knew me, so I figured I knew the clone well enough. She couldn’t risk me blowing and taking out the Citadel, but she also wanted to meet me before the kill order came down. And just like the pre-Tair version of me, she probably figured she could deal with me herself.
Because most importantly, if we were both going through the same thing—even a little bit—she had to see what the end looked like. It was the kind of peek into her future that she’d never be able to resist if she had my curiosity streak.
I was positive I was the perfect bait right now. And after we met…
I might burn the clone out with my new brain-melting power, or trigger her to blow when I finally lost it. I wasn’t sure, but if I could take her down with me or at least make sure that Tair was in the building…
It would have to be enough.
“Quanta…” Cipher’s low voice brought me back from my wild theories. “Your arms.”
Ghostly blue energy danced from my hands, climbing all the way to my shoulders. It was the same sketchy, hazy, flickering blue of the timeghosts, only now everyone could see.
I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad yet, but at least I knew what I had to do. “I’m definitely going in alone. She and I have to work this out together.”
They all started arguing, but I tuned them out. Maybe dying had mellowed me out, but I felt strangely calm.
I knew what I had to do.
The clone and I had a date—
And I knew she wasn’t going to miss it.
Chapter Forty
ALTAIR
The clone and I fell against the sofa. We were in her room again. It was just after breakfast.
Again.
She gripped her head. “How…”
My vision spun, but adrenaline kept me laser focused. “You’re all right?”
She put a hand over her mouth. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Reaching out to her, I swallowed my revulsion at the brush of skin. I couldn’t let the rest of this conversation be overheard. It will pass.
You knew we could do this? Her eyes were wide with a mix of emotions, but the way she braced against the sofa, she seemed more shocked than anything else.
I wasn’t sure. I am now.
“We have to catch them.” She stood and started to wobble.
Wait. I pulled her back onto the couch. Take it easy.
She leaned into my shoulder. We can catch them in the harbor. Then we can save the Citadel.
I swallowed a twinge of guilt. It didn’t feel nice manipulating her, but I was going to anyway. And I didn’t give a damn about the Citadel.
Only saving Quanta. And our allies, if I could.
That meant taking advantage of the clone while she was st
ill disoriented. I touched her flushed cheek. We can’t attack like that again. We’d just repeat the same chain of events.
She winced. I think you’re right. But then…
Then how do we stop it? I finished for her.
The clone nodded.
I had her. All I had to do was keep her following my lead. Are you allowed to access security whenever you want?
Yes.
That was good. Let’s monitor the harbor. We can spot them arriving and make a new plan.
We have to tell Ming. The clone started to pull away again.
I tugged her back. Is that a good idea? She’ll want to kill them all again. It’s better to wait and tell her when she needs to know.
Her eyes went out of focus. I hoped she was seeing futures that agreed with me. I might be manipulating her, but I was also telling the truth. Ming would try to kill Quanta and the others, and the three Reds wouldn’t go quietly.
Fine. We’ll wait.
Anticipation hummed through me. If I could get within reach of the real Quanta, we could use her powers to break us free of this situation. It wouldn’t be simple or easy, but I was willing to settle for possible.
The clone slipped off to her room and returned with a tablet. She settled back next to me on the couch and tapped into the security feeds.
The Seligo would be watching this—but there was nothing to do about that. Luckily, they couldn’t know what she was searching for.
I split my attention between her and the screen. She kept leaning against the couch as if she wanted to nod off.
“You’re sure you feel all right?” I asked.
“No. My head’s splitting.” She rubbed her temple. “And I’m dizzy and tired and nauseated.”
I patted her shoulder, trying to be comforting. Shadows hung under her eyes, and her skin had lost its original radiance. She didn’t look innocent or fresh anymore.
She looked exhausted.
Winding time always drained Quanta, but not to this extent. Not after only one reversal.
The clone wobbled as she sat. She looked like she’d reversed twenty times instead of one.
As the morning dragged on, I was positive the clone wasn’t in peak form. Yesterday she’d been peering at me and kicking her feet in curiosity. Today she could barely sit up straight. The change was too drastic to have been caused by a single trip through time.