by Lola Dodge
First Published by Ink Monster, LLC in 2017
Ink Monster, LLC
4470 W Sunset Blvd
Suite 145
Los Angeles, CA 90027
www.inkmonster.net
ISBN 9781943858002
Copyright © 2017 by Ink Monster LLC
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Also by Lola Dodge
The Shadow Ravens Series
Quanta
Quanta Reset
Quanta Rewind
Coming Soon: The Spellwork Syndicate
Deadly Sweet
The Manhattan Ten Series
Temptress
Ivory
Belle Fury
Junglecat Honeymoon
Angel
M10: Unlikely Beginnings
Contents
Chapter One: Quanta
Chapter Two: Altair
Chapter Three: Quanta
Chapter Four: Altair
Chapter Five: Quanta
Chapter Six: Altair
Chapter Seven: Quanta
Chapter Eight: Altair
Chapter Nine: Quanta
Chapter Ten: Altair
Chapter Eleven: Quanta
Chapter Twelve: Altair
Chapter Thirteen: Quanta
Chapter Fourteen: Altair
Chapter Fifteen: Quanta
Chapter Sixteen: Altair
Chapter Seventeen: Quanta
Chapter Eighteen: Altair
Chapter Nineteen: Quanta
Chapter Twenty: Altair
Chapter Twenty-One: Quanta
Chapter Twenty-Two: Altair
Chapter Twenty-Three: Quanta
Chapter Twenty-Four: Altair
Chapter Twenty-Five: Quanta
Chapter Twenty-Six: Altair
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Quanta
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Altair
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Quanta
Chapter Thirty: Altair
Chapter Thirty-One: Quanta
Chapter Thirty-Two: Altair
Chapter Thirty-Three: Quanta
Chapter Thirty-Four: Altair
Chapter Thirty-Five: Quanta
Chapter Thirty-Six: Altair
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Quanta
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Altair
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Quanta
Chapter Forty: Altair
Chapter Forty-One: Quanta
Reader’s Note
About the Author
Chapter One
QUANTA
My pulse rang loud in my ears as I puzzled over the doorknob in front of me. The only light in the narrow hallway glowed from Devan’s raised hand, but Cipher was starting to crackle with nervous sparks of electricity as she leaned closer, voice muffled by her protective facemask. “What’s next?”
I kept staring at the knob. What is next?
Good question. By way of an answer, bluish timeghosts fuzzed over reality, showing me all the ways the next seconds could play out.
Letting the present bleed away, I relaxed into my power. I stumble over the trip wire just across the threshold. That was a start. “There’s a wire on the first step through the door.” And then?
I tiptoe over the wire. Cipher and Devan follow me into a vacant gray office. It looks empty enough, with only a few bare desks and no furnishings or working lights, but before I can wave the girls across the room to the next door we have to crack, a shooter pops out from behind the desk. I lift my gun, but Cipher’s already pushing me aside to safety. She takes a hit to the shoulder before I can shoot.
Blinking back to the now, I scowled at Cipher. “Shooter behind the desk on the left. Don’t be such a hero.”
Cipher’s mask covered her mouth, but I knew she was scowling right back at me. “I didn’t do anything.”
“None of us are doing anything.” The golden light glowing from Devan’s hand flickered as she grumbled.
“Just let me take out the shooter. Can you unlock the door?” I stepped back, giving Cipher room.
She lifted a portacomp to the door’s keypad, punched in some numbers, and a beep sounded. I tried to breathe in and out and keep my focus as I pulled out my gun. We’d win this time. The possibility was there in the ether, if a little hazy and unlikely looking. There were only three more booby-trapped rooms between the exit and us, and I spotted at least one future where we darted through the last door grinning wide for the first time in weeks.
I just had to find the right path. We could do it.
Definitely.
Probably?
Devan pulled open the door. Already seeing where the attack was coming from, I darted into the office before Cipher could box me out. I pulled the trigger just before the target popped up. The hit connected with perfect timing. Cipher and Devan flanked me, crackling with light and electricity. Lowering my gun, I flexed my mental muscles.
When I called for them, timeghosts fluttered over reality like sheets of tissue paper—layer on layer on layer of possibility. As I flicked through the pages of time, a bluish glow wound from my fingertips. I could tamp it down, but I didn’t want to make the effort. I’d rather burn my focus finding a future where we got out of this sweaty, awful nightmare house. We only had to sneak through the bedroom and kitchen now.
But I already felt like we’d been in the office a thousand times. Cipher could hack into the abandoned terminal on the wall to get us through the next doorway, but then…
A panel drops from the ceiling, spraying us with pellets. Four shooters pop up, and there’s not enough time to hit all of them. I have to choose. Do I save myself? Save Devan? Save Cipher?
Fuzzy blue images of all of us falling in different combinations fluttered over my field of vision, and my head spun with the info. Seeing what came next didn’t make moving forward any easier. If anything, it was harder. How did I open a door, knowing I had to choose who took the inevitable shots?
“Quanta!” Cipher’s voice jolted me back to reality.
While I’d been staring down one set of potential futures, another had snuck up on me. Three mini drones zoomed through the door behind us. They zigged and zagged through the air, speeding up now that they had us in their sights. I whipped my gun toward the closest one, but the way the little UFO-looking buggers swerved made it crazy hard to predict their paths—especially when I had to blink away their drone-y timeghosts.
Electricity crackled, arcing across the room as Cipher fried the one nearest to her. Light blurred around Devan, but as soon as she went invisible, the drone that had been closing in on her swung toward me.
I knocked down the first one, but I couldn’t get my gun on the second target fast enough. Its shot was already on the way.
A paint pellet pinged me straight in the forehead, splattering my visor.
“Son of a—!” I grabbed at my mask. The color was green instead of red, but it felt warm enough to be blood, and my vision doubled for a second with the sting.
“Fail.” Knight’s voice echoed over the PA system. “You guys want to take another stab?”
“No way.” The eighth try today wasn’t going to be the lucky one, and I needed to wipe the paint off my visor or I’d bite it on the empty floor, let alone any more trip wires the guys planted.
“I’m done, too.” Cipher’s electric glow faded, and she shucked off her visor. Strands of her long blue hair were plastered to her face and she sagged a little, wilting from using her powers all morning. Devan was still invisible, but she didn’t speak up if she had a problem with taking a break.
The overhead lights flickered on and
a beep sounded as all the doors in the building swung open. We backtracked through the long bare hallway and the other unfurnished rooms we’d already cleared, finally popping out into the massive airplane hangar that had become our home.
More or less.
The three of us started peeling off our sweat-soaked paintball gear and tossing it into piles near the doorway. I was beyond tired of sweating, but after sneaking free of Theta Citadel, the middle of the North African desert had turned out to be the only place where we could train and stay hidden from the Seligo. It had been a month since then, and I was happy to be alive and all, but that didn’t stop me from pining for air-conditioning.
Finally, I stripped down to just a tank top and shorts. I wanted to be far away from the training house for a while, but there was nowhere to hide. The house was the only real structure in the hangar—otherwise, it was mostly empty floor space for planes that didn’t exist.
I trudged toward the mission control station set up in the corner. It had turned into our hodgepodge living room over the past few weeks, with a couple ragged sofas and rusty folding chairs clustered around a big screen, and stacks of all the working tech stuff we’d either salvaged from the storage or carried in ourselves. Knight and Dex sat at the comp desks, where they managed the traps in the training house.
Tair was already on his way to me. I let myself forget everything else as he closed the distance between us.
He looked tall and lithe in a black T-shirt and long shorts, but my favorite thing about him was the look of concern in his dark eyes. And the glasses. Those were always cute.
Tair pressed cool fingers to what was probably a red spot on my forehead. “Are you okay?”
“How are your fingers cold right now?” I covered his hand with mine, happy to keep him right where he was.
A smile smoothed the worry from his face. He slipped a hand into his pocket and then snuck a pouch into my palm.
The cold shocked my fingertips, but once I realized what it was, I clutched the precious bundle tight. “An ice pack? From where?”
“A hit to the head calls for raiding the first aid kit.” Tair’s fingers were still cold as he smoothed the sweat-crazed hair away from my face. I leaned into him, letting my forehead rest against his chest. It was just a little thoughtful gesture, but when I added up all the little things—and the big ones—Tair did for me, it was hard to not fall into his arms and just stay there for a few happy hours.
A throat cleared, and Dex called out. “You guys joining us, or…?”
I scooted far enough away from Tair to scowl. As big as the hangar was, it felt too small for the six of us. We had zero privacy and had all been spending way too much time together in nonstop training mode as we tried to prep for whatever came next.
With the old Shadow Ravens compound compromised, Lady Eva’s agents had splintered off to hide until the Seligo weren’t on such high alert. Tair and I hadn’t decided if we’d rejoin with her or break off on her own when the time came, but if we had to hide away, we might as well be productive about it. That meant catching up on fighting skills with the guys. I’d expected taking a break from running for our lives would be more fun, but after a few weeks waiting in close quarters, all of us were getting antsy.
I fought the urge to grab Tair by the T-shirt and drag him into a dark corner like a few of my timeghostly future selves were doing. Instead, I slipped my fingers into Tair’s, and we headed for the corner where the others were waiting. Cipher had plopped onto the less ratty of the two sofas, Dex and Knight were still stationed at the rickety desks with their comp consoles, and Devan leaned against a tower of tech gear with folded arms and a surly expression.
None of us had much reason to smile. If we couldn’t make it through the training house, how could we survive an actual mission? One that was really life or death?
I didn’t have an answer.
But we couldn’t hide forever. It would be better to go on the offensive, but if we couldn’t sneak past a few stupid drones in a plasterboard house, we weren’t even close to ready for that.
Tair and I slid a pair of folding chairs closer to where the others were grouped around the big screen. Knight queued up the vid footage, ready to run through our latest failure play by play.
His disappointed gaze fell on me first. “What happened?”
I had no excuses. “I was focusing on the wrong timeline.” My third eye was as clear as it had been in years, but I still had to know where to point it. Tair squeezed my hand in sympathy.
Knight tilted a screen so we could get a better view and started replaying footage from the training house cams. “I’m seeing improvements, but you all have to remember to clear the corners when you enter a new room. When Devan enters here…” I followed Knight’s spiel, trying to absorb his pointers about where to stand and how not to get shot, but no matter what nifty infiltration tactics he tried to teach, too much of it just didn’t apply. I’d always be pouring over futures instead of dealing with whatever enemies popped up in front of me. Still, I managed to more or less pay attention until my ice pack thawed and heatstroke became a real threat.
Eventually, Knight declared us debriefed. “We could all use some chow.”
I groaned. “Let me guess what’s on the menu.” I didn’t need precognition to see another vile food packet in my future.
“Ugh.” Cipher shuddered. “More baby vomit.”
“At least you get a little variety,” I said as the five of us headed for the kitchenette. The only vegetarian packets were spaghetti rings and soy protein stir-fry. My stomach rolled at the thought of choking another one down, but the hangar didn’t have a food printer, and we couldn’t exactly run to the store. It took hours to reach civilization on the dune buggy thing, and the closest “town” was a handful of Void dwellers in huts fighting over a water hole.
“Variety?” Cipher snorted. “You’re right. Maybe I’ll have the pus sandwich instead of the baby vomit.”
“Yum.” I’d asked her to stop with the creative food descriptions on day one, but nothing she could say made it any worse at this point.
Cutting across the hangar, I kept hold of Tair’s hand more out of comfort than necessity. Not too long ago, I would’ve been drowning in timeghosts just trying to cross the floor. Things had changed for the better since the throwdown with my clone. Now I could actually see where I was walking, from the rafters high overhead to the clusters of furniture we’d tried to make into rooms. Outside the training house, only the bathroom and storage closets had actual walls.
Every so often, I caught a glimpse of a spectral airplane or someone’s future, but a little flick of my mental muscles quieted everything back down. For the first time—possibly ever—my brain wasn’t fighting against me.
Free to watch the world around me, I snuck peeks at the others as we settled into the kitchen area. We’d set up a rickety table and chairs next to the food storage closet, but the only cooking “tools” were the gas burner on our lab table/countertop and a huge steel drum of drinking water.
It was Cipher’s turn to make dinner, so Knight fired up the burner to boil water while she raided the closet for food packs. She muttered more nasty food comparisons under her breath until Knight fake vomited. Then they started nudging each other and eventually laughing.
The rest of us settled into chairs around the table. Devan sat with her arms folded. Her dark bangs were getting long enough to hide her face, and I wondered if she’d grow out her bob so she could hide behind her hair even more. She hadn’t opened up to us much more since our crazy escape from Theta Citadel, and I couldn’t blame her. We had no leads on her kidnapped friends and no proof that they were still alive.
She must’ve felt my stare, because her gaze flicked to me. For a second, Devan hunched back into herself. Then she drew enough courage to sit straight up and face us. “How much longer are we staying here?”
I turned to Knight. He’d been running missions with Eva and the Shadow Ravens for year
s and had naturally taken the lead as our planner.
Knight shook his head. “We have a check-in with Lady Eva after dinner, but I’m guessing nothing’s changed. The Seligo are still hunting for Red Helixes, and you three are at the top of their shit list. Unless we find a lead on your friends, we’d be stupid to put ourselves out in the open again.”
Devan’s lips trembled until she pressed them tight together. My heart ached for her. She didn’t say much, but I’d seen plenty of her past just by being around her. Kiri and Aliya were basically Devan’s family, and she blamed herself that the Seligo had them now. If Devan had been with them when they were captured, her illusion-making powers might have kept them all safe.
Then again, they might all have been taken. But I couldn’t see what-ifs, and I couldn’t think of anything to comfort her. We all knew the odds. Red Helix girls had dangerous—and unstable—powers. My hand drifted to the hip where my Helix was tattooed. I’d barely survived captivity to the Seligo, and the same man who’d made me suffer for a decade was the one who had her friends now.
Doctor Nagi.
He wanted us all, but Tair and I had made it personal. We’d slipped past him twice, and he’d do anything in his power to make sure we never escaped him again.
As Devan hunched back in on herself, I wished there were something—anything—I could do to help her get through this. If I could find the girls in the future and see that they were okay…
But future-seeing had its limits. Kiri and Aliya were too far away, and I couldn’t pick out the right page out of the future if I didn’t have the book. Even if I could find them, all I’d see were possibilities.
Anything could happen. Our decisions were what steered us down one path out of millions.
And when I tried to find the path our little group would take? The only certainty in my future was a pouch of soggy-sweet spaghetti rings.
Tair squeezed my hand. “Are you seeing something or just thinking?”
“Thinking.” And now that he had my attention, I remembered the important thing. Whatever came at us next, Tair and I would handle it together. I scooted my chair closer and rested my head on his shoulder.