Selfless Series Box Set

by S Breaker

  Don’t miss an epic ending!

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  SELFLESS

  By S. Breaker

  The Complete Series

  Copyright © 2020 S. Breaker

  Save Yourself © 2019 S. Breaker

  Find Yourself © 2019 S. Breaker

  Free Yourself © 2020 S. Breaker

  All rights reserved.

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Selfless · Book 1

  Go

  Mental

  Alternatively

  Crumble

  Strangers

  T minus 11

  Secrets

  Adaptation

  The Fringe

  Macon

  Fight or Flight

  Close calls

  The Front Door

  P.S.

  The Other Laney

  Disguises

  The Cake is a Lie

  The Carter Effect

  Recoil

  Selfless · Book 2

  Normal

  Go Again

  Parallel

  For Real

  The Bleed

  The Community

  The Line

  Coming Home

  Tremors

  Traces

  Golden Halo

  Special

  The Alliance

  Powwow

  Masked

  A Reminder

  The Fix

  Theoretically

  Selfless · Book 3

  Fold

  First

  Again

  Sub

  Traversal

  Primaries

  Timetable

  Homeworld

  The Odds

  Same

  Camouflage

  Different

  Drive

  Gravity

  Feedback

  Compensate

  Jump

  Anomalies

  All Wrong

  Out of Mind

  Safe Space

  Inevitable

  Going Home

  Don’t miss an epic sequel!

  Sneak Peek: The Secret of the Phoenix

  Sneak Peek: Change of Mind

  SAVE YOURSELF

  Selfless · Book 1

  Go

  Friday, 20 March 2020 3:20 a.m.

  Oof! Laney tumbled out of the quantum shear onto a riverbank.

  Her eyelids felt heavy, there was a dull aching in her head, and gravity seemed to be keeping her cheek pressed against the wet sand on the river shore. She groaned and shivered at the same time.

  Then as if on cue, it started to rain.

  What the hell just happened? She peeked out of one eye. It was dark, and all she could see was the faint silhouette of a suspension bridge crossing the river.

  Her heart started to pound as she regained her bearings.

  She had to get up.

  What she wouldn’t give just then for an average teenage life, blissfully ignorant of quantum shears, multiverse catastrophes, and personal mortal peril. The life she’d had before today.

  Yesterday Laney’s biggest worry had been her sociology paper.

  Mrs. Bankes had cut her some slack—understandably, since the entire contents of her dorm room had been ransacked the previous night, her stuff shred to pieces, and her computer hard drive smashed. Vandalism, the school authorities had said. Laney, knowing better, shook her head. Mrs. Bankes had given her an extension until Friday.

  Laney shivered again, this time not from the cold but from dread.

  Friday. Today.

  Laney dragged herself up the riverbank and collapsed against the crumbly, mossy underside of the concrete bridge, gasping as she looked around.

  A rusty dinghy was half sunk off the end of a collapsed wooden dock on the shore. The path beyond the end of the bridge where she was led toward a row of low, run-down brick buildings. The buildings looked like apartments, but there was something old-fashioned about their architecture—the iron terraces, the white shuttered windows, the white bricks lining the red walls. Rusty cars had been haphazardly abandoned on the road as well as on the bridge itself. Cars with leather canopy tops, large grills, and round headlights.

  Classic cars. Laney thought, puzzled. The place looked like an old movie set, especially with the addition of the rain, except nothing looked even remotely familiar to her. She gingerly climbed over the waist-high stone wall that dammed the river and headed for the top of the bridge to get a better view.

  A commotion up the street made her snap to attention, her heart pounding harder in her chest. She squinted in the faint light but didn’t have to look for long to know it was them. Who else could it have been? They knew someone came through a quantum shear. And they knew it was her.

  She swallowed hard. She had to get out of there; the exposed bridge was not the best hiding place. Unfortunately, when she moved to run away, one of their strobe-like torches swept past her and detected her movement.

  “There she is!”

  Laney took off like a shot, running across the bridge and toward a line of what looked like deciduous trees, hoping at least for some cover, but more trackers showed up on the other side of the bridge and she was immediately blocked.

  One of the trackers stopped short of her position. “Come with us now and save us all some trouble,” he advised, training the business end of a big-ass high-tech gun in her direction.

  Laney was still heaving. “Who are you people?” she asked, hoping to appear innocent.

  Another tracker closed in from behind and she heard him speak into his communicator earpiece. “We’ve got her, sir. Fifty-five north, minus oh-twenty-two west, on the A306 bridge.”

  “Hey, whatever your boss thinks I have, seriously, I don’t have it. I don’t even know what the hell it is!” She swallowed hard as even more trackers closed in. She pivoted left and right, panicked. She was trapped!

  The flowing river seemed like the only plausible option for escape. As she prepared to jump, her breathing sounded very loud in her ears, louder than the rain.

  Two more trackers closed in.

  She glanced at the river again, then back up at the trackers. She didn’t have to be a scientist to know that the deep river was probably freezing.

  And for a split second, Laney entertained the thought that their interrogation room, on the other hand, was probably heated to a balmy seventy-five degrees.

  But before she could launch herself into the icy waters, a shadow dropped from above the bridge and fell two of the trackers in less than a second.

  “What—?” was the only thing the guy with the radio could say before he received a left hook right to his face. A couple more trackers moved in, another two were on the way, but with their attention shifting to the shadow, Laney took the opportunity to slip away.

  She darted toward the end of the bridge closest to her and crouched against the underside of one of the old support columns, hoping nobody had seen her duck and hide.

  Head down, she heard loud groans, the clatter of weapons hitting concrete, and bodies splashing into the river.

  After a few moments, the only sounds that remained were the constant pelting of the rain and the faint sound of the wind blowing through the streets.

  Laney squinted in the rain, cautiously peering out to check if it was safe when someone grabbed her from behind and covered
her mouth. Her scream was muffled as she struggled to get free before she bit his hand.

  He threw her partway across the wet ground. “Cripe, Laney!” he exclaimed, wringing out his hand.

  Laney blinked and squinted again, this time recognizing the intense blue eyes. She heaved a huge sigh of relief. “Noah.”

  He straightened up his jacket, blew out a breath, then shot her an exasperated, pointed, look. “Well?” he prompted before he took off running.

  Frowning, Laney took a deep breath before following suit. She couldn’t blame him for being irate. He did just take on about a dozen tracker thugs to save her.

  Let me guess, someone’s after you and you need my help to save the world or something crazy like that?

  Actually, someone’s after you.

  That had been just yesterday. The first time she’d met Noah.

  Well…technically she had met him before.

  Mental

  Thursday, 19 March 2020 3:20 p.m.

  Twelve hours earlier

  There’s nothing physically wrong with you. Laney could already hear her best friend Darla echoing the school nurse’s diagnosis, to which she would most certainly conclude then, that there had to be something mentally wrong with her.

  Laney had been exhausted practically every day for the past three weeks. She seriously couldn’t remember a class that she hadn’t slept through. And even though she was certain she’d been getting more than enough sleep at night, she never felt like she’d had enough rest.

  That day was the last straw. At lunch, Laney had passed out in the middle of the cafeteria. Darla had freaked out and pretty much muscled her to the nurse’s office.

  Laney shook her head. Well, something’s gotta be wrong with me, she thought. I can’t be this tired for nothing. She dragged her feet, walking back to the main school building after the check-up, kicking away some pebbles off the paved walkway.

  Laney’s boarding school was one of several in New England. Its campus was a complex of several identical-looking buildings arranged in quads. The classrooms were all on the opposite side of the campus from the school clinic, she wouldn’t have to go past any on the way back to the dorms, and the gym was just ahead.

  Laney recognized Jake Donovan coming her way almost instantly. He was a popular campus figure, captain of the hockey team, quite a guy with the females from what she had heard, but they’d hardly ever crossed paths. They’d never had to. She didn’t even think he knew her name. It was strange how he was staring at her though.

  “Hey,” he spoke up when she was about to pass him.

  Laney paused and glanced over, making sure he was speaking to her, but then there wasn’t anybody else around. “Uh, hi.”

  “Uh, how’s it going?” he asked, his hands shoved in his pockets.

  She stopped walking and noticed his clothes, what looked like a heavy flight jacket, a T-shirt, and worn faded jeans, which were a far cry from what he usually wore, his varsity jersey and designer label shirts.

  “Fine,” she replied. “How ‘bout with you?”

  Laney was actually genuinely curious, as he looked a bit worse for wear, somewhat harassed, and his usually slicked-back black hair was spiky, tousled, unruly—although strangely, she found the rough and tumble look even more attractive on him.

  Jake cracked a disarming smile. “I’ve been better,” he admitted. “Were you headed somewhere? Mind if I walked with you?”

  “What—oh, oh sure.” Laney nodded quickly and resumed walking as he fell into step beside her. She caught him looking at her when she glanced up and he averted his gaze. Jake seemed content not to say anything, and she hadn’t the slightest idea what to say to him to start a conversation. And she was debating with herself if she actually wanted to.

  After a few more feet of complete silence, she shot him a strange look again, and for a paranoid second, Laney thought that he must be involved in some prank with his buddies where they would pick on the first nerd who passed this way.

  She looked around. Nobody else was on this path. Of course, his friends could have been hiding anywhere.

  They walked past the open-air basketball courts and she happened to look over. She easily picked out several of Jake’s friends on the court playing ball and felt slightly at ease of his intentions.

  Or rather, she did, until Jake grabbed and pinned her against the wall.

  Laney squeezed her eyes shut, already wincing from anticipated pain. But nothing happened.

  She opened her eyes tentatively, prepared to scream bloody murder, but Jake was looking cautiously over his shoulder. Apparently, there was something out there that he didn’t want her to see.

  “Laney, I can explain,” Jake started under his breath.

  Laney was already beyond bewildered. “Jake, what’s the big—?” she was saying when she glanced past his head, in time to see Jake Donovan—that was, an identical other Jake Donovan—at the basketball court, catching a rebound off the backboard, making a jump shot from mid-court, and then whooping loudly in celebration.

  Laney jumped with a start. “WHAT THE HELL?”

  But this Jake tightened his grip on her arms, holding her in place. “Don’t make a scene, Laney,” he hissed. “I can explain. Just don’t make a scene.”

  Laney shot him a dirty suspicious look. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded hoarsely, still trying to push away.

  “Come with me.” He pulled on her arm.

  She resisted. “Are you crazy? I’m not going anywhere with you.” Her heels scraped the floor as she tried to pull back, even as he pulled forward. “Jake, or whoever the hell you are, if this is some kind of trick, I’ll have you know I can get the campus police here in two seconds if I wanted to.” She rummaged in her pockets for something with which to defend herself, except she remembered that she had left all her stuff with—Darla. Perfect.

  “Look, we really don’t have time for this,” he told her.

  She continued to struggle. “I don’t give a shit. Either you let me go, or you explain to me this goddamn instant what the hell is going on! Who was that back there and who the hell are you? Are you Jake’s evil twin? Is that it? What do you want from me?”

  “Laney!” he almost yelled in her face, his tone crossing between urgent and exasperated.

  She stopped short with a wince.

  “I’m…not from around here,” he began, loosening his hold on her.

  “Oh yeah, and what the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you a clone? Or an alien? From the future, or—or another planet, or something like that?” she tried to guess, with a highly skeptical tone of voice.

  Jake replied one better. “I’m from another parallel world.”

  She shot him a quick ridiculous look, then laughed. “Right.” She waved it away with her hand, playing along with the joke. “Wai-wai-wait a minute. Let me guess—” She paused, as though ceremoniously. “Someone’s after you, and you need my help to save the world or something crazy like that?”

  He didn’t even flinch. “Actually,” he replied. “Someone’s after you.”

  The certainty in his tone and the sober expression on his face made Laney’s expression fade for a moment. She shook her head quickly to snap back to reality. Whatever it was, it was clear that he believed it, but that didn’t make it any less crazy.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Okay,” she said, beginning to step backward to walk away from him. “Look, as much fun as this…little prank is, I have to—”

  Suddenly, his eyes darted up in alert to look past her shoulder, as if he’d heard something.

  Laney blinked. “What?”

  She turned to look behind her but saw nothing out of the ordinary—the paved walkway, students playing basketball, a faculty member had come out of a building for a cigarette break, and a custodial staff member was carrying a black bag of refuse across the way.

  She turned back to Jake. Or…where Jake had been.

  He was gone.

  What the—? She t
urned around slowly a few times.

  The weird Jake from “the parallel world” had disappeared.

  Laney blinked hard, twice. Still nothing.

  She rolled her eyes. “Seriously?” she asked nobody in particular, throwing up her hands. Did I seriously just hallucinate all that? She let out a huge deep breath, shaking her head in annoyance, and started to walk back to the dorms again.

  Darla was going to think she had gone totally nuts if she told her the story of the double Jake Donovan, Laney thought, still feeling creeped out at how vivid that whole scenario had been. She must have been way more tired than she’d thought.

  She was still preoccupied with those thoughts that she didn’t notice somebody else was walking down the pathway in her direction. Somebody who did not belong.

  Laney glanced up briefly as the man passed by, and it didn’t even get a chance to register.

  He lunged at her.

  Laney gasped, her scream catching in her throat.

  He pinned her up against the column, so high her feet didn’t even reach the floor, and his arm was choking her neck, she could barely breathe.

  “Where is the Zeta device?” he demanded.

  Her heart pounded in panic, her feet scuffing against the wall. She croaked, heaving. “Th-th-the what?”

  A deep voice called from behind them. “Hey!”

  Laney looked up, her eyes wide in surprise.

  Jake!

  He crossed the path in two strides, tore the guy off Laney, and thrust a single, seemingly well-aimed blow up into the man’s mid-section, instantly incapacitating him.

  “Donovan!” the man gagged. “You traitor—”

  “Shut up,” Jake barked.

  Laney had slumped on the ground. She could actually see blood dripping from the corner of the man’s mouth as he passed out in the middle of the school walkway. She slapped her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Come on, Laney!” Jake snapped, backing up, and pulling both her and the unconscious man through the thicket along the walkway.