Selfless Series Box Set

by S Breaker

  Laney met his gaze. “What?” she prompted flatly. “This is my mission,” she said, turning to Berry before meeting Maia’s carefully neutral yet wide-eyed look.

  Berry fidgeted. “Um…”

  “I’m sorry, your mission?” Noah’s eyebrows were high on his forehead.

  Laney’s tone was stern. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Uh—” Noah’s thoughts were plain on his face.

  “Hey,” Berry interjected loudly before Noah could make his irate reply, knowing full well how easily their arguments tended to escalate. “Let’s all just stay calm, shall we?”

  Laney looked at Berry and Noah in turn. “Just because I’m the only one here whose brain isn’t genetically super-advanced doesn’t mean I can’t handle things on my own,” she reasoned, her tone carrying layers of perfectly justifiable pent up frustration. “I never know where we are. I never know what’s going on. And don’t even get me started on everyone playing around with my brain like it’s their own personal laboratory!”

  Maia was grimacing, patting Laney’s back to help settle her down.

  But Laney went on with resolve. “I’m the one who doesn’t belong here. I’m the only one who needs to go.”

  Berry wrinkled his nose, looking hesitant to argue with her.

  But Noah gave her a mocking look. “Look,” he started, his tone as calm as he could make it. “You don’t know what you’re going to run into in this other world.”

  Berry was already shaking his head. “I’m afraid I have to agree with Noah, Laney. I haven’t even told you the tricky bit yet. We’ve still got quite a bit of work to do.”

  Maia looked over. “What does that mean?”

  “Well,” Berry started. “We know the target world. But there is literally an infinite number of paths you can take to get there. So we need to come up with the most expedient traversal path. One that goes through the least number of alternate worlds, not to mention the safest ones, in the shortest amount of time.”

  Laney looked tired already. “Traversal what?”

  Berry waved his hand and the hologram of a polyhedron outline appeared above the table. “Understand that there are billions upon billions of multiverses. Our target world is this.” He pointed to a dot near the edge of the shape and the image zoomed in to resolve back into the peanut lattice.

  “We are…here.” He pointed to another dot near the middle. “Interestingly,” he interjected. “Your original world is riiight there,” he said, pointing to about a few inches away from the second dot. “It’s right around the maximum end of our quantum jump range.”

  “In any case, to get all the way over there—” He pointed to the edge dot again. “We’re going to have to…” He moved his pointer finger to hop from one point to the other on the big map.

  Laney’s eyes popped out. “No way.”

  Noah was already shaking his head, his eyes closed in displeasure.

  “Other dimensions indeed exist in the same space as us, but the way they’re arranged, each quantum shear can only access within about every six times ten to the thirty-fourth’s worlds away.”

  “Right.”

  Berry regarded Laney’s short nod with a pause. “Um, okay,” he tried to explain. “Let me try to simplify it—”

  “No, no, I got it.” Laney shook her head carelessly.

  “You did?” Maia shot her an impressed look before exchanging looks with Berry. “She says she got it.”

  Laney rolled her eyes. “Come on, guys. I can learn.”

  “Either way,” Berry continued with an almost apologetic smirk. “From this world, I’m afraid we can only execute a quantum jump to one other world, but not daisy-chain them together. We have been able to bounce probes through marginally further along to collect readings but not organic matter. And certainly not people.”

  “But it’s possible?” Maia ventured, her eyebrows raised.

  “I know Eleanor thought so,” Berry relayed. “According to her notes. This approach is based on her theories. Her being sneaky and all, who knows?” He shrugged. “She might have already even tried jumping through to multiple worlds before and just never told anyone.”

  “How many worlds are we talking, Berry?” Noah asked.

  “Just two,” Berry reassured with a confident nod. Then he dropped his gaze to add in a mumble, “Or maybe three.”

  “You don’t know for sure?” Noah looked exasperated.

  “Heeey!” Berry put up his hands in defeat. “Like I said, this is all still theoretical.”

  “How do we even know which worlds we can go through?” Laney wanted to know.

  Berry put up his finger. “Ah,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “That I can tell you. Across the map, there are worlds similar enough to this world and yours that you can use them to hop across the multiverse. We’ve observed that in any of a hundred given worlds, there’s a version of ‘you’ that quantum jumped to this world.”

  “Ohh.”

  “Yes, and you’re going to have to piggyback your quantum shear onto the exit traces of your jumps on those worlds to get to the next one.”

  She groaned. “I suppose I should just be glad I still understand what the hell you’re saying.”

  “What’s the target world like?” Noah queried.

  “Okay, this is the tricky bit—”

  “More tricky than what we’re already talking about?” Laney put her hands up in disbelief.

  “I’m afraid so,” Berry said. “To access the supernova, we needed to find a space-faring world, a space-folding-capable society version of Earth.”

  “That seems simple enough.”

  “Except when you add that I’ve already plotted the exact supernova that we need,” he added, making another gesture to change the hologram image back to display the constellation of Orion where Betelgeuse was located. “The only star big enough in the only alternate dimension we’ve found that will go nova in the right amount of time before our Laney—you—fades into oblivion, will go bye-bye…this week,” he finished, already looking uncomfortable.

  Laney was taken aback. “This week? You want me to do all that—jump and hop and piggyback—all this week?” She braced her hands on her head in panicked disbelief. “That’s impossible!”

  “So this might be a silly question given the timescales of galaxies, but can we wait for the next one?” Maia proposed.

  Berry shrugged. “We can always wait, but who knows how long it will be before we find another one? It might not even be within our lifetime. Or worse, Eleanor never mentioned how long an ‘exit trace’ lasts for. By that time, they all might have degraded completely. She also didn’t mention if you could reuse a specific exit trace twice, so we really have to be on-point here.”

  “This is impossible,” Laney said again, her expression already devastated. Then she shook her head briskly as if to clear her head before she asked, “What are my other options?”

  Berry looked regretful that he didn’t have the right answer. “Well, you don’t have any,” he said. “You can’t stay here because you can be sure The Alliance will be back to get you. Who knows what they’re going to try to do next time?” he ventured, glancing at the others as if for support. “I mean the only other possibility is that you find a compatible parallel world with no Alliance. But so far, we haven’t found one of those yet.”

  Laney gave him an expectant look. “You’re saying even my world has Alliance? And I’m not talking the random rogue ones from your world like that guy who shot me eight months ago.”

  “Absolutely. The odds are you don’t know they exist either or they’re masquerading as some suspiciously creepy but legitimate form of government agency.”

  “Sounds like the CIA,” she quipped.

  “Or whomever. Which further supports my point,” Berry continued as though he was defending a thesis on the matter. “There’s no telling what kind of technology these agencies will have on these other worlds. You might run into ones that can de
tect a quantum shear jump in progress and can capture you as soon as you emerge. Some of them might even have technology that can disrupt the formation of a quantum shear altogether.” He looked up at Noah. “Which is why your odds will be better having Noah there with you. He’s specifically trained for these kinds of missions.”

  “Shucks, what a relief,” Laney mumbled sarcastically.

  Noah rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything.

  “It also goes without saying, you’d need to make sure that you do everything necessary to avoid your doubles seeing you in these other worlds. I can’t stress enough how potentially catastrophic that would be. You don’t want to contaminate the spacetime continuum any more than you already have.”

  Noah cleared his throat loudly, pointedly at the hint of blame in Berry’s tone.

  Laney had gone still, staring straight into thin air.

  Berry put his hands up. “I’m not saying any of this is your fault,” he resigned. “But you know? We need to be extra careful.”

  Laney didn’t respond. She was frozen in her stance, her mouth slightly open.

  “Laney?” Maia prompted, her forehead creasing in concern.

  Then Laney’s eyes widened in horror and she let out an ear-piercing shriek.

  Primaries

  Laney collapsed, still screaming, eyes open, her hands pressed tightly against either side of her head.

  “What the hell is going on?” Noah’s tone sounded almost panicked. He stood, alert in his stance, but looked unsure what he was supposed to do.

  Maia rushed over to kneel by Laney’s side to try to check on her even as she convulsed on the floor. “Her pulse is really fast. Too fast. And she’s burning up.”

  Noah’s HUD beeped at the same time that one of Berry’s consoles let out a shrill sound, almost as shrill as Laney’s screams.

  “She’s having a ‘bleed through’,” Noah noted loudly.

  Maia shook her head. “This can’t be a ‘bleed through’. She’s having a seizure!”

  Berry cursed as he rushed toward the console, flicked open a little tab, and pressed a button. Whatever he’d triggered sent a sudden jolt right through Laney, but when she fell slack again, she stopped seizing on the floor, unconscious.

  Berry blew out a breath.

  “Was that—?” Noah began.

  “Yeah.”

  Maia sank back on her heels then looked up at the two guys in turn. “Well, that can’t be good.”

  Laney woke up coughing as she tried to sit up.

  “Whoa.” Berry supported her shoulder before she collapsed back down on the emergency stretcher.

  She took a shivery breath, squinting as she looked around with only one eye open. She was still in the submarine but in a different, smaller compartment. She groaned after a moment. “Can I just say,” she began, her voice croaky. “I’m so glad to be waking up not strapped to some type of chair or machine this time?”

  Berry’s grin was tentative.

  “Was I out for long?”

  He shook his head. “A half-hour maybe. Noah and Maia have started working on the traversal path on the map,” he told her as she sat up slowly and regained her bearings.

  She rubbed her hands over her arms for warmth. “So, was that what I think it was?”

  “A bleed through?” He nodded. “Yes. My theory is that whatever else The Alliance tried to do to you, it’s also corrupted your CCL.”

  Her hand flew up to the spot behind her ear where Berry had attached the cerebral cortex link (CCL) for monitoring her ‘bleed throughs’ a few days ago.

  Laney let out a heavy sigh, closing her eyes for a moment. “Are you kidding me?” She couldn’t even begin to describe how relieved she had been that she hadn’t had a single incident of an alternate version of her overtaking her consciousness in over a day. She was almost hopeful that in that respect, she’d been cured. And now this. “I thought the ‘bleed throughs’ had gone.”

  Berry cringed, hesitant to explain. “Not quite. They may have just gone into a type of remission, probably caused by some lingering side effects of being in that horror show Alliance machine. But it seems to be dissipating.”

  “So, that means they’re going to come back,” Laney deduced.

  “And probably worse. I’m so sorry. I had to zap you to stop it. Otherwise, the ‘bleed through’ might have liquefied your brain.”

  Laney blinked hard. “Jeez, don’t worry about candy-coating it for me then.”

  Berry winced. “Sorry. Again.” He gritted his teeth, looking sheepish. “I’m thinking we have to extract your CCL altogether, in case there are any other adverse side effects.”

  Laney shivered again.

  Berry assessed her with another look. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  She waved her hand. “Fine,” she dismissed. “Just a bit chilly.”

  “Oh.” Berry’s eyes lit up and he walked across the room. “Not for nothing, but I nearly had to strong-arm Noah into going to get started on the work instead of sitting here waiting for you to wake up. Well,” he paused to correct. “Not me. Maia.” He came back to hand her a weighted blanket. “He was really worried about you,” he told her, a catch in his tone.

  “Really?” She drew her eyebrows together in skepticism, throwing the blanket around her shoulders. “I thought he for one would be relieved if my brain liquefied. Then none of you all would have to go through all this pokey, scary-ass, dangerous work.

  Berry nudged her shoulder lightly. “That’s not true. You’re one of us now. We care about you. And if Noah wasn’t such a stiff, I’m sure he’d tell you the same thing.”

  She grinned, even as she simply shook her head in disbelief, as she examined a few things on the instrument table, a soldering iron catching her eye, and she frowned slightly as a fragment of memory popped up in her head.

  “Hey Berry,” Laney called out, hesitantly. “The last time I was here, you said something about—why did you—how did you…know?” She wrinkled her nose. “That Noah and I…uh…”

  “Oh.” Berry raised his eyebrows. “How could I have been so incredibly perceptive as to infer that you guys had already made out that first day as though I had a spy camera watching you guys the whole time?”

  Laney’s face turned red.

  He bit back his smirk but went on to explain. “There’s a theory, see,” he began. “The Primaries Theory. Eleanor postulated it herself,” he relayed offhand.

  “It asserts that, across each of all the parallel worlds, there’s only one genuine copy of each of us. It’s not guaranteed to be the best version of us per se, but the theory is that that version was the mold, where each of us began. Our primary.”

  Laney nodded, surprisingly able to follow his explanation so far.

  He regarded her with a look. “Do you believe in soulmates?”

  She was unsure what that had to do with anything, but she shrugged anyway. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. I guess I thought I did.”

  Berry looked amused. “Well, there’s an auxiliary principle to The Primaries Theory. That when the primary version of ourselves finds the primary version of our soulmate—that’s it. Fireworks, explosions, you name it.”

  He paused meaningfully. “And I think, like it or not, that’s why you and Noah…” He cleared his throat instead of finishing his sentence.

  Laney blushed furiously in utter shock. “What?”

  “Some people are lucky enough to spawn in the same ‘verse as their primary mate, but some just don’t, so they wander around their world and settle for the closest thing. They aren’t really soulmates, and they themselves can tell, but they don’t have any choice.”

  Laney’s mind was reeling as she recalled Eleanor’s words, the way she had spoken about Noah.

  I know he loves me so much and all that, but I’ll tell you something, I always kind of knew maybe I wasn’t built for that kind of stuff…

  “Of course, that’s only a theory,” Berry recanted, studying her expression.
“But I reckon it’s a damn good one.”

  Laney’s jaw felt unhinged from how low the new revelation had made her drop it. Then another thought occurred to her. “And Noah knows this,” she breathed in realization.

  “Yup.”

  “And Maia. You’ve all known about this all along?” Laney asked again, still in bewildered disbelief as pieces of random previous conversations somehow all finally fully formed the puzzle. They had all known it. She smacked her forehead with her palm in realization. “Oh jeez, Eleanor! That’s how she also knew that Noah and I had kissed.”

  Berry was still smirking.

  Laney gawked at him. “It’s not funny.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She narrowed her eyes and Berry put up his hands as if in defeat wordlessly.

  No wonder every other guy Laney had encountered in this world so far was giving her a wide berth. They knew who she was. And they all knew she already had a primary. Someone whom they figure could probably give them a decent enough thumping with a mere look if they even breathed wrong.

  But it was still just a theory, right? It could still be a hundred percent wrong. That didn’t mean it explained why Laney had always felt she had such a strong connection to Noah. It could all just be a coincidence.

  More to the point, it didn’t mean she had to do anything about it. In fact, it was worse now. Who’s to say that this grand theory wasn’t making any of them see or feel things that weren’t actually there? There was no way to know for sure. It was only yet another way that she was being manipulated.

  Stupid theory. It changes nothing.

  “Hey, you’re up.” Maia’s smile looked relieved as she entered the room and walked up to where Laney was sitting.

  “Mm-hm,” Laney murmured, her lips still curled in displeasure.

  Maia looked over at Berry. “What’s going on?”

  Berry didn’t respond. He just shrugged and took a backward step, headed out of the room and away from the two of them.

  Maia met Laney’s gaze again. “Did I miss something?”

  “And just exactly when were you planning to tell me?” Laney tilted her head to one side. “You know for someone who can’t keep a secret, you certainly kept the lid shut tight on this one.”