Decoherence, Page 2

  “We lost a soldier,” she reported, the words tasting sour in her mouth. Wagner had been one of their best intelligence operatives.

  “A non-­nodal grunt,” Emir said with a wave of his hand. He always did that. Like a magician’s trick, he waved his hand, and another life was erased. “Some lives must be sacrificed to save humanity. Some pain must be endured, so we can make progress.”

  Saying Wagner had been a good soldier was useless. Emir understood physics, not ­people—­but it wasn’t a misunderstanding Rose could afford to just pass without comment.

  “We lost a highly versatile intelligence operative who had visited over fifty different iterations. We have no one on tap with that kind of experience or aptitude. It will take years to bring a replacement up through the ranks. Attrition of talent will kill us if we aren’t careful.”

  Even as she said it, she knew it might be a mistake, and she quickly snapped her mouth shut, locking down her emotions. This was a public room, and Emir wouldn’t forgive dissent. Node though she was, Control knew ways to keep a person alive long past the point of wishing for death. She wasn’t going to get herself arrested for treason over something like this.

  A bushy white eyebrow twitched up on Emir’s face. “We have a large pool of talent, Commander.”

  “Yes, sir.” Her tone was as neutral as the flat paint on the beige walls of the room.

  He smiled benevolently. “It does you credit that you are concerned about the loss of one life, Commander. Take the rest of the day off. Spend a few hours meditating on the good you’ve done. And then consider the stakes. Decoherence is only a few short months away. Our survival is worth any loss.”

  “Yes, sir. Which leads me to another point, sir, if I can have a private moment with you.” She glared at the room. Her team hurried away, while the techs suddenly became engrossed in their monitors.

  Emir stepped closer with a grimace and a sigh. “Yes, Commander? What thorn did you collect from your last trip through the briar patch?”

  “It’s Donovan,” she said quietly, so no one could overhear. “Sending two nodes into a collapsing iteration was a risky move. He took point when he should have been on rear guard. It could have been he who failed to get through the portal.”

  Another magician’s wave. “He needs training, and this matter should have been easily handled. Central Command did not anticipate this kind of resistance from I-­17. As for his taking point?” Emir shrugged. “You had more than enough time to prepare your team. I recommend you put them through a few more training drills, so Donovan learns his place.”

  Emir wasn’t listening. Again.

  “Sir, all these missions are high-­risk. As you mentioned, this close to decoherence, we can’t afford any kind of mishaps. I don’t want to take another node with me again. Ever.”

  “Donovan is your replacement should the unforeseeable happen. Prime needs you to have a backup, and he specifically requested more mission time.”

  “With Senturi, who is as experienced as I am and not a node.” Rose shook her head. “Sir, if we lose two nodes during a collapsing mission, Prime will suffer.”

  “A Warrior Node is easier to replace than a Paladin.” Emir’s smug smile said he’d considered this argument and already found a way to beat her. “Would you like Donovan to take over your team?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then I suggest you find a way to stay alive.” His smile held no warmth.

  Rose saluted. “Yes, sir.” She left the room as fast as decency allowed.

  Survival was all that mattered. Especially now with decoherence rushing toward them like a brush fire.

  The quest to keep the Prime Iteration intact through that rough ride had driven Wagner to dye her hair, move to a foreign iteration, and risk everything. Lose everything.

  Rose would do the same if that’s what it took.

  She checked to make sure the locker room was empty, locked the door behind her, and stripped off the hateful coverall. A boiling, hot shower wouldn’t make her feel clean enough, but it was a step forward. To wash off the dust and sweat of the fallen timeline . . . to wash away the memories. To wash off the scent of fear and desperation and humiliation in front of Emir.

  Her missions had grown increasingly risky.

  Early on, it had been rare to have an agent injured, let alone lost. Now they were suffering injuries on nearly every mission.

  Team Two, led by Captain Raza Lin, hadn’t returned from a collapsed iteration last week. They’d gone in, and it had taken thirty-­two hours for the iteration to collapse. There was no way of knowing how they suffered, but only catastrophic failure could have caused the delay. Those had been good agents.

  Rose leaned back against the black tile of the shower, letting the icy water pelt her as it warmed up. As long as she knew that the end was in sight, she could survive.

  And decoherence was definitely coming.

  Which meant all the iterations would collapse as the universe flat lined. For one brief moment, there would be no other possibilities. No doppelgangers. No alternate timelines. Only after that life-­shattering stutter could the universe breathe again. Expansion would open the doors of exploration, and her teams would go back to plundering the intelligence/academic/research wealth of other iterations.

  All she had to do was ensure that her iteration retained its position as Prime until then.

  The water heated up, and she tried to let those thoughts drift away from her like the steam filling up the stall.

  If only it were that easy.

  CHAPTER 3

  Each operative wears a personal chronometer on all missions. This measures our actual, rather than apparent, life span. If I leave at 1630 for a mission and return at 1631 local time, have I only aged a minute? No, I’ve lived during the time I was away, even if it is now a closed pocket of time. I’ve lived nearly eleven years outside of the normal timeline“, but I’ve aged very little since our first foray into foreign iterations. Why? Science has yet to tell us.”

  ~ private conversation with Agent 5 of the Ministry of Defense

  Tuesday October 29, 2069

  Cannonvale, Queensland

  Australia

  Iteration 2

  “Have a good night,” Todd said, as Sam clocked out of Wild Blue, the dive shop where she worked as part of her immigration agreement with the nation of Australia.

  She gave the boss a little wave. “Night.”

  It was barely three thirty, but there was no one in town to sell to. The only open hotel had no guests registered, and all the staff had been sent home at noon. Sam had helped Todd finish inventory, packed up a few dive souvenirs for online customers, and now there was nothing left to do. Airlie Beach was a ghost town in the wake of a plague scare.

  A few drunk university students came home queasy, and now the whole town was holding their breath and hoping it wouldn’t mean another quarantine and evacuation like they’d experienced at the height of the Yellow Plague.

  Sam knew with 97 percent certainty that a new plague wasn’t around the corner, with a 3 percent allowance for iterational drift, a phrase she and Mac had made up to describe the minor changes between this run through history and their first trip through 2069, when they had lived in the Commonwealth of North America.

  Tossing her purse into the passenger seat of the car, she rolled down the windows and let the ocean breeze sweep away the oven-­hot air. Australia was beautiful, ridiculously charming at times . . . and always way too hot for a girl born in Toronto.

  Not that she wanted six months of winter or anything, but sometimes she wished she could shiver without stepping into the grocery store’s deep freeze.

  Her phone beeped as she turned north, heading toward Cannonvale and home. She slowed at a stop sign and looked around. If she’d been in the Commonwealth’s Southwest, a tumbleweed would have rolled
across the street. Zombie movies had more life.

  Putting the car into park, she checked her phone, expecting a message from Mac about a missing ingredient for tonight’s dinner, or a request for her to get dog food for their mastiff, Bosco.

  Instead of a text, though, her phone pulled up a navy blue screen with the Commonwealth Bureau of Investigation seal in the top left corner and a file number she didn’t immediately recognize.

  Case-­756581530263

  The notice wasn’t strictly illegal. Technically—­and she’d be the first to admit it was a very broad technicality—­she was a district agent for the CBI. Time travel and the multiverse were the stuff of science fiction when she’d first gone to the bureau academy, and they had never gotten around to writing rules about agents who went back in time to stay like she had.

  With a frown, she tossed the phone into the passenger seat and tried to remember her old case files. Case-­756581530263 . . .

  And then it clicked.

  Jane Doe.

  The phone clattered between the seat and the door as she took a turn too fast and kept accelerating. No one was supposed to open those files. The events that had reshaped Alabama District 3 in the summer of 2069 were classified top secret need-­to-­know. Elected officials didn’t even get read in on it unless it was a matter of national security, which it wouldn’t be until late February, 2070.

  She crested the hill of the empty road, the tires squealing and smoking in protest as she hit the brakes hard before she destroyed the car door.

  Her husband’s head poked above the fence, curious but ready.

  If she came home driving like the very hounds of hell were chasing her, she knew Mac would be ready to either talk her into quitting her job, or to make dinner, or to grab the very illegal shotgun from the family armory and go shoot some hounds.

  “Sam? Sweetie?” He stepped in the back door as she slammed the front door closed.

  In the back of her mind, she registered the sweat glistening on his bronzed chest and the extra dog fur and bubbles on his arms. It was Bosco’s bath day. But she shook her head and went straight for the computer.

  Mac grabbed a hand towel from the kitchen and followed her quietly.

  “Is the IP signal still bouncing?”

  “Always,” Mac said. He pulled out a chair and sat beside her at the kitchen table. “Want to fill me in?”

  Sam pulled out her laptop and started typing in passwords more from muscle memory than actual memory. Her old codes got her to the bureau website, because they were the current codes a younger version of herself used every day at work.

  Growling in frustration, she pushed the laptop toward him. “Get me in.”

  “So, we’re angry and hacking into the bureau website. Did . . . wait. This is District 3 in Alabama. Your younger self isn’t there.”

  “I know, but I got an alert. Someone’s trying to access Jane Doe’s files, and I need to know why. This isn’t right.” She ground her teeth as two sets of memories beat against each other. “This didn’t happen last time.”

  “It’s not that alarming,” Mac said calmly as he typed, rooting through the bureau’s back alleys to access forgotten entrances in the code. “It makes sense that Agent Parker is looking through his predecessor’s old cases. It’s not like either of us had time to train him before we left.”

  Sam crossed her arms, almost hugging herself with fear. “He’s had months. Why now?”

  “Maybe he’s a slow reader.” Mac stopped typing and smiled. “In.”

  “Thank you!” She pulled the laptop back and started flipping through Parker’s computer history. “He caught a murder case.”

  “In Alabama District 3?” Mac sounded amused. “Who got murdered, the mayor’s dog?”

  “A woman. She hasn’t been identified yet. Had a name tag from a diner on the edge of the district, though. ELISSA. So we should have an ID by tomorrow.”

  “Parker will have an ID,” Mac corrected her. “You and I are not getting involved. We agreed.”

  She shot him a glare that bounced right off him. “You agreed,” she muttered.

  “Chasing after our younger selves only risks mucking up history.”

  “This isn’t our younger selves. This is two agents helping a fellow agent.”

  “From across the globe.”

  “Like armchair detectives.”

  “Except it’s illegal.”

  “I’m only looking,” Sam said. “Okay, here it is. He looked for similar murders in the district and pulled up a description of Jane Doe filed by the first patroller on scene. I knew we missed something in that cover-­up!”

  Mac leaned over to look at Parker’s notes. “Did he find anything?”

  “Similar phenotype and superficial murder weapon. They were both abused.”

  “Jane was professionally tortured.” Mac had done the autopsy, and she knew he’d been thorough because he’d redone everything once he’d identified Jane Doe as Sam Rose, CBI junior agent and his work partner.

  He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Sam, the tide’s coming in soon. The surfing should be good. Or swimming. Using Parker’s access code to look at his files is a breach of etiquette if nothing else.”

  Sam tilted her head, point acknowledged but not conceded. “Parker never checks his log-­ins anyway. It’s not like he’ll ever notice. He’s a lazy prat.”

  “Did you ever check your log-­ins and keystrokes when you were in Alabama?”

  She snickered because neither of them had. Things had been easier there, or maybe simply a different kind of difficult. Her worldview had been narrower. There was the CBI and Commonwealth government who were Right, and there were the lawbreakers who were ever so obviously Wrong.

  Time changed that. Really, time travel changed that. Suddenly, the playground of Commonwealth laws that defined her space seemed like a kindergarten classroom. Iterations, einselected nodes, and changing histories didn’t fit within the boundaries of law. So she’d stepped outside—­outside the law and outside of time. Mac had followed.

  Mac lifted the printed files from another case. She knew what he saw. Jane Doe: age twenty-­nine, height sixty-­six inches, hair dark brown, eyes dark brown, cause of death . . . inconclusive.

  “We never found her killer,” Sam said. “There weren’t even suspects.”

  “When we found her, we couldn’t risk naming her or finding suspects.” Mac sighed, a little frown on his face.

  Sam shared his expression. “I always felt I failed her. Me.”

  “Not you,” Mac said vehemently. “Never you. She’s like the one in Florida: a variation, from another iteration. She got caught in the temporal cross fire, or murdered and dumped on purpose, who knows. But it’s not the real you.”

  Mac brushed his lips across hers, just a little rough, but oh so loving. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”

  Sam shook her head. “You don’t know that.”

  He tugged the folder away from her. “Yes, I do. Because there’s one thing no other Sam in the multiverse has: me. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I won’t let anyone take you away. You have me. You have Bosco. You have training. Even if Emir shows up with his goon squad, there is nothing they’ll be able to do. So, let it go. You’re letting the worry of a potential maybe take all the fun out of summer.”

  With a sigh, she leaned back in her wooden chair. “I just . . .”

  “Worry,” Mac finished for her. “I know. It’s part of your charm. But today, the sea is beautiful, you are beautiful, and we shouldn’t waste our time worrying about what might happen.”

  She agreed they should enjoy the day. But letting go of the Jane Doe case wasn’t going to happen. The fact that she’d never found the killer nagged at her like a thorn in her toe, a constant reminder that she had failed. Still . . .

  Bosco clambered throug
h the doggie door and stomped across the tile floor, leaving large, wet paw prints.

  Sam automatically reached out to pet him. “Did mean ol’ Mac make you run, puppy? Did he make you run all around the beach?”

  “Don’t let him fool you,” Mac said. “He’s mad at me because I wouldn’t let him eat a seagull, not because I dragged him out to run with me.” He closed the folder. “Time to do something else.”

  Her eyes wandered over his bare chest, bronzed by the sun and honed from a return to his Ranger-­style training regimes. He was nothing like that pale, bloated, drug-­addled man she’d met so long ago. Now he leaned over her, hazel eyes gleaming.

  “I suppose you have some activity in mind?” Sam teased. She knew exactly what he had in mind . . . and had to admit she was starting to think in that direction, too.

  It helped that he was so very good at it.

  “Pigeon Island looks nice today. Maybe we should go kayaking, then come home and grill some ribs. And then . . .” He bent so his nose touched hers. “Kayaks are so much better than corpses.”

  She bit her lip. “Well . . .”

  “Warm water. Beautiful sunshine. Maybe see a dolphin.”

  “Or a sea snake.” Australia balanced out its otherworldly beauty with a lineup of the world’s most dangerous animals.

  Mac stole another kiss. “Nothing is going to bite you.”

  “Oh?” She pouted. “But what if I wanted you to nibble, just a little?” She ran a hand down his arm, enjoying the tension of the muscles and the smile that only appeared when she reached for him. “You know, I don’t think we should go kayaking in the middle of the day, though—­too much sun. So maybe we can start with the ‘and then’ . . .” She lifted an eyebrow in question. Not that Mac would ever say no, but it was fun to flirt.

  “Bosco, bien di,” Mac ordered in Vietnamese.

  The dog looked at them, then tromped out of the dining room to flop on his giant cushion in the main living area.