Alpha

by Jus Accardo

  This time I focused on freeing her. Pulling her from the water had proved impossible. If I could separate her from the chair… But that was no use, either. Her hands were cuffed behind her, the chain threaded through the back rung of the actual chair. If I hadn’t been in the water, I probably could have broken it. But with the lack of force behind my movements, I couldn’t snap the fucking thing.

  Sera’s eyes were wide. She was shaking her head slowly and had given up trying to rip her limbs free from the bonds. “Go,” she mouthed. Her hair floated around, an eerie, swaying halo. She lifted her head so that we were face to face just as a small burst of bubbles trickled from her lips. The chair hit the bottom of the lake, giving me the opportunity to grab the back and push off hard.

  It still wasn’t enough.

  The pressure in my chest was painful, and the effects of the pod still lingered, though thankfully dulled by the rush of adrenaline. I had to kick for air or we’d both drown. There was no way for me to save her. In my gut I knew that—but I couldn’t force myself to swim to the surface. I couldn’t leave her behind.

  Another burst of bubbles, this time larger, and her eyes closed. I was about to scream, to open my mouth and let death in, when I realized that there was someone above me. Someone diving to us. At first, I thought it was Cade, but as the form got closer, I realized it was Dylan.

  It was in that moment that I understood how deeply rooted his feelings for Ava were. Cade had insisted repeatedly that he’d never have hurt Sera. I didn’t believe it then, but I believed it now. He’d risked his life to give us a chance to survive. Like me, he’d managed to survive the fall. He could have swum for the surface and run again. Kept his freedom. Yet here he was. Here to save her again.

  He grabbed the arm of the chair, hands next to mine, and together we pushed hard off the ground. It wasn’t easy, and several times I thought we lost some ground, but with the two of us, we managed to get Sera and ourselves to the surface. To the air.

  I sucked in a greedy breath and instantly began kicking for the shore. There was a crowd gathered—the hotel had been evacuated—and wading into the water to meet us were Cade and Noah.

  “Up here,” Cade said as he grabbed my arm to help drag me from the drink. “How long was she under?”

  Anderson appeared behind him. He had the cuff keys in his hand and already had Sera off the chair and flat on the ground. She was so still. So pale. I dropped to my knees and started CPR.

  One. Two. Three. Breathe.

  “Anything?” Dylan asked. He was standing behind me.

  One. Two. Three. Breathe…

  I dropped my head to her chest. Nothing.

  One. Two. Three. Breathe…

  Something started to pull at my insides. A pressure different from anything I’d ever felt. It was like drowning and being torn to shreds all at the same time.

  One. Two Three. Breathe…

  “Sera,” I said, keeping my compressions steady and my breathing even. Focused. I had to stay focused. The worst thing a soldier could do in a crisis was lose his shit. That’s how people died. “Don’t you fucking dare, Sera.”

  One. Two. Three. Breathe…

  One. Two. Three. Breathe…

  One. Two. Three. Breathe…

  One. Two. Three—

  A spout of water erupted from her mouth, and Sera began to cough and gag. The weight around my throat and in my chest lifted, and I could breathe again. It was the most amazing sound I’d ever heard. The most beautiful sight. With Cade’s help, we rolled her onto her side, where she continued to expel what seemed like the entire lake.

  “Cora?” Anderson knelt beside us, brushing a chunk of sopping hair from Sera’s face.

  Dylan pointed across the water. It took a minute, but I finally saw what he was gesturing to. Not far from where we’d been, a white form bobbed across the surface. “I got in one hell of a blow when we hit. Turns out you can’t breathe underwater while unconscious.”

  He stepped in front of me and held out his hand. In his palm was a small glass vial filled halfway with a light blue liquid. “Take it.”

  “The antidote…” I couldn’t believe it. In the chaos, I’d forgotten all about the poison. “Thank you,” I said. I took the vial from him, uncorked the thing, and downed the contents. I probably should have used caution. Dylan could have given me anything. But, desperate times and all. A few moments ticked by. I was still here.

  Out across the water, Cora’s form bobbed languidly. I waited for her to move. To kick or flail or cry out for help. It didn’t happen.

  Cora Anderson was dead.

  Sera and I were finally free.

  …

  I hadn’t let her out of my sight since we reached the shore. There was a good chance I never would. Standing with her now, just inside the gates of Fort Hannity, it seemed like insanity that I’d even consider walking away from her. When I thought I’d lost her, back at the lake when I was sure she’d drowned, all I’d felt was black. There was a heaviness that tugged at me, and in those moments, I was able to understand Dylan better than anyone else ever could.

  He was a monster. The things he’d done were horrible, and there would never be redemption. There was no coming back from the places he’d gone. No act of heroism or sacrifice would ever erase the horrors that he’d committed.

  But he was also human. Flawed in so many ways, but human. The connection he’d had to Ava had been everything. When it was severed, he’d been severed. It’d ripped his soul out and scattered it into so many pieces that it was impossible to put back together again.

  He was me.

  And if Sera had died, then I would have become him.

  It was her presence in my life that held me back from that edge. She was my conscience, both the angel and the devil sitting on my shoulder, and my reason for wanting to resist my dark nature. To walk away from her would be giving up—and I was a stubborn son of a bitch.

  The serum was active now, and there was no turning back. Anderson sat me down when we’d gotten back. He’d been cautious, but optimistic. I realized that I liked the old guy. I respected him. Cade and Noah were lucky, and as far as he was concerned, I could be, too. He’d offered Sera and me a place here. I had my choice of serving an honorable general who believed in doing real good for his world—and others—or leading a civilian life.

  Sera… That one was going to be a bit more complicated. She was dead here. Well known and loved. Her parents still lived in town, but Anderson offered to talk to them. To bring them into the fold, so to speak. He would give them the choice he’d give his own wife once she returned—he’d called and told her about Kori, and she had jumped on the first plane back to the States. Her choice was easy. She would see her daughter again.

  “What are you thinking right now?” Sera wrapped her arms around me and rested her head against my chest. It was amazing. There was a time, not long ago, that I didn’t believe myself worthy of such contentment. But who was I to judge? Sera had deemed me worthy—and we both knew that girl was much smarter than I was.

  “I just didn’t think we’d get here, ya know?”

  “Here…?”

  “Six months ago, we were in hell. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. I was sure we’d both die in there. Now here we are. Evil Cora is gone, and we’re free. Like, free. From Cora, from our old lives… I guess I never gave the future much thought.”

  “So…?”

  “Do you want to stay? I still have the chip. Anderson promised they wouldn’t remove it right away. I think they’re at kind of a loss. If they take the chips out, then Kori will be stranded. She’d have to choose one world or the other. I don’t think the general will be able to accept that. Not after getting to know her.”

  “From what Cade’s told me, I don’t think Cora will allow that,” she said with a grin. “One thing that’s the same here is that Cora Anderson rules the roost. Karl is like putty in her hands.”

  I laughed. I could see that. Just watchi
ng the guy as he spoke about his wife was intense. The other Cora had been passionate about her Karl, but she’d never been in love with him. Not the same kind of love that this Cora and Karl had for each other. It gave me hope.

  “I think we should stick around. For a while, at least. Anderson is going to keep me monitored. We’re still not sure what the long-term effects of the serum will be—if anything. I think I’m more comfortable staying close to people who might have a handle on controlling me if I go south.”

  “You won’t.” She was so sure, so confident. It was impossible not to share her opinion. “I’m okay with staying. I think I even like the idea of getting to know Ava’s parents. Rabbit says they’re really great…”

  “What about him? You good with that? We stay here, and we’re stuck with these people. Hell, I think wherever we go we’ll be stuck with them. Doesn’t seem to matter what versions of us are out there, we all seem to find each other. Over and over.”

  She nodded. “I’m good with it. They’re our family, G.”

  She was right. They were. Sera couldn’t remember, but I could. Neither one of us had ever had that. A family. I kind of liked the sound of it.

  Epilogue

  Two weeks later…

  Sera

  The decision to stay on Cade’s world had been fairly easy to make. Here, we had support. Here, we had family.

  Speaking of the latter…

  The general had left the ultimate decision up to me. He’d contacted Ava’s family, had brought them to the base for a sit-down. From what I’d heard, they were in his office for almost four hours. Cade said he’d gone to check on them three times, worried that the conversation had taken a turn for the worse.

  It hadn’t.

  They were understandably confused at first. I knew how they felt. The concept of multiple worlds? That was one hell of a pill to swallow. But they had swallowed. Swallowed and embraced. With about as much joy as this world’s Cora Anderson—but that’s a different story altogether, and not mine to tell.

  I’d met them yesterday. Patrick and Mona Fielding. It’d gone pretty much as I’d expected. There were lots of tears and even more fears. Mona hadn’t been familiar at all, but Patrick’s face had tugged at something deep and unsettling. They were dark memories, unfortunately. My home hadn’t been anything like the one we were in. But this version of him was brightness and love. In time, I knew he’d overwrite all the shady memories and uneasy feelings.

  We’d talked for hours about everything under the sun. I told them a little bit—though, admittedly, not much—about my time at Infinity and the few things I remembered about my home. I found myself confessing the small truths I knew, about how my parents had used me to pay off their debt. How I’d been forced into an arranged marriage. That brought another round of tears and a whole lot of hugging. At the end of the day when I left them, I liked them. A lot. In fact, I could easily see myself falling in love with them—with everyone here.

  After all, I was off to a great start.

  I slipped my hand into G’s. The guy I loved. We had walked through hell together and come out on the other side in one piece. My heart was his for as long as he wanted it. G had his good days and his bad. The serum hadn’t shown any severe side effects, but we were still on guard. With Cora gone, we had no one to ask.

  Since activating the serum to defeat Yancy, G had been a bit moodier. It took less to piss him off or, as Karl liked to say, rattle his cage. But Cade was determined to help with that. He’d been forcing G to meditate with him at least an hour every day. G grumbled that he hated it, but the truth was, he was growing attached to Cade—and the feeling was mutual.

  As for me, I’d grown close to Kori. She’d never known me where she’d come from, and I didn’t remember if I’d met her on my world, but here on this one, we’d been close. Related, actually. Kori Anderson was my cousin.

  She and Cade had made it their personal mission to make us feel at home. They’d go out of their way to include us, and create opportunities for all of us to be together. It was a slow process, but we were starting to mesh. Some days it felt like we’d always been this way. Always together. Always there for one another…

  “You ready for this?”

  He mumbled something and tightened his hold on my hand. I’d had to beg and plead to get him here, and it wasn’t until I agreed to take daily self-defense lessons on the base that he’d conceded. Our nightmare version of Cora and Karl Anderson might be gone, but he didn’t want to take any chances. God knew with multiple worlds having the ability to skip, anything was possible.

  I’d also told my parents—Ava’s parents—about G. They knew he was another version of Dylan, who they’d known before, and they’d liked him. Well, at least they had before he’d turned into a raving lunatic in their daughter’s memory. They’d made me promise to bring him back the next night for dinner. I had a feeling that it would be one of many, and I was more than okay with that. They wanted to get to know me, and I felt the same way. They even offered me a room in their house. Not Ava’s, thank God, but the guest bedroom. I said I’d think about it.

  Epilogue Part Two

  One month later…

  G

  Dylan Granger had been slated for death when Cade broke him from jail more than a year ago. Upon recapture, Anderson had intended to pick right up where he left off. But I’d stepped up. The guy was a monster. There was no denying it. But I understood him in a way no one else could—or ever would. And he’d helped me save Sera. In the end, I felt like that at least warranted me taking a stab at it.

  Anderson agreed to spare his life. Dylan would live out the rest of his days behind bars but would be permitted one visit a week. Since I was sure no one else wanted anything to do with him, I wagered that it would be Sera or me. But, like I said, I owed him her life. Without his help, we both would have died in that lake. It wasn’t something I could—or would—ever forget.

  Noah’s opinion of me hadn’t changed much. In the month we’d been here, he still avoided me. On the occasion he couldn’t, he was sharp and cold as ice. Ash always apologized for him. They’d gotten an apartment together just outside the base, and he was starting medical school in a few months. Cade kept saying that he’d come around, but I think we both knew that was just his overly optimistic way of looking at things. Noah wouldn’t come around—and I didn’t hate or blame him for it. He’d fought me on recanting Dylan’s death sentence. From what I’d heard, it’d created quite a rift between him and Anderson.

  Things with Cade were…weird. There was no other way to put it, really. Unlike his best friend, his demeanor toward me had changed. While it wasn’t a shitshow of sunshine and roses, I hadn’t caught him glaring at me in weeks. He confessed once, at the end of the mandatory meditation sessions I’d been forced into, that he didn’t see Dylan anymore when he looked at me. He saw a brother—just, a different one. Kind of like the way Noah viewed Kori. I was okay with that, too. I liked the guy.

  Most of the time.

  The town wasn’t as accepting. I spent most of my time on the base and did whatever I could to make myself look as little like Dylan as I could. I’d dyed my hair a lighter shade of brown and started using contacts. Green was Sera’s favorite color… And Anderson told people that I was a relative. A cousin of Cade’s from South Florida. For the most part, people seemed to accept it, but that didn’t change the way they all looked at me. It probably never would.

  I slipped my hand into my jacket pocket, fingering the small, cool thing at the bottom. Sera was happy here, so here is where we’d stay until the day it changed. When—if—that happened, I would take her wherever she wanted to go. Out of state, country—or world. I would follow her anywhere, and if I had my way—and something told me I would—then she would do the same for me.

  I’d taken a paying job on base as a combat instructor. My world’s style of fighting was vastly different from the one they used here, and Anderson had been so intrigued that he’d insisted I
come work for Fort Hannity.

  The ring in the bottom of my pocket was a gift from Dylan. He’d given it to me moments before they took him away, after we’d pulled Sera from the water. He’d gotten it to give to Ava. Until this morning, I hadn’t been sure I’d use it. I debated getting one of my own, but the more I looked at it, the surer I became that it was exactly what I would have picked out myself. Plus, there was an odd kind of symmetry to it. These different versions of us, all floating around out there doing their own thing, were unique in many ways. But we were also the same. We were tied together in a manner none of us would ever quite grasp.

  The ring symbolized more than just a promise to Sera. I wanted to tie myself to her for as long as we both lived, but it also represented how far I’d come. On my world, rings were a symbol of service. I’d been forced to wear one from the time I was a young child. A token of my pledge to the government. They weren’t something you wanted. Yet now it represented the potential of happiness. Of a future I never imagined was possible, with a person almost too good to be true. The serum would always be a dark cloud over my head, as would my time at Infinity, but I was determined to keep it at bay for her. Sera deserved to be happy, and I wanted to be the one to give her that.

  I closed the car door and sucked in a breath. Sera had accepted a room with Ava’s parents. At first, I found the whole thing weird. The way they’d looked at her made me uncomfortable. I knew they saw their daughter. But it’d gotten better over the last few weeks. In fact, I hadn’t heard them slip, accidentally calling her Ava, in a while now.

  I shuffled up the walk, down the small path lined with bright red bushes and small white flowers, and up the three stairs to the redwood porch.

  This was the night my future began.

  Noah and Ash

  Noah

  Six months after the events of Alpha…

  “Is that the last one?” I set the box down and took a look around the room. The place was a disaster. Boxes from floor to ceiling, random piles of clothing, and bins of food stuffed anywhere there was room—which wasn’t much. If Cade could see it, he’d have a massive coronary. Thankfully, he was off-world at the moment. He got three days leave every month to go with Kori so she could visit her father. I’d gone to visit him, too. He hadn’t said it outright, but he wanted to get to know me. His own son, Kori’s world’s version of me, died before he’d gotten the chance. I told Cade I was doing it for the old man. The guy deserved an opportunity to get to know his son. But the truth? I liked the guy. Since coming home six months ago, our family had expanded. In four months’ time, the plan was to get everyone together. Kori’s father, my parents, Ava’s family. Yep. We had everything covered except one person…