by Liana Brooks
DEDICATION
To Sam. You earned your degree, and I wrote my book. I guess we both finally found our Happily Ever After.
CONTENTS
Dedication
A Brief Timeline of Modern History
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Liana Brooks
Copyright
About the Publisher
A BRIEF TIMELINE OF MODERN HISTORY
Prime Iteration
2029—The Asian Cold War ends with the assimilation of China into the Greater Asian Republic which includes parts of Old Russia, Mongolia, North and South Korea, Japan, China, Myanmar, Nepal, Bangladesh, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand
2037—Borders close as tensions between the South African Union and the Commonwealth of South America battle for oil rights in the Southern Ocean
2039—Ellen Meeks, of Trinidad and Tobago, proposes the UN take on a more formal role as a legislative body
2044—Dr. Abdul Emir presents his graduate thesis about the iterations of time and designs the first model of the Mechanism for Iteration Alignment
2045—Samantha Rose is born in the United Northern Territories of America
2046—The UN consolidates into the World Council, the Congress of Earth, and the Court of Justice
2049—The last of the Amazon rain forest is cut down for housing space and access to oil reserves
2050—Overpopulation concerns push the Ruling Council to consider measures of eugenics
2051—Citizens deemed Suitable by the Ruling Council are moved to controlled cities, remaining areas are bombed under Project New Life
2055–2062—Widespread rebellion leads to worldwide population purges and the Undeclared War
2064—Dr. Abdul Emir is granted executive powers by the Ruling Council
2065—Year 1 of Progress
2069—The Prime Iteration loses dominance
2070—Decoherence expected
Iteration 2
2029—First human clone born
2037—Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize, and Guatemala sign the Central American Charter to form the Central American Territories
2043—The World Plague begins in China; an estimated 3 billion people die in the next six years
2044—First law requiring all clones to have a genetic marker passed in Canada
2045—First clone with a genetic marker is created in the United States of America under the direction of an international team
2050—Canada signs the United Charter with the Central American Territories to form the United Territories
2053—The United dollar becomes the standard currency in North America
2057—European Recession cripples the world economy
2064—The United States of America votes to sign the United Charter
2065—The Commonwealth of North America is formed, and the first national elections are held in preparation for the writing of the North American Constitution
2069—Dr. Abdul Emir creates the first working time machine, a completion of his Grand Theory of Movement Through Time
2070—Sam Rose and Lynsey MacKenzie travel back in time to 2065, then move to Australia
CHAPTER 1
“Decoherence (n): a period of time when all iterations collapse and there is only one possible reality.”
~ excerpt from Definitions of Time by Emmanuela Pine, I1
Day 247
Year 5 of Progress
Capitol Spire
Main Continent
Iteration 17—Fan 1
. . . three. Rose stood and peered through the frosted, warped glass of the conference room as the speaker turned away. It didn’t matter which iteration she was in, Emir was predictable. She had seven seconds to do a head count. She didn’t need that long.
A quick head count was all it took to confirm that the einselected nodes she’d been sent to assassinate were where they belonged.
Every iteration had nodes, people or events that kept that variation of human history from collapsing. Dr. Emir had created a machine that allowed people not only to move along their own timeline, but at critical convergence points, it allowed them to cross between realities. But the Mechanism for Iteration Alignment’s greatest ability was the one that allowed Dr. Emir and Central Command to steer history by erasing futures they didn’t want.
Rose knelt beside the door, did one final sweep for alarms, and nodded for her team to move in. It was her job to cross at convergence points, kill the nodes, and collapse the futures that no one wanted.
One look at the version of herself watching this iteration’s Emir with rapt fascination was enough to make Rose want to snip this future in the bud.
Chubby was the first thing that came to mind. Rose’s doppelganger was enjoying being at the top of the social pyramid and probably gorging on whatever passed as a delicacy here. The squared bangs with a streak of riotous red only accented the corpulence and lack of self-control the inferior other had.
Even with a heavy wood door between them, Rose could hear that this iteration’s Emir was hypothesizing things the MIA was never meant to do. Everyone with half a brain knew that decoherence didn’t combine iterations, it crushed them. Only the true timeline, the Prime, would survive decoherence. Planning to welcome and integrate doppelgangers into the society was pure idiocy.
The techs sealing the door shut gave her the high sign.
Rose nodded to her hacker.
“Cameras locked. Security is deaf and blind, ma’am” Logan’s voice was a soft whisper in her earpiece. He was a genius with computer systems, a fact that had saved him when they collapsed I-38 three years ago. “We have a fifteen-minute window.”
“Hall cleared,” reported Bennet. “Permission to move perimeter guard to the exit?”
Rose nodded. “Permission granted.” She waved for the soldiers to move out. There could be no risk of failure. No chance for the errant nodes to escape, and no risk that her team would get killed here. Sending a node from the Prime was risky but sometimes required. Sending two nodes was something she and Dr. Emir had fought about more than once. She kept reminding him that he was risking the future of humanity.
The subject of argument rounded the corner wearing baggy coveralls that let him blend into I-17. Behind Donovan was Wagner, their intelligence asset, still sporting the ghastly blue-and-purple dye job that had allowed her to
embed here for seventeen weeks. Emir had let Donovan jump ahead of the main demolition squad by over two hours to catch up with Wagner, a choice that still left Rose grinding her teeth.
Donovan shouldn’t have needed two hours. They shouldn’t have needed four months to find the information they needed.
Seventeen weeks was a disgrace.
Most iterations took days to infiltrate, but this one had some truly outstanding cryptographers, who’d managed to hide the nodes for months. Wagner had brought a cryptographer home, a small gift for Central Command. Once the woman adjusted to life in the Prime, she’d be a very useful citizen.
Wagner nodded to Rose, stopping by her side.
Donovan walked past, going to check his soldier’s work on the door. “Done.” His expression was satisfied but cold. “This used to be my job.”
“Then you won’t have a problem setting the charges,” Rose said. The nodes of this iteration were going down along with everyone in this high-rise. It was an unfortunate, and unavoidable, situation. Normally, she did her best to keep the death toll to a minimum. Although it was rare for a non-nodal person to retain memories of their alternative selves from other iterations, there was a strong correlation between mass violence in demolished iterations and psychological trauma of the citizens in the Prime.
Which meant an event like this would cause a worldwide ripple of anxiety. No one would sleep easy tonight. Tomorrow, everyone would be on edge, a little more jittery, a little closer to crossing lines they would never normally cross.
Central Command had prepared for that before she’d left for the mission. There were extra guards scheduled for duty tomorrow, and next to her bed there was a little green pill that would ensure she didn’t dream of being torn to pieces by a bomb.
She knew, though, that most people wouldn’t be so lucky.
If the price of safety was only a few bad dreams, it was worth it.
“Charges set,” Donovan reported. “We have six minutes to exit this iteration.”
Rose activated her comm unit. “Strike team, move out.”
Donovan took point, leading the team through the octagonal building toward their portal home. Wagner took rear guard. If someone came up behind them, Wagner would stall them.
“Entering the secured area.” Donovan’s low voice grated on her sensibilities. It should have been Senturi running point with her. But a lucky shot by a sniper had put her second-in-command on the reserve roster, leaving her to run a major mission with the Donovan’s JV team instead.
They tromped like a herd of elephants. Two of them couldn’t keep their weapons high, the muzzles of the guns slipping downward to aim at the floor every time they turned a corner. Not a single one had even glanced upward yet, a lesson her team had learned the hard way several years ago.
Or had it been longer than that?
Her personal timeline was such a knot of traveling that even the computers programmed to track agents’ movements had trouble keeping up with hers. The chronometer on her arm said she was close to thirty-two, but her birthday wasn’t quite twenty-five years past.
“Contact.” Wagner’s voice came in terse and tight, like an electric shock against the spine.
Rose held her fist up to stop the team. She was willing to sacrifice herself for the cause—and losing operatives was part of the harsh reality she lived—but she didn’t want to waste their lives if Wagner could talk them out of a situation.
“Good afternoon,” she heard Wagner say through the earpiece. “Line code 671-59-60. Here’s my ID—”
Two heavy thuds followed.
“Threat neutralized,” Wagner reported. “But there will be more coming.”
That’s one way to talk through an obstacle, Rose thought. “Secure the jump room,” she ordered. The overhead lights flickered and died. That was not in the plan. “Wagner, explain.”
“Brownouts, Commander. This iteration has reached peak energy crisis. They lost the offshore oil rigs two years ago, and now every building is subject to temporary electric shortages.”
Fear fired under her skin like liquid lightning. “The machine?”
“On a priority generator,” Wagner said.
“The meeting will break early,” Donovan said.
Rose closed her eyes, mentally cursing Donovan for speaking out of turn. A few slow breaths, and she was able to respond in an even tone. “The room was sealed. If they try to leave, they can’t.” If Donovan had as much brain as he did testosterone, he would have realized that himself. Sadly, being a node had nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with charisma. The more influence and power a person had, the more likely they were to make a future-altering choice and become a node. Somehow, despite having the brains of a flea and the social grace of a concussed sloth, Donovan was a node.
“They may stay anyway,” Wagner said. “The brownouts usually don’t last more than a few minutes before the generators for the capitol building turn on.”
“Ma’am?” That was Logan.
“Speak.”
“They’ll regain the security feeds when the generators kick in.”
There was a snort from someone in the darkness, then, “The building will be rubble in ninety seconds.”
“Thank you, Donovan,” Rose said tersely. “Everyone, move to the control room. Operations team, I want that portal at full travel capacity in twenty-five seconds.” It was an impossible order to fulfill, but they’d scramble. It took sixty-five seconds to walk from the sealed conference room to the jump room. Every second scraped against her skin like a knife blade. This is not how I die. This is not where I end.
Donovan cleared the control room with a spray of fire, and the techs programmed the coordinates for home into the machine. The portal glowed, first a menacing purple, then a cool blue, then the warm, fiery white that meant safety.
“Everyone in!” Rose ordered, counting heads as her soldiers moved past.
A shot rang out. “Contact in the hall.”
Five more to go. Four. Three. “Come on, Wagner, move it!” The membrane of the portal shivered, taking on a cooler tone as the hole in the space-time continuum healed. Arctic blue streaks appeared like fissures. “Wagner!”
Rose gave it a half second more before she stepped through, unable to wait any longer.
There was a disorienting moment of complete sensory deprivation, a weightless moment in the place of nothingness, then her feet landed on the concrete floor of the control room of the Prime.
CHAPTER 2
“In theory, the probability fan is infinite. In practice, Prime is limited to a finite number of iterations that are closely related to the true reality in some way. When the nearest fan closes, another fan opens. From this we can extrapolate all possible futures and pasts. With that knowledge, we control time.”
~ excerpt from Lectures On the Movement of Time by Dr. Abdul Emir I1–2074
Day 159/365
Year 5 of Progress
(June 8, 2069)
Central Command
Third Continent
Prime Reality
“Twelve,” a controller shouted out. “We are losing portal integrity.”
Rose held her breath though she’d never let the fear show. The blue lines seeped across the portal, an insidious poison. Come on, Wagner. Move!
MOVE.
There was the sound of someone sucking in their breath behind her. “We’re losing it . . . Portal closed.”
Monitors beeped around the room in the frustrated silence. Rose closed her eyes. Tried to remember how Wagner had looked in her final moments before she’d been erased. Dark brown hair bleached in strips and dyed electric blue and plum purple, both fading. Pale, full lips on a lean face and green eyes. Young. Rose opened her eyes. That’s what she remembered; Wagner looked young.
She sighed, barely acknowledging the thought that she felt old. There was a time and a place for weakness, and this wasn’t it.
She pivoted around to face the techs behind the controls. “Did Wagner try to get through?”
“Yes, ma’am,” one round-faced man answered. “She landed in 2050 by the old calendar.”
“Date?”
“November 21.”
“Iteration?”
There was a sound of furious typing. “Ours, ma’am. We’ve matched her with a vagrant Jane Doe buried in a mass grave that year. Cause of death was believed to be disease and malnutrition.”
Rose clasped her hands behind her back to control the shaking. Adrenaline was no longer her friend. “Send condolences to her family. There will be a closed-casket memorial.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Two quick movements, and her lieutenant was nothing more than a name on the list of fallen soldiers. “Ma’am, Dr. Emir wishes to see you immediately in his office on this level.”
“I’m sure he does. Tell him I’m on my—”
“No need.” Emir’s voice behind her made all her muscles tense. They’d killed each other too many times in too many variations of history for her to be comfortable in his presence.
It took no small measure of control for to lock her emotions away, but by the time she turned, though, a polite smile was pasted on her face. “Sir.”
“An excellently run mission, Commander. Four iterations collapsed with that one. Fan 2 has dropped into Fan 1’s position. There are over a hundred iterations there. By morning, the weaker ones will have collapsed, and by this time tomorrow, we’ll have information on all of them.” He smiled, the all-seeing king, with the universe at his command.
