Sideswiped

by Kim Harrison

  Silas shook his head, Dr. Cavana’s last look at him taking on new meaning. But Professor Woo had drawn him into the building’s empty hallway, his expression holding a surprising, shared pain. “Silas, I have an idea of what you’re feeling,” he said as he turned him away from Peri and Allen. “That you think your size and your skills in the labs are dictating the limits of your life, but they aren’t.”

  “I fail to understand how they are not, Professor,” Silas said. “How can you possibly know what I’m feeling?”

  “You don’t see it.” He shifted his coat aside as he put his hands on his hips. “That’s nice. Gives me hope. Silas, I went active during the Cold War.”

  Silas gave him a questioning look. “And?” he prompted, still not getting it.

  “An Asian?” Professor Woo said, eyebrows high. “During the Cold War? I never got a single task. Fully trained, then shelved into academia. Too valuable, they said, but I knew it was because of what I looked like. It was hard, Silas. I hated it, but it was the closest I could get to what I was meant for, so I stayed, helpless to change anything. Or so I thought.”

  Silas let his shoulders slump. There was no silver lining.

  “I know how it feels to want something and be denied simply because of how you look,” Woo said. “But you will make a difference. Trust me. Something good will come of it.”

  “What good came of you being stuck in a dead-end job for forty years?” Silas said bitterly, not expecting an answer. But a wicked smile curved on Professor Woo’s thin lips.

  “Milo has seniority on paper, but as you say, I’ve been here forty years. I run the place through favors owed and ground-floor knowledge.” Woo glanced past Silas into the apartment, to where Allen and Peri commiserated glumly. “I know every single agent Opti has, their weaknesses and strengths. Their needs. You think Milo has any real pull inside these walls? No.” Professor Woo’s eyes came back to Silas. “Which is very good for you, yes?”

  Head down, Silas was silent. It wasn’t what he wanted.

  Slowly Professor Woo’s smile faded. “Don’t worry about Professor Milo,” he said. “He can’t remove you from the program. We’ll talk about this Monday, okay? Oh, and, ah, no one leaves the campus.”

  Silas nodded, but it was only to get the man to leave. Maybe Professor Milo couldn’t remove him from the program, but he could cut off his funding. And whereas Silas wouldn’t be chained to the professor’s lab bench, if he couldn’t prove his theory, he wouldn’t have the letters behind his name to rise much further than he was.

  Professor Woo shifted his weight, clearly anxious to rejoin Dr. Cavana. “You can take the system out of the spiral, right?” he asked.

  To say yes would be an admission of guilt, but the school would find something to link them to the act, even if it had to be invented. “Takes two minutes,” Silas said.

  “Good.” Professor Woo touched his arm in parting. “You’re the best Opti has. Quit screwing around.” Saying nothing more, he turned and left, his pace fast with deference.

  His steps slow as he thought, Silas went back into his apartment and shut the door. Thank God the semester was over and he wouldn’t have to deal with the gossip. At least not until everyone came back.

  Allen exhaled loudly as the whine of Woo’s electric car rose high and irritating. “We’re going to be legends.”

  Peri snickered, rolling her eyes.

  “Excuse me,” Summer said, voice quavering as she quickly paced to the bedroom. The door shut hard and Silas slumped.

  He wasn’t going to let this go. If he had to fight for what he wanted, he would.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  The sensation that something was wrong seeped through the disjointed cracks of Silas’s dream, fragmenting his slumber until it broke away and left his mind bare to the world again. Between one breath and the next, he woke, fully aware as he stared at the ceiling of the darkened room.

  He turned to the faint ribbon of light coming in from under the door. Summer’s side of the bed was empty, but a faint click of keys muffled his worry. She was in the living room working on something, as was her wont when she couldn’t sleep.

  Sighing, he swung his feet to the floor, reaching for his phone to see what time it was.

  “Three forty-five?” he whispered, knowing she probably hadn’t slept at all.

  Fatigue weighed him down as he rubbed his hand over his bristles and collected himself. Summer had been closed off and silent after Allen and Peri had left, depressed but not resigned. He loved her resilience and refusal to give up. Standing, he looked at her empty side of the bed, vowing that wouldn’t become permanent. They complemented each other too well. Tonight had proved it. Together, he and Summer could do more than he could ever do alone. It was more than her needs being a muse to his jumps of thought. She excelled where he faltered, and he excelled . . . well . . . Summer was good at everything Opti prized in their agents.

  Maybe that was the problem, he thought as he scuffed his way to the living room.

  Summer looked up as the door opened, her short hair catching the glow of her laptop in the otherwise darkened room. No, it was his tablet.

  “What are you doing up?” he said, voice rough from sleep, and she smiled, eyes bright with possibilities.

  “I think I have it,” she said, and he sat down beside her on the couch, liking how his weight slid her into him.

  But she shifted back, the excitement of discovery in her. “I’ve been looking at the data you got from the double-draft,” she said, and he squinted down, blinking through the glare. “Everything indicates that you’re right, that we’re not going back in time, but sideways, creating a temporary secondary existence for those within our reach, sort of like a closed oxbow of time.”

  “Yeah?” He was too tired to think, and he reached for the tablet. Summer wouldn’t let go, and they slid together so they could both hold it. The thin fabric of her nightgown was almost not there, and he forced his attention back. “I could use some good news,” he added, but data supporting his theory was only half the battle. He had to prove it.

  “Look here,” she said, slim finger pointing at the three-dimensional graph on the screen. “The gravity sink parallels an individual drafter’s physical reach, and the Doppler shift is a direct correlation with the span of time we impact. You couldn’t see it until there was a double-draft. There wouldn’t be a gravity sink that large unless we were going sideways, creating a new reality that we drag back with us using the Doppler shift resonance echoes as a guide. And if you are moving sideways, not back, then you can do a long draft and change something beyond a drafter’s natural reach. Time is an artifact of distance moved, not the other way around. This proves it, Silas. You did it!”

  Summer was hugging him, and he blinked fast, pulse quickening as he lurched to keep his tablet from hitting the floor when she let go of it.

  “This changes everything,” she said, positively glowing. “You’ll have all the clout you need to do whatever you want. Professor Milo can eat your silicon dust,” she said. “Silas,” she exclaimed, giving him a shake. “Say something!”

  A slow smile spread across his face, and he stared at the data, torn between studying it and holding her. “We only have this one data pool,” he said. “I’ll need more to prove it. Years,” he said, his excitement faltering at the idea of fighting Professor Milo for every scrap of computer time, the agony the drafters and anchors would have to endure to even gather the data. Years in which Summer would drift farther from him as she began her work as a drafter. “I can’t say a long draft is possible with just one twenty-second double-draft. I need more data.”

  Her lips pressed together, a vivid red against her cheeks, which were pale from lack of sleep. “Data? You don’t need data. I’ll prove it right now.”

  “Summer!” he exclaimed as he set the tablet aside, shifting
sideways to take her hands. “Knowing I’m right doesn’t equal safe or even possible. You might have to hold uncountable timelines until I can defragment them. The human mind is not a circuit.”

  “The human mind is the most flexible system ever created,” she said, flushed. “Isn’t that what you tell your students? Are you saying you don’t believe it?”

  “Well, no . . .”

  “Your theory is sound,” she said as she pulled away, her excitement undimmed but tarnished by his disbelief. “I’m not going to wait,” she said, cutting off his next protest. “I’m not going to wait until time and a partner assignment decide who I will love. Not if I can go back and maybe shift something. Make it better.”

  “Make it better?” he whispered, not believing his levelheaded, careful Summer was threatening to jump into the unknown, risk everything for . . . for them. “No.” Turning to face her even more, he took her shoulders, feeling her defiance. “There’s too much we don’t know.”

  “Then I’ll find out,” she said, and he gasped as vertigo swamped him. Sparkles so blue they glowed black rose like fireflies, blocking his vision. His grip on Summer became numb, indistinct. He scrambled for her, searching for her mind as she threw them both back far beyond her normal reach, the gravity sink of the double-draft pulling her. And she drafted.

  Silas spasmed as hot lances pierced his skull. He fastened on the thump of music, knowing immediately where they were. The dance club. It was the night they failed their test. She won’t survive, he thought, ignoring Professor Milo’s demand as he bolted out of the back room.

  He slid to a halt just past the door as his mind struggled to comprehend. Behind him the security room was stable—no choices to be made there—but before him . . . the bar was red-tinted shadows of alternate times. It was as if translucent pages fluttered before his vision, and he tried to comprehend, nothing real but Summer standing upon the dance floor.

  The pain of the universe being born shook him as she rifled through choices as if she were looking for a favorite recipe. She was the only thing clear as red-smeared shadows played out alternate timelines around her.

  With an angry, Doppler-tainted shout, the bouncer grew distinct as possibilities circled and steadied around the angry man. She’s trying to keep Professor Milo from getting shot, he thought as Summer focused on him. The pain was less as choices were cast aside, and feeling it, she smiled. Tiny shifts of probability haloed her in silver, and the knowledge that their love would survive made her achingly beautiful.

  “Excuse me,” Silas said as he tapped the bouncer on the shoulder. The man spun, and the red blur that was Allen became solid and real. Less pain, more reality. Silas jerked the rifle from the bouncer’s hand, and the drafter/anchor teams wavered into existence out of the red smear of possibilities. “Hold this,” Silas said, throwing the rifle to Professor Milo, who had emerged from the back room. If he had the rifle, he couldn’t be shot by it.

  “Take us home, Summer,” he said, and she nodded, love in her eyes. It was done, and there was no pain, just a euphoric rising of success.

  For an instant, the universe seemed to pause, assessing what Summer had done. And then . . . quietly, and quite decisively, the universe balanced its books.

  Silas gasped as time slid sideways through a billion ticks of electrons in the space of one. His head thundered and he hit the floor, his hands clenching the colorful rug. “Summer?” he moaned, trying to find himself. It hurt. Summer was beside him, her thin nightgown a whisper of sound as she clenched into a ball and shook under the coffee table. “Oh, God. Summer. I can’t believe you did that.”

  Wiping the sweat from his face, he put a hand on her back, feeling her shake. “Summer?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Summer!” He yanked her to him, wrapping himself around her to try to ground her. He knew the signs. She was in full overdraft, and if he didn’t destroy the extra timelines, she would go insane trying to reconcile them.

  But it felt as if there were hundreds instead of the usual one, and he couldn’t find her under them.

  “Listen to my voice. Focus on my voice. Let me in,” he said, his tone calm but his mind frantic as he fumbled for her, gasping when she found the presence to reach out to him like a drowning victim.

  His early training as an anchor took over, and as he held her body to his, he wrapped his mind around hers, trying to pull her from the chaotic slurry of memory as if he might draw her from a raging white-water river. But it was too strong, and as one, Silas and Summer fell back into her mind.

  They screamed as a hundred choices begetting a thousand realities cascaded from her to him. He floundered as never-realized timelines raced through him, not as red-smeared shadows, but as fully realized memories, each of them right, each real. Not knowing what to keep or what to destroy, he began burning them all, erasing everything of that night in the dance club, be it the first memory, the last, or the thousand in between.

  The rapid staccato of his heart was a thunderous roar, and as Summer shook in his arms, he felt his body begin to shut down. Still he struggled, but for every timeline he erased, a hundred more lay under it, vibrating through her, shaking her memory to a homogeneous slurry of everything all at once.

  It might have been better to not even try.

  With a sudden realization, he knew there was no way out. They were both going to die.

  His anger rose hot: anger that he had failed her, anger that the thing they’d thought would save them would instead betray them. It burned everything until, for a single moment, there was peace.

  I love you, he whispered, their thoughts mingling as one.

  And in that perfect moment of clarity, she shoved him out.

  Jerking violently, he found himself on the floor of their apartment.

  “Summer,” he rasped, gasping as he realized she lay in his arms, deathly still, her face still holding the pain of cheating the universe.

  “Summer! No!” he cried, but she was gone, and he could do nothing but hold her, grief shaking him as he howled great racking sobs, seeing all and unable to change anything.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  His suit fit perfectly. It was lightweight and breathed well, and it didn’t ride up his shoulders when he reached to shake everyone’s proffered hand. He’d bought it to wear to his graduation, but when this afternoon was over, he was going to give it to Goodwill, even if it was probably the most expensive outfit in the visitation room full of the academy’s finest down to the lunch lady. Summer was well liked.

  Had been well liked, he thought, immediately knowing it had been a mistake.

  It was still raw in him, and his hand clenched. But the cut-crystal glass with the weak red punch in it didn’t shatter. Not like his world. Not like everything that had given his life meaning. Fragile. For all their strength, they were so fragile.

  “Almost done, Silas,” Allen said from beside him, awkward in his flat-black suit. Peri was on his other side in a classy black dress cut high about her neck. Her hazel eyes were solemn with an eerie understanding he was afraid to ask her about, and she wobbled slightly, her heels too high. Maybe she was trying to look not-so-small beside him.

  “I’m done now,” Silas said, and he set the tiny goblet on the side table to undo his tie. It was a whisper of silk in his hands, and it reminded him of her hair.

  Silas’s fingers faltered. His body froze, and he struggled to breathe. Thank God there was no casket. He couldn’t bear to look at her again.

  Peri pushed into his space, motions rough as she slapped his hands away and reknotted the tie. “Don’t give them the satisfaction,” she said, flicking her eyes to where Professor Milo and Professor Woo stood with the rest of the department heads.

  Across the room, Karen, Heidi, Ethan, and Beth clustered, gossiping with the other newly graduated agents. Their punishment had been revoked in
light of the situation. It was only Allen and Silas who would be required to repeat their entire last year, a reprimand for Summer dying and making the news. At this point, Silas couldn’t care less what they did to him.

  Silas’s eyes bored into Professor Milo as the man turned to look at him. His chest hurt, and he swore when Professor Milo touched the shoulder of Professor Woo and they started his way.

  “Easy, Silas,” Peri said, reading him correctly.

  “Dr. Denier,” Professor Milo said, an odd, solemn nervousness about him as they scuffed to a halt. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Summer will be missed.”

  Professor Milo’s hand was extended, and Silas didn’t take it, even as Professor Woo’s expression pinched in worry. Silas wanted to smash Milo’s face. He wanted to shove him into the wall and beat him senseless. The best he could do was nothing, his lip twitching as Peri dug her fingernails into his arm—grounding him.

  “Silas already hit you once,” Allen said. “Just keep talking, and he’ll do it again.”

  Professor Woo gave Milo a nudge, and he let his arm drop. “I am sorry,” Milo repeated, turning to go.

  Silas choked. “She did change the past,” he managed, voice breaking, and Milo slowed, head cocked. “Don’t you ever forget that.”

  Pausing, the man rubbed his arm. The entire campus remembered him getting shot, but there wasn’t a mark on him. Neck red against his stark white shirt, he walked to the door.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow for lunch,” Professor Woo said, touching Silas’s elbow in parting before hustling after Milo.

  Peri exhaled, eyes following the retreating men. “I don’t know you well enough to say if that was good or not.”

  “Good,” Allen said, sweating as he took Silas’s discarded punch and downed it. “Real good.”

  Time was weird stuff. Everyone on campus including Milo himself remembered a timeline where he had been shot. There was blood in his car, and a hospital report—even used bandages in his trash and pain meds by his sink. But by the way Professor Milo shoved the door open as he left, Silas could tell there wasn’t a mark on the man. Day by day the differences that had been created were being rubbed out by the passage of time. Except for Summer’s absence.