Eyan shrugged out of the safety harness and stood, glancing at where her prod lay on the floor. Her stomach recoiled at the sight of her dismembered hand.
"Now what?" She refused to give credence to any of his crazy talk.
"We go to him." Cade stood up beside his chair.
"And then?"
"You help me kill him."
* * *
For once, Eyan held his undivided attention.
"What's going on over there?" Dr. Hammersmith stared at her from the wallscreen in front of the two bucket seats. "I've received word the UW observer never arrived on Futuro 2!"
"He's here, sir. With me." She stood at attention, clasping the wrist absent its hand behind her back. "It's urgent that I see you. I've…suffered an injury."
Hammersmith frowned with genuine concern. "Oh?"
Hesitating briefly, she showed him.
He started forward in his seat. "What the hell happened?"
"I'll need your coordinates, sir."
"You didn't have to eject the entire command module, Eyan. I would've sent a shuttle for you!"
"It's better this way. You can check my systems in person and make sure everything is in order." She forced herself not to glance at Cade off-camera, but she could feel him watching her, his blade out of its scabbard and at the ready. Calmly, he'd told her that her left arm would be the next to go, amputated at the shoulder, if she failed to cooperate.
"Very well." Hammersmith's frown remained on his brow as he typed in the coordinates. The alphanumeric digits appeared at the bottom of the wallscreen. "What about the situation with—" He snapped his fingers, failing to remember the young man's name.
"Xavier, sir."
"Right. Any progress on that?"
Eyan bit her lip before answering, "It's been ruled a suicide."
Dr. Hammersmith's face wrinkled in disgust. "Really. Well, that's too bad. We'll just have to do a better job of screening applicants from now on. That psych-eval hasn't been updated in years, I suppose. Who knows what new varieties of psychoses are running rampant these days!" He chuckled without mirth. "How soon before we can get back online? Time's money, kiddo, and right now those drillbots are collecting nothing but moondust."
"As soon as we return the module, operations will be able to resume, sir." Eyan's abdomen tightened. Any second, she expected him to see through Cade's wild scheme.
Dr. Hammersmith nodded, losing interest. He was a busy man, after all. His eyes focused on one of the other dozen screens positioned around his desk. "Then let's hurry things along, shall we?" The wallscreen went dark.
Cade sheathed his katana. "Well done."
Eyan's knees felt loose. "I will not help you murder him."
"You would be surprised what you're capable of—when the tide turns and your back is against the wall."
"Is that what you're planning?"
Cade noticed something on the proximity scanner as he entered Hammersmith's coordinates into the navigation console. "We have company."
Eyan brought up the display on a console across the room from him. Keeping her distance from that sword of his seemed prudent. On the screen, she saw the UW transport pod moving in an intercept course.
"I don't suppose this module was outfitted with a weapons complement."
She stared at him. "Have you no fear of the UW?"
"This is not my world. I have very little to lose."
She blinked at that.
"The same neuro-gel runs through what passes for veins in both of us." He approached her, leaving the auto-nav system to take them to Dr. Hammersmith's location. "If you took a moment to focus, you too would notice the link we share. Besides this, of course." He gestured at the subdermal Link behind his left ear.
"Technology in your world hasn't advanced beyond ours?" She smirked.
He halted in the middle of the room. "Much is similar in our two worlds. I cannot say the same for other realities."
"Why kill him? What good does it do? If you think he somehow messed up time in the past, why not go back and kill him then?" She couldn't believe she was speaking such gibberish.
"Time travel is quite impossible for the likes of us."
"And hopping into parallel worlds isn't?"
He watched her, his expression grim. "The space-between-space is dissolving. The longer these parallel realities exist, the more strain is placed on the fabric of space-time separating them. I know where the holes are."
"You didn't answer my question. Why murder him here and now?"
Cade nodded once. "It's the only way to collapse this reality and restore space-time to its former strength."
She narrowed her gaze. "You think Dr. Hammersmith's existence alone keeps this world intact?"
"It is a power no man should possess."
Eyan's lips parted, but at first no sound came. "What about all the other billions of lives in this world? Are you saying they're not real?"
"I would not think to define human life. Some say a soul is required. But tell me, do we have souls, you and I? Would anyone else in this world—if it exists only because of one man's foolish trips through time?"
Eyan shook her head. "How could one person create entire worlds?"
With a twitch of one hand, Cade plucked a loose thread from his sleeve and held it up for her to see. "You have heard of string theory."
Eyan crossed her arms, tucking the quick-healing stump of her left wrist into her armpit. Casually, she glanced at her console. The UW transport was matching their course and speed.
Cade ran his fingers along the thread. "There is no way to go back and forth without it unraveling. Changes made to the past, no matter how slight, create an alternate space-time for those changes to play out, so that instead of one thread, we now have two, each thinner than the original—which still exists; nothing can change that. Without it, the other two would never have been brought into existence. Do you follow?"
"I'm no physicist."
"Nor am I. But Dr. Hammersmith is, and while not a perfect analogy, this made sense to me when he explained it. I remember the string every time I delete an alternate Hammersmith and collapse his world—as I twist the strands back together to make my world stronger."
"Your world."
Cade nodded. "The one that matters. Alpha and omega—the first, and the last."
"When you end him here, then I will cease to exist as well."
"Yes."
"And my lifetimes, everything I've done over the years—none of it will matter. Because in your mind, I'm not real. Nor are the billions of lives in this reality."
"It is not my place to quantify life."
"Only to bring death." She watched him. "Do I even exist in your world?"
"Yes."
She blinked. "Do we know each other there?"
"We are like brother and sister."
She couldn't imagine that. "In other worlds you've destroyed, do alternate versions of you exist?"
"Dr. Hammersmith created me for the sole purpose of restoring the Prime Reality to its fullest strength. I came into being years after he realized the abnormalities his trips through time had wrought."
"You're one of a kind."
He nodded without conceit. If anything, for the first time there appeared to be sadness in his eyes.
* * *
With dogged determination, the pilot of the transport pod brought his vessel within meters to couple with the command module's port side.
"By the authority of the United World government, you are hereby ordered to comply. Prepare to be boarded!"
Cade shut off the comm and increased the module's velocity.
"It wasn't intended for this." Eyan gripped the console before her as the hull quaked and rattled. "So much for your crusade if you kill us both."
Something hit the port side—a solid impact followed by another violent thump.
"Grapplers," Eyan said. "They've tethered the pod to our airlock." She watched the scene as it unfolded on her displ
ay. "They're reeling themselves in."
Cade's sword was already in his hand.
"Time to welcome our guests." He turned to the door that had opened onto the corridor while attached to Futuro 2; but now, with the module floating free, it was the room's single airlock. "You might want that." He nodded at her hand on the floor.
Keeping a wary eye on his weapon, she crouched to retrieve the prod and slipped her severed hand—cold to the touch, which sent an unexpected shiver down the back of her neck—into one of the zip-pockets on her uniform where it bulged unnaturally.
"I won't let you hurt them," she said. "They've done nothing wrong."
"We will let them decide. They are the authorities."
"You're outnumbered."
"I have been many times before."
The module rumbled as the transport pod docked. A loud hiss of pneumatics followed, and the makeshift airlock kicked in, conjoining the two spaceworthy vessels and equalizing the air pressure between them. Eyan glanced at her console. Less than thirty minutes remained before they would reach Dr. Hammersmith's coordinates. She'd never known where his base of operations was located and often assumed he moved from station to station. Her upgrades had always been performed remotely, as if she were a puppet dangling at the end of a string. Like poor Xavier, tethered to Futuro 2, freezing solid before he'd even reached the surface of the moon.
Had that been his intent? To kill himself?
Eyan blinked, facing the door, glancing at Cade. If she lost an arm or even her head, so be it. She wouldn't let him hurt these people. Time travel? Alternate worlds? The ravings of a lunatic.
Lunatic. Meaning moon-struck—from the Latin, luna.
Eyan blinked, focusing on the moment. Her muscles tensed, the prod charged and ready in its holster. She would be the first person the envoy saw when the airlock door slid aside. Then they'd see Cade, and there'd come the inevitable moment of confusion at the sight of a sword-wielding monk.
The door opened. Two large men in uniform filled the frame with hands on their holstered sidearms. A smaller man stood behind them, garbed in a formless pressure suit and carrying a digital slate. Noticing Cade, both security officers drew their guns, and the UW official stumbled backward in surprise.
"Put down your weapon! Identify yourself!"
"You are here to solve a murder." Cade's steady gaze seemed unaffected by the two guns aimed at him.
"Drop it!" The first officer inside eyed the sword in disbelief.
"I have done your work for you. You will find everything filed here." Cade nodded toward the console beside him. "All I ask is that you allow me to take your transport pod and be on my way."
The officer smirked, half-turning to his partner. "Disarm him. I'll cover you."
Hesitating a moment, the second officer approached Cade and gripped his weapon with both hands extended out in front of him.
Eyan should have warned him.
Blood gushed in a thick spray. The man screamed, staring at his wrists, severed clean through flesh and bone. His gun and both of his hands lay on the floor.
The officer at the door cursed and fired his sidearm, sending a barrage of pulse rounds at Cade. But as Eyan had seen before, he was far too fast, whipping his blade side to side now, deflecting every round that came his way and sending them into the walls and ceiling to spark and fizzle into black burns.
Cade watched the bleeding man drop to his knees and pass out. Then he turned his gaze to the officer hastily reloading his weapon. Cursing and sweating, the man fumbled with his pulse rounds, glancing at Cade's white robe—now covered in a wild blood spatter pattern.
"Kill him!" the UW official shrilled.
Eyan drew her prod and came up beside the security officer. Without a word, she jammed the prongs into his abdominal wall. Jerking and barking gibberish, he collapsed to the floor.
"Don't come in here." She stared down the UW official who hugged his slate to his chest like it was a small shield and remained rooted on his side of the airlock.
"I will not hurt you." Cade sheathed his sword and beckoned to the man. "You will want to see this."
Turning his back on both Eyan and the official, Cade activated the wallscreen. Instantly, monochrome video footage appeared showing two naked figures in a narrow shower stall.
"What is this?" Eyan demanded. The prod sizzled in her grip.
"The truth," Cade said.
Frowning pensively, the UW official came to the doorway but proceeded no farther, his eyes riveted to the screen as Cade swiped the display and broke the footage into quadrants, each showing a different scene, taken from what was obviously surveillance footage. The young Xavier appeared in each frame—showering, writhing in bed, arguing, but never alone. Eyan was right there with him.
"What have you done?" She nearly choked.
"It took some work to assemble everything from the crew's eyecams, but now the sum is greater than its parts. Your relationship was a secret to no one aboard Futuro 2."
The screen showed Eyan coming upon Xavier and Rojas kissing, and in a single move, Eyan had whipped out her prod and jammed it against the woman's throat.
"This never happened—none of it's real. I don't know how you've manage to fabricate this footage—"
"Of course you would not remember any of it." Cade's tone remained even. "It occurred during your fourth lifetime."
"You said it was suicide, that Xavier—" She frowned at that. Of course he would have lied to her.
"I will leave this evidence for you." Cade drew his sword slowly and beckoned again to the UW official. "Please. I must be on my way now."
Glancing from Cade to Eyan with uncertainty, the man stepped lightly over the unconscious bodies of his security personnel and hung back against the wall, clutching his slate.
"Are you armed?" Cade strode to the airlock.
The man shook his head quickly.
"You may want to borrow that." With the tip of his blade, Cade pointed out the gun on the floor with the two severed hands attached. "I am leaving you here with a killer, after all."
The man blinked and stooped to retrieve the weapon with a look of horrified disgust.
"You have no proof." Eyan pointed at the screen as it ran the looped footage. "There's nothing here that shows I killed Xavier!"
Cade lingered at the airlock. "In this world, all that is required is a reasonable doubt." He shrugged slightly. "But I would not worry. Your time here is about to end."
With that, he stepped outside and shut the door. The airlock sealed itself automatically, and it wasn't long before Cade had uncoupled the transport pod from the command module and doubled its speed toward Dr. Hammersmith's coordinates.
"Who was that guy?" the official's hushed voice broke the silence. He held the bloody pulse pistol aimed at Eyan but there was nothing committal about his posture. His gaze hadn't left the two men on the floor.
She gripped onto her console and disabled the thrusters—and with them, the artificial gravity. The official cursed as his slate and borrowed weapon suddenly drifted beyond his grasp, his limbs flailing spastically as he rose into the air. She watched him, feeling her insides rebel, demanding to drift free.
But she remained standing.
Not floating curled into a fetal position, hoping for another lifetime to come even as the command module of the Futuro 2 Drilling Station rotated end over end through the black in a slow dance by the light of the moon.
Eyan faced the future on her feet.
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About the Author
Milo James Fowler is a teacher by day and a speculative fictioneer by night. When he's not grading papers, he's imagining what the world might be like in a dozen alternate realities. He's an active SFWA member, and his short fiction has appeared in AE SciFi, Cosmos, Daily Science Fiction, Nature, and Shimmer. His novel Captain Bartholomew Quasar and
the Space-Time Displacement Conundrum is forthcoming from Every Day Publishing.
www.milojamesfowler.com
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