Quantum Entanglement

by Liesel K. Hill

  Joan’s voice grew thick with emotion. “I’m asking you to help me protect my daughter,” she said, eyes still on the floor.

  The guilt in his chest and the pain on her face tugged at Doc’s emotions. He turned away from Joan and Nate, running his hands through his hair and playing out every possible scenario in his mind. If they put a message out there, could it make the situation worse? If—at the worst—the collectives intercepted and decoded the message, would it compromise the location of Interchron? If the wrong people picked it up...?

  Doc couldn’t come up with anything truly disastrous. He turned back to Joan and Nat, who watched him with steady, inquiring eyes. “Perhaps I am being too cautious. If we send the message out, we must be tremendously careful about what we say. Something that may seem innocuous to us may give the collectives some piece of information they didn’t have before, which could put us at a disadvantage.”

  “Like what?” Nat asked.

  Doc shrugged. “Obviously the collectives know about this, this...I think we have to assume it’s an assassin, not a kidnapper, who’s after Maggie. They probably don’t know two members of the rebellion and a Traveler have gone to get her. I don’t think we should volunteer that.”

  “Perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Nat said. “The Seekers haven’t located anyone yet. It could be hours or days before they do.”

  Joan took deep breath and looked Doc straight in the eye. “What about the other things? What happened in that cavern? Who is B, really? What did it all mean?”

  Doc and Nat exchanged glances. Joan noticed the exchange and her eyes widened.

  “Hey!” She snapped her fingers so they’d both look at her. “What was that look about? My daughter’s life is in danger. So is the rest of the team, including Maggie. She’s the key to the prophecy, Doc.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then tell me what’s going on! No more secrets, no more half-truths. Tell me what you know. All of it!”

  Doc glanced at Nat again, wishing the two of them could have a private conference. Nat held his hands up and took a step back. Doc nodded. Nat would let him take the lead. He’d always been that way: counseling, but not questioning. Whatever Doc decided, Nat went with it and backed him up, a blessing Doc had taken for granted over the years.

  Joan glared again, her eyes full of frustration and unshed tears. He owed her the full truth, but he didn’t feel ready to tell it. Even after all this time.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked quietly.

  “What did he mean when he said the thing about ‘Dr. Viktor?’”

  Doc sighed. “I knew B a long time ago, as a young man. We were close, both of us scientists doing experiments with neurochemical abilities. We wanted to see if we could engineer abilities; put traits together to make a super-soldier, or at least someone geared toward a specific purpose.”

  Joan eyed him warily. “Did you experiment on humans?”

  “Not at first,” Doc said, and her eyes widened. “It started with simply splicing together the DNA of the specific traits we wanted. The technology at the time allowed us to see what the marriage of different kinds of neurochemical abilities would produce without actually producing offspring. Because we put abilities together piece-meal, we often referred to it as our Frankenstein project. To say ‘Dr. Viktor is in the house’ was our code for saying we were working on that project.

  “Eventually the project became corrupted. I found out some members of the project, including B, were experimenting on humans, and the experiments became more grotesque with each passing year. I walked away because my morals demanded it.”

  “So,” Joan rubbed the bridge of her nose, “what does that mean about what he said? If he’s been working on this project, he’s created...what exactly?”

  “B’s pet project was creating neurochemical bounty hunters. He believed you could engineer a person to be compatible with another person.”

  “In what way compatible?” Joan asked.

  “In every way. Physically, emotionally, neurochemically. The idea is, if you had, say, a killer on the loose, you could engineer someone, using the killer’s DNA to match him. They would know how he thought, what choices he would make, be a perfect match for his neurochemical abilities, everything. They would be able to bring him in. No matter where he went, they could find him.”

  Joan’s face became still. “So he’s created something like that...and sent it after Maggie.”

  Doc nodded. “If B was telling the truth, he’s sent out a bounty hunter assassin that will be a perfect match for Maggie. A mirror image of her abilities. She won’t be able to defeat or get away from it.”

  “Will Concealments protect her?” Nat asked.

  “Perhaps,” Doc frowned. “I honestly don’t know. It depends on how he’s programmed the bounty hunter. That’s why I walked away from the project. B promised he’d only be looking for criminals, but the person being engineered to look for them was human, too. Without their consent he tied them, inextricably, to another person—a dangerous criminal. And I knew eventually it would be used for other applications. There was too much god-play in it.”

  “So what happened to the project?” Joan asked.

  “I walked away. B and I became estranged. Things changed. Though B kept the science, the bounty hunter application was obsolete even then. Criminals weren’t being punished for their crimes, so the idea of bounty hunting became a relic of history.”

  “So I take it we have no idea how to stop one of these things if they go after Maggie? Or any of us for that matter?”

  “Until we do a brain scan of one of them, we have no idea what we’re dealing with. I’m sure B has made modifications to suit his purposes. It’s useless at this point to try and draw conclusions.”

  Joan nodded and silence descended as they chewed over the information. Joan’s eyes shifted between him and Nat several times. “Are you two brothers?”

  Doc glanced at Nat again before answering. “Yes.”

  Joan rolled her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell us this, Doc? You’ve never said a word about having siblings.”

  Doc searched his memories for a way to begin. How did he explain this without launching into a two-hour history lesson? Despite her demand for explanations, he didn’t think Joan wanted that right now. She craved quick answers.

  “Nat and I have been fighting against the collectives for decades. It’s something we’ve both always believed in. Something we dedicated our lives to many years ago. Collectivism in general has been on the rise for hundreds of years, ever since the brain was fully mapped—”

  “And people stopped being held accountable for their choices.” Joan finished the thought with something she’d probably memorized as a child. The rebellion made a point of teaching their children the history of how the world fell apart; the ignorance and misconception which plunged the world into “too common” slavery, as the prophecy put it. Every child in Interchron knew the story.

  “Why not tell us about Nat?” Joan asked. “And why had I never met Nat before he brought David here a few months ago?” She shifted her gaze to Nat. “Why haven’t you always lived at Interchron?”

  Nat didn’t answer. He looked at Doc and Joan followed suit. Doc chose his words carefully. The way Joan’s eyes narrowed said she sensed his evasion, but she didn’t call him out. She was probably glad to be getting any information at all.

  “A lot of things happened when Nat and I were young, Joan. I’m not going to go into everything right now. Wait!” He held up a hand when she opened her mouth to protest. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know. I promise. But as long as I’m telling you, I might as well tell the rest of the team and it’s not something I want to repeat again and again. Besides, for you to understand everything, I’d have to go into a long, detailed explanation that has nothing to do with what you’re asking me right now.

  “Suffice it to say, things happened that made Nat and me realize we would be better able
to fight the collectives from different places. Being a member of the team myself, I thought people knowing Nat and I were related would put us both in danger. You want to protect your daughter, and rightfully so. If B wanted to get at you specifically, and knew Lila was your daughter, what would be the best way for him to strike at you?”

  Though Joan didn’t answer, her face said she understood, and Doc supposed the question was rhetorical anyway.

  “In the same way, Nat and I decided to distance ourselves from one another, for our mutual protection. Now, as I told the team a few months ago, Nat has some small talent as a Seeker. His ability isn’t strong enough to do what the Seekers in the other room are doing, of course. He has to be within close proximity of a person for it to work. When he is, he can tell exactly what neurochemical abilities a person has, or will have, if it’s a child whose abilities haven’t matured yet.

  “Nat and I were inseparable as youngsters. When he first left my side, decades ago now, he left to make good use of his ability. Though the collectives were powerful and getting stronger with each passing year, many more individuals still roamed around back then. Nat went out in search of people who would be willing to join the rebellion. He got close to them, identified their abilities, and reported back to me. Being in the field, he could also report other things he saw: the movements of the collectives, smaller conflicts going on among different factions of individuals, the changes the world underwent. Incidentally, it was Nat who identified Marcus.”

  Joan’s head came up, eyebrows arching. “He did?” Her gaze shifted to Nat. “You did?”

  Doc nodded. “Marcus was only a child at the time. Nat came upon a group of traveling individuals, including a young father with two little boys.”

  “Marcus and David.” Joan whispered, awe in her voice.

  “Nat didn’t approach Marcus’s father then. He simply slipped away and sent me a message about a child who could fill the role of Healer in the prophecy. I approached Marcus’s father, a man named Danic. Danic wasn’t interested in joining Interchron. The world was becoming dangerous, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as things are now, and as his children were quite young, he preferred to protect them himself. It wasn’t until years later, after David disappeared into the collective ether and Danic was dying that he finally came to us. By then Marcus had become a teenager, and carried a much heavier burden than when Nat met him.”

  Joan gazed at Doc for long seconds, looking disturbed. “I still don’t understand why you haven’t told us this before, Doc. Does Marcus know this story?”

  “When he and his father came to Interchron, Marcus said he remembered meeting me years before, if only vaguely. He was guarded at first, but told me the entire story about David not long after his father passed. He doesn’t remember meeting Nat. To the boys, Nat was only another passing stranger.”

  “Don’t you think he ought to know this?” Joan asked. “Don’t you think the details of our personal histories are important?”

  Doc sighed, leaning against the cold rock wall. “Of course I do. I’ve not volunteered any of this before because it would inevitably lead to questions about where Nat and I come from, what led to our voluntary estrangement, and things that happened in our youth. I’m not comfortable talking about it. For now, understand this: although Interchron has many spy networks that bring us information, I’ve had my own personal network all these years through contact with Nat. We hadn’t seen one another for years before he and his family arrived a few months ago, but he and I have been in near constant contact all this time.”

  Joan frowned, her gaze sliding between them again. “What kind of contact? How did you send messages without our Receivers knowing about it?”

  Doc sighed. Another piece of information sure to alarm her. “You aren’t going to like this.”

  Her face remained still, though her eyes widened. “Yeah, I’m getting that. Tell me anyway.”

  Doc opened his mouth, but became aware of a murmur of voices in the room behind them. He frowned and turned to find Nat doing the same. It wasn’t uncommon for Seekers to talk amongst themselves about what they’d found, but up until now the adjoining room had been silent.

  “Doc, come here please!” The raised voice belonged to Dayna.

  Joan pushed between the two men and practically sprinted into the next room. Doc and Nat were at her heels.

  “We’ve found something,” Dayna said, then turned her gaze on a young man sitting on her right. The youngster was only seventeen or eighteen years old, the equivalent of an apprentice among the Seekers. Most children didn’t manifest neurochemical abilities until adolescence. After they did, it took a good handful of years to hone their abilities into maturity.

  When all their eyes turned to him, his cheeks reddened. “Uh, I think I’ve found them.”

  “Where?” Joan asked.

  “When,” Nat corrected. Joan ignored him.

  “Three months past.”

  “That’s it?” Joan asked. “That’s not long ago. Are they okay?”

  The boy hesitated again and Dayna spoke up. “You know we can’t tell for certain.”

  Doc nodded. Most people with any kind of neurochemical ability could sense life signs, but the means of perception varied. Some sensed life as heat, including Doc. Others perceived it as the buzz of bodily functions. Seekers only sensed neurochemical abilities. Feeling abilities at all meant life—the neurochemical abilities were the result of healthy brainwave functions, after all—but they didn’t have any talent with Healing or Scanning, so it was difficult for them to tell whether the owner of the abilities was healthy or not.

  “I’m sensing five brain signatures,” the young man said.

  “Five?” Doc frowned. David, Lila and Kristee made three, and Maggie would make four. Who was the fifth? “Tell us about them.”

  “Beside the Traveler, there are two men and two women. I’ve known Lila for years and can tell she’s one of them. One of the men has an underdeveloped mind. I think he may be the one who came out of the collective recently.”

  “That’s David,” Doc supplied. “What about the other two?”

  “The woman has remarkable neurochemical abilities. The man has potential for them, but it doesn’t feel like his abilities have ever been brought forth or matured. His mind isn’t underdeveloped like...David’s is, but his abilities are.”

  “The woman is Maggie,” Joan said firmly. “I don’t know who the other man is. As long as they trust him, we needn’t worry. Are they all well? Are their neural signatures strong, healthy?”

  The young man hesitated, his eyes glazing over as he concentrated on what he sensed, and Joan’s body tensed. Doc put a hand on her shoulder. “All except the Traveler,” he said carefully. Joan relaxed. A little.

  “I’m wondering,” the young man said, then froze. His eyes shifted between all of them, the red of his cheeks deepening, and he put his gaze on the ground.

  “It’s all right, Carson,” Dayna said, putting a reassuring hand on her apprentice’s arm. “We know you can’t know for sure what’s happening, but you’re the one sensing it so your perception is the most important. Tell us your theory.”

  Carson shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m wondering if they even need help. I was scanning the earth of three months ago and suddenly the Traveler’s signature appeared.”

  “So they only just Traveled to that time,” Nat said.

  “Yes. They arrived at three months past only moments ago. And the Traveler is physically weak. From what you’ve told us of her, she’s not nearly as strong as Karl is. Perhaps she can only jump chunks of years at a time and then needs recuperation. Once she’s stronger, they’ll come the rest of the way.”

  Silence settled as they all considered the information.

  “What do you think, Doc?” Joan asked.

  “What do we know about this Kristee?” he asked Nat.

  Nat scratched his beard, thinking. “I met her when she came in, nearly two months ago. She’s on
ly eighteen. She has a younger sister. Their parents died a few years ago—Arachniman attack—and they’ve taken care of one another ever since. The younger one doesn’t have much in the way of neurochemical abilities; some talent in Protection and Transmission, I think.”

  Doc turned to Dayna. “Can you have one of your people bring this young woman here? We need her to tell us about her sister.”

  Dayna nodded and got to her feet.

  Twenty minutes later, a young woman who couldn’t have been more than fifteen came into the cavern. She had more hair than anyone Doc had ever seen. It was medium brown, reached to her waist, and so thick he doubted he would be able to gather it in both his hands. Her pale green eyes darted around, frightened.

  Doc crossed the room to her and took her hands. “What is your name, dear?”

  “Salla.”

  “Salla, please don’t be afraid. You aren’t in any trouble. We have some questions for you.”

  “I’m not afraid I’m in trouble,” she said, looking him square in the eye. “This is about my sister. Is she all right?”

  Doc arched an eyebrow. He could feel Joan’s tension behind him. “What would make you think she wasn’t?”

  “Three days ago, she told me someone needed her Traveling insight and she wouldn’t be long. I figured she’d be gone a few hours. She never came back. The next morning, I figured it took longer than she’d planned. I’ve asked around, but no one knows us well yet and I didn’t know who to talk to.” As she spoke, her voice grew heavy with emotion.

  Doc patted her hand. “I’m so sorry you didn’t have more help in this, Salla. We’re paying attention, now. I don’t want to alarm you, but your sister Traveled backward in time with two members of our community. We believe they’re trying to get back now, and may have run into trouble.”

  Salla’s eyebrows hiked at the mention of Traveling. She gazed at Doc in stunned silence.

  “What knowledge do you have of your sister’s abilities?” he asked.

  Salla’s look turned wary. “Some. Not much.”