Decoherence (6 page)

 

CHAPTER 10

“Everyone wants to believe they're special, that their choices matter and that they are truly unique. We tried applying that human fallacy to time and failed, spectacularly, to understand the truth.”

~ Dr. M. Vensula, head of the National Center for Time Fluctuation Studies I4—­2071

Friday November 29, 2069

Cannonvale, Queensland

Australia

Iteration 2

M
ac rubbed Bosco's ears in meditative circles as he contemplated the contents of the fridge. Five years married to a woman who could be a gourmet chef—­and was playing one on a dinner cruise tonight—­and he still couldn't seem to find a meal when he needed one.

Bosco stepped forward to nudge a block of aged cheddar cheese with his nose.

“You're a cheese fiend, Bosco.” At the word “cheese,” Bosco's rump hit the floor with an echoing thump. “You are not getting cheese.”

Bosco's tongue hung out.

Mac shook his head and reached for a half-­finished hoagie. He wanted a proper dinner, but he'd stayed late up at the single hotel still open on Airlie Beach where he worked as a local guide. It was his stupid fat mouth that got Sam a job helping out on the cruise. He should have kept silent when Wendy asked if anyone could fill in for the other chef who'd gone up to Townsville to be with her sister, who was in labor.

Never volunteer.

He was a former US Army Ranger, and he'd volunteered. The sergeant in him was deeply disappointed.

Sandwich in hand, he wandered back to the dining room, where Sam's latest case was spread over everything like an encroaching coral. He'd been trying to stay out of it. Someone had told him years ago that spouses needed their own hobbies, but . . .

He took a bite of his sandwich and sat down to see how Agent Parker was doing.

Poor guy. Sam hadn't even had time to train her replacement before she was swept away by the CBI and given a promotion to keep her from telling anyone what they'd found.

His assignment to Chicago had been more of the same.

Parker had identified four victims so far: Elissa Morez, Jane Doe, Amanda Leyvas, and Carolina Avalos. And there was an e-­mail from Florida District 20, south of Lake City, Florida: Leigh Locklear, a nineteen-­year-­old massage therapist who had moved to Tampa to work for a cruise line. That made no sense. She fit the phenotype the killer preferred, but Tampa? That was just too far away from anything. And she didn't have a car.

So how did she get from Tampa to Lake City?

Mac was mapping trucking routes when Sam walked in. “Hi.”

“What are you doing up?” She looked a little frazzled, her usually neat hair escaping from her bun and her white work shirt stained with something yellow. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Not really, no.” He smiled. “How was the trip?”

“Wendy paid me double when I told her I was never coming back.” She dropped her bag by the table and sat down. “I'm still never going back again. I spent more time trying to keep a drunk tourist from grabbing my butt than I did cooking.”

Mac raised an eyebrow. He knew better than to storm off and coldcock a tourist, but if Sam wanted it, the man would be in a body bag by sunup.

“It's fine, Mac,” Sam said, clearly seeing the murderous look in his eye. “I did the thumb hold you showed me, and told him if he didn't leave me alone, I'd feed him to the sharks. He spent the rest of the cruise hiding in a guest room.”

He smiled. “Good.”

“So, what are you doing?”

“Digging through the CBI travel database to see if any trucker visited all these areas.”

“And?” She sat down beside him.

“Nothing. I don't think the killer was using the main travel routes.”

She pillowed her arms on the table and laid her head down. “So . . . what? There's no connecting the victims. I've tried every angle I can think of. There's no rhyme or reason for why these victims were picked.”

“Except for the physical similarities,” he said.

“Yeah. But it's so superficial!” She sat up, and he saw a familiar look of annoyance. The criminals were doing it WRONG by golly, and his beautiful wife wasn't having it. She paused. “What? You're grinning.”

“I was just thinking of what would happen if you ever turned to a life of crime.” It would be glorious watching her storm across a continent beating henchmen into line.

“I wouldn't do that!”

“You might want to consider it as a future career option. You'd make an amazing crime boss.”

“I'd tell everyone to follow the law.”

“Crime boss, politician, they're so similar. Plus, we'd get henchmen.”

Sam giggled. “Henchmen? And wait—­
we
?”

“I'm your loyal second-­in-­command.”

She hit his shoulder. “All right. Did you find anything helpful?”

He turned the map so she could see. “Amanda Leyvas, lived in rural Alabama and worked as a middle school teacher. She didn't come back to school after spring break. When her coworker went to check on her, they found her body lying next to her car, dead and cold. The police found nothing. There was a speed trap less than a mile from her house in both directions. Leyvas hadn't left her house since midweek, and no other cars went past in the coroner's window during the time of death.”

Sam frowned. “Did they question the person who found her?”

“A sixty-­two-­year-­old woman with bad hips and a bandaged hand because she burned it baking cookies for her class. Mrs. Amil was not listed as a suspect.”

“Yeah, I can see why. The ME reported her being extra cold?” Sam raised an eyebrow.

“Not rapid postmortem cooling as far as I can tell.” Mac said. “A late-­season cold front swept through, and her windows and door were still open. I flagged it because it's the first home invasion although it doesn't look like it had anything to do with a robbery. But she's the first one who wasn't killed or dumped in a public place.”

Sam nodded slowly. “A change of pattern usually means an outside pressure, or something similar. What was she near? A rest stop maybe? Truck weight station? It would fit the target-­of-­opportunity theory.”

“There were no tire tracks in her yard, but her house is near public land, so there's a place to park a few miles away . . .” They both came to the same thought at the same time. “Hiking trails.”

“Private home on the edge of public land.” Sam's smile was fierce. She stood and sorted through the file before handing the datpad to Mac. “There it is in the crime scene photos, see? She hung her laundry out to dry, and you can see a footpath in the background. See the dirt trail?”

“So the killer is walking, sees a woman hanging her laundry . . . and attacks her?”

“Suggesting the killer picks victims before locations. And, possibly, that this phenotype is triggering uncontrollable rage.”

“That's not sane.”

“Killing usually isn't,” Sam said, taking the datpad back. “But it's a lead. Everyone who hikes has to sign in and carry a trail tag. If a trail tag is still missing when the park closes at sundown, the park rangers are alerted and go out to find the missing hiker.”

It was Mac's turn to smile. “Tracking means GPS, and a GPS means there is a time and location of the hiker. That would give us a list of suspects, if nothing else.”

“As long as they checked into the ranger station at the parking lot,” Sam said, trying to temper their expectations.

“How close is the next parking area?”

She sat and pulled up the public land files on her computer. “Thirty miles. It's on the other side of the wood. Still, someone could have parked along the side of the road.”

“And not have been noticed? Do you know how many poacher cams are lining the public lands these days?”

She made a face of disgust. “Not enough. I don't suppose she had a convenient ex in the picture, did she? A lot of serial killers get their start obsessing over one person, either killing them first or killing surrogates as they work up the nerve to kill the person they really hate. If there's a break in the pattern here, it could mean she was the targeted victim all along, and the killer was practicing on the others.

“Amanda . . .” Mac pulled the right screen up and shook his head. “No boyfriend, no family in North America. Her parents live in Panama, but she worked her way north by teaching at various schools. According to her profile on PlusWe—­you remember that? The online friend maker site?”

“I remember not using it,” Sam said.

“Yeah, well, Amanda posted every few hours, if not more often. She liked hiking, had a tiny organic garden, washed her clothes in a vintage spin machine that came with the house, and she was planning to move to Detroit at the end of the school year.”

Sam shrugged. “Sounds annoying, and I bet the school wasn't happy, but that's not a motive. Did she have any PlusWe friends in town who might have been at her house when she died.”

“Not a one. That's why she said she was moving. Most of her online friends live up in the Great Lakes region. But she did post a picture of herself hanging the laundry out, so we have an approximate time of death, which will help once Parker gets the forest rangers to give him the park data.”

He pulled up a collage of the crime scene photos. “There is something else, though. I was looking over the crime scene photos, and none of the women were found where they died. Some of the investigators noticed, but not all of them. But I looked, and there's not enough blood at any of the spots they were found. Amanda Leyvas's house was immaculate. There's no blood inside or out.”

“You'd expect blood if she were killed at home.” Sam sat close and leaned over to look at the crime scene photos. “These look almost like movie sets.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “Can we—­”

“No.”

“You didn't even—­”

“You were going to ask if we could go to the Commonwealth.”

She put on her Catholic Schoolgirl Smile. “We could use a vacation.”

“We could. But that's not a vacation. That's trying to enter a foreign country illegally.”

“But Mac.” She batted her eyes.

Mac kissed her nose. “No. Find a murder in Australia to solve.”

She groaned and leaned away.

“One of us has to be the sane one who puts their foot down. Otherwise, we'd be running all over the world trying to fix all the problems out there.”

“And that's would be a bad thing why?”

“Do you want to own the world?” Mac asked, only half joking.

She grumbled something about, “Not the worst idea,” under her breath.

“Let's get some sleep. The Davis boys are taking a boat out early for dives, and that means the shop will be in complete disarray. It'll be easier to cope with if you haven't spent all night awake worrying about this.”

Sam crossed her arms. “Can't we do anything? Send someone in? Get some information?” She nibbled on her bottom lip. “Mac, how much does a private detective cost?”

He took her hand and pulled her away from the table. “We'll look into it. Tomorrow.”

She wrapped her arms around his torso and snuggled in close. “What would I do without you?”

Mac looked down at the love of his life and kissed her head. “You'll never have to find out.”

 

CHAPTER 11

“Nothing changes faster than the future.”

~ excerpt from
A Brief Summary of Time
by Dr. Henry Troom I4—­2065

Day 187/365

Year 5 of Progress

(July 6, 2069)

Central Command

Third Continent

Prime Reality

R
ose moved around the quiet command room, trying to find the files compiled from the latest MIA runs. The lights were at 30 percent, mimicking night and discouraging anyone from lingering after their shift was over. She was alone with the soft hum of data collection interrupted only by the occasional chirp of a computer spitting out data.

Sixteen iterations had been demolished in the past twenty hours. There was no rhyme or reason that she could see, but she was searching. At the moment, she had six computers running. Five were collating data and comparing the recently destroyed timelines in a hunt for a pattern. The sixth was scrolling through the information collected from a thousand iterations in the search for Dana Cardenas, the woman in the yellow shirt Rose had found in Locker 666.

Dr. Basch had given her the name but couldn't place the adult Cardenas in any one iteration. Which was very odd. Every iteration they'd made contact with had a file. But Basch's research had only pulled up Cardenas because she was from Prime. She'd died at age six during a bombing of her city, and her DNA was on file.

One by one, the computers turned up zero results. It was improbable that Emir was operating without a reason. Even with decoherence looming, the other iterations didn't present a threat. They'd all self-­destruct when the iterational fan collapsed in that one moment where the only possible future became Prime's future. When all other options ceased to be viable, when some earth-­shattering catastrophe hit and only Prime had the answer, the other iterations would vanish.

Collecting the information made sense. Pruning certain radical futures made sense. But this current surge in missions was senseless to her.

With a quiet sigh, she went to each computer, erasing her search history and wiping the stations clean of any genetic evidence. She was supposed to be on duty watching the MIA in case there was an unexpected intrusion, not hacking into the system to run unapproved searches.

Cleaning everything up brought her a sense of peace. For a moment, she could pretend that everything was going well and enjoy the sense of awe she felt standing here.

This was the very center of the universe. Prime was the master control, the heartbeat of the universe.

Rose's fingers brushed across the synthapaper scrolls that showed the constant sine wave of time. With training, she'd learned to read each dip of the iterations.

Here, the birth of an einselected node.

There, the tragic outcome of an event that crushed a million iterations and left only four struggling forward.

The future had a unique brilliance. During the times of expansion, all of time looked like a rainbow fracturing into infinite color. Now the lines of possibility were thickening, collapsing. Decoherence was drowning the rainbow in brutal black.

Quietly, the machine drew the newest line. Tomorrow shifted into view.

Prime appeared as a thin black line at the base of the sine wave. The scroll rolled out, and the black line surged up like a wave, following the possibilities of the lesser iterations. Hour by hour, ink drop by ink drop, the future appeared. She held her breath as the wave crested and crashed down, back to where it belonged at the baseline.

For a moment the whole universe held its breath.

Prime sank, and sank, and plateaued as a rogue iteration shot past it.

Heartbeat stuttering with an unpleasant rush of fear, Rose watched another iteration take Prime's place. Another line touched the baseline and took dominance.

Someone was stealing her future.

Rose went to the communications board and dialed a number she thought she'd never need to use.

After a moment, the screen shimmered as the stern visage of Emir appeared.

“Dr. Emir, my apologies for calling at this late hour, there's been a mishap here at the command center.”

He raised a bushy white eyebrow. “A mishap? A flood perhaps? Did you run out of synthapaper? You're a commander. You are supposed to be able to handle these things on your own.”

Rose bristled at his tone, furious and fearful. “There is a problem with the machine, sir.” She only barely managed to keep her tone respectful.

“The MIA?”

“No, sir. The reader attached to the MIA. The probability fan, crashed and Prime didn't take the Prime position again. It must have a glitch.”

“Impossible.” Emir sneered. “The machine is infallible.”

“If that is the case, sir, then we have lost our place as the dominant iteration.”

“Impossible!”

“Then the machine is broken. Sir.”

Emir's scowl burned through the screen. “Call the techs. I'll be there in twenty minutes.”

R
ose slapped on her Kevlar vest with more force then was strictly required. Under the blue-­tinted glow of the lights, she found herself trying to avoid catching her reflection in the polished chrome of the lockers. Afraid she'd no longer see the pride and righ­teous fury that she needed. Afraid that she'd look into her own eyes and see confirmation that, somewhere, she'd made a wrong choice.
This was an impossible situation. Untenable. Utterly ridiculous.

The silent room became an echo chamber of memories. From her first mission as a freshly minted lieutenant shaking with excitement at the idea of going to a different timeline, to a seasoned veteran, shaking with exhaustion from the years she'd spent in the pursuit of maintaining their Primacy. Now she wondered if all those choices had been right. There had been a few tiny, unauthorized changes to ensure that Samantha Rose got the promotion, to ensure that the stars aligned for her and her alone.

All of those choices haunted her. Begged her to question if that was why Prime was no longer truly the Prime. If her selfishness had doomed all of them to a horrible fate.

The locker room door snapped open with a metallic clatter. “Do you know what hour it is?” Cornelius Senturi, her second-­in-­command, asked as he opened the locker next to hers.

“I see the surgeon was unable to fix your lack of discipline,” Rose said, but there was no bite to her words. She was glad the emergency had pulled in Senturi instead of Donovan. Despite Emir's assurances, the thought of having two nodes out of the iteration made her want to vomit.

“It's three in the morning,” Senturi grumbled.

“Time is irrelevant.” The response was almost automatic now. Everyone in Central Command knew time was an illusion. And the illusion was running out.

Senturi gave her a put-­upon look. “Sleep isn't an illusion. I'm supposed to be healing. Why are we going
now
? This can wait until I've had my beauty rest.”

Rose didn't even bother turning to watch him strip. Senturi fishing for compliments was as common as the ticking of a second hand. “No amount of sleep is going to make you pretty, Senturi.”

“If time is ours to control, we can wait to run this op until after breakfast. That's all I'm saying.”

She tugged her boots on. “Time slipped.”

“What?” Senturi demanded, pushing her shoulder so she was forced to turn. He glared at her with pale eyes and an ugly sneer that very few ever saw. “Time slipped? What's that even supposed to mean?”

“We are currently not the prime iteration. Someone else has taken over.”

“Impossible.”

“Improbable,” Rose corrected calmly. “There wouldn't be a possibility fan if things were impossible.” Her hand shook a little as she thought about it.

Somewhere out there was the far edge of the fan. A world where she existed, but was so foreign as to be completely alien, and they were going there.

This wasn't a matter of small-­change iterations where the wrong politician was elected to the World Council—­they were going to a place where there was no World Council. No Central Command. No Ministry of Defense. Nothing she knew existed on the far edge of the fan.

Too late, she realized Senturi was scrutinizing her. She stared back. “What?”

“Commander, is this a drill?” For the first time in his life, he looked serious.

She lifted her chin. “Does it matter? If you can't perform correctly on a drill, you won't do your job in the field. Suit up and meet me in the jump room. I'm taking Bennet in the field, but you'll be needed no matter what.”

“What about Donovan?”

She grabbed her travel kit from her locker, slammed the door shut, and waited for the gene lock to cycle closed. “This is not a situation we can afford to risk two nodes on. If something goes wrong, Donovan needs to stay here.”

“This doesn't sound like a drill, ma'am.”

“Then maybe this will be your first bad hair day.” With a small, cynical smile, she walked out of the room, leaving Senturi to admire the chiseled perfection of his reflection . . . even with the confused look on his face. It felt good to rattle his cage, and safer keeping the Council off guard. The longer they were kept in the dark, the more time she had to put everything back together.

Under her breath, she hummed the tune to Humpty Dumpty.
All the king's horses and all the king's men.

The jump room was really three rooms built in concentric circles focused on the time portal. The core was dark still, lit only by the sullen, purple glow of the closed portal that rippled with lazy waves. The secondary circle should have had data screens brightening the place like noon on a clear summer day, but today there was nothing. A sick feeling in the pit of her stomach made her blood colder than a time jump.

“Commander Rose.” Dr. Emir waved to her from the far side of the room.

She walked through the outer layer, where techs in pale mint-­green scrubs and masks carefully prepared for every eventuality. An agent could step through the portal and be in an operating room in under ninety seconds if needed.
Which has been necessary more and more often.
“Doctor.”

“I traced the aberrant iteration to the outer edge of the fan.”

“Let me guess, dinosaurs and cavemen?”

It was a joke, but Emir treated her to a withering glare. “One would think that after committing such an egregious error, you would be do your best to perform as a professional. Your levity is not welcome. Nor are your sloppy mistakes.”

“My mistakes?” Practice kept her tone from rising or from blood flushing her cheeks an unsightly red. He didn't know what she'd done in those other iterations. No one knew. So he could only be blaming her for the machine readings that were beyond her control. “Don't put the blame for this fiasco on my doorstep. We both know I'm not the one who's made a mistake.” It was so close to what she wanted to say and still so far away.

“The machine and my science are infallible,” Emir said curtly.

“Your MIA and your science aren't being questioned.” Only his motivations, but she kept that to herself because she had a healthy sense of self-­preservation and a desire to live to see old age. Facts were facts, and the one fact that could never be forgotten was that Emir was the one who chose who lived and died. “But this isn't an iteration where my team was sent in and failed. This is . . .” The word IMPOSSIBLE bubbled up in her mind. “Unheard of.”

“Nevertheless,” Emir said. “It will be your fault in a few short hours. Unless your team manages to topple the iteration.”

Senturi walked in, dressed in the team's black uniform and trailing the other seven members of their jump crew behind him.

Rose motioned for them to go into the second tier for briefing.

Senturi glanced at the dark ring and crossed over to her and Emir. “Where's the data for this launch?” he asked.

Her mouth twisted into a bitter scowl. “There is none. We have no operatives there. No safe house. Not even local identities.” She looked at Emir and hoped he read her silent fear. They were taking a huge risk sending her in first. It was a calculated risk, no one had more experiences on the far side of the MIA portal than her, but she'd only gone in blind once before. Her knee still ached some days because of that mission.

Emir ignored her with practiced arrogance. “It's an inconsequential iteration on the far side of the third fan. There were never enough variations of it to justify exploration.”

“So why is it taking precedence?” Rose demanded, furious at this little nothing-­timeline. There were
rules
. The prime iteration was always the one with the most variations branching off it, like the trunk of a tree. A healthy tree had many branches and deep roots. A weak tree had a few spindly branches and shallow roots.

A terrifying thought gripped her.
They call us Gardeners. Was it possible? Could we have pruned away too many branches?

No.
Logic asserted itself, stuffing her fearful fantasies back down to her subconscious psyche.

Senturi was studying her again. “Commander?”

She shook her head. “Your orders, sir?”

“Three-­man strike team,” Emir said.

She nodded. “Senturi, have your team on standby in case we need an extraction.”

“Aye, ma'am.”

Emir's eyes flared with cold fury. “Rose, go find out why these parasites are stealing our future.”