Max entered her place in the new timeline.
Found herself in a squishier office chair than she left, leaning precariously to one side. Apparently pawing through the contents of a bottom side-drawer.
Snooping? Okay, to be fair, that doesn't not seem like something I'd do.
Papers. Pen box. Stick of gum. Carved crystal of old Scotch, nearly empty. An exquisitely engraved silver handgun.
Wasn't her desk.
She pushed away.
Okay, but where am I?
Nowhere familiar. The office was tiny but felt grossly expensive. Walls of exotic, patterned wood veneers, glowing and reflecting through thick layers of clear honey lacquer. Dozens of inset lamps illuminated built-in shelves filled with books, artifacts, improbable statuary. Overhead, a gold-leaf tray ceiling with recessed lighting cast warm diffusion. Not so much as a fingerprint or speck of dust anywhere.
An embroidered Roman shade covered what she assumed to be a picture window to her right.
I need to get my bearings here.
She tried to pull the shade aside, but it resisted. Set in tracks. Once she located the switch, it retreated noiselessly toward the ceiling. As it ascended, it revealed more of the world beyond the window, starting with a sliver of deep-blue glass. Then a wide inlaid-teak walkway just outside, harshly lit, optically distorted. The teak transitioned seamlessly into a polished white side-wall topped by a floating chrome-tube railing. She released the switch. Beyond the railing, only her reflection in the window superimposed over dark, calm waters.
I'm…on a boat.
Clouds beyond the distant horizon picked up the amber light of some city or another.
She turned, opened the door opposite the window. Exited to an expansive circular bedroom - must have been twenty-five feet across. It carried some of the same design themes as the office while layering details Max recognized as super-high-end, but which always struck her as tacky.
She sauntered though the room.
A bright barrel-chandelier, centered over the bed, scattered light through countless thousands of crystal elements. Beneath her feet, short, dense carpeting in cream, with spiraling gold stems and flowers. On each side of the bed, lacquered walnut dressers with veined marble tops and exquisitely detailed gold inlays, mirroring the carpet's patterns. And a comically ginormous stained-glass peacock stood guard over it all, perched above the pinned fabric of the headboard.
She stifled a laugh. Excess much?
This doesn't feel like somewhere we'd hang on purpose.
I mean, maybe Chloe brought us here ironically?
But that gun doesn't belong to her. Unless it's new? Hmmm.
Drawn shade-panels ringed the bedroom.
No apparent exits or views outside.
Hang on…those drapes over there are different.
She crossed the room, pushed them aside. More of the blue-tinted ballistic glass - a hidden slider. It was heavy, but opened easily, letting in a blast of fresh salt air. Outside, a lit balcony jutted from another walkway. Its sidewall dropped to glass, providing an ocean view to anyone lounging in the low deck-mounted sofa ahead.
She exited, went to the railing. Leaned out. The metal was cold under her forearms. She counted four levels down to the water, glowing aqua from underwater accent lights. Small pointy fish darted below the surface.
Okay. A big, big boat.
She scanned up, fore and aft. The aggressive lines of the dark blue hull contrasted with the softly lit organic white curves above the main deck. At least two or three more levels towered overhead. And something bright, hidden from view. Stars twinkled through high clouds.
Six or seven stories tall? Okay, Max, what are we doing on a private super-yacht? Whose is it?
The evening was quiet.
She headed aft. Maybe she'd find Chloe or…their hosts or…anyone? Least a better view?
Fleeting thoughts of an alternate vacation ended once she hit the hot-tub deck, behind the master suite. Saw the raw chaos of the open sky.
Well then.
Somebody's been busy.
She lifted herself off the deck for a better look.
Drifted up and back, slowly, like a kite, until the vessel was a thin aqua outline little bigger than her shoe. Spotlights reached up to untold thousands of tiny frozen bubbles. The arrangement spiraled skyward from a recessed Vulcan cannon on the roof. Its roar long over, not even smoke lingered.
An ascending series of larger bubbles trapped angry flowers of red fire, dark smoke and the beginnings of sharp, deadly shrapnel. Exploding smart-rounds fired from hidden tubes, captured mid-burst, looking for all the world like rotten hell-balloons.
Max dropped closer to the sea, took a lap.
Across the water, up front, two speedboats. Bubbled while racing back toward the yacht. Armed crews of three men were frozen in each, drifting harmlessly above the wavelets.
She completed her circle. Toward the rear of the yacht, at the waterline, an open wet-garage with water-toys. Empty parking spaces for the speedboats she saw earlier, as well as an extended crane, empty, and big spot for some other vehicle, missing.
Prolly a mini-sub?
That would suggest that someone bolted.
She bubbled herself, dipped below the surface, but visibility dropped to zero in the darkening blue. If there were an escaping sub, she wouldn't find it like this. Not without more effort. If it was important, she'd come back.
She broke the surface, dropping the bubble. A residual film of water collapsed, sprinkling droplets.
Back on the yacht, unconscious men lay strewn across decks and levels, their weapons in varied states of powdered decay or mechanical disassembly.
Okay. Picture time. I must have dropped from above, triggered some defensive system. Armed dudes reacted. Someone bailed below the surface. No signs of other crew. If they're still on board, they'll be huddled up in the citadel.
She and Chloe flirted with the idea of floating offices. Large yachts like this one had armored panic rooms with redundant communications and engine controls. The crew and guests would have been drilled to head there at the first sign of piracy or other troubles.
Okay, if that's the 'what' - why am I here?
She dropped to the deck.
Felt her ear.
Oh. Course I'm wearing an earpiece.
Ask someone, dummy.
She tapped it. "Hey, uh, guys? Anyone there?"
Chloe answered at once, voice stressed. "Find anything? Clock's ticking, dude. Like, literally."
Max sat on the back of a low sofa. "Chloe! Hey! Um…I'm just curious why I'm on a boat, exactly?"
Silence.
"Shit." All energy drained from Chloe's voice. "…jump."
"…yeah."
"Okay, Max…well, hi there, I guess? If you were coming backward, you'd know where you are, which means you must have come in sideways. Damn. Rubber-band. Okay. Do this - mark the moment and check your phone? I'm sending you a map. Why don't you come to us? We can compare realities. Then reset, keep going or…whatever. Doesn't super-matter - I mean, shit…just another reverse-engineering loop."
Max took out her phone. "That doesn't sound cheerful?"
After a brief delay, a message appeared, linking to a pin on a map.
"What are you doing there? Never-mind. On my way."
Emily was trapped. Trembling, hunched in the muddy drain-pipe that ran beneath a lonely dirt logging road.
None of them wanted to go back.
Fuck!
They captured Jason first. Tased him from a drone, where the edge of the forest crept into the last small town. Another twenty feet and he would have made it to the trees. Had a chance.
Not that they had a chance.
Emily jerked.
Mira's wounded screams cut through the forest again.
That was worse. Her pursuers were making Mira yell. Instead of helping her.
Trying to draw Em out.
Half-hour before, half a mile into the forest, Mira took a wrong step. She was leading Emily through the undergrowth, slipped down a short embankment into some rocks. Something crunched wrong.
They tried to stay together as long as they could. Hobbled as one, every step torture over the uneven ground. But the men with the dogs came right for them; excited barks brought closer by Mira's pain. She finally gave up. Sat on a log, leg bloody. Pushed Emily away, told her to go on. At least one of them might get to freedom.
It tore at Emily.
She didn't want to go back.
But she didn't want to be separated either.
There wasn't any help to get out here.
So this was it.
She was it.
Stay or go?
She tried both at once. Not too far.
Found a place to hide.
Every rustle echoed inside her pipe.
Daylight blazed from each end as opposing circles, crushing the darkness.
There she was, caught in the middle. Dirty.
She repositioned to let blood back into her sleeping foot. Pins and needles flooded. When she twisted her body, her hand found a twig in the mud. Pencil-sized. Something familiar to hold. She tried to close her ears to Mira's distant cries. But she couldn't close her heart.
Every instinct pushed her out the exit, back to Mira.
She was on the edge of giving in.
But instead, she stayed. Prayed to whoever was listening for someone, anyone, to help them.
It's not fair! We were so close!
She stabbed at the mud with the twig.
Nervous autopilot.
Rough sketch.
The roughest.
She couldn't make it out until she finished. Not that she knew what it meant. Her drawings were only ever meaningful to those people back there. The ones who imprisoned and shared her.
It was the same for Jason. Mira was different. She saw hers as she went.
Emily squinted at the faint lines in the mud. Sorta looked like a building. From above? Not like any she'd seen. Three buildings sticking out of a circle, maybe?
She didn't hear the dogs until it was too late. Her eyes shot up when they blocked the light.
Left side first, then right.
NO!
Trapped.
Once they saw her, they barked like it was the only sound in the universe.
She put her hands over her ears.
Always caught in the middle.
The one on the left charged, splashing in toward her.
Big German shepherd, from the grounds.
She put her arm up to protect herself, fell back into the mud.
It hesitated, barked once, took another step. Stopped.
Pulled back, as if given some silent signal.
Both dogs backed out of the pipe, away from view.
Her heart sank again as the drone dropped down. Men's voices drew closer.
Caught.
At least Mira's screams had finally stopped.
Max snapped her fingers mid-fold.
She wasn't sure why.
Random.
The dark sea around her displaced to an aerial view of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
Half the sprawl below was jeweled in the nighttime romance of faded yellow street-lamps, while the remainder suffered under the clinical blue-white glare of newer LED fixtures. Old streetcars ran cobblestone roads through charming old-world buildings. Contrasting modern construction, commercial and industrial, radiated out to suburbs, intermingled with low billboards and hilly forests of untamed growth.
Half everything.
Max descended to the spot Chloe marked, east of the city center.
Tapped her ear. "Alright, Chlo, I'm here. I'm in a parking lot between buildings, off the main street. Where to next?"
Chloe came on, her voice more relaxed, "Hang on, coming to you. What lot are you in? Hardware store or the bike shop?"
A lazy beetle buzzed Max's face, hovered, bumbled off. She waved it away, glanced around. "Both? I'm between 'em, I guess? Under a light."
"Okay…hey. I see you. Turn left…no, your left. Other…left." Max spun the right way, caught a flash of Chloe over a hedge. Waved. They met in the middle, greeted with a quick hug and kiss.
Chloe spoke first. "Welcome back, or…ya know, here, I guess?"
"Thanks? I hope?"
Chloe guided her to the far edge of the lot, where the faded blacktop eroded to weedy grit, dark trees. "Don't hold onto that too tight - whatever you did to try and head off this shit show, it didn't change things enough."
"Uh. Okay? What's the dramarama 'round here?" Max followed Chloe down a pebbly dirt path, around the dark corner of a metal-clad building.
Ty waited for them beside the door, wearing some new flavor of full-body tech-armor. The shadows of gently blowing leaves rolled off his shoulder, but his gear didn't reflect much of the lamp-light that made them. His eyes were dead-tired.
"Hey, Ty."
He nodded. "Max." Pulled aside the metal barn door as they neared, flooding them with harsh light. He followed them in. A team decked in similar gear maintained relaxed, outward-facing defensive positions near doors and windows. One secured the entry behind them.
"What was the alteration date?" Chloe led them across the otherwise-empty warehouse. The space was echoey; their steps skiffed through the thick layer of dust and small grains.
"It was about a month back. Morning of January 20th." They passed under a couple of drone body-forms Max didn't recognize. Hanging in mid-air among the rafters. Their skins were semi-translucent, gloss-white. Shaped like upside-down raindrops. Shifting geometric lines in orange and blue glowed beneath their milky surfaces. No visible means of propulsion. Or purpose.
On the far side of the room, two men and a woman lay prone, zip-tied.
Before Max could inquire, Chloe kicked open a section of floor with a loud bang. A steel plate on recessed tracks bounced once, slid away, revealing concrete steps to a basement level.
Chloe descended first. "20th? Not far, then…right before. Okay. Once we're in, I'll throw you a timeline, some highlights, and you can let us know what you changed, maybe where events are different for you?"
"Okay." Max followed her down.
"Once we understand what your plan was, we'll do our best to help figure out what you can do to push the timeline farther, yeah?"
"Sure?"
Chloe, over her shoulder, "Walking our event-check forward from the beginning, our first wave should be identical. The party hit on New Year's, right? Assholes, traps and toys?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Okay, then between, you rescued Emo, put up Skywatch…I pwned Area51, we rolled across a future-past project at S-6, and then the big scary alien whatever was whatevered?"
Max ducked her head to avoid a twisted fluorescent bulb. "That sounds right."
"Okay, cool. The second wave began a few days after your tweak-date, so I'm guessing—"
"I think I need to better understand what you mean by 'wave'?" Max trailed Chloe into the plain cinder-block basement.
It was longer than it was across, with tall racks of wires and electronics lining one wall and workbenches at the other. Bare bulbs, wire runs, and venting ran along the ceiling. Concrete support columns for the floor above broke up the space. Raw. Unfinished. Smelled like mold, fresh plastic, and electricity. The entire aesthetic was like the polar opposite of Max's first few moments in this new timeline.
A couple of op techs fiddled with equipment across the span, while another catalogued the contents of benches with the help of a small, scanning holo-drone.
Too many questions.
Just…wait. Absorb.
Juliet laughed along. They were both idiots, but they could be funny sometimes. The self-designated clowns of her new study group. Bro-ish, for sure. But that wasn't all they were. Wasn't ever all they were.
Juliet was on the floor, chair at her back.
They took over a common-area lounge for this session.
Sierra rolled her eyes. "Guys. Come on. Focus this time? Please? Test is in two days."
"Fine. Be lame."
"Laaaaaaame, bruh." The first guy threw popcorn at Sierra, who blocked. She hit him back with a stern glare. Dodged another fluff without rolling out of her striped bean-bag lounger.
Juliet tried. Why couldn't she hold on to his name? Grant…or…Baxter or…some stereotypical East-Coast-ivy-money-sounding… Only her second session, but she always remembered people's names. No excuses.
She found them on the cork board in the hall. This group was for calc. She was okay but could use the boost. She found another group for Wednesdays, for her class on computer-assisted data-reporting. Good time to retrench, shore up some of her weaker grades.
It was better this way. Her almost daily commute downtown ate too much of her life. And if her morning in Vegas with that sexist asshole was any indication of what her future co-workers would be like at the stuffy old Journal, Max did her a favor.
Should reach out again.
Say something.
Journal didn't matter. She'd already lined up a new internship with a broadcast news network, starting in a month. Mid-town. Better schedule. Better balance. Still journalism, still writing. Just a different medium and angle. Would be good experience. She'd do another traditional newspaper internship next year to round her resume. Add more contacts to her personal network.
The bros were still goofing on each other.
She saw movement from the corner of her eye. Easily caught the thrown popcorn in her mouth, eyes back to her notebook without acknowledging it.
Sierra and the others burst into surprised cheers for Juliet, derision for her would-be popcorn-sneak-attacker.
She smiled to herself.
Maybe she didn't have to try to adult so hard.
It'd all work out.
She was only beginning.
Max took a stool. Waited for them to share. Often learned more by listening first.
Ty leaned against a nearby support pillar, serious, looming. There was something else in his posture. Almost a hint of sadness?
Chloe slid the wrong way onto a high-backed metal bench stool, leaned her arms on the backrest. She fidget-swiveled side-to-side with a squeak. "Okay, lemmie bring you current. Not much happened on the 20th. You were zonked from Jeremy's overnight satellite rescue gig the night before. Cash is good, right? Only distraction was that Gabriel dude I let break in. Everything else, pretty much business as usual…or…whatever passes for us.
"Next couple days, we stumbled into action on that whole human-trafficking horribleness…well, you did. Moonlighting gig; trigger was a drone slip that freaked a ship full of twitchy slaver assholes. They dumped containers of live people in the ocean. Bad form. You jumped backward, rescued the peeps, kicked their goddamn asses like a fuckin' boss. Still…same?"
Max poked at the strange dusty objects on the bench. Looked up at Chloe's last. "Wait, go back. Me? I went back to the ship after bringing people to HQ?"
Chloe nodded, pulled up a holo. "Yeah. Epic. You were super fuckin' pissed, too."
Ty nearly smiled. "Thing of beauty. Caught the video later."
Max shrugged at Chloe. "Interesting. That's different. My last timeline, I moved everyone to LV, but you were the one who went over solo and secured the ship after. And Ty, you even won a bet with Hector about her final speed-run time."
"I'm not surprised. Beyond his five seconds, he underestimates people. Win anything good?"
"Heh. Hector had to sing about ponies at a giant karaoke show in Japan. Last Sunday. Valentine's…did we not—"
Chloe brought it back. "Okay, guys - that's still only one minor change. Could be random, from the timing offset. I thought about it - going, you know? But you were on a holy-mission. Headed back to fuck with 'em before I could even think to get dressed. We were all angry, for obvious reasons."
"Like, how angry though? Bad-angry?" asked Max.
Chloe shook her head. "Nothing killy or anything, but you fully represented our collective aggro with the whole 'wrathful god-mode' routine." She ended with a smile.
The holo record between them cleared, then showed the container ship, suspended half a mile above the water, broken in two, tilted at off-angles. Storm raging around it. Lightning. Bubbled shipping containers orbited like it was an old-school model of an atom. All the while, a bright blue dot created mayhem inside the wireframe of the castle structure.
Ty added, "Departments are still trading the clips around. Callin' it 'training.'"
That's…but okay… "Keep going. Interesting change. Be honest, I thought about it." Max shrugged.
Chloe put up project data, images, network diagrams, interdiction efforts. "Okay, after you handed 'em their asses, we fast-tracked an insider deal with a UN sub-committee and the Interpol network, going after the trafficking network, leaving them as the front-end —"
"Okay, that part sounds right." Max shuffled.
Chloe fast-forwarded through maps, news coverage, photos of dudes bundled into police vans. "And we're walking… Moving on, day later I worked from Groom. You slept in. Left yourself a note about a train bombing in Madrid. Ty?"
"Yeah. Nice day in Spain. Easy save." He slow-winked at Max. "We were gearing for weekly drills when you caught up to us, all bed-head with your little pink post-it. You and me each took a team, wormed over and slapped down a split-cell of ungrateful terrorist types. Saved a whole lotta civilians from expiring during their commutes home. And politely asked the bad guys a few questions that helped us track down the dudes supplying their tech and explosives. Forensics took the ball, HQ followed up on finance. We delivered everybody to the cops in Madrid, with a nice package of evidence and supporting intel."
Chloe jumped back in with a sleepy stretch and a yawn. "…and thennnn…you made it home in time to join meee halfway through a surprise inbound call from the sales-schmo for the Evil Empire."
Max paged through frames from Chloe's holo with a wave. "In this timeline, we handled Madrid ourselves instead of calling it in. Huh. So…that means I was in the field all day…no solo world tour, no photo safari. Sadface. Those were sweet shots. Okay - I think I was way more hands-on this branch. It's interesting. That call, was it still Wallace?"
"Yep. Minion of lameness reached out, basically said they'd give us the country to STFU and go away," Chloe chuckled. "Paraphrasing Mr. Shirt. After dumping his people somewhere super cold, you laughed in his face and threw the whole human slave-trade thing back on him, along with a few other forward-looking examples of why their kind of world wasn't gonna work for us. Closed with the whole 'no - you shut the fuck up and go away, cause you're all evil dicks and you're not the boss of me' speech." Chloe reflected, looked at Ty, "I had tingles."
"Okay…that's…way different. The tone of it too." Max picked up a keypad, wires hanging loose. Turned it over.
What was I thinking over here? How did it go like that?
All I changed was the interview, right?
"Mean assholes, global destruction, not a social call." Chloe rolled her eyes. "We relocated The Wallace to join his cronies on the moon. Recalled Soph from her vacation, sent her along to help peel their brains—"
Ty interrupted, "She delivered us more heavies the next day, by the by…"
Max dropped the keypad. "Ripples getting bigger. This went different." Wiped her hands on her jeans.
"Really?" Chloe swung her legs.
"Yeah, this path was…a lot more aggressive. On our part. Mine, I guess."
Chloe shrugged. "Pretty fuckin' measured from my point of view. I mean, you know, they didn't take it very well."
Ty, grim, crossed his arms. "Here we go…"
Chloe nodded solemnly. In a quiet voice, "Sophie…she's one of…the recent casualties in our current little side-branch—"
"Wait - why?" Max dropped onto a stool. "Soph's dead here!? There's no fucking way that's canon."
Ty shifted, uncomfortable.
Chloe slumped, held up her hands. "Temporary trade-offs. She insisted we save the others this pass. You'll understand."
"Let's skip to that part."
"Yeah. K. Sorry. It was two days. After we absconded with Wall-ass. They hit back with the start of wave two. And we've all been in a rolling triage since. Ten steps forward, eleven steps back to gain two steps forward. Rinse. Repeat."
Shit…but Soph… "I'm sorry, Ty. I know from my last timeline." Max turned back, continued, "Okay, but, no, Chlo - I'm lost. Explain for real - what do you mean by they hit back? And how the fuck is Soph staying dead an acceptable anything to any of us?"
Ty glanced from Max to Chloe and back, puzzled.
Chloe had that faraway look, like she was processing.
Max, under her breath, "Okay, this branch took a turn." She picked up a heavy ball-bearing, cold. Rolled it in her hand. Set it down with a hard metallic thump.
A couple of techs and an operator stopped at the sound. Listened in.
"Here." Chloe cleared, threw new diagrams, images into the air around them. Of strewn bodies. Burnt homes. News articles. Maps. "Alright. We're obviously not on the same page. Day one, two days after that meeting with Wallace, a…retaliation effort of sorts kicked off. They straight-up executed two-hundred of our people in coordinated attacks around the world."
Max froze. "Holy shit. Seriously? Why? What's the point? I mean…how do they think this is gonna end?"
"This is new to you then? That's…funny isn't exactly the right word, but…everything we know, from the other loops, you hand-carried to us on cubes through rewinds. You were the only one of us who was there, and now, even you don't remember…sorry. These pics, reports from that day, they're all from that very first timeline. No rhyme or reason to the targeting, other than people being out on their own. Some on the way to work, others at home, out, or sleeping. Just…bang. Collateral damage too."
"This is all wrong." Max picked up a lump of clay, squeezed hard. "Did we save—"
Chloe held up her hand. "Of course. Oh my god, of course. Final pass at day one was shiny, dude. They fucked shit up, but we're us, so with some badass collective effort, we unfucked it just as hard." Chloe got up, paced.
The air around them swirled with local news reports from an undone version of this alternate branch. Chloe continued. "The hits were a mixed bag. Some by low-level family-style operators, others made to look like random street violence. Others, 'accidents' or staged like arson or terrorism - even bystanders to random gang hits. All over the map. That hasn't changed. It was the tight timing and the collection of them that first stood out. Common thread of us, obvs."
Ty was troubled. "…I'm sorry to interrupt you, Chloe - Max - just real quick, I gotta ask - if all this is new to you, how bad was it where you came from?"
Chloe squinted, added, "And what, exactly, did you change on the 20th to get us here?"
Max squished the ball of clay in her hand. Deflated. "I just dropped back and left myself a note - to cancel a meeting with Juliet. That was the only change I made. In-n-out like a trout. No interactions. Kept it under two minutes? Following through with that interview - it went bad. Gave them an opening to attack us in the press, which led to spiraling waves of negative coverage and—"
Ty and Chloe exchanged quick looks, as did others in the room.
Chloe knitted her brows. "Bad press. Seriously? Was that the worst of it?"
Max shrugged. "So far. -Ish. I mean, it was a coordinated bad-guy push, pretty widespread, growing a life all its own. Jillian seemed more worried than usual. Plus, Juliet was missing, a few folks in New York got killed. All this went down while you and I were on Steve for our mini-break. We only came back last night, caught up to all the craziness this morning. After untangling things, we made the call, I made a quick change, and now, here I am…or…we are."
Chloe shook her head. "Damn, dude. History turns on the weirdest shit sometimes. Okay, we can agree this isn't an improvement over here? Right?"
"Understatement," muttered one of the techs.
"No," said Ty. "But this…right here…this is good news, friends." He put his hands where his pockets would be on civilian clothes. Caught himself. Crossed his arms instead.
Chloe nodded, slouched into her seat. Ran her fingers through her hair, pulling it back. "No shit. It's finally over. It's all over now. We know exactly what to change to make it stop for good. That's…such a huge fucking relief after the fight we've had, Max. Keepin' a brave face, but we're not quite treading water here, you know?"
A couple of nods from others in the room.
Damn. Okay. Wrong turn.
And maybe a warning?
"Chlo - they planned the New Year's thing for more than a year. Something like what you're talking about, coordinated hits, people, places; that's not easy to pull off either. Means it's something else they have planned. Maybe it was a backup to what we were going through in the last branch, but this will be in their back pocket when I revert things."
"Yeah. True. But…we might be able to help you there." Chloe smiled, rapid-fire holos flashed names, faces, metadata, rotated, interconnected with pyramidal hierarchies below them. A senator's husband. Two competing crime syndicate bosses. A board member of a major telecom company. Owner of an alt-media network. "The Wallace guy knew the plan in general but didn't have names of the leads or any of the real execution details that would help us here. We've taken down a handful of folks he did know, across reboots - worked their networks, standard 'flip our way up the chain' stuff. That and your rewind-cubes from our future selves are how we've gotten this far, but it's like everything is so fucking compartmented with these people. No idea how they get anything done, honestly…Sophie was workin' her brain to the pan before…well…you know…but she couldn't pull what wasn't in their heads. Fortunately, that's not all we have."
Max looked from face to face. "Okay guys - this branch - please, I need you to help me understand it. In case we see it again - that first hit was nearly a month ago in this timeline - what's happened since?"
"Motherfuckers took the gloves off." Ty dropped his arms, fists clenched.
Kate signed the last of the checks. Left them in the 'out' tray at the edge of the desk.
There was something old-fashioned about the feel of real paper in her hands. Permanently committing the practiced flow of a careful signature.
In the beginning, it made everything a touch more formal. Which made things feel more official. Real.
They'd done some good since then, even as everything else seemed to get crazier. Especially over the last month. But in spite of the world outside her bubble and all that remained undone, she clung tightly to the starfish principal.
It mattered to the ones they could help.
She smiled, flashing back to the early days. All apprehension melted away once the first groups of therapy animals arrived. The goats and sheep and cows and buns and other farm critters were so excited when they were released. When they knew they were home. Cows kicking their hind legs mid-run, so happy to have space. Open green fields, heated barns, forests. Clear skies. A few small streams that fed a handful of ponds on nearly three-hundred acres of protected land.
The animals seemed happy to have each other, too. The alpacas watched over the sheep. The sheep kept the baby goats from terrorizing the chickens. For too long, anyway. There were taller things for them to stand on. Like the lambs.
Speaking of…she checked her watch.
Mind back on her day. There was time for a quick walk-through before the next group of at-risk kids hit the front gate. Check in on folks, and make sure everyone with a tail was happy and healthy.
Whenever it synced with her class schedule, she tried to be here for orientation days and graduations especially. The before and after, in a way. In time, she'd have her own graduate degree in counseling. Until then, real counselors did the most delicate work, while The Amber Foundation provided silent funding. Which was, in turn, secretly funded by grants from Max's company. Whole other story there. But this was Kate's vision, this farm, this camp on the outskirts of Portland. One of many good works she'd been allowed to realize while developing her skills. With her dad's help and guidance.
We've all been so incredibly blessed.
She exited the shared office, a converted bedroom of the original Victorian farmhouse, headed for the screen door that led out back. Half-opened it with a creak.
A voice behind her. "Miss Marsh? Kate? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you come in."
Kate stopped, turned. The office administrator, one of the permanent on-site staff. She smiled warmly, "Good morning, Anthony. How are you feeling today? How is your mother?" He was a gentle soul, the older brother of one of their earliest graduates.
"I'm doing very well, and she's improving, thank you. She asked after you. Here." He pulled a soft-padded envelope from a drawer, handed it to her. "I didn't want to forget again; a messenger dropped this off for you last week."
"Thank you." She accepted it, felt something small inside. Corners. When she opened it, an unmarked USB-drive slid into her hand. She re-examined the front and back of the package but found only her name.
"Did the messenger say who it was from?"
"I wasn't here when it was delivered. I'm sorry."
"It's okay. If it's been here a week, another hour won't hurt anything. I'll see what it is when I get back from my visit." She set the drive on the desk next to her notebook and bag.
"Would you like some company?"
Without pause, she nodded. "I'd like that. It's turning into a pretty day outside, don't you think?"
They headed outside to commandeer a golf-cart to the top of the hill.
She slowed to let a new family of ducks waddle across the path.
Max searched their faces.
This timeline was a dead-end, so the eavesdroppers gave up any pretense at continuing their work, closed in. Took stools at the benches, leaned against pillars or racks. They all nodded at Ty's stark description.
Gloves off, huh?
They looked beat up for sure.
"What are we doing…about the victims? From that first attack. You said reverse engineering loops? What's the real damage over here, Chlo?"
"It's gotten way bigger than it was, and it's mostly been on your shoulders. Nearly five months have passed for you, since that first day…"
"Wow. Shit."
"Surprise. Meanwhile, us dead-branchers - sorry, gallows humor - we've been working backward on intel, and the triage plans to hand off to PastUs. And once you rewind however far, our younger, fresher selves execute those final plans from our alt-future - to build each new permanent day. If it's a fail, we re-examine, adapt to changes, start over. If we pull it off, we start working on the next day."
"Trying." Ty shrugged.
Chloe paused. "Lemmie start over. Now that I know where you're coming from, I see the gaps."
"Please? Thanks?"
Chloe ran an impromptu motion-graphic outlining the events, complete with stick figures. "You couldn't fix everything; couldn't be everywhere at once. That first day in the old timeline, you took half a day, deconstructed everything with the teams. Rewound with a cube with a list of victim's names, all the data we'd put together, news, police reports, and moment-by-moment plans to fix things - a hopeful present from all of us in that first timeline stub. We just carried those plans out here in our branch once you got back."
"It worked?"
"Yeah," Chloe fidgeted. "We let everyone who was targeted know, had our people moved, sent our teams or local LE in to intercept street level guys before the hits started, you know. We only had a twelve-hour lead, but with hard intel - it's what we could do. Shit-ton of work, but it went okay and took us down to zero casualties, two wounded. Caught some smalltime bad guys. Progress."
"Go team us."
Ty spoke up. "Yeah, but…the next real day, they started over, same time, only it was three-hundred. Different people, different places. New day and a rehash of the same operational plan."
Chloe wove in additional images, hand-carried across rewinds from dead branches past. "More people targeted on day two meant it was more complicated to fix. Took us a few more successive days to work out the rescue logistics to send back for that wave, and guess it took us a few tries before we got it right here. Trial and error, with more loops to get everyone over the line at the end of that final second day."
Max leaned against the bench, eyes defocused through the holos to the far wall. "I think I see where this is going."
Chloe took her hand. "Babe, just so you understand how relieved we are that this has an easy-exit, like, we're not even near the bad parts yet."
Quiet nods.
One of the operators complained, "They'd begin again, each new day. While we're occupied with how to undo the day before, however long that takes, they'd keep going. Like they were on a schedule. Beatin' on us. Getting progressively worse as it went on."
Another added, "You ever see the old Galactica episode, early one, I think? Cylons chasing the fleet across jumps, catching up every half-hour? For weeks on end, just wearing everyone down, waiting for mistakes. Picking them off? It's felt like that here."
Chloe let go of Max's hand. Projected new images. Groups of people. Maps. "Day three, they escalated to full-on ultra-shitty, went after families of our people too. Few hundred more got added to the starting list of the dead. Emotions inside were running pretty fuckin' raw, for obvious reasons. Which made it worse for everyone from then forward. Harder to concentrate, piece the events out - but I guess we all pulled together. A solid week of detailed investigations of all the individual murders, and then designing the person-by-person plans. Work it all backward to try to save them. Meanwhile, each passing day in that stub brought another new wave of timed attacks."
Max scanned the room. "But most of that time is erased, so it's only been a few busy days to you guys?"
Ty nodded. "Yeah. Back then. You know, for us here, the first three days were long lists of simultaneous missions that ended with everyone good. Exhausting back to back, but the final version is the only permanent record, right?"
"That, at least. The attacks started a month ago. Why is this still a problem, guys? Where are we now?"
Chloe stood. "Today's the 18th. For the past few weeks, we've been trying to understand and solve the casualty list from day five. We're stuck. It's gotten more complicated each new real-day. Like he said. Taking longer. More to investigate, deconstruct, plan for. And the longer it takes, the greater the toll it takes on everyone, especially with new attacks ongoing. That's how we lost Soph, about a week ago, here. Saving her meant letting a dozen others in ops die. Guess that was the loop before. She insisted this go-round, said they were more necessary than she'd be for finally solving the day. Won't stick. But…that and…the not-sleeping is starting to add up for everyone. I think that kinda shit's part of why they had to call it, back when they were planning the endgame for day four."
"Yeah. That was…fucked up." A tech stared off.
"It is fucked up, but we have to accept that the best we were gonna get was down to two casualties." Chloe's tone was almost defensive. Turned back to Max. "Only so much they could do for us…in the end, we lost a life sciences tech in Mumbai, and a city firefighter in Berlin, after the building evacuation there. There just wasn't any other way for our other selves to find. Couldn't save them all. Not when they were targeting families and more than a thousand other people around the world, including people we saved on prior days."
Ty's expression was pained. "Yeah, with the AMFO trucks under a couple offices too. Everything executing at nearly the same second…"
Wait…the same second?! Fuck. Answers that question. "That's what you meant by coordinated? Shit…okay, but…wait! Day four, you said there were two - why couldn't I bridge those final two people back to life? After? If it was just down to them—"
Chloe shook her head. "Bridge? I don't…know what you mean by that, Max." She shot a confused glance at Ty.
He shrugged.
Oh.
Max turned inward.
They…don't know.
Why would they?
Different timeline; different events.
Different…me, too?
"It didn't happen that way over here, did it? If I had no chill. If…I was the one who went after the dudes on the cargo ship right away, that…means…I didn't stop, take off for the quiet of the void space? Shit. No time for reflection, no working to understand my anger, no re-centering. And no thought to even the possibility that I might hack a way to save the kids. If I left in anger, didn't deal, I must have stayed angry and kept going."
"Wait, what? Brought back? What do you…you mean those poor kids from the boat?"
Max heard Ty, but she was already on a different track. Trying to walk forward the events that led to this reality. "Yeah. But…why? Why did I go after the ship guys in this branch? All I changed ahead of that was the interview. I slept in a little extra without it maybe, but the end of day sleep-cycle should have smoothed any other minor timing lumps out. Or is it…not so simple? Was it the interview itself?
"No, not simple. That was a semi-hostile interview, and I had to dance around probing questions, by…getting into a pretty Zen frame…navigating everything back to the core of our purpose. My mind was quiet - on the big picture all that morning, wasn't it? Is that it? Was that all? Wow. That's…nothing extreme…only small ripples, but carried inside me this time. Like, inner butterfly wings. And without the added balance brought on by going through that interview process, this branch's version of me must have acted on what I felt after opening the containers. Instead of retreating, making room for a different way.
"And that rolled forward in a negative feedback loop. Getting bigger. I left a note, we went after the Madrid thing directly, instead of handing it off to local cops. And I missed more alone-time, spent working things out for myself; thinking, watching, connecting with other people over the photos I took around the world that day… Without any of those internal dialogs, those opportunities for rebalancing, this version of me must have been angrier, less patient for the meet with Wallace. Missed out on all those conversation loops with him too, I bet. Prolly more confrontational, took a harder line with more absolutes. And of course, after, no karaoke night chat with Sophie and Hector.
"I see where events diverged here. Where I diverged. This…was my fault, wasn't it?" Max leaned forward, elbows to knees.
"Not because of any changes I made while leaving myself the note. It's because I didn't go through with that interview here.
"All this nonsense, from a changed state of mind after missing that single half-hour. Thirty minutes reminding myself, and persuading others, why we're here. Losing that must have been enough to change my mood, narrow my perspective. Enough to manifest forward into a different path for my psyche. And then those changes redirected my actions, unknowingly deleting even more crucial conversations I never had with myself in this branch.
"All those moments of lost introspection…without those escapes, grounding…healing…without…going through all those inner-dialogs, we get this mess - and an arguably less-whole Max. And the me from this side would have no clue about the differences inside, would she? What she was missing. What might have been in place of that anger. Or how events, the world or…how I might have been reshaped as a result.
"Maybe you were right, Chloe…maybe we shouldn't be so quick to blindly trust ourselves, however far ahead. Our information, our intentions, yes, probably. But…maybe not our judgement. We could be in so many different places. Imagine more choices, longer cycles. I've always assumed we'd be better people up ahead…faith, I guess…but…maybe...it's more complicated than that. Subtler.
"We've always known the 'us' forward might bend slightly with each note back, each message…each change. Small tweaks. Not necessarily bad. But, are we as much of a moving target as the restof the future? Could our swings be this wide?
"I honestly didn't think we could be so fragile. Especially over such a short timescale as this. Damn. Might need to be way more careful with ourselves than we've been. With each other. More than I've been with you. It may be as important as anything else…to make sure we're the best possible 'us' up there."
Max sat back. "You were onto something, Chlo. You went for the extreme examples, so I blew you off. I thought you were being all anti…but…you've always been better with patterns. Worries bubbling up, without knowing why you're worried. I dismissed you. Sorry—"
Chloe leaned back, eyes to the ceiling. Waved. "Uh. Max? I know it probably super-seems like you're talking to us, but…"
Max came back to the moment. To everyone staring.
She shook her head. "I'm sorry guys. I shoulda hit the pause button. Got lost in my brain for a sec, just working stuff out." Max put her hand on Chloe's knee. "I know you're brilliant, Chlo, but…I'm not giving you enough credit for being something more."
Chloe smiled. "Well, thanks? And sorry we're all eavesdropping on your outer-inner-dialog. But, if I'm following along with any of that shit you're saying…just…please - don't overthink it, dude. Okay? You know how you get."
"Yeah…hard not to." Max shrugged, motioned her hand around. "That this timeline even exists…it's proof how important even the smallest—"
Chloe shrugged. "Meh."
"Huh?"
"Meh. You're special, but…you're no different from the rest of us. You get agency in your present awareness. Your working memory. Your version of 'now.' That's it. That's your range of motion."
"Is it?" Max looked up, around.
Chloe nodded. "Sure. Everything outside might be fluid for you, and you're more fluid than any of us, but yeah - that one thing is still fundamentally inescapable. You know? You have limits, Max. So, not everything's gonna be perfect. Us included. So what? Have we ever been? Was that ever a goal? Maybe we are just a million different versions of our old imperfect selves up ahead. That sounds like the most realistic picture, honestly. But that doesn't make anything we do a failure. It's still us. Still trying. Whenever. Wherever."
Max shook her head. "But the me in this timeline - wasn't anywhere near as together as I am now."
"Well, that's just like, your opinion, man." Chloe smiled, tired. "You know yourself best…but you haven't seemed different to me. Any less real, any less caring. For your lifeline, it's been five long-ass months recycling through versions of this same timeline, and you're still a motherfuckin' trooper. I've seen most of it through the rewind cubes, and I don't know how you keep it together. But…nothing you've done has been out of character or out of line. And who's to say your shade in this timeline wouldn't have eventually gotten to the same place you feel you have. Only, maybe in her own time, in a different way? You automatically assume she's worse off for having taken a different path, but the same applies. What might you be missing by taking yours? Only to pick it up in your own time?"
"Chloe…I…I know I could have handled things better is all. This timeline might have gone different if I'd—"
"No. No. That's some bullshit right there. All you did was miss an interview, dude. Chill. You didn't decide to buy and sell people. You didn't bomb a fuckin' train. You didn't make the call to murder thousands of people. They did all that. Not you. This mess is all on them. That's the job."
"Well, I know that, but—"
Chloe shrugged, shook her head. "Stop. Not your fault. Shit timeline. Roll of the dice. Reboot and don't over-analyze it. Not everything's gonna be an easy win. Maybe not even second or third try. But - '…little by little, we advance with each turn…'"
Max finished, "'…that's how a drill works.' I know…I get it Chlo, but this isn't—"
Chloe cut her off. "Sometimes, we can fix the bad shit, like we've been trying to do here. Sometimes it takes a total redirect like you're about to do. And sometimes we can't fix everything. Maybe including ourselves. If there's no other way, it has to be okay for us to accept that. It does. We've…all…apparently…had to deal with bad compromises."
Ty, quiet, "Sometimes, there's no good option but muddle through. We are who we are at every step - and we're all we got. We're all any of them have."
"That's all the more reason to be careful." Max folded her arms.
Chloe swiveled to Max. "Says 'Miss Infinite Lives' over here. Whatever. The past is only set as long as you let it be. You've seen this reality show now, and you'll make it so it never happened. It's fine. But, because of these amazing gifts, tomorrow's always gonna be squishy."
"Us too." Max raised her eyebrows.
"Yeah. Us too. To a point. But we're still us. And so, yeah. What we do today matters for that. But the future's not real 'til we're there, and we decide that it'll make an okay past to build on. The capital-F future is all an illusion, Max. Hell, even this 'here and now' is an illusion, if we're being real. Thank…well, thanks to you."
"You know that's not exactly right, Chlo. My present becomes the real future every time I go back and forward again. And the changes we make to that reality aren't any less real."
"Not all changes are permanent."
"Some can be. Besides, you know that doesn't describe the true shape of things from outside."
"But we're not outside, Max. You're not outside. Not all the way. Even jumping back, you're still in your present, to you. Think about it - can you do anything in your future right now? Or ours? Can you?"
"Well, no…"
"That's all I'm saying. We all joke, but you're not omnipotent, dude. Cut yourself a fuckin' break - including this branch's expression of you, you know? She's been trying pretty fucking hard. And if she were anyone besides you, you'd be a million times more impressed with her. I am.
"So what, you reshuffled your deck. Bad guys reacted to a change. Whatever." Chloe did an old-school three-finger salute. "Sure. Be mindful, same as any of us. Use your best judgement. Act with love and kindness and all the light-side stuff you can bring. But don't second guess yourself to death, doll. We all know your heart's in the right place, and we'll always do the best we can. That'll always be enough.
"I'm just parroting your words back to you, by the way. You told me something nearly identical not two days ago. It was a…a bad day. We made some mistakes. You shared some personal things with me that helped me realize we probably always will. Some, we might not ever be able to take back. And that that's life, sometimes. Even for us. But it's important to keep going, fix what we can, forgive ourselves, and each other, for what we can't. We're all carried forward by our time. You too, in your way. Don't judge too harshly."
Her reference, to sharing something personal…it wasn't lost on Max.
What might I be missing, indeed…
Even without Sophie and Hector's breakthrough session, and holding on to all that anger, this version of me somehow opened up to Chloe in a way that I still haven't been able to over there. Not yet. Maybe she's right. Shuffling the deck is just shuffling the deck. Card order changes, but still the same cards, right? Same game? I don't know.
"So funny, Chlo. You were a lot less philosophical like an hour ago. I feel like we've switched places."
Chloe pursed her lips. "Please. Hardly the first time. And…rough loops."
Others nodded, even if they weren't entirely following along.
"Thanks. I'll…keep all this in mind. You're probably right. Sorry guys, for the detours. Trying to see the best way out for everyone. Do you mind? Can we keep going with the tear-down? Think I can process this other shit in my own time."
Chloe held her hand out to Max. "Let's…take a walk. Get some outside air. You'll feel it differently if I show you."
"Okay?"
Chloe, to the others, "Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Just stay live on comms, guys?"
Ian clipped the stream.
They were almost to the woods, minutes from entering a dark zone. Switched gears away from the kids.
Brought up a new hacked feed.
Had access to the video, but there didn't seem to be any audio of their conversation. The lip-reading program kept up with most of Price's side, but Caulfield's back was to the camera.
What was decipherable read like a basic recent-history lesson.
Internet rumors were a curious thing.
For as far under the radar as they pretended to be, they left a lot of eyewitnesses over the years. Some of whom later shared their experiences. Small groups at first, seeking each other out. But movements begin that way. Inevitabilities.
Experiences shared became the kernels of truth from which the wildest speculations eventually grew. With the net effect of making all of it suspect. Driving it underground.
It was smart of Price, in a way. If unoriginal.
Redacting. Or injecting disinformation along the way, muddying the waters.
Egging each side against the other from the shadows.
Let people do what they do from there.
A small push with each swing of the pendulum, adding more energy.
Informational tai-chi.
All that motion, to maintain plausible deniability.
Easier to craft a blatant lie than manage others' truths.
But there was 'truth,' and there was truth.
And he was running out of time.
Max took Chloe's outstretched hand. "Okay. Where to?"
Chloe blew a holo-map into the air. Zoomed down. "Here first."
The air changed with her fold. Bright afternoon, but cold. Half a mile over Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Chloe pointed, added quietly, "Take us down there?"
Sky transitioned to ground at the edge of another parking lot. This time, near an entry gate. The sign overhead colorfully proclaimed it to be a children's zoo. Chloe kept Max's hand, led them off to the right of the ticket booths. To what appeared to be a makeshift memorial along a chain-link fence.
Candles, photos, cards, and flowers lined the walk. Most of the artifacts had been exposed to winter weather for too long. It was difficult to make out who it was for.
"What is this?" Max knelt down. Straightened a bedraggled teddy bear.
"Was going to be a new rescue mission. They were life-long friends. Anna and Chelsea. Locals, in their early 20's. They gave birth within a few months of each other, a couple years ago. And on our Day Five, they decided to brave the winter and meet each other at the zoo. Have fun day together with their kids."
The memorial was beginning to take shape. Two sets of photos, faded, running. Neither laminated. The bears.
Max's heart sank. "Oh man."
"Yeah. The police report labeled them unfortunate bystanders." Chloe stood behind her.
Max looked back. "Who was the target?"
Chloe put her hands in her pockets. Behind her, a faint holo of an SUV drove away. Three men inside. "Near as we can tell, they were. Change-up. Soft targets. Each of the four victims was hit by a dozen rounds fired from a car window. It didn't make sense to the cops that they could be the real targets though, so the drive-by crossfire narrative stuck in the news. Less scary for the public than random."
Max rose up, turned. "You don't think that's right."
"Cameras showed they were the only ones there." The holo of the escaping car faded to nothing with distance.
"This is…fucking terrible, Chloe. But…what's the connection?"
"The shooters." Chloe tossed out a holo of men running from the open front door of a suburban home. "These same three pricks showed up two days earlier, a town away. Caught on camera leaving the double-homicide of the parents of one of our molecular biology researchers in Chicago. The driver of the car was killed three days after that in an explosion. Darwin Award candidate wired up the detonator with a closed circuit to power. They were all enthusiastic amateurs."
"Bad guys doing bad-guy things? You've vetted for coincidence."
Ty's voice in her earpiece. "The killing they ran from, it was one we prevented on the final pass of Day Two. Put cops outside the house. Never happened here. And that explosion, it was in a basement parking garage across the street from our Chicago facility."
"Okay. That's…rewind cube stuff?"
"Yeah. It's like that. This memorial, these four murders, they're new to this most recent timeline. We saved our guy's parents but didn't apprehend the shooters, leaving them free to target someone new days later. Every change changes something. It's been like trying to squeeze pudding with your hand. We've seen other patterns in the data, between passes." Chloe took a deep breath. "And that's a good segue back to our loops - we left off before Five. And that's where they've jacked us up pretty hard."
A semi-truck sped by behind them.
Once the background noise died down, Ty gave her highlights. "We got a heads-up from the prior branches that it was coming, but it was still a surprise when it caught up to us. Our turn to lead. They left a hundred bombs in a hundred cities. Conventional, not enough to trigger collapses, but loud. A few targeted remote sites of ours, or walking distance. You know, but most were placed random. These assholes added EOD to our daily rescue drills. While going after more and more of our people, more and more of our loved ones each new day. Stepping up to civilians, like those girls and their li'l babies. A few celebs, politicians. That picked up later, got messy. Dialed up the false flags…"
More of those?
Chloe must have read her expression and misinterpreted. "Not big by themselves, but a border checkpoint here, a rocket attack there. Seemingly designed to provoke, stir shit up where tensions are already high."
Oh. Not just against us with van stickers. "They're…trying to turn cold wars into hot ones? Wait…why? This doesn't make any kinda sense."
"That's just what it looks like. Could also be normal history. But the timing is suspect." Chloe projected a few headlines. A political assassination. Embassy truck bomb. A compromised shooter firing across a DMZ. "A normal timeline, we'd take care of most of these. But we've been busy. The events don't seem to have changed loop to loop, but it's not like there's an open dialog going. We've been keeping an eye on it for a few loops. Maybe it's a bigger plan we haven't seen in full outlines yet. But it hasn't been our main worry, either. At this rate, it'd take you years of personal looping just to clear the days of live events between day five and where we are now. Which is where this other stuff would start to matter for the final timeline. But…every day bogs us down more. Takes its own unique, escalating toll as they think of new ways to fuck with us - mostly by fucking with everyone else."
Ty came in on the line. "Gives us a rolling preview on what their plans are for each new calendar day, but…knowing and fixing are two different things. And we still gotta get through the permanent run at number five first."
Max couldn't look at the bears anymore. Best friends. Young. Little kids. The whole scene was too much. She slowly migrated toward the booths. "So that's it. This is their end game? It's down to open warfare?"
Chloe followed.
Ty grumbled, "One-sided. We're strictly on defense, and half their efforts hit at innocents. Like, a week ago, the other bodies started dropping. Shipping containers of mutilated corpses showing up on the sides of highways in Austria. Or dumped off trucks in LA. Dark, psyops shit. And yesterday, gas attacks in the London subways. We knew we were heading back to the end of day four, once we operationalized five, so it's been a little easier for everyone to deal with that aspect. Thankfully, sounds like all of this bad is undone now - cause between you and me, this isn't sustainable like this. Not if we keep losing more people at the end of each real day. We either need to bring some offense back to our game, or we're off our mission till they're done playing with us."
Max shook her head. "Okay, wait…what the fuck do they want?"
Chloe shrugged. "No demands. No dialog. Just staged violence. Maybe it's leading to something. Maybe it's that they don't know what the fuck else to do."
Max pressed her eyes shut, confused. "Gah. But…these idiots are more paranoid than we are about keeping a low profile for themselves. Did that change? I mean, are people starting to figure out that they're here, or what does everybody think is happening with all this murdery bullshitty behavior?"
"Hold please." Chloe held out her hand for Max. "We have one more stop." She gave Max the holo-pointer. "Come down from two-hundred, aim for that roof. You'll see it."
Max was glad to leave. It was sad. Pointless waste. Not just the victims…people. But their families, everyone who knew them. More Rachels. This was the enemy. This was the fucking darkness. Anti-wings set loose on the world.
She folded them away.
Cold transitioned to warm early morning skies. Clear blue. She and Chloe descended to the edge of a hotel roof overlooking Waikiki Beach. Hotel towers, turquoise seas, white sands, palms, breakwaters. Diamond Head jutting to their south.
Chloe leaned over the safety wall.
Max followed her gaze to a construction site across the street.
"So, to answer your question - people haven't noticed anything. That's maybe the saddest part. It's been buried in the daily noise." Chloe shrugged. "Shit happens every day. We're looking for the patterns, and our people are half the variables, so we see it. Only everything's a local story out there to most people. Or a very faraway story. Same as usual."
Max scanned the horizon. "There's more here than I'm seeing, isn't there?"
"Not your fault. That lot down there."
The block was fenced off by chain link, with visual barriers at street level. Behind the fences, worn paths snaked through piles of concrete rubble, steel rebar. Backhoes and loaders filled the trucks, which carted the debris away in a trail of rising white dust.
Chloe projected a holo-overlay of the building that used to be there, aligned to Max's line of sight. A floor a third of the way up gave way, pancaked down. The structure above collapsed down onto it a level at a time, compressing each as everything raced to the ground. Dust blew out with each failure, quickly obscured the view.
Chloe waited 'til the render playback finished. Explained. "That was a hotel; it went down on day seven. Thankfully, it's offseason, so it wasn't full."
"Explosion?"
Chloe shifted the holo to a close-up of a column, slowly cracking in half. "Not the way you're thinking. There was some remodeling going on on the tenth floor, a conference center. But over that weekend, someone made holes in all the support columns and poured in a non-explosive demolition grout. Stuff expands at like 17,000 psi, breaking the concrete apart from inside. Thankfully, it's a slow process. Hours at least. A maintenance worker noticed cracks intruding into the columns on the ninth floor. He raised the alarm while there was time to get everyone out. It could have been a thousand people dead otherwise."
Max folded her hands, elbows on the wall. "We know it was our bad guys?"
"You parked your parents in that hotel, once we realized they were targeting families."
Max snapped back to Chloe. "Right. Dammit. They went after mom and dad?! Are they okay? Where are they now?"
"They're fine; they're fine. Guest apartment at HQ. We planned to move them there directly next loop. See if that headed off this collapse."
"Gotcha." The hell.
"Yeah." Chloe shrugged. "So, this is what I mean - to the untrained eye, down there, it looks like a typical building teardown and rebuild. Quiet. Normal. That happens, so it blends. The local PD and state government know the real story. They looped in DHS, who are worried, but the press has been kept quiet. FBI pressured NDAs on the guests and staff, and that's how it is.
"With media globally, there's been an uptick in attention around the coordinated bombings Ty mentioned, calling it terrorism. Some of the celeb stuff, ODs and whatever. But the press miss a lot - and the stuff they catch, they don't connect. Why would they? It doesn't pattern on us, or them. Anyone. We're not the only tenants in any of our buildings that they've targeted. From the outside, it's just another sometimes-busy news day. One that we'll make go away in the final pass if we can ever get our shit together. And…well, never…doesn't matter now…
"I mean, just so you're prepared if it comes up again, Max. I've only taken you to two events. Shown you two stories. Now multiply them out by a few thousand. Understand them. In detail. Plan for them. Execute the saves. That's been our job, day to day. And the bad-guys react to our changes, do different shit on subsequent days, so not everything from prior loops applies more than a day out. It's hard to build a final master map or anything." Chloe turned, leaned back against the wall.
Max looked down to the trees. "Shit, guys. Okay. I totally get why this has been a handful. Ty, earlier you said you don't think our fix efforts are sustainable? For us to keep going like this? I'm just thinking ahead. Can you elaborate?" Max pushed away from the wall. Motioned to Chloe to head to the beach-side.
Ty paused. "I mean, I was speaking to you from a more emotional place, you know? But you heard how long you've been workin' through this, and how long we've been working on day five. It doesn't matter to any of us once we're reset for each try, but it's weight on your shoulders. And if fixin' each day starts stretching into months of planning, and more for the refinement passes, that's a lot for you to carry. With no end in sight."
Max considered. I've carried more. Longer. Not that I'm anxious to repeat it.
Chloe killed the holo, caught up to Max. "That's where you and I and a few whole floors have been focused during off-hours. Try to get at something that breaks their cycle."
"Going after the cause, not the symptoms?"
Chloe jumped up, sat on the wall facing the ocean, legs dangling. "That was the hope. Bust whoever's runnin' the show, take 'em out before they can start. Team effort across timelines, so we all come out shiny."
Max joined Chloe on the wall, legs over the side. "Hence the R&D loops. Got it. That makes sense." Steps forward, steps back. "Was that the yacht? What have we been doing?"
Chloe looked out over the beach. "Oh yeah. Uh, foreground-background, I've been about nine-hundred percent focused on forensic reconstructions of each murder or group attack, so we know what each thing is, and what our options are. How to solve for it, and how to communicate it to our past selves in a way that doesn't require them to know everything we know to follow our plans.
"You've seen two examples of new ones we were going to have to solve after the changes from last pass - but, each one of these is a full op to run the fix. Project managers, collaborating on tactical…takes time to plot the critical paths since nothing's in isolation. Some events interconnect, which complicates pathing, and they all trigger in a narrow window, so that's been mostly fucked. Then there's the pudding principal, catching new asshole behavior in subsequent loops. Even with local LE involved in a lot of these saves, we're beyond stretched. So 'free time' is…well, you get it.
"And you, you've been riding herd all along the way. Trying to optimize your path, folding in for otherwise impossible saves, closing a few gaps on each execution day. But that's second-by-second choreography we have to get right, while everyone else is in motion."
Max crossed her ankles. Bounced her heels off the side. "That wasn't enough for day five, though, was it?"
"Not yet. You have a sense for how complicated this is. Guess we've tried two-dozen different variations of plans, over and over, but the best we've done so far at the end of day five is seventy dead while sacrificing two office buildings, Geneva and Lagos, along with a subway train full of people in Seoul. Unacceptable for a keeper day. So, we study, we plan, we make note of the new shit, then lather, cube, repeat. But at some point, if we can't do any more than move the names of the dead around, we might have to call it and start to worry about day six."
That attrition is gonna get frustrating. "There has to be a better way."
Chloe met Max's eyes. "We're not done yet, but with that in mind, a bunch of our folks have been looking for patterns too. The meta. You know, with the timeline blown 'til we fix shit, there's not much other work anyone can do that'll stick past the resets, so it's all hands. Brains. Good ones."
"How's that working?"
"In the end, some bad guys get ID'd when they fail, fuck up, leave open comm trails, sometimes there are differences in money flows between one timeline and the next, or events. All that data traveling from one branch to the next by rewind cubes adds up. Sometimes there are big clues in the changes, so we have to compare them all each time. A break in a few events between four timelines led us to that lovely multi-purpose hole under a building back in Ukraine."
Ty chimed in, "Comm relay and bomb shop. Max, you were playing with bomb and trigger parts earlier, by the way."
Max wiped her hands on her pant leg.
A nervous tech back in Lviv spoke up for the first time, "With the pointers here, we decrypted a few vidcom streams that led to embedded data traffic that led us to a rotating set of private channels on public comm satellites. Hacked in, DF'd the distant ends, filtered, and that's why we landed you off the east coast of Africa earlier."
"That was the deal with the yacht? Bad guy, or…?" Max looked at Chloe.
Chloe nodded, projected a map with tracks, metadata. "That was the mission. Find out. Was a lead. Boat's course up and down the coast of Somalia was a suspicious endpoint. Heavy data traffic, and the timing of it too, with bursts before and after the wave cycles each day. Like there was some relay or coordination or reporting going on. They're outside the cargo lanes, in a place yachts like that don't usually like to be.
"Final nail on 'go' was a piece of CIA intel one of my IAs pulled off a report right before you left. Local pirates on the beach were aware of the boat. Guess it looked like a VIP or fat target a while back. Three crews went out after it; two were allegedly vaporized. Direct quote from the one who came back. Probably left alive so no more would try. The locals have kept distant since. Boat's listed as charter out of Monaco, but that's probably bullshit with the level of future-forward military tech you ran into.
"You were only there for recon, but they still lit you up once you hit the perimeter. Suggests it was part of somebody's checklist. Went as expected for 'em. But you were only inside for a few minutes when you came out as the new you. You know the rest."
Max closed her eyes. Listened to the waves below while she got everything straight in her head. "Okay. This tangle sounds uber-sucky, guys. Too many ripples in the pond. Ponds. Internal and external. Jesus. They've been sitting on this the whole time, waiting. It kicked off here before the publish date of the first journal thing in my old timeline. With no interview to launch their little character assassination play - they stepped up the clock to actual assassinations. No fucking bueno.
"They're targeting different weaknesses in each of their approaches, though. Last branch, they played off our secrecy. In this branch, it's that we give a shit, but can't be everywhere at once. They're not so dumb. Well…I mean. They're not smart. But not dumb, either."
Max was still for a moment.
What else could they go after?
What other plans might they be sitting on?
The intel from these timelines would be a fucking treasure trove though.
Maybe enough to start going after families directly.
Chloe looked down. "There's only so much anyone can do in the same physical moment. I wish you could interact with shit in the freeze, but…you've tried as close as you can without blowing things apart or dissociating completely. We're pushing it here, Max. I agree with Ty. Even with help, new drones. It's why we were playing a longer game, trying to work up the chain. But you…we…might see this again in another life. Least it won't be a surprise next time."
Max nodded. "Yeah. Meanwhile, we have to find another way to navigate our last branch, or just…power through the media BS somehow. Take the hits. This was a bad trade."
"Agreed."
"Babe, would you mind though, giving me the cumulative everything that's happened since the 20th, on a cube? All data from all loops? Full archive?"
Chloe pulled a cube from her pocket. Fired blue. "Sure."
Oh! No! Shit! Wait! Max quickly added, "Second thought. Um. Maybe edit out the 'personal sharing' conversation you mentioned earlier. It's one I want to have over there, but…it hasn't happened yet. You understand?"
Chloe stopped. Nodded. "I do. Better face to face than second-hand."
"Thank you."
"Wait a sec though, Max - are you rewinding all the way back to the 20th this time? Walking forward the slow way?"
Max shook her head. Stood up on the edge. "No. I'll undo what I did, pretty much. Pop back, pull the note."
"Okay. Then, remind me - why am I prepping you a cube, exactly? You can't—"
"Oh! Sorry - should have explained. New experiment. There's a chance we might be able to use Luna as a kind of cache for ourselves. A data-relay across hard timeline resets. It's behind us - surprise - but thanks to FutureMe's pathfinding, it's always been a foldable coordinate."
"That works if you park stuff before the branch point split off…yeah. Wish I'd known for sure there was a time offset. I might have made the connection earlier. A time-isolated drop box…" Chloe rose up next to her. "Oh well. As the wise man once said, 'Use the forks, Luke…'"
Max pinched her nose. "You suck. And I still have to verify it'll even work."
"It'll work. I'm sure you guys have realized some of the super-weird shit you could do with this technique, right?" Chloe laughed - for the first time since Max arrived in this branch.
Max smiled. "We've tagged that for future discussion. Yes. One crisis at a time."
"Okay, dude, you've been cubed." Chloe tossed it to Max. Scooted off the wall to the roof. "Go. Make this all not suck giant donkey parts. And if they pull this shit again, it'll be a different set of start-conditions, maybe go some other way, but there's a shit-ton on here we would've killed to have back on day one. Real family names. Established staging areas. Resource and network lists. Hierarchies. Targets, financial accounts, comms.
"With a coordinated pre-emptive strike, we could take out at least some of their network's first four days of shitty plans before they can act. Drop in the bucket. They have more after, so it's probably not enough, but it's not nothing, either. Maybe enough of a bloody nose to make them stop and rethink pissin' us off before they start next time."
Max smiled. "Yeah. Thanks, Chloe. Everybody on the line. I'm so sorry that you had to go through all of this. My fault. We'll try to do better over there - I know this sucked, but at least we won't let it be a wasted effort."
Ty responded. "No arguments from this side of the globe."
Max, quiet, "It'll be like she was never gone."
Ty might have cleared his throat.
Chloe stretched her arms overhead. "It's all trial and error, end of the day. Allllright, everybody, talk amongst yourselves. We're signing off. I wanna say goodbye to my darling savior."
Took a minute for everyone to say their goodbyes, express their thanks - not only for themselves but in some cases, for their families, friends. More.
The facts of the timeline didn't convey the personal impacts, the emotional toll she saw in each of them. Or experienced herself when shown. Hit everyone close to home.
Max took Chloe's hand, folded from the roof to the beach. Early morning sunshine snuck in under the palm trees. Waves lapped at the breakwater, shoreline.
"I love you, Max." Chloe pulled her in, hugged her hard. "You have no idea how big a relief this is. I just…thanks. Could I be even more selfish and ask for a kiss before you go?"
"I might be able to swing that." Max held her closer. After a lingering kiss, Chloe pulled back, hesitated. "About…that other thing…it'll be okay you know."
Max looked away. Whispered, "No spoilers."
Chloe nodded. "Okay. No spoilers."
"See you in a few."
Max folded away. Carried the meta-cube back to Luna.
Multiple timelines. Hard fought.
We'll put it to good use.
She removed it from her pocket, set it next to the first cube from her original timeline. She never had the chance to come back for it. Or a need, after all.
She wondered if they could be the same physical cube.
Chloe could tell.
Later.
She visualized, folded back to earth a moment later, to their penthouse.
She took a last look out their living room window. "Bye, timeline. Sorry for all the trouble I put you through."
Then she jumped backward to January 20th, into her body at her desk, an instant after she left last time. Pulled the taped note to herself from the emitter, crumpled, tossed it into the bin.
It left a blotch of sticky residue behind.
She was about to jump forward again, but her eyes lingered on the emitter.
She puzzled at it for a second. Something…
Squinted. "Huh."
Reached to wipe it off.
Stopped herself.
Wait.
That…
Is this why?
I…remember this, from the first pass.
The feel of the haptics, seemed broken, mushy that morning.
Did I do that? Just now? With this?!
Can't be.
That's not how it works!
If I just did this, that, I shouldn't remember from before…this was…unless…
…are memories leaking?
Or…have I spent this last month in an open loop?
Her breath was short.
What just happened, Max?
What did you do?
The wall clock flipped forward a minute.
Shit.
Figure it out later.
Gotta go.
Come on.
Quick like a bunny.
She leapt forward again.
Chloe opened her eyes. Cold, cloudy day. Max was still there, standing awkwardly in a half-slush, half-grease junkyard puddle in the Bronx. "Uh. You gonna go back? Or…?"
"Well, shit. That didn't work." Max rolled her eyes. Shrugged as she fell forward into Chloe. "Ehnnnng."
Chloe caught her, held her up. "Wait - what happened? Are you back?"
Max pushed away. "Yeah. Bad branch. Hang on. Sorry. Oh. Hey, Hector. Wait, what are you doing here?"
"Ouch? Love you too, Max." Hector tossed the tennis ball. The dogs splashed after it, muddy, panting, happy.
"He's been tagging along since Taco-time. You okay?" We all had that whole existential confab across two continents together, and —
Max shrugged. "Shit. What the hell, man?" Spun away, then back in a frustrated circle.
"Max?"
"I only lingered a few extra seconds. Fucking ripples. Easier if you see it. Sorry. BRB." Max jittered, shifted position. Tossed Chloe a cube she didn't have a moment before. "Here."
Chloe investigated. A record of a nearly identical version of reality, including her own POV, ending less than a minute before. A few super-minor differences. Like, Hector wasn't here with us the last pass. Okay - wow. Chloe ran it backward, compared. Couldn't see any obvious cause of the effects. She shrugged. "Weird. Small perturbations, but aside from Hector, nothing substantial or world-breaking."
Max relaxed. "Okay, good. Still weird AF. No offense, Hector."
"None taken. And you're weird AF. What happened?"
Max rolled her eyes at Chloe. "Remember earlier when I said I'd rather stare down bad-guy armies than deal with all the press stuff?"
Chloe and Hector both answered "Yeah."
They shouted, "Jinx!" over each other. Laughed.
Max closed her eyes. "You guys are too much for me right now. Um. Okay, well, it's still mostly true - if it was me facing them. But turns out, that's not how it goes in practice."
Talking in riddles. "Vague," Chloe shrugged, shared her impatient look.
"Yeah. So…sorry, guys. I guess…reason I'm back - we have to stay. This all…has to stay. We have to deal with this timeline. One way or another. Sorry, Chlo - wait for it." Max tossed her the second cube.
Chloe caught it. Fired it up. Concurrent time-stamped reality-streams and data caches from more than a hundred major and minor loops, all nesting, forking from one alternate branch of reality. Her cursory indexing only scratched the surface, but it was astonishing. "Jesus Fucking Christ, Max!"
"Yep." Max shared a weak smile. "Right? So…that all happened. Least we know their plan B. Anything useful in there for us?"
Chloe was appropriately whelmed. "Yes! Absofuckinglutely all of it. Hang on. I need to get this to the core where I can run it for real. Fuck, Max! Sucked mega-hard for other-us, but this is…good-guy gold. Breaking our dry spell for sure."
"In a good way or?"
"Yes! Not everything, lemmie…walk that comment back, but…there are two-dozen legit mid-tier families flipped and doxed in excruciating detail, plus, thousands of foot-soldiers we caught in the act, or ID'd during corrective actions across loops, tons of stuff Sophie sucked out of their brains. Bad actors are from all over, and…while they're only following their leaders, they're far less important individually than where they came from - shit - and how the C&C and money maps…the controls that show up even in a quick flip-plate analysis between lines…"
"Anybody gonna translate for the guy who isn't here?" Hector pulled his hair back with one hand, wrestled the ball from a dog-mouth with the other.
Chloe, still streaming, "Intel. Affiliations…contractors, gangs, business networks, crime syndicates mixed with financial services, corporate security, governments, militaries. Minor subset, but fuck.
"Okay - random sample dive - millions in cash moving from a thousand small unrelated churches in eastern Europe through blinds to a handful of state-sponsored arms dealers in Africa, supplying guns to rebel fronts in Central America…who are linked to drug operations heading north, with agency permission. And three secure texts ID-ing them as the source of more than twenty of the local Day 3 hitters in the alt branches, targeting our friends and family in the southwest US. IDs, tracks, everything.
"Point is - in all of this - they're…using what they've got, which is their own distributed family infrastructures."
"How's that different from…I mean, duh?"
"No - it's where they fucked up big-time, dude. There are some holding companies and shells and popups and the usual obfuscation, but even so, they're exposing the outlines of their networks too - in different ways across different loops, compared and contrasted between more than a hundred timelines. This is like pure data-point heaven in here. A hundred-plus realities, all differential signal? There's never been anything like this, Max. We gotta head home. Now. Please? I wanna play."
Max motioned Hector over. "K. And since we gotta deal with this timeline, maybe it's time to stop fucking around with our current media situation too. Doesn't seem so bad in comparison, does it?"
Chloe, eyes to the horizon, processing, "No, it doesn't."
Hector teased, "Gonna be honest. Feeling pretty left out over here."
Max locked arms with him. "I'm sorry, Hector. We'll catch you up at regular speed." Max took Chloe's elbow on the other side. "Before I left, you mentioned there's some Alex dude to chase down? Plus, we gotta corner Juliet's boss, Tanner. Talk to Wallace again. Brute force loop so we don't compromise him. Figure that out later. Then find Juliet. Get ourselves out of all of this shit - but very carefully."
"Dudette. Alex. But yeah to the rest. Into action, then." Chloe continued to scan. "I'll signal-flare Jillian and her peeps. Let HQ know what's happening, and that we're comin' in hot. We need to spin agents and teams of smartypants to go through all of this glorious data-loot, and we'll need to dev coordinated plans on a couple fronts."
Max interjected, "…and we need contingencies. Cause the second we extricate ourselves from this press bullshit, I'm worried that all this other stuff is coming next."
"Could always go look for that yacht again."
"Great minds."
Chloe hesitated. "First things. You glossed over the extrication from our current media problems part, made that sound easy. It won't be."
"I know. Handwave. But maybe we…listen to Jillian this time? She's right. We should let the experts expert."
"Yeah. And…last thing - a caution for all of us as we troll this data - this other timeline shit was somewhere on their back-burner. But remember Max, you were also different in that loop. Clearly. And no, I'm not gonna say I told you so. Or that you told me so. Sorry - just catching up on your coherent rambling about the future-us stuff with alt-me.
"But the big difference is, in this reality, you gave the families an honest explanation of what we're doing, and why. Left a reasonable, face-saving out for everyone. Over there in that timeline, you just backed everyone into a big 'fuck you' corner together. The differences between our timelines go deeper than a simple A and B plan. They were all assholes over there, but let's not leap straight to prevenge on people who might seek redemption or otherwise be helpful to us - not without giving our plan a chance to work first."
Max nodded. Got the message. "Fair enough. Let's hit it?" Called over her shoulder, "Bye for now, pup-pups. I'll come back and rescue your human before dinner. Promise." Max looked at Chloe, then Hector. "Arms and legs. Bus's leaving."
The cold overcast vanished.
Max took them to the terrarium back home. Flat ground. Wide open space. Toasty.
Chloe leapt into action on the local upload, tasked a few intelligent agents to start running with all the data.
All three of them fast-walked toward the elevator.
Chloe side-glanced Max. "The rewind cubes were a good innovation. But this whole bouncing them off the moon thing - that was inspired, dude. Real data continuity across hard-reset timelines? Fucking game-changer, Max. For reals. Nice job."
"Thanks, Chlo. Full team effort. As always."
"Let's get this party started."
Chloe warmed. The bright pressure of morning light overwhelmed her closed eyelids, spilled through. Scents in the air around her aspired to tropical springtime, all salt air, flower buds and light breezes whispering through the palms. Morning Honolulu traffic, waves, and birdsong talked over each other respectfully.
Could be worse final moments.
Max was gone, leaving Chloe alone on the beach.
After resting a beat, she opened her eyes, mentally patted herself down. Still here. Max must have made a pitstop home before—
"Hey, Chlo." Behind her.
Ah. Okay. Chloe felt a quick relief at the temporary stay of impending whatever. Loose sand gave way beneath her boots as she pivoted back to the waves, toward Max. Almost joking, she asked, "What'd you forget? I was…freakin' out a little, wondering why we're still here."
Behind Max, the blue horizon stretched out to infinity. She had that look like she was holding in her smile, savoring the moment before revealing the punch-line to her own joke. When she spoke, her voice was strange, cadence slow. "I never forget. Law of conservation of Chloes." Her eyes twinkled.
"Huh?" Chloe's attention blew past Max's unfamiliar outfit. Something else. A flicker. Something moved across her collarbone. Difficult to resolve in the sunshine, with the sparkles off the water, but it was almost like she caught a weird bounce of light off a window.
Another dim pin-point raced across Max's lip. Something else followed, larger.
Chloe subconsciously calculated the angles, looking for the source behind them. Failed.
Max's body was 2% brighter than ambient.
A wave hit the breakwater, splashed up to hang in mid-air.
The horizon-line directly behind Max deflected ever so slightly.
Wait… Is that…?
Chloe saw another something, zoomed to the details. A barely-visible disk of light pinwheeled across the bridge of Max's nose, tumbled, raced beneath her freckles. Rolled edgewise across her left cheek to disappear into her hairline.
W.T.F.? "…Max!?"
Max wrinkled her nose. "Hello, love." Lips parted. "We have this rule, where I'm from. No Chloe left behind."
They weren't illusions - tiny pinpricks of brilliance traced beneath her skin, like an inner planetarium shining a changing universe of diamond starlight across her shoulders, neck, hands… Other stars blurred by, while whole clusters, nebulas, shifted perspective across her body with every subtle motion.
Max presented her hand to Chloe like it was an offering. A lifeline. "Come on. We can save Emo too, if we're quick."