She Who Knows Tomorrow: a multiverse novella

Cold air burned Third’s lungs as she perched on the roof of the local StretSec building—StretSec being the public security agency, and which was responsible for both resolving crimes and for answering any problem featuring freaks. It was the last thing she could think of to try to find Second—and it would work, it had to work, because Third would end up in a cage nearby Second as the woman and her baby died—

Third focused on taking slow, deep breaths.

The lungs had always been a weak point of hers—of Third’s, not of any of the other versions of her that she was aware of—but that was likely from all the spores she’d breathed while destroying Infested. Or so she guessed. Nev would have been the one to know, but Third had always found it healthier to avoid her older sister. The ‘god’ mods found in some universes reached a point wherein the mods themselves produced the hellverse, because the modifications themselves triggered instincts that made people think of others as threats.

That ‘kill’ instinct was strongest among biological relatives. Opposite gender was okay; same gender was really bad. Third had some theories as to why, but Nameless were discouraged from being inquisitive. Ultimately, Third had always sought medical treatment from amateurs before she got it from her sister.

She flinched and hoped nobody had seen it. Someone from this somewhen might comment on it; someone from another might helpfully mention it to someone from her universe; and someone from her universe would have to punish her for the breach in composure.

Mistakes could get you Infested. Nobody wanted to face an Infested Nameless.

Third had tracked Second’s bio-identity all over town, but she had yet to find the woman herself. Jumpers could hop into another somewhere or somewhen and leave you wondering where in reality they’d gone. As a navigator-class jumper, Second could easily Jump through time and space, but she couldn’t hide her bio-identity all that well. Merger-class jumpers had the opposite balance—able to Jump, but far better at hiding bio-identities, which was necessary if you wanted to blend in to some universe or somewhen other than your own. Third—all versions of her—was a merger, though some versions of her were more practiced with it than others.

Being a merger was handy for hanging out on top of a local security building without the scanners picking you up. Third surreptitiously stretched her shoulders.

The StretSec operative currently leaving the building wasn’t from this universe.

Third hopped back, reflexively hiding the curiosity that Nameless weren’t allowed to display. She checked her surroundings again and dropped to her stomach to elbow-crawl to the edge to peek over. She hadn’t noticed any mods in the man, not in the glimpse she’d gotten—but hiding mods was standard, in some universes. Even Janni could do that.

A taxi stopped, the driver calling out a promise to get the operative to his destination fast, for cheap. The operative shook his head and turned away from the street, rubbing his eyes as if he had a headache, the motion letting her see more than the back of his head and recognizing—

TamLin.

Third shoved herself back from the edge, her entire body cold. A TamLin. This universe’s StretSec had a TamLin working for them.

Curses ran through her mind. Most sensates wouldn’t be able to pick out a single should-be-there bio-identity from a crowd, but most sensates weren’t him. Third knew all too well how keen his abilities actually were—though he’d hidden that, in her universe, because otherwise he would’ve been bound to Nev, who would’ve then made sure to kill Third before—

The quick double-blink didn’t suffice to keep the tear ducts clear. She quickly shook her head, trying again, and scurried away from the fire escape, where she heard someone climbing up—

“Third, right?”

She froze, feeling like a taut bowstring, as the soles of his boots hit the roof. He’d swung himself up the last few steps, by the sound of it.

She needed to move, to get away from him—

She needed his help to find Second.

Third took a deep breath. She wasn’t supposed to engage in niceties—and asking for help defeated the point of Nameless—but…TamLin was a very good ally to have. Or at least her universe’s version of him had been.

She didn’t let herself flinch. “You’re looking for…”

Second had a name, in Janni’s native universe–which was the same as his, she saw, now that she was looking for it—but she couldn’t remember. It had been a word, an odd one to use as a name.

“Dasher?” he supplied, with the same polite frankness that her TamLin had—

No, Third told herself. She would get his help to try to save Second, and then she would be a good little Nameless and return to the shadows to protect the Named until she earned the right to claim a name of her own.

He studied her, forehead still creased with the headache that would linger as long as she was hiding herself from the scanners, and she realized this TamLin was observant, too. More so than Janni. Maybe as much as her TamLin had been.

Not that her universe’s TamLin ever had been hers. But he could have been. Maybe.

“I’m actually looking for Janni,” he said.

Of course he was. Third knew her façade was good enough that her flash of envy didn’t show, not even to someone who was watching for hints to what she was thinking. “I don’t hear her.” Not that she necessarily would, not without opening herself to resonance, but she knew better than to admit her handicaps.

TamLin looked away, studying their surroundings with a relaxed thoroughness. “Any ideas where she’d be? I’d like to find her before your Nev does.”

“I’ll be caged.” Third forced herself to watch his reaction as she realized she’d spoken as if he were her TamLin, who knew about her Jumping and could follow when she—

“Inside thick mesh or thin?”

The question was her TamLin, but the tone was…brighter, though only a little.

“Thick or thin, Third?”

“Gaps three fingers wide.” She indicated three of her fingers, to be clear.

He leaned back against the pillar that supported the building above the roof they were on, pulled a console from his uniform jacket, and started typing, still keeping an eye on their surroundings. “You see Janni, holler, would you?”

Third stared at him. He kept tapping his console as if he’d just asked her to do something normal. She glanced around, but she didn’t see or sense anyone else, and she sidled back against the pillar to stand beside him and peek at his console. He was running a…cybsearch, they called it, in this somewhen.

She needed to treat him as a Named ally who was aiding her to get a specific job done. Not as if he were the man she’d loved enough that she’d misbehaved on purpose just so he’d be allowed to touch her, even if that touch would have to leave bruises behind.

He’d loved her, too.

“Holler?” she murmured anyway, then looked away. She’d driven her TamLin to suicide—she was honest enough with herself to admit that much. She wouldn’t sabotage Janni’s life, too.

“Well, you know how I get, when focused on solving a problem.”

So battle-ready that a dropped pin could get the dropper shot—unlike most Named, who tended to let their interests and focus distract them to the point that many a Nameless had died because they couldn’t get the Named’s attention in time to save both. Regardless of his home universe, TamLin was evidently fond of irony.

Third clenched her jaw to prevent a smile. “My job.”

She heard him pause; felt him study her. The few seconds it took him to follow her meaning was a chilling reminder that, as much as he reminded her of her TamLin, he wasn’t—he was Janni’s, and she needed to remember that.

“Ah,” he said quietly. “Hellverse.”

Well, they didn’t make Nameless in utopias.

“Nameless,” she reminded him, her tone something that her TamLin would’ve had to strike her for—backhand, his right hand to her right cheek, which would sometimes even crack the bone.

This TamLin didn’t even lift his hand to hit her, but the sharpness that entered his gaze said he knew the laws. He wordlessly showed her his console—which featured a surveillance image of the room she remembered seeing for those brief moments, hours earlier.

Her breath caught. This is happening. She would watch Second die. “How did you know?”

He tapped something on the settings, adjusting the camera or maybe moving to another one, and showed Third.

A cage was hanging from the ceiling by a chain. Inside it, keeping her balance by crouching as she glared at her captor who napped out of reach, was Janni.

“Any particular reason your Nev would go for Janni?” he asked, his tone too casual to be anything but feigned.

Any reason other than the natural Nev’s-mods-threatened-by-sister’s-mods, Third assumed he meant, but she found herself unable to look away from the security feed. “Second,” she murmured.

“Hmm?”

She tore her gaze away and checked their surroundings once again. “Pregnant.” Was pregnant, when she died, and First might not have even known, before Nev called Second a Breach.

Silence answered her.

His lack of answer meant that he understood—or, possibly, that he didn’t. Third didn’t want to know which it was, but she needed to.

She held her breath and looked at him.

As if that were the signal he were waiting for, TamLin frowned. “What were they thinking?”

He understood, then.

And Second being a Breach was something else that Third could be blamed for. “Nameless at thirty?”

That tilt to his chin was all her TamLin. “Twenty-six?”

Not quite. First and Second had waited so long for Naming. Why couldn’t they have waited just a while longer before they consummated, so they could do so legally?

Third found that easy to answer: Probably thought themselves safely hidden, in this universe. They’d wanted children. Second was older than First. With all that Nameless went through while destroying the Infested…

She blinked quickly, twice.

If Second hadn’t conceived soon, she would’ve lost all ability to have children.

First and Second had waited to officially join the Named so they wouldn’t abandon Third again. They should’ve been selfish.

TamLin sighed heavily, evidently knowing Janni well enough to realize that she might’ve put herself in that position—gotten herself captured by Nev—to interfere with Nev’s ability to find Third.

Janni had probably masqueraded her bio-identity as Third’s. Mergers could do that, if they wanted, and Nev was particularly susceptible to that kind of deception.

TamLin studied his console once more. “Your Nev looks scarier than mine did.”

Did? “Dead?”

He shrugged. “Still in our home universe, so… Same effect. Not as though we’ll see her again.”

Third needed to back away from the man, to keep her distance—for her own sake as well as his.

But she missed him. “Your Nev isn’t scary?”

“Scattered, more like. She’s a medic, grade green, so she can get a little scary when you do something stupid and she decides she has to to keep you from getting yourself even more screwed up—but if handed a Nameless and told to apply the laws, she’d squeal and pass out.” He gave her a stern stare. “I will keep you in line, if I have to. Please don’t make me.”

The polite tone was one person asking another, and cooler than what her TamLin would have used—but the attitude, the willingness, the adherence to duty…

It was her TamLin, all over again.

No, Third ordered herself. She wouldn’t steal her own fiancé.

Even if she succeeded, she’d just be the death of him, anyway.

Refugees from other universes evidently had a tendency toward paranoia. Understandable, justifiable, and not minded by Raleigh…except for the fact that those refugees fled when they saw First and her coming.

She triple-checked her coat—again—but her upgrades weren’t showing. “Why are they running?”

First sighed and pulled something from his pocket. Unfolded it, smoothened it out, and handed it to her.

Paper? Raleigh accepted it, startled before she even saw what was on it: a mug shot of First, with a brief description and a panorama of snapshots featuring him in various gruesome situations.

A sectioned-off part of her mind nonchalantly analyzed the blood spatter and the corpses and informed her that he was quite efficient and preferred methods of maximum effectiveness and minimum duration.

So… A killer, but not a sadistic one. She could relate.

Raleigh spared a brief thought for how the child of two such killers might turn out—it was something she’d considered before, in regards to herself—and handed back the paper, unsure if she was annoyed or disturbed that Janni had never bothered to to introduce her to the underworld of temporal refugees. “I feel like a fish out of water.”

“Depends on the fish,” First answered absentmindedly. “Some don’t mind being out of water awhile.”

Raleigh blinked at him.

He sighed. “I’m an upper grade science teacher.”

“Ah.” She eyed him askance. “How does that work, with the Nameless thing?”

First’s eyes jumped around as he studied their surroundings. “Doesn’t.” He snorted. “Third always was the smartest of us.”

“Oh?” Raleigh kept her tone light, so he’d be less likely to notice that she was fishing for details. “What do you mean?”

He answered matter-of-factly, “Most people assumed she was dumb, because she earned herself so many beatings. But she never crossed the line into becoming a Breach, which would get her executed. Not even here.” He grimaced. “Not even after…”

He shook his head. “Beatings had to be administered by our clutch’s keeper, and…it was one of the only times he was allowed to touch her. Maybe he could’ve gotten past the guilt if we got out sooner, but as it was, he stayed here long enough to confirm this universe didn’t have Infested, then killed himself so he couldn’t hurt her anymore.”

His blasé attitude chilled her. “Kitten—Third—is a masochist.”

“No.” First glanced over at something above and behind Raleigh. “If anything, she’s too smart for her own good. She knows the laws, her limitations, and just how far she can push them both without causing any lasting damage.”

Raleigh wasn’t sure she wanted to understand everything he was talking about. His native universe was sounding worse than hers. “Isn’t intelligence a good thing?”

“When you’re rigorously controlled, starved of emotional and physical needs, severely punished for any infraction, and required to risk yourself to save everyone else?” He shrugged. “Maybe not. Usually we’re sent in pairs, for guard duty or killing, but that requires a clutch to have an even number. Ours doesn’t. Third’s been even lonelier than…”

First looked away.

Raleigh realized that he’d stopped because he’d remembered he was wrong. His clutch was down to an even number, two, because his wife was dead. Or at least his wife was about to die and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

She impulsively caught his arm and gave it a slight squeeze. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He froze in the middle of studying her from the corner of his eye.

His expression stayed on the wary side of ‘impassive’, but a yellow glow rippled from beneath his skin before it submerged once more.

Raleigh stared at his face, wondering where it had gone. Moreover, what had it been?

First tugged his arm from her grip and continued on his way. “We’ve a few more places we can try, at least.”

His tone was unruffled, as if his wife wasn’t dying, and it rang as false as his blasé attitude about his namelessness.

For the first time, Raleigh felt fortunate for her own native universe, and the circumstances that led to her receiving her own mods. At least she had been allowed to be a person when she was off-duty.

“How are you so normal?” she asked before she thought better of it.

He glanced back at her, eyebrows raised, his expression otherwise indicating a calm readiness that called him anything but a civvie.

She got the impression it had been there all along, but he, despite his belittling of his own intelligence, was adept at hiding it. “Oh.”

Once TamLin was satisfied with what he’d searched on his console, he indicated for Third to precede him back down the building’s emergency stairs and toward the front door. She glanced at him, wondering what he’d do if she refused or tried to bolt. The bland expression and raised eyebrow suggested the result would be comparable to her TamLin’s.

She forced a swallow and refused to let herself try, to test him. He’s Janni’s, she reminded herself.

As she reached the door, she read the energy eddies of the scanners and merged her bio-identity with their expected parameters. She entered without raising so much as a buzz.

The receptionist on the other side, however, frowned at her. Not that the expression was all that visible beneath the beard. “Who are—”

“She’s with me.” TamLin caught Third’s upper arm in a light grip and guided her toward one hallway. “Tell Puce I have a lead on the latest entrant.”

They were tracking Nev? She planted her feet against the tile floor and gave him a pointed stare.

He spun toward her, hand going to a hip holster as if he expected her pause to be due to a threat. His scan of the room took less than a second, and then he gave her a dark look. “I know your laws, kid. Don’t make me hurt you.”

Kid? She put her hands on her decidedly adult hips, resting her weight against the balls of her feet in case he retaliated appropriately.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, which sometimes helped with his headaches. Rarely. “All right. What’s wrong?”

She jerked her chin toward the receptionist. “Nev would cut him up and feed him to Mom.”

TamLin froze, reminding her whose he was. Her TamLin had known what Nev put in their mother’s special meds. She winced.

His throat worked for a long second. “Ribald? Send vegetarian refreshments to Room Zed, please.”

“Zed?”

“Yes.” He stepped up to a door, waved his wrist at the panel, and it buzzed open.

Third slipped through behind him. “Zed?”

Her curiosity was going to get her killed, someday. She wasn’t supposed to ask questions.

TamLin didn’t react nor respond, just led her through the halls and stairwells and more doors, every so often rubbing his temples. She nearly winced, but if he really wanted her to stop merging with the security systems, he had only to ask.

Some of his coworkers frowned at her, some raised eyebrows, and a few smiled at TamLin. He’d built a good reputation, apparently. Good enough that he could bring a strange girl deep into the building without anyone stopping him, though he did have to sign something at a few different checkpoints.

They finally reached a door with so many different types of security before it that Third assumed it was their destination.

“So how is Janni, these days, when she isn’t playing chicken with assassins from hellverses?”

His question was timed to pull Third’s attention from what he was doing with the door. She hadn’t seen that particular type of lock, before, combining physical keying with a specific combination of timing, energy, and authorization code that couldn’t be bypassed with the normal merging or lock-picking skills.

His attempt at distraction failed, but Third saw no reason to rub it in. “She’s well.”

Wait. Why was he asking her how his bondmate was doing?

“Glad to hear it.” He gave a quick peek in the room before he opened the door all the way and strode in.

She followed and palmed the door shut behind her. He’d brought her straight into an armory that would’ve suited an alpha universe, pre-apocalypse. She’d never even seen a room this full of goodies back home.

Third took a tentative step toward one aisle and glanced at TamLin. He was already cycling through the shelves on a firearm rack, not looking at her.

She took that as permission and beelined for the vials. The ones out front were fairly innocuous, like liquid smoke and eye irritant. She found the rack’s controls and tapped for it to drop that out of the way and to rotate the next shelf into view. The rack required an authorization code, but she easily nudged it into thinking that authorization had already been unlocked.

On the fourth shelf, she found napalm-echo. She stared at it for a long moment before helping herself to a vial. “I thought this universe was…”

TamLin rounded the edge of the aisle to join her, wielding an edition of pulse weapon that definitely wasn’t from that universe. “Fourth shelf’s only accessible to the brass, a few shadows and shadowborn who know how to use them, and any merger who happens to be brought in this far.”

For all his insistence that he knew the laws, he wasn’t treating her as a Nameless. The privacy of the room gave her the courage to let out a little curiosity on purpose. “Could you get in trouble for letting me in here?”

“No. You’re documented as a consultant.” He scanned the shelf, himself, and palmed one too quickly for her to identify it. “Janni brought me some of your hair, for me to log in.”

But he hadn’t known Raleigh, so they hadn’t done the same thing for her.

Then again, Raleigh, from an apex universe, would be in a lot less trouble, if the Shadow Corps found them all. Primes knew better than to go universe jumping without proper authorization. Refugees from apex universes didn’t.

Third sent the vials back to the first shelf and continued down the aisle. “Thanks.”

TamLin followed, not acknowledging her breach of protocol.

She let herself sigh, though she kept it silent. Two more birthdays. She just had to make it through two more birthdays, and the timer would disintegrate and she could take a name, be a person.

Third knew better than to think she’d ever get over the trauma of her origins enough to be normal, but maybe she’d learn to pretend, in time. First and Second had.

Only a few years in, and they’d gotten so comfortable that Second was about to die for it. Unfortunately, the personhood only applied if you took a name, and since they hadn’t…

Third pressed her lips together and hoped her brother wouldn’t revert to ‘proper’ Nameless behavior after that happened. They’d been forced to flee the first few universes they’d tried to take refuge in, because their attempts to acclimate had gone that badly. If First wanted to leave, Third would help him Jump universes, but…she couldn’t be sure she’d go along. She liked this somewhen.

Though, now that Nev knew their location, they’d probably have to leave, anyway.

Where would she find any miscellaneous gadgets that this universe didn’t precisely know what to do with? Third considered the question for a moment, then headed for the corner furthest from the door.

She rounded the end of an aisle, and her steps faltered.

Third stared at the device before her. It was a nightmarish cross between a dentist chair and a web or claw…though admittedly some of that impression was because she knew what the spindly-looking frame did. Infants were supposed to be too young to remember them, but…

She swallowed hard.

“The brass leaves that out to help ID who’s from universes like ours,” TamLin said quietly at her back. “A shadowborn would take a moment to recognize it, because they’d only know it from descriptions. A prime doesn’t expect to see it and therefore freezes immediately.”

His bosses knew he was a shadow, then…unless he’d controlled his reaction?

She gave him an inquiring look.

He answered with a wan smile. “I’m flattered, but I can be startled as readily as the next person.”

Perhaps. TamLin’s mother had been a keeper for clutches, herself, so very little caught him off-guard.

He grimaced and rubbed his temples again.

Third turned back toward the corner and sought the shelf featuring miscellaneous not-from-this-universe paraphernalia.

And, to stop hurting TamLin, she let the security systems notice her and reverted her bio-identity back to its native default.