They were running in circles, hitting the same parts of town without any further effect.
When First started leading Raleigh into a fourth round, she gently asked, “Is this really accomplishing anything?”
He stopped cold, midstride, in the middle of the sidewalk, and didn’t even move when passersby bumped into him.
“I don’t ask that to be rude or cruel. But since this is proving ineffective, perhaps…” Perhaps what? She didn’t even know enough about what was going on to know what was possible.
First rubbed his face. “I was the worst tracker in my clutch, you know? I wasn’t even the oldest of us. I’m only First because I play well with politics.”
Raleigh felt as if she were missing a piece of the conversation, but instinct told her that pressing for explanation would be unwise. “Is there any way to negotiate with your sister?”
He snorted. “No.”
She nodded acknowledgement of his answer, and she peered up to glimpse the sky through the maze and terraces of the buildings that towered above them.
“She’s Named. We’re not,” he added. “She has every right to eliminate Third or…”
She didn’t glance at him, but she heard his voice catch.
“She’s pregnant,” he said faintly, voice thick. “My wife is pregnant, and my sister is going to murder her—and what kind of man am I, if I can’t even protect my wife and child?”
“One as human as the rest of us,” Raleigh said, because there was no good answer for the question. Holding her silence would only be interpreted as agreement.
“I wasn’t created to be human!” he snapped.
She shrugged and tapped her gills. “Neither was I.”
She looked at him, then, and he stared at her, the weird glow flickering in and out as if it were tasting the back and side of his neck.
“What’s that?” she asked, in attempt to shift the conversation topic.
He scowled but followed her gaze with his hand, ultimately touching one of the yellow spots. He grimaced. “My patch is wearing off.”
And he turned on his heel and strode back toward…somewhere.
Raleigh followed. “Your what?”
“Patch! My mods”—he waved at his neck—“never ‘took’ properly. It’s why I’m Nameless, why I stink at tracking, and why my wife and sister always had to worry about protecting me when we went after zombies. I can’t control this, and it’s like putting candy in front of a baby. They come right for me—Infested, bigots, Nameless who want my position.”
She frowned and took the time she needed to parse that. “Third can control hers.” So why was she Nameless?
First gave his head a single sharp shake. “She has a governor chip. She can’t modulate things on her own. Without it… Suffice to say that blackouts have a way of getting you killed.”
“Sure do.”
From the odd glance First gave her, he hadn’t expected her to agree.
“You aren’t the only designed killer of the pair of us. I just have tech that lets me stick the memories in storage, to keep them from affecting me all that much. I was…” On second thought, she didn’t want to pull up how she’d ended up in this somewhen. Just thinking about letting herself remember it was making her wince.
He studied her a moment, then sighed. “We could call TamLin. See if he’s found anything.”
Without a console, Third couldn’t be called, herself.
Raleigh smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”
At least it was something different and might get them on a better track—maybe something that would succeed, or could succeed. Surely there had to be some way to save Second. If time were that solid, why would anyone even attempt to change the past?
He grimaced and increased his pace. Raleigh kept up easily but wondered what she was missing…and if he or any of the others would ever deign to explain it to her.
Alarms squealed, and TamLin cringed for another reason entirely.
Third could’ve kicked herself. She was in a high-security facility, so why had she thought it a good idea to let the security system suddenly detect her in an armory?
TamLin ran back to the door, Third following, and smacked the comms panel on the wall beside the entrance. “What the hell, Puce?!”
She grimaced. “Sorry.”
TamLin’s eyes narrowed on her, and he tapped the comms off a moment to say, “You shut up,” before continuing, “I told you I had a merger with me! Turn that off!”
Argument ensued with whoever was on the other end.
TamLin won; the alarms deactivated.
“—And have somebody bring our snacks before I grab Kasy and eat her arm! Thank you.”
He slapped the comms off, and her across the face.
The impact—the strength behind it, the familiar shape and sting—was comforting. Third felt faintly disturbed by that, but she mostly didn’t care. TamLin had touched her.
And she certainly had earned that strike.
This TamLin, though, seemed every bit as conflicted about hitting her as hers had been.
No! Third reminded herself. Not as conflicted. Her TamLin had loved her.
“Seriously?” Incredulity sharpened the pitch of his voice. “You get off on pain?”
He was a sensate.
Her face heated, and she looked away. “It isn’t the pain,” she admitted quietly.
Silence answered her, and she turned back to him. His brow was furrowed in a puzzled way, not pained.
“You’re Nameless,” he said at last. “You wouldn’t have been paired with—”
He and Janni were an assigned couple? Third struggled to imagine a life where she would’ve warranted that.
He pivoted on his heel to the door and opened it. The type of well-padded woman that Nameless were never fed enough to become stood on the other side, carrying a tray with beverages and…
Third frowned at the oddly complicated food. This was a public security office, not a restaurant.
“Hors d’oeuvres, Kasy?” TamLin asked dryly.
The woman took a half-step back and hunched her shoulders, red tinging her cheeks. “If—if you don’t want it…”
Third snatched a stick from the tray. She stared at the skewer of cucumber and carrot and… What was that? She sniffed warily.
TamLin sighed. “Eat one,” he told Kasy as he took one, himself.
His coworker blinked at him. “What?”
He indicated Third. “She can’t eat anything until after we do.”
Kasy frowned at him. “What do you mean? Of course she can eat—”
“It’s forbidden!” he snapped. “Her sister’s already off murdering her brother’s girlfriend because they broke the rules. She isn’t about to do something stupid that’ll get her euthanized.”
He was still upset at her for triggering the alarm.
“You had a cluster headache,” Third said quietly.
“Of course I had a—” He stared at her again. “You reverted to baseline because it would stop my headache?”
She nodded once.
He turned and grabbed one of the beverage cups, then stalked away. “Not from your universe. Not your responsibility.”
Nor was punishing her, his. She rubbed the cheek he’d struck.
He turned back before she dropped her hand, and he grimaced. “Either leave the tray or eat something, Kasy. We’re busy and have a prime to catch.”
Third jerked at his word choice and abruptly remembered another reason she needed to avoid being around that TamLin too much: As a sensate—and a highly sensitive one, at that—details from her universe would bleed into his psyche. She couldn’t keep her thoughts and such from leaching out, and he couldn’t help but overhear them. It had led to more than one sensate being considered insane until the scientists in alpha universes realized what was going on.
Kasy took a quick step forward and plucked a skewer for herself as she set the tray on a nearby shelf. She nibbled one of the things Third couldn’t identify. “Puce said I have to keep an eye on you.”
TamLin gave her a flat look, one eyebrow twitching.
She skittered back, slamming her hip into a counter. “I know! I know, okay? But he saw the vid of your friend here and claims you’re thinking with your dick.”
Third understood the words and their implication, but the concept was so foreign that it took what felt like forever to process. This TamLin? And her? Together-together? “I’m Nameless.”
She realized she’d spoken aloud, and she looked right at Kasy. Why would someone so obviously terrified be picked to ‘keep an eye on’ TamLin?
The woman swiped some limp curls out of her eyes. “Yeah, I noticed, but Puce… He wants…”
Kasy eyed her, suddenly looking serious, sedate. More her age—which was in her late thirties, if Third was reading her telomeres right.
And then the woman let out a long breath and deflated, losing the effect. “I’m Shadowborn, okay? Sensate, grade yellow.” Yellow was the bottom tier for primes, the one where sensates couldn’t identify details about what they felt. They just got a niggling feeling when something was in or from the wrong time or universe or both. “And Puce wants to breed us.”
“Orchestrated breeding is illegal in this somewhen,” Third said automatically, though she wasn’t naive enough to disbelieve the woman. She glanced at the closed door and merged into the surrounding systems enough to glitch up the cameras’ audio. “Breeder?”
Kasy grimaced. Third adjusted herself to check other details about the woman’s body…and realized the jitters and anxiety were biological, some kind of side effect. She wasn’t afraid at TamLin at all.
Third looked at TamLin. “Why isn’t Puce dead?”
“Moving against him directly will have repercussions on the others.”
Others, plural? Third wondered who else had come with Janni and TamLin from their universe.
But that was the kind of thing one shadow didn’t ask another. Instead, she ran her hands along her clothing, recognizing the various accoutrements by feel, and let her fingers linger on the vial of napalm-echo that was under her sweater.
She hopped over to the shelf and grabbed another one, which she stashed somewhere easy and quick to get to. She’d need it. “You said you had a ‘lead’ on things, so we’d better go talk to him.”
TamLin eyed her sharply, but she kept her expression the bland façade Nameless were required to wear.
Kasy looked from one of them to the other and back again. She let out something that might’ve been a weak snort or a cut-off chuckle.
“You will not touch Puce,” TamLin said firmly.
“I will not touch Puce,” she agreed—probably too readily, but the promise fit fine with her plan for whatever evidence or blackmail material he’d collected.
TamLin shook his head and headed out. Third and Kasy followed.
Kasy even gave her a wink.
Third missed a step. Surely she wasn’t that easy to read, not to someone she’d only just met?
The other woman smiled and fell back behind her, so TamLin and Kasy both escorted her through the security building.
Third wondered if that was meant as a protection or as a warning.
First didn’t so much as pause before entering the StretSec office. Raleigh hesitated before following. In her experience, public security didn’t care for people who didn’t have proper documentation.
The receptionist at the front desk was male, with ill-fitting clothes that seemed designed to hide that he was an experienced fighter. The beard kept him from seeming too unassuming, though.
First walked right up to his desk. “Is TamLin in?”
Why was he looking for TamLin at StretSec?
“You know TamLin?” the receptionist asked.
“He’s helping me look for my sister and my wife.”
The receptionist nodded. “And do you have a name?”
First just quietly met his gaze.
Raleigh understood why—answering either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ could cause more problems than they had time to deal with—but that was still antagonizing the man. She sighed. “We’re just trying to get in touch with him. Is he in? If not, we’ll just call and leave a message.”
She wasn’t quite sure why First had decided to come by rather than do that to begin with. Maybe he didn’t have TamLin’s number?
The receptionist glanced her over, then did it again—more slowly and appreciatively. “You have a name?”
“Raleigh.” She smiled politely. “Can you let him know we’re here, please?”
He beamed back at her, probably having read far too much into her courtesy. “Sure thing. Just a—”
An alarm shrieked.
Hubbub erupted. Raleigh’s chipset automatically adjusted to suit the situation—reducing the sensitivity of her hearing, improving her strength and balance, and to—
She hastily overrode that one and shut it off before she went into ‘kill’ mode.
First stepped aside—back to the wall, beside to the desk—and Raleigh stood near, watching the other side of the room. Near them, the receptionist was scrambling on his console and demanding someone tell him what the hell was going on.
TamLin, Third, and a woman (who had the sharp look of someone who’d been put through the breeder drugs that Raleigh thankfully had been spared experiencing back home) stumbled out from a hallway and beelined for the exit. First and Raleigh leaped after them—
And caught up in a nearby alley as TamLin shoved Third into a wall that had peeling paint and nails sticking out from the fabricated brick. “What were you thinking?”
The woman Raleigh didn’t know had her arms wrapped around herself. She was rocking and giggling softly. Déjà vu hit Raleigh, but she didn’t let her chipset bring the memory to fore, to recognize the woman’s reaction.
Third didn’t respond, even as TamLin knocked her to the ground and brought his foot back to kick her.
First intervened, catching TamLin’s foot with his own and nearly getting his own face slugged for his trouble.
“What did she do?” First asked calmly, as if watching his little sister get beaten on was normal for him.
TamLin’s chest heaved. “She killed my boss!”
“Now, we don’t know that,” the woman said, so calm that Raleigh’s stomach lurched. It took going through the drugs at least three times before somebody could manage that despite them. “We were walking away, and the office happened to catch fire. First off, who’s to say she did anything? And second off, he might not be dead.”
The woman tightened her arms around herself and started shivering. “I hope he is, though.”
“She grabbed napalm right before we stepped out of the armory!” TamLin snapped.
“She has napalm under her sweater,” Raleigh pointed out, glad for her built-in scanners.
First flinched, and TamLin gave her a hard stare, his respiration and pupils telling her where at least some of the aggression and fear were coming from.
Just as swiftly, TamLin grabbed Third and ripped off her sweater, leaving her in the sleeveless summer shirt that Raleigh had seen on the future version of Third that had paid a visit.
He stared at the bottle on her belt, yanked her up and against the wall, glared for another long moment, then dropped her and stalked off.
“What…?” First murmured.
He sounded genuinely confused, so Raleigh glanced at the still-shaky woman still near them and said, “Your TamLin wasn’t an addict, I take it.”
First stared at her.
Raleigh jerked her head back towards the direction he’d stalked off in. “He’s wanting a fix.”
The woman said, “Puce set things up to harm others, if he died suddenly. I’m Kasy. I work with…” Kasy mirrored Raleigh’s motion to indicate TamLin. “I don’t think the drugs are what are making him antsy.”
“They might not be the only factor, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t part of it or don’t exacerbate the problem.” Raleigh glanced at First, who still seemed dumbstruck that TamLin was an addict, to Third, who seemed unsurprised.
So perhaps their universe’s version of the man had just hidden his drug habit from First…or maybe Third was just better at hiding her reaction to things.
Raleigh helped Third to her feet and watched the girl brush herself off. “You know that was abusive, right?” she asked softly. “He had no right to do that.”
“Yes, he did,” said First, startling her. He sounded exhausted. “If he hadn’t done it, I would’ve had to.”
“It was a misunderstanding—”
“Oh,” Third said matter-of-factly. Her cheek was already starting to bruise. “I napalmed Puce.”
Raleigh stared at her.
“And I am much grateful to you for that,” Kasy said, “but in his office? Really?”
“Where else would he keep his documentation?” Third gave a slight smile. “The scanners were glitching, off and on, the whole time I was near that building—which has been most of the afternoon. Started hours before I came in, ended minutes after I left. Not enough of a connection for them to see it’s me.”
“I don’t hear the crime you’re admitting to committing,” Kasy said. “La la la. Fingers in my ears.” The woman frowned at Third. “Aren’t you talking too much? I thought Nameless weren’t supposed to be chatty.”
Third shrugged. “I’m a very bad Nameless.”
“No, you’re not,” TamLin said from the end of the alley.
Third actually perked up to see him, which made Raleigh feel a little sick.
“You’re just very bad at heeding rules that are tradition rather than outright law.” He stepped forward.
Raleigh didn’t see any more withdrawal symptoms. She also didn’t detect any drugs in him. Puzzling. And it made her even more uncomfortable about Third’s obvious infatuation with him. At least Janni had the sense not to complete their marriage.
“We found where Nev is holding Janni, at least, and it’s likely that Second will be there, too.” He started off, apparently no longer caring even about his possibly dead boss.
Third followed him readily.
Raleigh glanced at First. The two of them shook their heads, then looked to Kasy.
Kasy gave a little wave. “I’ll just be going back in the office and start the paperwork for all of you.”
And, as she headed back toward the building, Raleigh overheard her mutter, “I hope he’s dead.”
I hope you’ve enjoyed this section. This is the story’s “Authorized Cut” (in other words: language is adjusted to keep it to a T rating). If you purchase the e-book for this story or continue the series, you’ll be able to continue in the same version OR you can read the original NSFW Author’s Edition.
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