Time Shards - Tempus Fury E-Book

Dana Fredsti

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

It's called "the Event." An unimaginable cataclysm in the 23rd century shatters 600 years of the Earth's timeline into jumbled fragments. Our world is gone: instantly replaced by a new one made of shattered remnants of the past, present and future, all existing alongside one another in a nightmare patchwork of different time "shards"—some hundreds of miles long and others no more than a few feet across.An alliance is formed: San Diego native Amber Richardson, the young warrior Cam, the supercilious Victorian Phineas Van Seldoot, Blake—a soldier from World War II, the 1880's reporter Nelly Bly, and "Merlin, and who claims to be the time-travelling 23rd century scientist responsible for the Event. Together they reach Merlin's laboratory at the South Pole, only to discover a vortex where the doomsday machine should be. If they enter the vortex, they may find a way to restore time. Or they may die in the chaos of extra-dimensional space.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Novels by Dana Fredsti and David Fitzgerald

Title Page

Leave us a review

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Novels by Dana Fredsti and David Fitzgerald

The Time Shards Novels:

Time Shards

Shatter War

Tempus Fury

Also by Dana Fredsti

The Lilith Novels:

The Spawn of Lilith

Blood Ink

Hollywood Monsters

The Ashley Parker Novels:

Plague Town

Plague Nation

Plague World

A Man’s Gotta Eat What a Man’s Gotta Eat

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TEMPUS FURY

Print edition ISBN: 9781785654565

Electronic edition ISBN: 9781785654572

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: June 2021

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2021 Dana Fredsti and David Fitzgerald. All rights reserved.

Visit our website: www.titanbooks.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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DEDICATION

Heartfelt special thanks to everyonewho helped us with our move from SF to Eureka.We could not have finished this book—and kept our sanity—without your support.We love you all.

Imagine time seen as a continuum—an infinite line containing everything that was and everything that will be…

Time perhaps as a tangible object. One that can be touched, like a mural on a wall that stretches infinitely in both directions. Portraying everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen. In one direction is the future unfolding. In the other direction the past, much of it forgotten, back to the beginning of time itself.

Finally, imagine time as a stained-glass window. The story of everything laid out in a glittering mosaic of trillions upon trillions of moments, from the big bang to the fiery death of the universe.

Until it shatters, and these shards of time come back together—but no longer in the same configuration…

This is the world after the Event.

1

Exultationist–Gestaltist Disputed TerritoryOutside the village of Horváth, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén Republic(Formerly Northeastern Hungary)July 18, 2216Three years before the Event

There had been twelve soldiers in the squad three days ago. Now there were seven.

In good formation, they cautiously made their way up the footpath between meadows and vineyards, toward the village. Here and there locals tended the vineyards, showing little interest in the newcomers. A cursory scan revealed no hostility. The mountainous landscape was green and lush, as if unchanged for centuries—aside from a trio of boxy robot shepherds tending a flock of sheep.

Sergeant Myfanwy Cochrane breathed in the crisp fresh air, admiring the view, trying hard not to think of all the burnt-out cityscapes she had marched through over the years. In places like this, however, the forgotten nooks and crannies of the world, she could almost believe they had found an oasis from the decades of endless world war.

A deserter’s dream, she thought, careful to mask it from her subordinates.

“Sarge, we have contact.”

An incoming thought from Peters, their point man, interrupted her reverie. At the top of the rise, where an ancient tavern stood and the cobblestone streets of the hamlet began, a quartet of village elders awaited their arrival. Cochrane halted the squad and signaled Peters to hold up. She turned to her comm specialist, Silva, who was also her best diplomat.

“Silva, go talk to them,” she sent. “Bradley, go with him.”

The two soldiers cradled their carbines, attempting a less confrontational manner, and approached the elders. Bradley, one of the squad’s two sweepers, was a talented esper. He’d already be telepathically scanning the four villagers.

“Jó reggelt kívánok!” Silva greeted them with a friendly wave. He spoke very little of the local dialect, but had made a point of learning a few basic pleasantries. It was polite to speak aloud before initiating a telepathic conversation with a stranger.

After a few minutes, Silva and Bradley shook hands with the locals, and the comm specialist stepped away, waving down to the squad.

“What’s the story, Silva?” Cochrane asked.

“Outstanding,” Silva replied. “We have good, better, and best news, Sarge. This place is called Horváth, and they say they’re unaffiliated with any factions. We and any other Gestaltist troops are welcome to stay here as their guests. They also told us theExultationist main force left here two days ago, headed over the border, to which they say good riddance.”

She nodded in approval. In this case “the border” meant the border with the Mátra-Slanec Federation, formerly a chunk of southern Slovakia.

For the last one hundred and fifty years Europe, like the rest of the world, had dissolved from nation-states into a patchwork of petty fiefdoms. No, Cochrane corrected herself. Patchwork was the wrong word—that would imply there were still large centralized territories left. The world was now a mosaic of tiny local authorities. Various psionic factions had taken up the mantle of governing—or at least raising armies.

Not surprising that the locals didn’t take to the Exultationists. That faction was one of the most notorious of the PsiPremicists—to them, the non-psychic minority weren’t just second-class citizens, they were outright chattel. Evolutionary has-beens no better than animals.

The only factions that treated the non-psionic worse were the Vorax, psychic vampires that happily fed on them, and the Ouroboros, the psionic hive mind spreading across Asia like a pandemic. Their Gestaltist PreCogs had warned that the Ouroboros sought to absorb the mind and personality of every person on Earth. These people in Horváth didn’t know how lucky they were.

“Sarge…”

She glanced at her second sweeper specialist. He was staring intently down at the villagers tending to the vineyards on the hillside below.

“What is it, Dee?”

He turned to her, fear in his eyes.

“Sarge, I scanned again for hostility, deeper, just in case, and— I’m not reading anything. They’ve been hollowed!”

The field hands had been brainwiped.

Cochrane whirled and sent to the entire squad.

“Ambush! Shields up!”

Not a millisecond too soon. Automatic weapon fire erupted from the upper windows of the tavern and the closest buildings. The spray of bullets ricocheted off their telekinetic shields, illuminating them with a ghostly glare.

Silva and Bradley turned to take cover, but the four villagers—or whatever they were—dropped their psychic masks and went on the attack. Both soldiers stiffened, faces locked in a rictus, and then crumpled.

Hitting the ground, the squad opened up with their spindle-fed TK assault carbines, but the ambushers had raised their telekinetic shields. Peters, still on point, low-crawled closer to the outlying buildings, but didn’t bother trying to blast through their shields. A highly rated pyrokinetic, he just focused his attention on first one roof, then the other, igniting a blaze on both.

The rest of the squad focused their fire on the quartet, but their shields held, disk shapes glowing bright with every impact. The four turned to face them. Suddenly Peters grabbed his head and writhed in pain, dropping and curling into a fetal position.

Then Cochrane was hit.

///the sun exploded

ripping the skin of the shrieking

sky apart in a violent, pulsating

nightmare///monstrous

disembodied human eyeballs bubbled up

through the leprous ground

and began devouring

Kwame their heavy gunner///his screams

echoed and reverberated infinitely

in her ears///while his body went twisting

and stretching into impossible

shapes until his torso

burst open///torn inside out like a pulpy

fruit mangled by a raging lunatic god///

Cochrane fought to regain control of her hijacked senses, but the sensory onslaught was overpowering—

///the sky plunged

into a crushing hopeless black

night///abandoned by stars///the

haunted moon

a howling death’s head

staring down on the ring

of grinning corpses

surrounding her///their faces

melting into grave rot///they

reach for her

stretching forth horrid

grasping hungry cadaverous

clawed hands///covetous

of her naked warmth///

Her resistance slipped as the telepaths reached down into the amygdala region of her brain, triggering the emotional center. Forcing herself to remain calm, she tried to concentrate on the location of her four opponents, even as she felt them twisting the knife in her mind—

///a cyclone of a million

fractaling razor blades flailing

through banshee winds///

ripping through her flesh

///face///stomach///fingers///

everywhere merciless

and unstoppable///

slicing her body

in a universe of pure pain///ten

thousand bloody

wounds made of her///

Cochrane screamed in agony. She struggled to stay alive long enough to pour all her mindfulness into one last telekinetic burst—if only she could—

///she was falling///

///she was on fire///

///she was a newborn baby

being eaten alive

by her own mother///

A sudden violent wrenching. The ground gave a single, quick, booming jolt, and then the pain vanished.

So did the flashing hellscapes.

The sergeant found herself on her knees, fingers dug deep into the turf, limbs shaking, body covered in sweat. She looked at the enemy. Her telekinetic attack had succeeded. She had reached around their line of protective shields and pulled apart the wall of the burning tavern—it had smashed them like a giant flyswatter.

Behind the smoldering slab the two closest buildings were engulfed in flames. Inside them, shooters screamed as the fire took them. Then the sounds stopped. No other hostiles in sight. It was a quiet day in the beautiful countryside again, save for the crackling of burning wood and the heavy breathing of her soldiers.

Meyers, their squad medic, ran up. Cochrane waved her away.

“I’m fine,” she said in her crisp British accent. “Check Peters and Kwame.” She turned to Dee. He was kneeling on the grass, his face slick with tears. The barrel of his pistol was in his mouth.

“Dee?” she called to him. After a few heartbeats, he slowly pulled the gun away.

“How long?” he croaked.

“Dee? Are you okay?”

He stared blankly. “How many years was I gone?”

“Fight’s all over. Only lasted a few seconds.”

He shook his head. “No, it was decades… I grew old and feeble in there…”

Meyers went over to the esper and crouched beside him, touching her fingers to his temple, talking to him gently while she mentally ran diagnostics. After a minute or two, she returned to Cochrane.

“He’ll be alright. It’ll just take a little time to shake off the effects.”

“How are the others?”

“Silva and Bradley are dead—hostiles crushed their hearts before they could get their blocks up. Peters is shaken, but I think he’ll be okay.” She looked over at Kwame, their heavy gunner. He was standing stock still, his spindle-fed cannon dangling from its straps and his blank eyes rolled back. Turning back to the sergeant, she shook her head.

“Kwame’s left the building. I can put some suggestions into his lizard brain to keep him marching with us, but he’s hollowed.” Meyers handed over three dog tags.

Sergeant Cochrane nodded. Walking killed in action.

“All right,” she sent out to what remained of her squad. “We still have three klicks to go to get to the bunker. Quick sweep up top to secure the area, and then we’re on the move again. Dee, you back with us?”

He wiped his face with the back of his hand, nodded.

“Good. You’re on double duty now—comms and sweeper. Stay sharp, everyone.”

The squad’s survivors moved out. Below, the villagers continued tending to the vines, industrious as bees, oblivious to the world.

*   *   *

When they finally reached the hatch of the spindle bunker, Cochrane breathed a silent prayer of thanks to the Corps of Engineers. It was right where the map indicated it would be, freshly planted and camouflaged. Bending down, she uncovered the square slab of nanowoven ferroconcrete, and mentally asked Dee for the combination.

“Cerulean Lemniscate Anticlockwise,” he responded.

Cochrane pictured a deep blue infinity symbol and set it gently in motion, spinning right over left as it hovered above the hatch.

“Zinnober Triangle Inverted.”

She set the image of an upside-down chrome green triangle next to the little spinning blue propeller.

“Topaz Pentagon Clockwise.”

Last, she added a yellowish-brown gem-toned pentagon, spinning opposite to the infinity sign. She held all three shapes in her mind’s eye.

The hatch made a sharp clack, unlocked, and began to sink. It descended fifteen centimeters before halting with a second clack, and slid away into a recess, revealing a narrow stone ramp. A line of tiny pale blue fluorescent lights, like helpful fireflies, showed the way. The remnants of the squad trudged down, exhausted and grateful.

At the bottom of the ramp lay the recharge chamber, dominated by the bunker’s spindle—its psionic power generator—hovering silently in the air between floor and ceiling. It was a black, elongated diamond structure with a hexagonal cross-section about sixty centimeters wide in the middle, tapering to a tiny flat hexagon at either end.

As the spindle sensed their approach, it activated with an almost imperceptible hum, slowly beginning to spin and flickering to life. Pale traces of lightning began to dance in its smoky crystalline interior, growing to an incandescence that suffused the entire generator with light.

The squad’s assault carbines and powered equipment operated on psionic batteries as well. Each soldier unclipped their weapon’s smaller spindles and spares, placing them close to the mother spindle. They hung in the air like crystal ornaments, orbiting the generator as they recharged.

Activating the spindle’s communications array, Cochrane spoke aloud. “Sergeant Myfanwy Cochrane, 138th Kinetic Infantry, Lima one-one-oh-niner.” While she reported in, the rest inflated their cots and dug into their rations. At Meyers’ instruction Kwame sat, back to the wall, remaining motionless.

“Dee, you’ve got mail,” Cochrane said. After a moment, she added quietly, “… it’s from a PreCog.”

The whole team looked up at that, forkfuls of food halted midway to their mouths. Mail was rare enough. Private channel messages, sent from HQ to a grunt, were unheard of. A private message from Military Intelligence?

Unimaginable.

“Probably just foreseeing a dear John letter,” Peters cracked. “Or maybe they forecasted you buying the farm.” Meyers kicked him and shot him a reproachful glare.

“Sorry, Dee,” he mumbled. The sweeper swallowed, then got up and cautiously approached the spindle array, wiping his hands on his fatigues.

“Specialist John DeMetta, 138th Kinetic Infantry, Delta one-two-two-six.”

The rest of the squad waited in hushed silence while he telepathically received his message. When he finally turned around and walked back to his cot, he said nothing. Peters and Meyers exchanged worried glances.

“Well, what is it already?” Peters burst out.

“Cut the chatter, Peters,” the sergeant snapped. “The message is for him, nobody else. Got it?”

“It’s okay, Sarge,” DeMetta said. “It’s not classified. Honestly, I don’t know what the hell to make of it.” He frowned and shook his head. “It didn’t make any sense… just something about a… a girl. Amber.”

No one said anything.

“Dear John,” Peters sent to Meyers.

She nodded.

2

Richardson HomeSan Diego, California

Amber woke up.

She lay with her eyes closed for a few minutes, trying to capture her dreams, but finding the images frustratingly vague, like a mental itch she couldn’t scratch. Broken snippets tickled her brain—swirls of pyramids, Roundhead and French Napoleonic soldiers, dinosaurs, and talking, flying bowling balls… and a man with violet eyes, stars streaming through their depths.

At first it all seemed so real.

Then, in the way of dreams, it made no damn sense.

The image of a man suddenly crystalized—early twenties with strong features, and a scar on his cheek. Dark shaggy hair falling to broad shoulders, a silver torc around his throat.

Cam, she thought. Yes, that seemed right.

Once his name and face solidified in her mind, so did others who had populated her dream. Nellie—a young Victorian woman with auburn hair and clever green eyes. Harcourt—another Victorian, but older and somehow irritating. Blake—a World War II British soldier who’d saved her life more than once…

As quickly as the images came, they blurred again, and faded. Try as she might, she couldn’t hold on to them.

Darn it! She tried one more time to grasp the memory, then shrugged and realized what she really needed.

Coffee.

With a yawn she stretched out on her bed, reveling in the crisp clean linen sheets, then looked around her bedroom. A menagerie of well-loved stuffed animals on the shelf. The picture window looking out on Mission Bay. The cast of Firefly looking back at her from the poster on her wall, promising her that they aimed to misbehave.

From downstairs the muffled sound of canned laughter came from the TV. She could smell waffles and bacon, and her stomach growled. Slipping an oversized Padres jersey on over her underwear, she wandered barefoot down the shag-carpeted stairs to grab some breakfast. At the bottom she paused for a moment to stare at a tall, stately grandfather clock standing against the far wall in the entryway.

Huh. That’s new.

“Mom? Dad?” she called out as she wandered into the dining room. “Hey, when did we get a grandfather cl—”

Amber stopped in her tracks. Neither her parents nor sister and brother were there, but two more grandfather clocks stood upright at either end of the table.

“Okay… that’s weird.” Her voice echoed in the empty room.

Fighting a rising sense of unease, she backed away and went into the family room, following the comforting sound of the TV. Another grandfather clock stood there like a monolith, parked in front of the television set, the dancing black and white static reflecting off its glassy face. It made no sense.

Amber’s heart started racing.

She went back to the entryway and approached the front door.

Nothing scary there, she thought even as her heart galloped in her chest. Just a door.

As she reached for the door handle, it seemed to recede, the air thickening around her hand like warm gelatin. Clenching her jaw, she pushed through, grabbed the handle, and shoved the door open, stepping out onto the porch.

There was no one in sight.

Across the street, a grandfather clock stood on the porch, facing her. Two more were on the sidewalk in front of the house, side by side, as if caught in mid-stroll. Another was down at the corner, and yet another in the middle of the front yard next door. Three more stood sentry at random spots along the street and sidewalks.

A low rumbling noise came from down the block, like the sound of garbage bins being rolled out. The street a few houses down rippled like an oasis in the desert heat. Amber watched as the ripple turned into a long sinuous shape rising out of the asphalt—a huge crocodile swimming through the street as though it were water. It drew abreast to her house, then submerged, vanishing from sight.

Heart hammering in her chest, she retreated back into the house, bolting upstairs. At the top she threw open a door before registering that there wasn’t supposed to be one there. On the other side, instead of the hallway, there was a small room, featureless and unfurnished…

Another door on the opposite wall.

Running to the door, she flung it open. Another equally sterile room, another unwelcoming door. In full panic mode, she turned back to the first door, but instead of leading to the stairs it opened to yet another small room with yet another door on the far wall.

Fear mixing with anger, she screamed, and ran for that door. It opened to a small room with a door. She opened it, to find another door.

And another door.

And another.

And another…

Time and again she burst through, great shuddering breaths pumping through her lungs, turning to sobs as she twisted knob after knob. And then, when her terror seemed too much to bear, she opened yet another door and rushed inside—

Into pitch darkness.

3

Evacuation Zone, somewhere in the ruins of the Khan el-Khalilisouk El Qahira Governorate (formerly Cairo, Egypt)February 2, 2219Twenty-five minutes before the Event

Even when the ancient city had been alive and full of people, its alleys and souks had formed a confusing warren. In the moonlight, the ruins of the lost Cairo megalopolis were a surreal and disturbing labyrinth—yawning holes in twisted chunks of concrete or metal or stone that stood like abstract statues of lost souls. For the pair of soldiers nursing the wheezing, cantankerous hovercraft through the maze, over broken streets littered with dust, ash, and tangles of bones and skulls, it was a waking nightmare.

The vehicle kicked up great plumes of dust, the twin headlight beams barely piercing the haze in front of them. Both soldiers kept their eyes peeled for trouble, alert for whatever might be lurking in the twists and turns of the haunted streets. Sergeant Cochrane gritted her teeth, her grip so tight on the jumpy, uncooperative stick of their commandeered vehicle that her fingers cramped.

“How much further to the extraction, DeMetta?”

“We’re close—less than a klick,” he answered.

“And how close are the Ouroboros?”

“Still advancing through central city. Everything west of Gezira Island is overrun, and they’ve reached Tahrir Square. To the north, the main body has just crossed Ramses Street, and there’s a division coming down Salah Salem to do a pincer action from the east.”

“Just great,” Cochrane thought darkly. “Can we still get out through the south?”

“If they don’t encircle the whole city first.”

“How soon before we’re in range of their Medusae?”

“At the rate they’re closing in, I’m guessing twenty minutes, if we’re lucky.”

If they failed to elude the dragnet closing in on them, the approaching Ouroboros vanguard would crack their psyches like eggs and absorb them into the hive mind, just as it had done to more than two-thirds of the human population of Earth. It had taken less than sixteen months.

Cochrane increased the hovercraft’s speed as much as she dared.

They turned a corner, and the maze around them exploded into light. They caught a fleeting glimpse of a dazzlingly bright, vaguely human shape as a deafening psychic banshee scream tore through them, overloading their senses with raw bursts of pure insanity.

“Berserker!” That was all Cochrane managed to get out before the lightning storm raged through her neural pathways into the core of her brain. Her body’s muscles locked up, causing her to simultaneously slam on the braking thrusters and rev the accelerators. With a queasy lurch, the hovercraft flew into a spin, careening out of control. They hurtled forward, slamming directly toward the shrieking inferno of glaring light.

Something struck them with a sickening crunch and another explosive burst of intense brightness. An instant later they clipped a section of wall and rebounded before finally coming to a juddering halt.

“We’re not dead,” DeMetta said aloud, sounding surprised.

“As if we’d be that lucky,” Cochrane replied, rubbing her neck. “What happened to the scream job?”

DeMetta looked behind them. A pair of blood trails led to where the former human had been torn in two. For a change their shit luck had a silver lining—the hovercraft had crashed into and killed the thing that sent them out of control in the first place.

Bad things happened when psychics overloaded and blew out their psionic power. In most cases they died horribly, brains turned into gray mush. In the case of berserkers, though, the manifestation of self-destruction was more spectacular.

Berserkers were what remained of a flameout case whose brainstem remained just intact enough to become id-driven, walking psionic Chernobyls. Some psychically annihilated any mind they encountered, others demolished everything in their path with frenzied telekinetic blasts. It no longer mattered what faction they’d served—they were, to all extents and purposes, the psychic undead.

“Berserker contact resolved,” DeMetta deadpanned.

Cochrane nodded. “I’ll take it.” She turned her attention back to the controls. “Let’s move.”

Their hovercraft’s turbines caterwauled more than before as Cochrane urged it back to life. Its battered skirt panels rattled as they sped through the maze of rubble. Crossing the wide thoroughfare of Nafak Al-Azhar into a sector of lesser devastation, they pulled up at their contact point—the domed remains of a grand Ottoman mosque.

The ancient wooden front doors were scorched but still finely engraved with tessellated geometric designs. Cochrane stood by, covering DeMetta with her assault carbine while he beat on the door three times, then twice, then three times again, and finally sent the password to anyone within ten meters.

“Khanda.”

“Kirpan,” came the countersign a moment later.

They pushed open the great doors and entered the sacred space. Chains of unlit brass lanterns hung suspended from the domed ceiling overhead. It was richly tiled with arabesques and ringed with calligraphic verses from the Quran. Below that were rows of broken stained-glass windows, some tall and long, others forming clusters of little portholes. Stray pale beams of moonlight lanced down through them, illuminating a smooth stone floor littered with fresh corpses.

A tremendous firefight had occurred here. There were a few dead Transcendentist troopers in urban camo fatigues and spiked turbans, but the majority of the casualties were wearing civilian clothes—working smocks, facemasks, aprons. Judging from the stacks of crates, overturned tables, and a scattering of spindles, tools, and material, the mosque had been converted into a guerrilla weapons factory.

“Over here,” a Japanese-accented voice called out. A pair of Transcendentist soldiers—one Asian, the other Slavic, their impressive beards and mustaches fastidiously groomed—had taken position behind the ablutions fountain. They rose from their cover and saluted the new arrivals with great formality. “Prefect Lance Corporal Anzai and Initiate Svoboda, Unified True Transcendent Forces, at your service.”

DeMetta thought of how Peters would refer to them as “Trancin’ Dentists.” He carefully concealed that memory—the Transcendentists were notoriously humorless. It was strange to be allied after generations of warring with them, but even quasi-religious, deeply controlling cultists were better than a voracious hive mind.

“Sergeant Cochrane and Esper Specialist DeMetta,” Cochrane said brusquely, all business. “What happened here? Rogue faction?”

Anzai shook his head. “Unaffiliated. Criminals, in fact. Our intel tipped us off to an underground bombmaking operation here in the ruins.”

“So close to the hive advance? That’s suicidal.” She shook her head. “Never mind, we don’t have time for this. We were told there were three of you. Where’s your prisoner?”

Anzai turned and pointed behind him.

Nearby lay a sealed metal capsule roughly the size of a sofa. A small bank of system monitors and controls was on one side, instructions and notations all in Cyrillic. It took Cochrane a moment to recognize what it was—a hibernation pod, just like long-range astronauts used in the old days, back when nation-states had space programs. She shot a glance at DeMetta.

“Do you buy any of this shit?”

“Hell no, and we sure as hell don’t have time to figure out what their game is, either.”

She turned back to the Transcendentists, eyebrow raised. “Your prisoner is in there?”

“Yes, ma’am. In suspended animation.”

“Well? Open it up and get him out! Let’s go!”

“Ma’am! We can’t open the capsule!” Anzai’s previously unruffled composure cracked.

“Then he’s a no-go,” she replied. “We’re out of here. Now.” Her gaze was steely.

“Surely we can lift it together between the four of us—”

“Look, Corporal, I don’t know your TK ratings, but even if we can lift it to the street, there’s no way in hell we’ll be able to fit it on the hovercraft. Either crack it open now, or he’s staying here.”

“We cannot leave this in the hands of the Ouroboros,” the corporal responded flatly. Cochrane cocked her head slightly and stared at the man through narrowed eyes.

“Okay… just what the hell do you people have here?”

“We have to get it out of the city!” Svoboda insisted.

“What the fuck do you people have here?” Cochrane shouted.

Taking a deep breath, Anzai replied, “We—we strongly suspect… it is a PreCog.”

The two Gestaltist troopers stared at him.

“A rogue PreCog?”

“Precisely, ma’am.”

Cochrane and DeMetta looked at each other. Precognitive operatives were among the rarest and potentially most powerful psionic talents. Letting one fall under Ouroboros control would be an irreparable strategic disaster. The ability to forecast the future was the only advantage the Alliance had left over the hive mind.

She put a hand on DeMetta’s shoulder. “DeMetta, I need you to see what’s really inside there—and do it fast.”

*   *   *

DeMetta nodded. Unslinging his carbine, he carefully set it on the stone floor and knelt by the capsule, stretching a hand over its sleek surface. Closing his eyes and probing its interior, he could just sense a glimmer of the mind inside, but any cerebral activity was buried in hibernation. He had to dig deeper.

There.

All at once he had a clear picture of the unconscious figure. It wasn’t what he was expecting.

“There’s a girl inside,” he said over his shoulder. “She’s only fourteen.”

“Can you hear me?” he asked her.

“Yes…”

A thought occurred to him—something he had been mulling over for three years.

“Are you… Is your name Amber?”

“No… My name is Sensemayá.”

“I’m John,” he replied. “We need to get you out of here, Sensemayá.”

“Wait… It is time…”

“What? What do you mean?”

“They are coming…”

The girl shocked DeMetta by projecting an image into his mind—a huge army pouring off the Salah Salem freeway and coming down the Nafak Al-Azhar. Not an army of soldiers. These were—or, had been—ordinary people. Their anonymous numbers filled the wide boulevard like a river, moving inexorably, their advance eerily silent, their blank eyes staring into the distance.

Leading the somber procession were three sallow-skinned bald men dressed in tattered shrouds, their oversized violet eyes glowing brightly. They stood like statues with their arms at their sides, palms facing out as they glided down the road, feet levitating over the asphalt. The Alliance called them Medusae—the Ouroboros shock troopers—and they drew their power from the vast entourage that followed them.

DeMetta came out of his trance, eyes snapping open as he leapt to his feet.

“They’re here! Coming down Al-Azhar!”

“Get her out of the capsule,” Cochrane barked. “Now!”

But the capsule was already opening. With a smooth mechanical whirring, a crack of light appeared along the side of the sleek metal tube as the lid automatically lifted open. A slender young girl with long black hair was nestled within the soft foam, dressed in simple white cotton pajamas. Her features seemed South American, or perhaps Slavic-Eurasian.

She opened her eyes.

“It is time,” she sent.

“Sensemayá,” DeMetta said urgently, “listen to me. I know you’re still groggy, but you have to come with us, right now. Here, let us help you up.” The girl sat up. Though her face was unreadable, she was neither groggy nor, it appeared, prepared to go anywhere.

“No,” she responded, “this is the moment.”

She closed her eyes. DeMetta frowned in confusion, and reached out with his psyche once more to try to make sense of her intentions. She allowed it.

“Sensemayá? What are you doing?”

The girl wasn’t trying to escape at all. Quite the opposite— her mind was racing out in a psychic wave, coursing through the ruins of the city directly toward all the Medusae triads.

“No! Don’t get close to them—they’ll absorb you!” he warned her.

“No… I will absorb them.”

She wasn’t a PreCog, he realized with a shock. No, she was something else entirely, engaged in some psionic discipline unfamiliar to him. As the Ouroboros sensed her approach, he felt the Hive’s voracious hunger for their surge. Terrified, he could only watch helplessly as they lashed out to seize and assimilate her consciousness.

They failed.

Instead she phased—DeMetta didn’t know what else to call it—somehow translating herself extra-dimensionally out of synch with them, her psychic presence effortlessly slipping through the Medusae’s psionic nets.

“My god,” DeMetta said aloud. “They can’t stop her!”

Immune to their mental snares, the girl bypassed the Medusae completely, tapping into the lines of connection between the triads and their attendant hive-slaves. DeMetta felt her flex her strength and seize control of their mental reins. Their power supply became hers, and she drank it all in.

“She’s some kind of Vorax,” DeMetta said. “Some new form of psychic vampire. She’s not just co-opting their power supply, she’s doing something I’ve never seen before— drawing on another kind of energy…”

The esper watched her psychokinetically warping space again, extending her reach not just through the million-strong Hive forces descending upon Cairo, but to all of the hive mind’s teeming billions—every one on the planet.

DeMetta opened his eyes again and faced the two Transcendentist soldiers.

“This wasn’t some faction of criminal bombmakers, you stupid jackholes. They brought her here to take out the Ouroboros! They found a way to warp space so that the Medusae can’t get their hooks in her!” He pointed to Sensemayá.

“She’s not a bombmaker—she’s the bomb…”

The fourteen-year-old held the entire Ouroboros serpent, with all its billions of once-human hive mind components, in her psionic grasp. She was going to kill the snake.

A smell of ozone filled the air, along with a deep hum that seemed to come from everywhere. Tiny strings of white-hot ball lightning suddenly sparked into life, crackling along the sides of the metal capsule. All around them, the chains holding the mosque’s lanterns began to sway. Cochrane and the Transcendentists looked around nervously.

“She’s doing it,” DeMetta said in amazement. He strained his own clairvoyant ability to keep up with the sheer scope of her global reach as the power she channeled built to near-unimaginable levels. And then it reached a crescendo.

Sensemayá threw her head back and screamed, the piercing sound echoing off the stone floors and walls, shattering the mosque’s remaining stained glass into flying pieces. The soldiers crouched and covered their heads.

“DeMetta!” Cochrane yelled. “What’s happening? She’s tearing the place apart!”

DeMetta could see it happening all around the world, as stolen husks of Ouroboros minds flared out and died, their eye sockets smoking.

“She’s done it,” he answered, voice filled with awe. “She’s really done it—she’s killed them all! Every last one of them!” He crouched down next to her. “Sensemayá, you’ve done it.”

The girl didn’t answer. Her eyes remained closed, body trembling.

“Sensemayá? It’s okay, you did it, girl. You saved us all.”

“It’s not okay, John. Something’s wrong… the power’s still building. I can’t control it, it’s not coming down.” Her fear was palpable. She grabbed his hand. “There’s too much. Something else is here…”

He stared at her, trying to concentrate.

“Let me help you. Show me—”

She did, letting him further into her mind. He could see it now. The nexus of extra-dimensional energy upon which she was drawing was transforming into something bigger. She had opened Pandora’s box, and couldn’t close the lid. Now the girl really was a human bomb. Energy particles streamed off her.

“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”

“Sensemayá!”

The psychic wave hit him first, followed by a blinding torrent of charged particles that ripped through him. He screamed. Her hand gripped his with a desperate strength. There was a rush, a supernova’s brilliance, and then…

Silence.

*   *   *

When sight and sound returned—a moment later? Hours later?—he found himself draped over the metal coffin, arm outstretched. Sensemayá was gone. Sergeant Cochrane and the soldiers were gone. Cairo was gone.

He couldn’t make out anything but the roughest details. It was far brighter and hotter now, daytime. There were voices close by, and he could discern blurry figures approaching. Then he felt hands trying to help him to his feet. He was too unsteady to resist as they brought him—no, not to his feet. They were gently placing him in the capsule. His head spun.

“No, please—don’t do that,” he murmured. They crossed his arms on his chest.

“Sui-Netherit, wep em wawet. Hru ent kshese neseni, t’a pa maehti,” someone said in a reverent voice. The lid closed. The capsule’s theta-wave generator put him to sleep instantly, and the hibernation sequence began.

4

Place: UnknownTime: Unknown

She landed on hands and knees, against a hard surface. Wood. Terror-sweat poured in rivulets off her face as the sound of her sobs echoed off the walls. A faint light shimmered off to one side.

Amber sat up slowly, wiping the tears away from her eyes, watching as violet stars began to cascade down one wall, a waterfall of light suddenly illuminating the room… which expanded until there were no walls, just an endless room stretching out for infinity.

Two men in black monk robes, hoods pulled up over their heads and hiding their faces, sat at a small table. She looked closer. They were playing chess. The white chess pieces were on fire, but neither player seemed perturbed by the flames. Further away a funeral was underway. A simple pinewood coffin lay next to an open grave, dug out from the wooden floor.

As Amber approached the casket, the lid slowly opened. Dr. Jonathan Meta lay there in his own black robe, just as when she first met him, looking peaceful with long silver hair, his eyes closed.

“Oh, Merlin…” she said softly. It broke her heart to see him.

“Amber,” he answered.

His voice didn’t come from the coffin. It came from one of the chess players. Both turned to her, drawing back the cowls from their faces. Both were János Mehta.

They frowned at her.

“Who’s Merlin?” the player with the black pieces asked. He sat there, glaring at her while the Mehta with the flaming chess pieces stood up. He looked around the infinite space in dazed wonderment, then turned to Amber.

“You… are Amber, aren’t you?”

She looked from one to the other. With his hood pulled back, she could now see that under his black robe, the seated János Mehta wore a military-style uniform of some kind—a crisp black formfitting outfit that looked as if it came from the Imperial wardrobe rack in Star Wars.

The standing János Mehta pulled his robe off, revealing military wear as well, but drab and worn baggy camo fatigues—more like the twenty-first-century American soldier gear she was used to seeing, even if she didn’t recognize the flag patch on his shoulder.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m Esper Specialist John DeMetta, with the 138th Kinetic Infantry unit of the Gestaltist Faction Army.” He rattled off his name and rank with a well-practiced flow before giving an almost embarrassed smile. “My friends, however, just call me John, or Dee.”

She looked at the two men. Their faces and buzz cuts were identical, dark skin, high cheekbones, silver hair, and those unmistakable violet space-alien eyes with the freaky cascade of tiny stars. Yet there was a subtle difference between them, a natural gentleness inherent to Specialist DeMetta—and to her Merlin—that was lacking in János Mehta. He could only mimic compassion—when it suited him.

She turned to DeMetta. “So… you’re the one who’s been haunting me in my dreams, and making me sleepwalk all over the place?”

“Yes,” he replied. “I think it must have been me. Sorry about that.”

She flashed on the memory of him at the base of the Sphinx. Cam and Kha-Hotep charging him, weapons raised to protect her. Both men crumpling to the ground without warning.

“Hey!” she exclaimed. “What did you do to Cam and Kha-Hotep?”

“Your friends?” he responded. “They’re fine. I just stunned them so they wouldn’t cut my head off.”

Amber felt relieved to hear that, though her mind was still reeling and she wasn’t sure she could trust what anyone told her anymore. She rubbed her head with both hands.

“Is this really happening, or is this just another dream?” She glanced down at her jersey. “Never mind, this has to be a dream. I haven’t worn this shirt in months.”

“Well, this is a dream,” DeMetta said, straddling the chair he’d been sitting in, “but you and I are having a real conversation. You and I have been communicating in our sleep all along, so this seemed the fastest way to catch up. But this is the first time we’ve been awake in our dreams, if that makes sense.”

“Um… sort of,” she replied. “Not so much.”

DeMetta grinned. “It’s okay. We’re lucid dreaming now. When we’re done, you can just wake up. And in the meantime, if you want to change clothes, just think of something, anything you like. I mean, you’re the boss here.”

On a whim, she imagined herself wearing a black leather combat catsuit. The Padres jersey vanished, replaced by something Kate Beckinsale would wear to fight Lycans.

“We really are in The Matrix,” she murmured, pleased with herself.

DeMetta gave a confused smile. “Sorry, I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a twentieth-century thing,” Amber explained. “So where is your shard from?”

“My shard?” He stared at her blankly.

“What year are you from?”

“What year am I from?”

“Yeah, you know, the Event? Where have you been, under a rock or someth—” She stopped as she remembered the Sphinx, and realized her faux pas. “I’m sorry. You’ve been stuck in a big metal box for who knows how long.”

He nodded. “You know what suspended animation is, right? Basically, I’ve missed everything since the Ouroboros marched on Cairo. I don’t know how long I’ve been out, but you must’ve already heard the news through the spindle networks or the Allied PreCogs, about Sensemayá and how she took out all their Medusae.

“Well, I was there with her when it was defeated—at ground zero, in fact,” he continued. “It’s funny, feels like it only just happened a few moments ago…” He paused, looking back up at Amber. Her blank expression said it all.

“I don’t want to come off like a PsiPremicist,” he said carefully, “but are you and this Egyptian group from some rogue a-psyche faction?”

“What?”

“The Contras? NeoLudds? Gypsies?” He suddenly looked at her as if just seeing her for the first time. “Hang on. You’re not any kind of a-psyche radical, are you? You’re a…” His voice trailed off, as though not wanting to say it out loud. “You’re a full-on Ungifted.”

“Look,” she said, “I have to tell you—I really, really don’t have a clue about anything you’re talking about.”

He leaned back and scratched his head.

“I guess that makes two of us.” He sat silent for a moment, then said, “Tell you what. You debrief me, and then I’ll return the favor.”

“Sure, but…” Amber frowned. “Wait, so how did you even find me, if you don’t—” She stopped, nodded to herself. “Right. Suspended animation. Never mind. Okay, first things first. The Event. So… do you know what ‘schizochronolinear’ is?”

DeMetta raised a hand. “Let me make this really easy for you. Don’t tell me, just show me.”

“What do you mean? Draw you a picture? Do an interpretive dance?”

“Smart ass,” he said with a grin. “No, just think about what you’re trying to explain to me.” He sat straight and closed his eyes.

“Oh. Okay.”

She closed her eyes, too, and pictured…

*   *   *

Merlin, back at the Neolithic cave in Britain, lecturing them by firelight, as she imagines a stained-glass window of time, six hundred million years long, shattering in a mindboggling cosmic cataclysm, then coalescing again into a patchwork new world… a towering curtain of raw energy roaring just inches away from her face…

Pleistocene wilderness, Gavin dead beside her, sliced in half… making her way cross-country past ruins, hiding from dire wolves… Blake rescuing her…

*   *   *

Cam, charging her with his sword, then falling at her feet… The young Celt laughing with her, cooking them both breakfast… Getting captured by Cromwellian Roundheads and locked up in the bell tower at Lexden… The others. Stearne. Nell. Their escape. Pursuit. Simon. Blake. Fighting soldiers. Cam, dying on the ground…

The Vanuatu… Flying the ship to North Africa… Stranded… Crossing the desert… The temple… Giant crocodiles… The Star of the Dawn… New Memphis.

The Sphinx.

*   *   *

She opened her eyes again. The return to the dreamscape was disconcerting, but she shook her head and recovered. After a moment, DeMetta opened his eyes, as well. When he finally spoke, he sounded shaken.

“So time has shattered into pieces, and you… you aren’t an Ungifted, you’re just from the past. A completely different past.”

“What do you mean?”

He was silent for a moment, then looked at her with a solemn gaze.

“Let me show you.”