His daze twisted into tight focus. Eliot was emerging from the washroom—pink-faced, blaster in hand. Far had seen more than a few gun barrels in his day, but this one was unique: shaped like an X instead of an O, ready to punch a cross through his chest. There was no flourishing pause, no dramatic monologue, no time for Far’s Recorder reflexes to throw him out of the weapon’s range. Eliot pulled the trigger and he was a dead man.
Or would’ve been, if not for Saffron. The red panda launched from the pipes with a step on me and I’ll fall on you vengeance—landing on Eliot’s head, every claw flailing. She yelped. The blaster swung, its laser reducing the cushion by Far’s shoulder to a blackened smolder. Gram launched himself over the second couch, wresting the weapon from Eliot and tossing it back to Far, who caught the blaster midair—Way to finally make an appearance, Academy training!
When he turned the weapon’s sights back at its owner, Eliot froze. The whole hashing room did. Gram had managed to secure the girl’s arms behind her back. Priya paused by the charred couch and Imogen was brandishing the chai pot, though Far doubted she’d use it. There wasn’t a violent bone in his cousin’s body. There weren’t many in his, either, but almost getting blasted through the heart was enough to whip up aggression in anyone.
“You can’t shoot her, Far.” Priya was the first to move, bringing the moment back into itself with a touch on his arm. “She’s family.”
“Not on this crew, she’s not.”
“It’s not a metaphor,” Priya insisted. “The Ancestral Archives results came through. Eliot shares half of your mother’s DNA, which means she’s either your sister or your aunt.”
“What?” The worst day of Far’s life was also now jockeying for the weirdest. “No. No! I don’t have a sister. And Uncle Bert is Mom’s only sibling. There must be a mistake. We were both eating blood orange gelato when you gathered the sample; you must’ve snatched my spoon instead.”
That was it. The only thing that made sense…
“The DNA is Eliot’s,” Priya pressed. “It has all of her markers. Female. Alopecia universalis. She’s a McCarthy.”
Far stared down the blaster sights. Eliot stared back, no more smirks left to give. Those eyes did look an awful lot like his: same color, same stark stubbornness. “Is this true?”
“In a sense.” Hers was one of the most earnest sighs ever exhaled. “My name is Eliot Gaia McCarthy. I’m not your sister, or your aunt. I’m the daughter of Empra McCarthy, born on April 18, 2354 AD, in a parallel universe.”
Parallel universe.
As in…
Another world.
Weirdest worst day ever. “So you’re my doppelg?nger?”
“Doppelg?ngers look the same,” Gram corrected him. “What Eliot posits, what the evidence substantiates, is that there’s a different universe in which Empra McCarthy had a daughter instead of a son. That would mean Eliot is an alternate version of you.”
“Far’s the alternate version,” Eliot muttered.
“I think we all know who’s the original here,” Far shot back, blaster steady.
“Really?” Imogen lowered the chai pot. “We just found out there are whole other worlds and you’re arguing for an ego boost?”
Fair. Far looked back at the Engineer. “Is this even possible? Parallel worlds and shazm?”
“Hypothetically? Yes.” Gram’s eyes brightened: Geek-out mode greenlit. “String theory has maintained the existence of a multiverse for centuries, but we haven’t figured out how to communicate with these theoretical universes, much less attempt interdimensional travel.”
“A lot of the universes haven’t,” Eliot said. “Mine only joined the fun about twenty-seven years ago.”
“That’s remarkable!” Gram glanced down at her. “How’d your scientists manage it?”
Far broke in before things spiraled into quarky atomic talk. “If you’ve been able to jump worlds for so long, how come we haven’t heard of this multiverse before?”
“For the same reason your world’s history hasn’t caught on to the fact that the future walks among them. Much like the past, the multiverse is delicate. The Multiverse Bureau doesn’t like disturbing worlds that haven’t discovered parallel universes. It’s their policy to remain observers in such spheres.”
“You call trying to shoot someone observing?” Tiny tongues of smoke licked off ruined satin, dispersing when Far waved toward them. “I, for one, am very disturbed. If not for the deus ex machina à la bear-cat, that would’ve been my chest! Why would you want to kill yourself? I mean, your alternate self. Crux, we need a term for this.”
“I don’t want to kill you.” There was a crack in Eliot’s voice, threatening to spill out all sorts of emotion. “I have to.”
Far wasn’t sure he wanted her to go on.
“Why?” Priya asked for him.
“You just saw why.” Eliot’s eyes slid toward the hatch, meaning clear.
The door was the same as it’d always been, yet the crew’s hearts quickened when they stared at its metal and bolts. As if the why—the Fade—remained on the other side, apocalyptic storm front rolling, ever rolling, toward them, edges heavy with a skeleton army. Far could almost hear the clip-clop of ghost hooves, galloping in infinite silence….
“You mean that fady cloud-thing?” Imogen murmured. “What’s that got to do with Farway?”
“Everything,” Eliot said. “It’s—well, it’s hard to explain. It’d be easier to show you. There’s a memory chip of datastreams inside my pocket universe.”
“Your bag o’ secrets is a pocket universe?” Far snorted. “No way am I going to let you rummage through that. You probably have another weapon tucked away in there somewhere.”
Eliot looked to Priya. “The pocket universe is on my left wrist. It’s easier to open if you stretch it horizontal.”
So the bag o’ secrets was a pocket universe was a… bracelet? The chain was, for the most part, invisible. All the naked eye could see was a distortion—a ripple of wrong air strung between Priya’s hands, paper-cut thin. She stretched it out, eyes widening as they registered what she held: porthole to a different world. Slender fingertips vanished, first knuckle, second, third, wrist, as she reached into a space the rest of them couldn’t see. For a terrible moment, Far feared the disappearing would swallow her, too.
But her hand resurfaced, clutching the edge of a daffodil dress. Lace frothed out of thin air, until an entire gown stretched before them. The whole thing looked as magical as ever. Whoa was a common theme the room over, except for Imogen, who was making grabby hands for the dress itself.
“If you set the pocket universe on the floor, it’s easier to see what you’re grabbing,” Eliot offered. “You can stretch it wider, too. Just take care that you don’t fall in.”
Priya did as instructed. The dimension’s edge was malleable, warping to her touch until Far could see where space itself had split open, allowing for a cavity that was both there and not. One of the Invictus’s floor panels now went a level deeper than ship schematics dictated.
“What I wouldn’t give for a purse like this.” Priya pulled out another gown. “It’s… well, I mean, it’s phenomenal.”
Gram craned his neck for a better view. “This tech’s from your world?”
“Standard issue from the Multiverse Bureau.” Eliot nodded. “Light packing makes interdimensional travel worlds easier.”