Eyes widened. The guards glanced at one another.
“You’re from the future, aren’t you?” the red-haired guard offered. “Explains why we didn’t recognize your credentials.”
The thought of the respected emblem of the Multiverse Bureau—the infinity symbol linked over and over again into a circular chain-mail pattern—being mistaken for a time traveler’s badge ticked August’s blood pressure up a few notches. Somewhere in universe MB+251418881HTP8, the Ackerman forefathers were rolling in their cryonic suspension chambers.
“Sharp young man you are.” Agent Ackerman’s gaze flicked past the guards, to the mirror. Whoever was calling the shots of this interrogation stood behind the glass, listening. August stared past his reflection as austerely as he could. “Your present is in peril. Cadet McCarthy is traveling back into the past to alter events, but she is playing with forces vastly beyond her qualifications—”
CRACK! The door to the interrogation room opened so hard August expected the sound to spread to the mirror and spill into a thousand silver shards. The glass held. Agent Ackerman recognized the newcomer from the datastream of his trip to MB+178587977FLT6. Headmaster Marin’s alternate was identical in this world—right down to the mustache. It was an admirable lip wig, waxed into knifepoint ends that quivered when their owner spoke.
“Did you say McCarthy?”
“Yes,” Agent Ackerman answered with care. The name was obviously an explosive one.
“First day of a new promotion and that hashing family shows up. Never could stand Farway, always preening about being born outside of time. As if having a mother irresponsible enough to watch gladiator matches during labor is a bragging point!”
Ah. The history hoppers had a history, something painfully personal, gathering from the mustachioed man’s tone. It was the born-outside-of-time bit that piqued August’s interest. Could the circumstances of Farway McCarthy’s birth be the event to which Cadet McCarthy had been referring? Was 95 AD the time she was so determined to alter?
“Who is this girl? Farway’s daughter?”
“What she is, is a danger to you and your timeline.” Cadet McCarthy was probably in 95 AD already, catalyst alive at her side, attempting to spread this decay even farther…. Even if August could get his teleportation capabilities back online, they wouldn’t do him much good. “It was a disaster I was in the process of preventing, but your stunrods have interfered with my equipment. Headmaster Marin—”
“Headmaster?” It wasn’t until Marin frowned that Agent Ackerman realized his slip. Different world, different title. “No, no. It’s Commander Marin.”
“Commander Marin.” Frozen Ackerman corpses kept rolling round and round, but family honor could wait. The Fade had to be contained. If Agent Ackerman had to time travel to kill the final catalyst, so be it. “I’m going to need a ride.”
41
THAT TIME GODS POPPED OUT OF THE FLOOR
THE DREADED DAWN HAD COME. Gaius fought it off, clinging to dreams as long as he could, for Empra was in most of them. Empra—woman who’d come from the clouds, or so she’d always claimed. It was the glib answer to his serious question: Where are you from? He’d wondered this ever since his first sight of her in the stands in the ludus’s training arena, bright spot in the bleakest winter of Gaius’s life. His debts had hounded him to the foot of a lanista, forcing him to make an oath—to train, to fight, to slay, to die in the man’s name. Sunrises became numbered, nothing more than a reason to wake and begin the litany of blood and blade anew.
Whenever Empra watched Gaius’s practice spars, he felt life’s gray slip away. Food stuck to his stomach, jokes became laugh-worthy. On the evenings she visited him, to break bread and ask Gaius about the gladiator’s lot, he remembered that spring smelled of warmth and star-edged flowers, and love felt much the same.
During the day, Gaius fought. During the night, he lived.
Their conversations wound through many things. Questions, answers, fears, the dreams of youth. Nothing about Empra added up to a single city or province, nor did she ever commit to one when he asked.
Where are you from? The stars.
Where are you from? Heaven.
Where are you from? Not here. Elsewhere.
The thing was, it was believable. Empra was sky—vivid and vast with possibilities. But Gaius? Gaius, as his name so literally claimed, was a man of earth. He felt this gap between them even after their love became a spoken thing, even when she lay in his arms: shoulder blades sprouting like wings into his chest, a beat or two away from taking flight. Not even a child, his child, growing inside her womb, could keep Empra from leaving, going back to wherever it was that she’d come from.
Why? There was no fanciful answer this time.
Nor was there sky above Gaius when he opened his eyes, just the dull stone of ceiling, made for tamping down dreams. A rooster’s cry announced that morning was nigh. Soon he’d be fighting his first official match.
“Gaius? Is that you?”
The accent was Empra’s, and the woman standing on the other side of his cell door had a complexion just as alabaster. But the torchlight called up several differences: Her eyes were darker, her hair, too. Empra was gone and this woman was here when she was not supposed to be—even wealthy matrons didn’t frequent the gladiator school at this hour.
“How do you know my name?” There was crust in Gaius’s eyes. He made to wipe it out, yet the motion was in vain. He was still dreaming. He must be, for the woman was now inside his cell, while the bars themselves had not moved.
Gaius blinked. The sight only grew stranger. The woman—girl? She looked to be that in-between age where both words applied—removed the thinnest bracelet he’d ever seen, stretched it out in front of her, and pulled the air apart. She stared into this hole, speaking tooth-jarring words that belonged to no tongue Gaius had ever heard.
Hair appeared, black curls spilling out of nothingness. A head followed.
It was his own.
Gaius forgot to breathe.
The head frowned and spoke in the tumbling language. The woman—Girl? Goddess?—knelt down, placing the torn air before her. Two arms sprouted from the floor; an entire second Gaius pulled himself into the cell.
Somewhere the rooster kept crowing, reminding Gaius that he was awake. Awake and sober, unlike his cellmate, Castor, who’d tried to drown his fears in a goblet at last evening’s banquet, and was now a pile of limp limbs in the corner. Gaius drank only a single glass of wine at the festivities, even after Empra had melted off into the darkness and the night caved in on him. Yet if he was neither drunk nor dreaming, what explanation could there be for the scene before him? Had he already died in the arena? Was this Elysium? He’d expected more grass and fewer bars in the afterlife….
“Wh-who are you?” he managed.