Third led her brother to across the street from a restaurant that was that somewhen’s equivalent to Greek food. First studied the building a moment, then strode into the street toward the entrance, accepting her choice. Third continued down the sidewalk and crossed the street a block down before circling her way back up. Second—if she hadn’t been dead—would’ve cut across the street a block up, and reached the restaurant before Third did.
Old habits died hard.
Third stepped around a waitress and headed for the back right corner—that would be his first choice, with the two of them, with the back left being first choice when all three of them together, and the front corners only chosen if the back options were taken—and slipped into the seat across from her brother as the waitress took his drink order—waters, for both of them, no ice, with lemon in his and lime in hers. First was thoughtful like that, much like TamLin, who had been their clutch’s keeper, before…
She blinked twice, quickly, to interfere with the tear ducts. Tears were dangerous, whether because they interfered with the identification of a threat or because they displayed that she wasn’t an automaton. She focused on the table as a distraction. It was plastic, engineered to look like wood, but plastics’ bio-identities were easy to recognize.
Third turned in her seat to keep as much of an eye on their surroundings as she could, though First had taken the true corner and thereby set himself as the on-duty sentinel. Firsts didn’t always see themselves as responsible for their clutches—some only delegated, as if they were keepers, themselves—so Third appreciated his willingness to give her a break, when he could.
His own limitations—and choices—meant that the worst, longest, and most dangerous jobs had always fallen to Third, often by herself… She didn’t need to be psy-positive to know her brother felt guilty about it. He’d been born first, before their mother had realized her children were usually unstable. He could’ve been Named all along, had their mother wanted that.
Third had never had that option.
First opened his menu. “Where’s the chicken?”
She crisply opened her menu to the appropriate page, paused long enough for him to spot it, then checked the veal, herself.
“You have local currency?” First asked blandly. He knew she did—she wouldn’t have recommended the restaurant if she couldn’t pay for it—and his tone made the question rhetorical.
Janni knew how Third got her money, too, though Third was pretty sure Raleigh didn’t. Their spot of town made it easy. She could rob a burglar or mug a pimp or flip a bundle of unlicensed drugs. (The last one could be the most amusing, considering dealers sometimes noticed that she was selling them their own jolt.) She had to vary her targets and processes, too, because people swapped notes, and predictability would get her killed.
But keeping the criminal element mad at her kept her from getting complacent, and it paid well, without her having to take a name. She’d fled her universe because she wasn’t suicidal, so she wasn’t about to do something that would get her hunted as a Breach.
Living with a Named version of herself did kinda stretch the laws thin, but Janni was Named, so Third wasn’t neglecting her duty. If you assumed that Janni let Third protect her from Infested—which didn’t exist in their current universe, so the law only applied if you squinted.
Third liked squinting.
But perhaps that was because of TamLin. Even though he’d been their clutch’s keeper and responsible for keeping them in line, he had been a sensate, naturally aware of the traces left by displaced time or universes. Gave him cluster headaches, even.
She blinked twice, quickly, to stop the tear ducts, ducking her chin to hide any glint from watery eyes. She put her menu down so First could see it, tapped her choice, then folded her menu and put it aside.
The waitress returned with their waters, and First ordered for both of them.
The woman frowned. “I think the young lady should order her own meal.”
“She told me what she wanted before you came over here,” First said calmly. “And don’t forget the extra olives.”
The waitress’s frown deepened as she studied Third, who observed that the woman had acne scars—some fresh enough that she suffered adult outbreaks—and had removed a wedding tattoo from her right wrist, judging from the size and shape of that particular scar. Not enough credits to remove the blemish, probably.
“Madam?” First cut in, though Third was sure he’d noticed the removed tattoo, too. “Please take our orders to the kitchen. My sister is hungry.”
“Is she mute?”
“Sometimes.” His mild, dry tone mimicked TamLin, and Third had to look away again, to maintain her composure. The waitress left, and First sighed softly. “I’m sorry. I should’ve thought before—”
“He’s dead,” she interrupted, though he would’ve had to strike her for such disrespect, back home. “She’s dead. We’ve both lost the reasons we ran to begin with, so it’s either find something else to live for or go back home and let the zombies eat our brains.”
Third didn’t talk that much. She was getting…confused. She sipped her water as she adjusted her mental state to reduce the resonance—psychic influence from a nearby alternate version of herself—then let out a long sigh. “Janni.”
“She’s more verbose, then?”
Third shrugged. “Named.” A person, allowed—required—to speak, plus from a universe that featured no Infested and more culture.
Out of habit, she scanned the restaurant for threats.
She frowned and turned to get a better look, though that would be overtly obvious. The object of her attention noticed her, and he gave her a wry, rueful smirk from across the restaurant.
“Third?” First asked, the polite request a demand for an explanation.
She glanced at her brother, and when she looked back, she was unsurprised to find the man she’d been staring at was gone. “Father,” she whispered, though he wasn’t their father.
She turned back to the table as the waitress set their ordered meals down. First’s expression asked the question he wouldn’t dare say aloud. Nameless weren’t allowed to care.
“Janni’s father.” Though Third knew he was gone, she searched the crowd of restaurant employees and patrons, hoping for a glimpse, something that would help her figure out why he was there. “I take after him.”
Which made her all the more worried about why Nev would kill Second and why Third would remove her governor chip. Jumpers who knew how to use their abilities were difficult to capture. Second, as a navigator, was even harder to catch than Third was. Why was Second the one who was about to end up dead?
Third had met Janni’s father once before, when he slipped into her universe, and though he hadn’t said as much—and though his universe preferred euthanasia over namelessness—she suspected he’d originally been Nameless, himself.
Just one more thought of the many that Third was careful to keep Janni from picking up. Janni didn’t need that knowledge worrying her conscience.
Raleigh recovered her equilibrium by making coffee and preparing sandwiches to stick in the fridge, for everyone to eat whenever they got around to it. Janni came in when Raleigh was halfway through putting jalapeño kale chips on the sandwich she’d made for herself. “You okay?”
“This body is undamaged,” Janni said, one of the few overtly odd things she’d say, sometimes. Brushing her brown-dyed bangs out of her eyes, she wrinkled her nose and peered at the sandwich. “I hope you have something prepped that you didn’t ruin with condiments.”
Raleigh pointed a thumb at the fridge. Janni promptly opened it and grabbed a plastic-wrapped sandwich and a single-serve bottle of milk.
Before Janni could ask where their third roommate was, Raleigh said, “Kitten’s brother picked her up for lunch.”
The milk bottle and sandwich hit the floor, and Janni was facing Raleigh before her combat chip recognized a possible threat.
Raleigh swallowed hard, pulse pounding from the adrenaline. “You look a lot like Kitten when you do that.”
Janni watched her for a long moment—looking ever so creepily like Kitten—then blinked once, still as expressive as an iceberg. “Unsurprising.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The other woman—Raleigh thought Janni was younger than she was, but it was hard to tell, and it was always possible that something in Janni’s universe made aging go funky—looked irritated. “You’ve lived with us for months, Raleigh. Months. You have military-grade enhancements. Granted, your universe is apex class, not all that advanced, but… How have you not noticed?”
Only Janni could pull off indignant and insulting at the same time.
“Noticed what?” Raleigh snapped, perhaps more irritated than she should’ve been.
Janni indicated her face—no, her eyes, which were pale blue, much like—
No. Exactly like Kitten’s.
“Finally.” Janni huffed, as if it were perfectly natural to assume that someone from another universe would hang out with an alternate version of herself. “That wasn’t all that hard, was it?”
That explained why the roots of Janni’s brown hair came in the precise shade of auburn of Kitten’s, and Raleigh could only assume that Janni had her hair professionally styled to further promote the dissimilarity. And… “You have a brother?”
Janni’s gaze chilled, and Raleigh wondered why she’d never noticed how comparable she and Kitten were. Now that she thought of it, they were most similar when one or the other was agitated. Some low-level empathic or telepathic ability, maybe?
Then Janni’s eyes thawed to their usual pale blue, more water than ice. “I had a brother,” she said, tone the clinical one she used when discussing potentially disturbing topics. “He didn’t survive to Naming, in my universe.”
Raleigh stared. “Naming?” she whispered. Maybe Janni was old enough to have relearned civilian reflexes after she’d once been an assassin.
Janni crouched and waved a dismissive hand as she picked up the dropped milk and sandwich. “I wasn’t handicapped. I was Named on my first birthday, which is the normal date for mods. Um, primes. Alphas?” She squinted at Raleigh. “Your universe didn’t have us, but you get my gist, I think.”
Raleigh blinked. “But you aren’t a cyborg.”
That question had come up in conversation before, though Janni never had explained how she could read people’s bio-identities. Raleigh had assumed it was some freak mutation, but Kitten couldn’t do that…so far as Raleigh knew.
“Not as such, no.” Janni sighed. “Apex class modifications are all tech, hardware—so ‘hard’ mods. They end with you. No inheritance involved.”
That wasn’t strictly true. “I inherited a tolerance for them.”
She shook her head and set her sandwich and bottle of milk on the counter. “Not the same.” She quickly unwrapped the food. “Some universes, the mods are biological, inherited. That’s ‘soft’ mods. Usually, scientists who played God that much ended up producing monsters, too, so the originally optional mods ended up necessary.”
Janni took a bite, chewed, swallowed—and didn’t comment on the mustard, which meant she wasn’t paying attention to what she was eating. “But soft mods get…messy. They don’t always take, or they cause problems. So, to make sure kids aren’t handicapped, they aren’t…named, aren’t legally people, until they survive x months. And then if something shows up before that ceremony, and you’re a cripple…” She grimaced.
With how clearly Janni was explaining things now, Raleigh was starting to believe the woman was usually hard to follow on purpose. “Then you don’t get Named?”
Janni eyed her sharply, belying her usual happy-go-lucky behavior. “No. You’re either euthanized, or you’re one of the Nameless.” She was quiet for a long moment. “Neither option is kind. In some universes, one option is more common than the other.”
“Kitten is Nameless?”
“Third,” Janni said softly. “She is Third of her… I’m not sure what they call a group of Nameless. Her brother…” Her gaze went distant. “Her brother was First, for the same reason he was euthanized in my universe.”
Raleigh had always assumed Janni’s home universe was better than Kitten’s. Now she wasn’t so sure. “Your parents killed him?”
“I’m not sure what his disability is… It was before I was born, and nobody thought about it, and Kitten’s good at avoiding thoughts she doesn’t want me to pick up.”
Raleigh stared. “You’re telepathic?”
Janni shook her head. “More…empathic,” she said blandly. “I’m…a weaker psy than my alternates. I’m actually better off than the strongest me—”
“There’s another version of you? In this universe?” Three versions of the same person seemed overmuch.
“Sometimes. Lysacarly jumps universes a lot for her job, but she’s not infrequently in this one—likely due to Kitten and me, though I don’t think she’s noticed us yet. When you fold time and space enough to produce paradoxes like ours, well… Like attracts like.”
Raleigh wondered how many versions of her there were. “And when…Lysacarly…notices you?”
“She might have to arrest us—me, Kitten. Lysacarly’s Shadow Corps.” Janni paused, but she evidently wasn’t waiting for Raleigh’s reaction to discovering that a telepathic version of Janni was an active member of the stay-in-your-own-universe police, because she continued before Raleigh could think of one. “What happens is my memory and thoughts can get…confused, with those of any other version of me that’s in range. It’s a known issue for psy-positives, and it’s usually called ‘resonance’. Kitten and I are fairly used to it, though she started out enough better than me that I suspect she’s met herself more often than I have. Lysacarly might be used to it, but she’s fully telepathic, so it’ll affect her worse than it does us.”
The woman’s casual chatting about alternate versions of herself reminded Raleigh of how, when they’d met, Janni had glanced at her gills and said, “Apex. Need a place to stay?” Only later had Raleigh realized that Janni’s ‘apex’ was a comment on the type of universe she was from.
“What does this have to do with…First”—Kitten’s brother—“taking her to lunch?”
Janni frowned, pausing. “Did they say anything about Second?”
“She was First’s wife.”
Janni nodded, as if she’d known that.
“And she’s dead.”
Janni stared at Raleigh, again resembling Kitten. Then she cursed, quietly but vehemently, for several seconds. “Dead?” she muttered. “How can Dasher be…”
Raleigh assumed Second’s name had been Dasher, in Janni’s universe.
Janni stood, polished off her sandwich, and gulped down her milk. “Did they say where they were going?”
She shook her head.
“Did they say when they’d be back?”
Raleigh just gave Janni a What do you think? frown.
Janni went on another cursing spree, running her hands through her hair. “Okay. You see them—either of them—call me, okay? This…this is not good.” She pulled her console from her pocket, started scrolling through her contacts, grimaced, then pocketed it again.
And promptly left the apartment without bothering to fill Raleigh in or try to recruit her for help.
Raleigh couldn’t help but wonder if that oversight was a commentary on how much Janni valued her friendship.
After eating her lunch and ordering baklava for dessert, Third slipped out, ostensibly to go to the ladies’ washroom, but she continued out the door to the greenhouse out back. One of the reasons she liked this restaurant was it grew much of its own seasonings.
That and the Greek-ish menu. She was fond of Greek food.
She caught a whiff of hash and followed the scent to Janni’s father, who slouched against a table—on the end with the unused clay pots that the restaurant sold with cuttings, rather than by the basil that was on most of the table—wearing blue-collar local.
Drugs tended to be legally obtainable, in this somewhen, but that didn’t make them have any fewer risks or side effects. Her TamLin had used them when he could, to dull his sensitivity to Jumps, but Third had never dared try them, herself. Nameless couldn’t afford to handicap themselves.
She stared at the cigar in Janni’s father’s hand for a long moment, intending it to be as a question—but she glimpsed what was under his skin, climbing up his hand. She froze.
He let out a long puff of smoke and flexed the hand belonging to the Infested arm. “Figured you’d notice.”
She met his gaze—the blue of her eyes came from him, obviously, as did the darkness of her hair. “Janni thinks you’re dead.”
His slight smile was at odds with the regret in his eyes. “I am.”
Those eyes would give her nightmares, later, but Third found them comforting anyway. Mergers weren’t easy to kill, and if he’d been Nameless… He’d be even more difficult, than most.
And the first thing the infestation did, when creating an Infested, was remove the host’s ability to kill themselves. Third had seen people try, desperate to die at their own hands so their loved ones wouldn’t have to kill them. Those were the ones younger Nameless tended to train on, because the host was still lucid enough to at least fight the infestation’s urge to protect itself.
It wouldn’t be the first time Third had to eliminate someone she knew—and to be honest, Janni’s father was a stranger she’d met, briefly, years before. But…his universe didn’t have Infested.
They’d met when he slipped into her universe, though.
He gave her a slight smile and nod, saying yes, she’d guessed right—that his infestation was from her universe.
Her fault.
“Now, don’t you go thinking that,” he said gently. “I was dumb. Assumed that our universes were sufficiently similar for the doctors back home to be able to handle it. Delayed the spread, but…”
Third knew. She’d seen the progression, often enough.
She checked their surroundings. People were busy taking advantage of their lunch breaks, not watching the man and girl of questionable income chatting by the basil. The two of them were weren’t invisible, but they were far from the center of attention.
She sidestepped to near his side. “Message?” Still-lucid Infested persons often wanted their loved ones told some last thing. Usually sharing it got the Nameless deliverer spat upon or struck, but Third would do her job.
He shook his head. “My wife and I… We staged my death years ago, once we realized…” He looked away. “We agreed it would be easier for the kids, so… There’s nobody to take a message to. Thanks for asking.”
Easier for their children to think some accident had killed him, rather than his forays into another universe? Hard to think that true, for a jumper like Janni. But… “For Nev,” his firstborn daughter, Third agreed.
She had been young when she’d met him, but she was sure he hadn’t gotten Infested then. She could only guess why he’d intentionally Jump back into a hellverse.
Only guess, and remember his expression when he realized they’d have to leave her behind when they escaped her universe for theirs, and wish she didn’t take after him quite so much.
“Third…” He sighed, and she waited for him to finish. “You know I wouldn’t ask this of you, if I had anyone else who I could trust to do this.”
She took a small step back, tucking one hand inside her sweater. “Lie.” Cruel of her, to call him on that, but he reminded her too much of herself. She prompted, “Janni?”
His daughter was Named, yes, but she was every bit as capable of killing him as Third was—maybe more, because she had more control over her mods, more stability. Janni didn’t have a governor chip, blocking most of her abilities because they were likely to kill her, if left unchecked.
Tears welled in the man’s eyes—the eyes of Janni’s father, not hers; she’d never had a father. Before Third did something crueler, something that drove him to give up entirely and let the infestation take over, she plucked a knife from the belt hidden by her oversized sweater and stepped around him, stumbling into the table.
Her blade found its mark and returned to its sheath—she’d clean it later, replace the sheath—and the pots fell, some crashing to the ground, some breaking.
As he collapsed to the ground—still alive and in a lot of pain (but not for long, and the infestation would die with him because nobody from this universe would have any mods for it to latch onto)—she backed away, into a passerby, with enough force to continue the chain reaction of stumbling and jostling and confusion about who had started what.
Third scurried away from the mess, as if overwhelmed by the noise, and let herself back into the restaurant hallway, breathing harder than she should’ve been.
First stood across the hall and a little way up from the ladies’ washroom, waiting for her. He spotted her and tilted his chin in inquiry. She answered with slight shrug as she approached.
As she reached him, he turned towards the restaurant proper, and they both headed back to their table, where her lunch and two servings of coffee and baklava waited.
“I was beginning to think Nev had picked you up,” he said.
“Nev?” Third asked promptly, because she wasn’t supposed to, so the question would get First focused on making sure none of the witnesses would necessitate her being punished for it, distract him from noticing any little tells that slipped from how unsteady she felt. She already knew their Nev would be joining them in that universe soon, if she wasn’t already there.
Nev would kill Second. Nev would stick Third in a cage and poison her and leave her to watch as she killed Second.
Why would Nev kill Second?
First’s expression tightened as they slipped into their seats. He knew why Third acted out—understood it, even—but that didn’t mean he liked it. “I think she might be around.”
And Nev would be all too happy to assume Third was a Breach. With their universe’s TamLin dead, the clutch had no keeper, so Nev would be free to assume the worst and kill Third.
That still didn’t explain why Second would die.
“What took you so long?” her brother asked. “Smelling the basil?”
She did like the scent. Janni’s father had chosen to die near the basil, so maybe that was something else the two of them had in common.
Third took a bite of the baklava, ignoring the coffee. If she were to be fighting for her life, she would need to be operating at full capacity, not woozy from her coffee allergy.
As she started on her lunch, she glanced at her left wrist. Digging out the governor chip would hurt.
Third abruptly remembered that First had asked why she’d been delayed. “Work.”
He raised his eyebrows. “This universe keeps you busy, then. That’s good.”
Never mind that the job she’d had to do had been a holdover from their home ’verse. Considering First was about to lose his wife and Third suspected she’d be the reason for it, she was willing to let him believe what he would. Janni’s father had come to her, not him, when he needed death. She wondered if First remembered their father.
She took another bite of baklava, wondering whom she’d trust to off her, if she ever needed killing. The only person she’d ever trusted that much was their keeper, TamLin, and she’d driven him into killing himself.
Her brother frowned, but he followed her lead and ate dessert.
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