Raleigh would have been the first to admit that she wasn’t all that good a friend to her housemates. Good friends knew about allergies and families and origin stories. Good friends didn’t steal contact lists when the opportunity arose.
But in Raleigh’s universe, taking precautions even with those she trusted was standard procedure—though her continuance of that procedure into this universe was, perhaps, influenced by the knowledge Janni and Kitten would be forgiving of such stemming-from-native-universe habits.
Sitting at the dining room table, she paged through her console’s copy of Janni’s contact list, trying to figure out whom the woman had considered calling. It was probably one that had been on there awhile, for Janni had grimaced like that before.
Someone was breathing behind her.
Raleigh’s enhancements analyzed the height, temperature, and other details about the body suddenly behind her before she turned. “How do you do that?”
Kitten stood…stoically, Raleigh thought, now that she knew of the girl’s namelessness. The ice blue eyes observed without revealing what thoughts or emotions went on behind them. The circles under her eyes were too dark to be explained by the few hours she’d been away, and she was even more unkempt than usual. Dirt smudged her right cheek, and her sweater was gone, leaving a sleeveless summer shirt that matched her eyes, and the wire bracelet was missing from her left wrist.
“How’s your brother?” Raleigh didn’t expect any more answer to that question, but she figured it was polite to ask. “I’m sorry about his wife.”
Kitten blinked twice, quickly—as if hiding emotion, rather than as if startled.
“Janni told me about…” She wasn’t sure how to broach the topic of the two of them being alternate versions of the same person. “About Lysacarly.”
After a long moment, Kitten pivoted toward the Jenga game, which Raleigh had picked up and re-stacked in its tower. The girl paused, then plucked out a wooden block two levels from the bottom. Raleigh suspected it wasn’t a coincidence that the action conveniently put Kitten’s back to her.
“So ‘prime’ is what you call someone with biological modifications?” she asked—again, not expecting an answer, but she wanted to let the girl know that she’d followed some of her conversation with her brother. “And ‘null’ is someone without?”
Kitten turned her head enough to look over her shoulder at Raleigh, which was enough of an affirmative for her.
“You said Janni had a ‘bondmate’. I didn’t know she was married.” Raleigh was fishing, and she knew Kitten would recognize that.
But Kitten let Raleigh notice when she relaxed—insomuch as she ever relaxed—so might just be willing to let enough slip for her to put things together. After all, Kitten was an alternate version of Janni, and if Raleigh knew anything about the woman, it was that she loved dropping cryptic hints.
The girl picked another brick from the tower, then put it down on the table beside Raleigh’s console. She turned her hand palm up, as if asking for the device.
“Do you know how to use it?” Raleigh asked.
Kitten didn’t flinch, didn’t move, didn’t so much as glance Raleigh’s way. Just kept her palm up for the console.
Raleigh gave it.
The girl looked the device over for a moment, then started tapping buttons as if she owned one. She didn’t. Raleigh had tried giving her one, a few times, but it always ended up returned, with the money back in her account. She now wondered if that was another facet of Kitten’s namelessness. No name, so no property, maybe? That would explain why Kitten only ever wore hand-me-downs and castoffs—except for her weapons and the first aid kit. Those, Kitten would buy new, if necessary, and she kept them in excellent condition.
Raleigh remembered Janni’s ‘I suspect she’s met herself more often than I have.’ “See a console in one universe, you’ve seen them all?”
Her tapping continued without pause. “Tablet,” she said, voice soft and flat. “Usually.”
“It’s usually called a tablet?”
Kitten nodded once and offered the console back.
Raleigh took it and saw a specific address book entry open on the screen. No name was listed, but the entry had a photo, so Janni had chatted with him before—and the photo was the man she’d seen that morning, who’d spoken up when she encountered the would-have-been mugger.
She was sure Kitten had noticed her startlement already, so she asked the first thing that she could think of: “Is that a beard?”
The girl gave a little huff that was her equivalent of a snort. “Four o’clock shadow. It’s…” Kitten glanced away, as if evaluating if she should continue, then gave her infinitesimal shrug. “Some people naturally mix well with others, genetically.”
She’d called the man a ‘natural’ when speaking to her brother, Raleigh remembered.
“That…isn’t common. So they usually have…abilities, to help them adjust or freeze their appearance more easily than most, to help them hide. He likes looking a little scruffy, in clean-cut universes. Makes people underestimate him.”
Kitten spoke as if she knew Janni’s husband, and the paragraph was more words than Raleigh could ever remember hearing the girl string together at once, even when speaking to her brother.
“He exists in your universe?”
She looked away. “Dead.”
Raleigh realized that if Janni loved one version of him enough to marry him—well, Kitten had probably cared for her universe’s version of him, too. “I’m sorry.”
Kitten met her gaze for a long moment, faintly puzzled, before she focused back on the Jenga game. “We escaped our universe. He was…unable to acclimate.”
Raleigh winced. Acclimation to another universe—where people didn’t sound, look, or maybe even move like they did in your own universe—had been tough for her, and her universe had been a lot less apocalyptic than Kitten’s seemed to have been.
Her forefinger hovered over the Call button. If she dialed, she’d be announcing that she’d taken Janni’s contact list—and she’d also be officially ignoring Janni’s request to be called once Kitten turned up.
But First was still out there, somewhere. If Kitten’s appearance was anything to go by, her Nameless brother could use some help.
Raleigh hit the button. The call was answered a few seconds later. “Yes?” the man asked, his face filling the screen.
“I’m Raleigh,” she said, feeling awkward. The man was Janni’s husband. So why did he live elsewhere? And why did Janni grimace whenever she considered calling him?
“I’m sorry?”
The man didn’t even know who she was. She lived with his wife, and he didn’t know.
He’d left before she’d walked in, that morning. Maybe he didn’t recognize her.
Raleigh itched to hang up and call Janni, as she should have done from the get-go.
Kitten drew a sharp breath and stepped toward the console, reaching out as if to enter the call, then quickly caught herself and stepped even further back out of range, taking up her usual stance, though it seemed…tense…and she stared at the far wall rather than at her surroundings in general.
That was enough acceptance for Raleigh to say, “I live with Janni.”
The man blinked, frowning. “What’s the matter?”
So the man, whoever he was, didn’t expect her to know about him unless there was a problem.
That was probably a valid assumption. “First is missing,” Raleigh guessed, suspecting she was right when Kitten locked her ice-blue stare on her. “Second is dead. Third is…”—she glanced at Kitten—“damaged.” This body is undamaged—an odd turn of phrase she heard Janni use—and knowing what she did now, she suspected ‘this body’ was how Janni distinguished herself from Kitten.
The man still looked puzzled.
Raleigh let out a long breath. “Look, I don’t know how much I can say. I don’t want to get these Nameless people killed.”
His expression blanked into the stoicism she usually associated with Kitten. It looked far less creepy on him. “Where are you?”
“At the apartment.” She paused. “Your wife went out looking for them, I think.”
From the way the visuals blurred, the man had picked up his console and started running. “Bondmate, not wife,” he corrected casually. “We’re bonded, not consummated.”
If he was able and willing to converse while running, Raleigh would accept all the knowledge she could get. “I thought bonded meant married.”
He shrugged and ducked around something. “In some universes. In ours…it’s more ‘betrothed’.”
“Then why don’t you marry?”
“Various reasons.”
“Resonance,” Kitten said, even more softly than she was wont, as if making certain she wouldn’t be heard by the man on the other end of the call.
Raleigh looked at the girl, her face warming. Janni had called Kitten better at keeping her thoughts to herself. Being unable to keep another, younger version of herself from hopping into her mind while she was…occupied…would be rather problematic.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Raleigh said quickly, not wanting to get Kitten—or Third, or whatever she was supposed to be called, since she didn’t have an actual name—in trouble.
From his expression, he wasn’t fooled, but he also was willing to let it slide.
“I’m sorry, but what’s your name?” Raleigh asked. “I mean, if you have one.”
He gave a wry half-smile, and she found herself liking him. “Call me Lin.”
Kitten swiftly left the table, heading down the hall, and Raleigh couldn’t help thinking the man’s feminine-sounding name was particularly ill-fitting.
After Third and First finished eating, she led the way up on the roof of a building owned by one of the more notorious gangs in town—they were actually honorable and took care of their own, but their retaliation against threats was unusually thorough. Third tended to think of them like a huge clutch of Nameless. She treated them accordingly, and they returned the favor.
The wind tried to pull Third’s hair out of its ponytail and First’s out of its carefully arranged mess. Third kept her arms at her sides, tucked in the folds of her sweater, since she didn’t have a coat. She had long been used to cold, due to the decrepit space habitations she’d grown up in, but appearances mattered.
And her weapons were under the sweater.
“No…beetles?” her brother asked.
“Bugs,” she corrected, even as she sensed that something far worse than an eavesdropper had joined them on that roof, on the other side of the lookout post. “No.”
The gang’s leader wasn’t from another universe himself, but his parents had been—from two different universes, if she read his bio-identity right, though Janni was better at that than she was—and he didn’t give her any trouble. But by that same token, he accepted any other shadows—escapees from other universes—as well.
First let himself smile a little. It even reached his eyes. “You make friends fast, don’t you, Third?”
“Allies.” Nameless didn’t have friends.
His expression darkened, but he nodded once.
“Nice of you to worry about the laws now, Breach.”
First started. He’d gotten far too complacent for his own good…and Third had the sick feeling that complacency was what would be the death of Second.
“Nev?!” First sounded startled, as if still shocked, but he was scanning their surroundings for escape.
Third already knew where they were, what was around. She sidled toward one edge of the roof. “Not Breach,” she said quietly, as their Named sister came into view.
Nev’s mods were fully active, her biotech phased and plugged into a netsuit that resembled a black spiderweb worn between skin and clothes—and there was shattersilk over it, so Nev had been in this universe for at least a day, maybe two, to find that and poison the owner for it. Slow, but she wasn’t stupid.
Or, at least, Nev hadn’t been stupid when they were in their own universe, but now Third recognized the hardness to Nev’s gaze. Nothing Third could say or do would shake her sister’s conviction that a breach had occurred.
First was beyond Nev’s authority to hunt—she could arrest a first, but firsts could only be hunted by keepers—so Nev wouldn’t try to hurt him unless he tried to interfere.
Third took another step, ostensibly away from Nev, but it put her on the roof’s edge.
First didn’t look at her directly, but he did tense, so he’d noticed. “Third isn’t a Breach, Nev.”
Nev glowered at him, her expression admitting who had given her the hunt order: their mother. “You consummated?”
The question was directed at First, and he blanched, following Nev’s meaning before Third—
“Oh,” she whispered, suddenly understanding why Second was about to die, and Third herself had nothing to do with it.
Second was pregnant.
Nameless weren’t permitted children. Childbearing defeated the purpose of being Nameless.
Third leaped off the roof to drop and roll atop the neighboring building below and started running, illogically hoping she could find Second in time to save her.
Maybe the Second she’d seen die had been another universe’s, or a paradox, and she could stop it if she only fought it, tooth and nail, making use of everything her original hellverse had taught her.
Or so Third tried to convince herself.
As Raleigh waited for Lin, she finished her lunch and drank some water, then kept poking through Janni’s contact list, wondering who most of the people were.
The door opened, and Lin edged in, glancing around and quickly shutting the door behind him. “You shouldn’t leave that open.”
She frowned at the door. “I didn’t.” But Raleigh couldn’t imagine Kitten leaving the door unlocked, either.
Lin frowned back, glanced around the room, and focused on the Jenga game. He went to it, reaching for the block the ‘damaged’ Kitten had put down, but he didn’t touch it.
“Someone’s been Jumping,” he muttered, forehead scrunched as if he had a headache.
“What?”
“Time jumping,” he absentmindedly clarified, still frowning, and gave his temple a brisk rub.
Kitten had looked more tired than Raleigh had thought could be accounted for by a few hours. She looked down the hall, where the girl had gone—and where Raleigh now suspected she wouldn’t be able to find her. “What?”
“Janni was playing the game?”
“Kit—” Raleigh remembered the girl was Nameless. “Third.”
His frown deepened. “Another jumper?”
She froze. “I thought jumpers Jumped universes.”
He shrugged. “Universes…time… Pretty similar, though jumpers tend to specialize in one or the other.” He paused and glanced at Raleigh, but his tone was conversational, not critical. “I thought First was missing.”
She shrugged. “Third showed up by herself, looking like something a medic had dragged in. That was a guess. Why?”
The door opened, and Kitten’s brother entered, his attention focused on Lin—warily, Raleigh thought, realizing First was a bit more expressive than his sister.
“Sir,” First said.
Ah. So First was not missing. She wondered what Third’s stare had been for.
Lin waved dismissively, scrutinizing the tower. “This me is not your keeper.”
First’s gaze narrowed, making Raleigh wonder if Lin’s casual words were somehow insulting. “No, my keeper slit his own throat once we reached a universe without Nameless.”
Lin turned sharply towards him, and the two men exchanged a long look.
“Well, then,” Lin said quietly, breaking the silence. “It’s a good thing I’m not from your universe, isn’t it?”
Raleigh was beginning to feel as if she should make a flow chart to keep track of who all was from which universe and what their relationships were.
Lin went to the kitchen found the glasses on the first try. “You registered?”
“Nev is,” First answered immediately.
Lin filled two glasses with water. “Ah, you have a Nev.” He handed one glass to First, who accepted.
They each took a sip, looking eerily similar, despite being two distinctly different people.
Lin swigged the rest of his water, then fiddled with his glass. “You take a name yet?”
First glanced away. “We were waiting for Third.”
Lin nodded, as if that made sense. “I’m sorry about Dasher—ah, Second. She wasn’t anyone I wanted to know, in my universe, but she turns out well in the universes where she gets you.”
From the startled glance First tossed at Lin, he didn’t find the other man’s words as insensitive as Raleigh did.
“Thank you,” First said quietly, sounding…grateful.
Lin shrugged. “My universe favored death over namelessness. I look at you, I see a person.”
“A sentimental TamLin.” First shook his head, as if he found the concept hard to believe. “Do I make Naming, in any universe?”
Lin—which was evidently short for TamLin—gave First a steady scrutiny, then went to the sink for more water. “Damarc-Luc Waver, diminutive Marc. He’s an admin in Shadow Corps.” He filled his glass, then returned, giving First a quick grin as he sat back down. “We meet for drinks, sometimes.”
First blinked once. “You aren’t registered.”
“He’s administration, not field or tactical. Not required to report non-registrants.” Lin shrugged. “Besides, he has to keep his doors open, if he wants to have a shot at saving his Nev once—well. Let’s just say Nev’s particularly ill-suited to Jumping, no matter which universe she’s from.”
First snorted, as if amused, but he seemed…pensive.
“This male bonding is all very nice,” Raleigh cut in, “but where’s Third?”
The two men exchanged an Isn’t it obvious? glance.
“Fleeing Nev,” Lin said mildly. “Speaking of which…” He turned to the Jenga game, picked up the block Kitten had moved, and ran it through his hands, then slid it back into place in the tower. “That’s better.”
Raleigh looked at him, then at the specific block that he’d been careful to touch—a block that Kitten had handled on purpose. The man also accepted First’s glass and ran it through his hands on the way to set it in the sink.
She frowned. “Nev is psychoscopic?” If Janni could be a crippled telepath, why couldn’t her sister be able to read objects by touching them?
The men turned towards her, Lin’s dark and First’s blue, and pleasure softened both stares.
Neither spoke, though.
Raleigh rallied her nerves, ones that had carried her through military campaigns that she intentionally abused her software to keep herself from remembering clearly. “So now what do we do? Janni wanted me to call her.”
“No,” Lin said first, glancing at First before continuing, “Janni meets that Nev, one of them will have to kill the other. I don’t want… I don’t want her dead.”
Raleigh wondered what he’d edited out, but the answer of what to do was blatantly obvious. “So we find Nev and kill her first?”
Lin grimaced. The little emotion in First’s expression vanished, and he again reminded her of Kitten.
A logistics possibility occurred to Raleigh. “With Kitten’s…time jumping. Couldn’t we rescue Second?”
Lin looked away, whereas First studied Raleigh, as if seeing her for the first time.
After a long moment of silence, First turned his staid scrutiny on Lin and paused. Without looking away from the other man, he said, “Time jumping has limits. We could save a Second, but she wouldn’t be my Second. Third would’ve already fetched her, otherwise.”
Raleigh glanced at the Jenga game, which a future Kitten had evidently Jumped back in time to tweak, which had gotten Lin aware of the time jumping issues to begin with.
At least limitations meant that there were set cause and effect, even when the cause and effect were circular. “I’m sorry.”
First studied her again, and Raleigh got the impression that Nameless weren’t usually treated as people. She remembered his earlier statement that he and Second had been waiting to take names until Third was old enough to take one, too, and if she were reading the situation right, that waiting had cost Second her life.
She felt sorry for all three of them.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
Raleigh grabbed her shattersilk trench coat and pulled it on, making sure it hid her tech, including the gills.
Even before she tapped the seal closed, First gave a slight shake of his head. “Miss—”
“Raleigh,” she offered, realizing she’d never told either man her name, but feeling a little guilty for using it when First didn’t have a name of his own.
“My universe’s Nev would wipe the floor with you,” First finished.
“With me too, probably,” Lin commented, “but Nev will expect you and me to be involved. Her? Who is she?” He glanced at her. “I mean, she won’t know you. Even if she’s bothered to observe and discover that you live with Janni, you’re…” He evidently decided against insulting her body’s tech upgrades. “No offense intended.”
“None taken,” Raleigh said coolly, meeting First’s gaze.
He still watched her sedately, but the very fact that he was scrutinizing her and not acting suggested he didn’t like the idea.
“I was military, in my ’verse,” she told him, tapping her collar where it hid gills. “The memories are blocked, not deleted. I can restore them, if necessary.” She hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.
“This me probably won’t be much use in a fight.” Lin paused, then amended, “Compared to your universe, I mean. But somebody has to find Janni, and I don’t think you want to end up registered with Shadow Corps,”—First’s grimace said Lin’s assumption was correct—“so I’ll busy myself with that.”
Lin quickly washed the cups, set them to dry, and headed out—making Raleigh wonder why he and Janni were so estranged. He seemed nice, thoughtful.
She also found herself wishing she’d kept the mugger’s knife that morning, instead of giving it to Kitten, but it was no use changing her mind now. She’d find a weapon somewhere. She headed for the door.
“Forgetting something?” First asked.
She turned. He pulled the chair by the Jenga game out from the table and picked something off the seat.
The knife from that morning.
One-handed, First turned the knife to offer to her, hilt-first, his ease and economy of motion betraying him as someone well used to blades.
Future-Kitten must’ve left it when she came by, but why hadn’t Lin noticed it? He’d noticed the Jenga block, and Kitten hadn’t worn that.
First studied her, still offering the knife. “Raleigh?”
She gave herself a shake and took it. “Sorry, just… Sorry.”
“Not used to time jumping, I take it?”
She shuddered as she stepped out the door. “No.”
He followed and gave a slight smile, shutting the door behind him and tapping it to lock. “You’ll get used to it.”
Raleigh stared at his hand for a long moment. It was strong and callused, crisscrossed with faint scars like the rest of him was, though most people would have to be close to him, to see that. “I’d rather not.”
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