evidence lodged in his favor on his homeworld, while having his daughter released into his wife’s custody.
Trinity watched Jonas’ investigative scowl he so often wore fade to a look of considerable anxiety as blessed sleep threatened to wrap her under its watchful wing.
“What is it, Jonas,” She asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I was originally sent to this sector on a temporary assignment,” He finally said after a time. “That was three years ago. Every day I imagine receiving a communication for me to return home to my own family at last. I don’t see how that’s going to be possible now. Especially, since my portion of this investigation will ultimately aid in sending powerful people to die in a Centauri Court of Law for treason. A Centauri never forget, Trinity.” Jonas of Proxima said, as the wind whistled ominously once more.
“TELL ME; ARE you a collaborator now, Trinity?” Micah, the leader of The Eastern Seaboard Alliance Insurgency asked as his green eyes sparkled in anger. For what he lacked in physical size he more than made up in a glare that frightens most people. “Why in the hell are you traveling with the Centauri?”
The next morning had dawned cool and windy with a grayish sky witnessing the proceedings from overhead. Respecting her request for privacy, Jonas had left her behind for the moment, with the understanding that a small platoon of Centauri were stationed nearby, while she spoke with her comrades. The magistrate seemed satisfied that her people had nothing to do with the explosion on Artemis thus far. Now, she and Micah conversed atop a wasteland of rock and sand on the outskirts of where greater Philadelphia once stood before the Centauri obliterated it from orbit years ago.
“I needed answers, Micah. Magistrate Jonas told me that the transmitter reported 154 Earthers killed in the initial explosion.” She said, folding her arms across her chest. Trinity classified herself unlike most people. Micah dared not try intimidation tactics with her. “Was there a malfunction or possibly an electrical surge caused by the bombs detonation? How did the transmitter we programmed scan 100 more Earther life signatures that never existed in the first place?”
The other’s noted hesitation startled Trinity; this one would never be mistaken for lacking confidence, confirming the anxiety laced heartbeat already bulging from her tunic. Micah bowed his head to the muddy surface of the encampment beneath, his cheeks ashen and bloodlessly grievous. My God, she thought, what am I not being told here?
“There was no malfunction, no surge,” he said, struggling to maintain an even tone. “I’m sure you learned from your experience traveling with the magistrate, that our people have underestimated the Centauri’s ability to track our movements in space as well as here on the surface?”
‘Our people’ . . . or you Micah, she asked herself, but remained silent, only nodding to him instead.
Micah cleared his throat. “The Centauri ambushed my five man unit before they were smuggled aboard Artemis with the prototype transmitter in tow. Four standard hours after their discovery, our enemies tortured four of our people until they literally begged their captors to put them down.”
“Are you saying that the Centauri knew of our plans?” Trinity asked with some gruff.
“NO!” Micah said. He took a deep breath; with a considerable effort he measured his tone again. “It didn’t go down that way, at least not at first. Trinity, you understand better than most how our enemies operate. They forced the fifth man to stand and witness while they mutilated and killed his associates, his friends. Grief and fear must have overwhelmed him as contemplation that he’d never look upon the faces of his beloved wife and sisters he’d left behind on Earth volunteering for this mission . . . realizing in moments he was going to die a horrid death, all alone and afraid.”
“Of course I—“
“Tell that man, at that moment, how we are living in an insignificant recessive universe. Tell him that his life and the lives of the ones he loves don’t count for something other than a blip in the history of the galaxy, don’t count for everything. Tell him that if and when we succeed in our mission, that all of this will no longer exist.”
Trinity hugged herself, chilled to her bones in fear. There’s more. There has to be more. “What happened afterwards, Micah?” She asked.
“He cut a deal with Amadeus.”
“What do you mean by a deal?” Trinity asked, speaking as if the final word were than any blasphemy. “What kind of deal could he possibly make with that tyrant?”
After an eternal minute Micah said, “Don’t forget that Amadeus situation dictated his own points of desperation as well. He was in political trouble at home. He may have even inadvertently put his own daughter at risk to his enemies within his own government. But to answer your question, Trinity, He relished our scheme in its original context well enough after he learned of it. The thought of killing a few Earthers—even in a simulation—with the dishonor being bestowed at the feet of Rainier was brilliant. He thought the ploy was so in genius if fact, that he soon adapted our blueprint as his very own.”
Trinity shrugged in mocked satisfaction. “Okay, then what is the big mystery here, Micah? All of what you’ve said brings me back to my original point. Why did the transmitter read 100 more dead Earthers than the number we all agreed upon before your team left for Titan? I only had two legitimate explosives and I purposely detonated them in the Centauri sectors. I left several bogies in our residents’ quarters to throw some false evidence at the magistrate and his deputies to reconstruct.”
Micah wiped at the sweat building on his brow, his continued silence deafening an already quiet area.
“Tell me!” Trinity finally cried out.
A single tear streaked down the older man’s face, darted around a series of scars on his cheek, and vanished into his beard. She’d never seen Micah cry before, even when she told him about Solaris’ death after the attack on the food center. And I never wanted to see you suffer, Micah, that’s why I never told you were Solaris’ father. I didn’t want you to have to live with the fact that I lost our little girl. You take the responsibility for so many other lives. I didn’t want you to have to live with this particular grief as I have.
Behind him, the woman who Trinity saw in both her dreams and on the station appeared almost from nothingness in front of the passageway where Trinity had watched others all morning walk into a secluded room with a rainbow of lights and colors peeking from underneath the door. The other woman was as brown as a Jersey sunset, more petite than she appeared in Trinity’s dreams, her head full of chestnut colored hair.
“Who are you? How did you get off the station?” Trinity asked as her pulse pounded in her ear, and she found herself fidgeting under the other’s unblinking gaze.
“Hear me out, Trinity,” The stranger said, ignoring her query. “I need you to listen very closely to every word I say. The end is near. You deserve to know the truth. I can tell you that the stolen transmitter worked within its programmed perimeters. All was going well. During our initial test with the Centauri, our surviving operative learned that Amadeus’ genetically specialized residue would be traced if we attempted to operate the prototype in any capacity.”
Amadeus encoded everything with this residue, Jonas had repeatedly said to her last night. Everything.
“The Centauri discovered what our operative already knew. If the transmitter was used as it was designed to be, Amadeus’ residue would be traced back to us—
“Which would eventually be traced back to Amadeus himself,” Micah recovered from his moment long enough to add. “Jonas is a dogged investigator. He would have eventually pieced it all together.” He hesitated another moment. “I called in every favor I had with the dissidents aboard Artemis to smuggle Blair up to the station and back. I sent her to kill you, Trinity; she was my only guarantee against you or our mission being compromised in any way.”
“Too many Core lives were at risk, Trinity.” The woman, Blair said. “When that bastard Amadeus took to murdering our people at random on the promenade I
thought you would break. So I was ordered to shoot you in the head and then end my own life before the Centauri tried to catch and question me.” Blair paused, perhaps at the enormity weighing on her of what she’d just said. “I don’t have to remind you that the fate of two or more universes hung precariously in the balance. I won’t remind you of what you saw on the opposite side of the Window.”
All was lost because I failed in my mission. My failures enacted the breech in the timeline. No Blair, I don’t need you to remind me.
“We all made abrupt choices.” Blair continued. We all made contemptible ones that God himself will damn us all for . . . yet they were all necessary choices all the same.”
Trinity considered everything a man she once loved, and the woman Blair had said for a minute, paced relentlessly for another, pieced the puzzle together, then the truth—all of the truth—manifested itself inside her heart all at once somewhere in the midst of that third traumatic minute.
NO! NO! NO! She thought.
Trinity didn’t remember losing her equilibrium and falling to the turf, but there she lay, twisting in the midst of the mud. She felt cotton mouthed, while hot tears gushed freely for all who were gathering to see.
“My God, the Earther casualties were all real!” Trinity shouted,