Finn Delaney's twin had been a member of the adjustment team, along with Captain Hunter, commanded by Major Kennedy, the man the temporal agents had known as Kovalos. They had been attempting to adjust the temporal disruption, thinking that the temporal agents were responsible, never suspecting that Drakov was behind it all. They had clocked several teams back and now only Hunter was left.
"Kennedy was going to signal the assault the moment the Infiltrators we had buried on the beach engaged the Argonauts," said Hunter. "We were going to hit from both sides. We were waiting for his signal when all hell broke loose. That damn giant robot clocked in right on top of us." He took a ragged breath. "The poor bastards were crushed. Finn and I were the only ones who got away. We tried to get back to Kennedy, up on the crest, and clocked in just in time to see him buy it. We couldn't see your faces from where we were. We didn't know what the hell was happening. We had no idea what Drakov was doing here. He was supposed to be working for us. Last time I saw him, he was updating the C.I.S. archives."
"C.I.S.?" asked Steiger.
"Counter-Insurgency Section," Hunter said. "New branch of our Intelligence service."
"The ones in charge of intelligence concerning us," said Andre.
Hunter nodded. "Anyway, we were trying to figure our next move when Drakov herded you three inside the robot. The minute I saw that, I knew he was the one responsible for hitting us, not you people. And we still didn't know who you were. Delaney decided to make a try for the door before it closed. Worst damn decision that fool ever made." He glanced at Finn. "Nothing personal."
Delaney smiled wryly. "Yeah, right."
Hunter leaned back against the wall and gave out a small groan. "Damn. Everything went wrong. We were going to jump you people as you came back down. We thought there was a chance we might have been spotted, but we figured what the hell, you had to get by us anyway, so it was worth a shot. We never put it together that Drakov was the one who stole the Infiltrator Project. The next thing we knew, that door was sliding open and they were coming in behind us, rushing up the stairs like an army of ants. We fired and fired and they just kept on coming. Delaney ran out of plasma charges and they got him. Tore him apart with their bare hands. I never saw anything like it."
Delaney shuddered at the thought of his twin from the congruent universe being slaughtered while he was standing on the stairs just overhead.
"I would've burned him to save him from that agony," Hunter went on, "only I had run out of charges, too. There was only one way left to go and that was up. I had an empty gun, but I thought maybe I'd have a chance to bluff you and get those horrors called off. And then I ran smack dab into you. I thought I was hallucinating. Christ, you're his spitting image. And Andre. Jesus, you were dead as well, and there you were."
"What happened to 'me' in this universe?" Andre asked, hesitantly.
"You bought it on an adjustment mission," Hunted said. "Priest never got over it."
"Lucas?" Andre said, feeling as if a cold hand were closing around her insides.
"Your husband," Hunter said. "Or rather, her husband. Our Andre Cross, that is. Only she wasn't Andre Cross in our timeline. Her name was Andre de la Croix."
Andre swallowed hard. "That used to be my name," she said. "I changed it."
Hunter nodded. "Hell of a thing, isn't it? And you have a Lucas Priest, as well?"
"Had," Delaney said. "He died on our last mission."
"So did ours," said Hunter. "He was waiting for it, I guess. He never came back from the last one. From what I heard, it was a real killer. You people got us good."
Delaney had no response. What could he say, that he was sorry? The situation was difficult enough as it was without his telling Hunter that he was the one who had killed their Lucas Priest. Andre felt numb. In their own timeline, she had always felt very close to Lucas Priest. In the congruent universe, her twin and that of Lucas had married. It might have happened to them, too, had her Lucas lived long enough. She could not get the image of Hunter's Lucas Priest out of her mind as he stood before her in 19th century Afghanistan, pointing a laser at her chest. She was the enemy and he should have fired, but he had hesitated. There had been a tortured look upon his face as he had briefly lowered the laser, then raised it once again, resigned to what he had to do. That moment's hesitation was what killed him. He had said, "Forgive me, Andre," then just as he was about to fire, Delaney had bayoneted him from behind. She hadn't understood what happened then, why he had hesitated. Now she knew and she wished she didn't.
"So there's a Reese Hunter in your timeline, as well," said Hunter.
"Was, "said Delaney.
"Was?" said Hunter. "I see." He shook his head. "Man, that's strange. It's like being told I died."
"Tell me about it," said Delaney.
"Yeah, it's a macabre situation, pilgrim. 1 keep having to remind myself that you're really not my partner, just like you're probably having a hard time remembering that I'm not the Reese Hunter that you knew. What was he like?"
"He was a lot like you," Delaney said. "Hell, he was you, only his history followed a slightly different path. He was an officer in the Airborne Pathfinders who became separated from his unit in 12th century England."
"Christ," said Hunter. "The same thing happened to me."
"Only you apparently came back," Delaney said. "Our Hunter decided to go underground."
Hunter chuckled. "I thought about it. Almost did it, too. It was tempting as hell. How'd your boy make out?"
"Pretty well," Delaney said. "He had quite a setup for himself back there in Sherwood Forest. Built himself a cabin and stocked it with all sorts of goodies from various different time periods. He had all the conveniences. Sound system, generators, microwave oven, briar pipes, smoking jackets, various kinds of ordnance, fine wines… The locals believed he was a wizard and he played up the idea to keep them from bothering him. Grew his hair long and dressed up in some kind of crazy silk robe from Japan with dragons on it. Then he got mixed up in one of our missions. Complicated story."
Hunter glanced at Andre. "He bring you back from the 12th century?"
"Yes," she said. "How did you… oh, of course. But we went to 17th century Paris first. That was where he… died."
Hunter sighed. "Glad I never went to Paris," he said. "We clocked straight back home. Christ, it's really something. Alternate universes, almost exactly identical. And we're at war." Delaney remained silent.
"Look," said Hunter, "if you don't want to answer this one, just forget I asked, but I've always wanted to know something. Why'd you people start this? I realize you're only grunts, like I am, so maybe you don't really know, but it strikes me that there had to be a better way. All right, so the confluence phenomenon was endangering both our time-streams, but maybe if we got together, we could've figured out a way to lick this thing. But after what you did-"
"We didn't know," said Steiger.
Hunter sighed. "Well, I guess I sorta figured that. Hell, it wasn't your decision. You people are just soldiers, like me."
"You don't understand," said Steiger. "I meant we really didn't know. Until your people attacked us in 19th century Afghanistan, we didn't even know that you existed."
"Come on," said Hunter. "Is that really the line they fed you? Your people bombed the hell out of us. You wiped out entire colonies, killed millions of people-"
"And we didn't even know we were doing it," Delaney said. "He's telling you the truth. We have a temporal nuclear device known as a warp grenade. It allows you to utilize a specified portion of a highly controlled nuclear explosion and it clocks the surplus energy through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge out into space somewhere. We thought we were disposing of the surplus energy in the Orion Nebula, but apparently sending such massive amounts of energy through space warps somehow affected chronophysical alignment. We were clocking nuclear explosions into your timeline and we didn't even know it."