Pointless, but he couldn’t tell Sofia that.
He need only survive a day or two more, that was all that mattered, then the process required to make Lifeboat a reality would succeed.
The flesh of his arm ached.
“I can’t become like them,” he said, as much to himself as anyone. “That kind of madness. Trapped between moments. Forever.”
“Paul,” she said. “That is not your fate.”
“I’ll kill myself first.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“They want me with them, Sofia. When they howl, it’s a pull like nothing I’ve ever felt. When I dream of them it’s like coming home.”
“You make it sound like something you want.”
“What if, as this sickness spreads, my mind becomes infirm? In a moment of weakness, I could surrender humanity’s every future.” Paul took her hand in his. “I need just a few more days. Give me that.”
“I do not tend corpses,” she said. “You will live. But, I will do as you ask. For the next few days.” She laid one hand against his face. “In that time don’t be stupid.”
Hatch cleared his throat.
Paul glanced at him. “Yes, Martin.”
“We need to debrief.”
Paul gently touched Sofia’s face, kissed her forehead. “Be rested for the gala tonight. Seduce the world for me, Sofia. I want you and Martin to leave them gasping. I’ll be watching from my quarters.”
“And afterward?”
“Just you and me.” Then: “Martin, this way.”
Paul directed his CEO into a free medical bay. Sofia’s lab was secure on the top floor, close to Martin’s office and away from the eyes of the rest of the Tower. Paul’s association with Monarch, despite being its unofficial founder, was strictly off the record. He’d never even walked the mezzanines.
“You said you’ve assigned Chronon-1 to bring in Jack,” Paul said.
“That’s right.”
Paul dragged one palm down his sweating face, worked the ache out of his jaw. “Chronon-1 had him once.”
“Randall Gibson had him once. I’ve demoted him and placed Donny in charge.”
Paul was surprised. “Gibson’s your boy, Martin. You’ve cleaned a lot of dirt from his kennel over the years. I expected rationales from you, not a spanking.”
“In his defense, Randall was underequipped. Jack is chronon-active. That was unexpected.” Martin let that hang for a moment, perhaps pointedly. “He informs me that Joyce woke and gave him the slip.”
“You doubt the report.”
“Randall’s instinct for self-preservation is a primary trait.”
“As is his unpredictability.”
“It’s the cost of an adaptable operative who possesses wide-spectrum moral flexibility, zero hesitation, and the mental fortitude for stutter operations. His success rate remains in the second percentile. In terms of cost-benefit the man remains an asset.”
“So. Now that the university is done, what’s the temperature outside?”
Hatch shifted his weight a touch, straightened his shoulders. “Almost everything went exactly as you said it would.”
Paul took a second and slowed his subjective relationship to the moment. Focusing on Martin, he watched potential futures radiate off the man four-dimensionally. He isolated his awareness of these potential causality streams and focused instead on streams already expiring. Paul’s awareness scanned through this fading back-catalog, located the inbound path that had led to the particular moment they now inhabited, and traced it backward.
This backward path was already weak and fading, becoming fainter as each passing second took Paul farther away from the present. Paul seized upon it, allowed his perception to inhabit that now-extinct possible past, and looked around as quickly as he could.
Martin, in his office, eighty-seven minutes prior. The black-glass surface of his smart desk channeled the voice of Talon Squad’s senior operative.
“Stage One’s complete, sir. All witnesses detained.”
“How many?”
“Thirteen. They’ve seen what we needed them to see.”
Martin digested this. “Thirteen is manageable.”
“Sir?”
Martin Hatch radiated a sudden density of potential, a daisy-head of deeply consequential paths streaming from him. What he said next would determine the shape of the future-the success or failure, potentially, of everything Paul had worked for.
“Release three, then exercise the hard-line option immediately. Civilians and law enforcement are contained, but not for much longer. You have sixty seconds.”
“Yes, sir. Talon out.”
Hatch heard gunfire before the line had even cut.
The daisy-head withered, untaken paths already dusting out and being left behind as Martin Hatch walked Monarch into a future where they murdered ten college students, on campus. The flow of time dragged Paul away from other futures. Looking forward, Paul saw how the path Martin had taken them down would require cover-ups, raise questions, spawn suspicion, and require a retasking of manpower to smooth things over. Why had Monarch personnel cordoned the university? How could a private security outfit mandate to the Riverport Police Department who may and may not enter an active crime scene? Why was Monarch dealing with the shooters?
But it was all covered in their contract with the city, and events would progress fast enough that it would never go to court.
He saw the media explode with speculation about “Peace”: who were they and why had they targeted the quantum physics building? He caught glimpses of Monarch revealing what had been inside that lab, the perfect way to prime the public for what Martin would reveal at tomorrow night’s gala.
This had been the right move. Behind him Paul watched a dozen lesser causality-paths die.
Paul disengaged and rubber banded back into the present.
“We made an impression,” Hatch was saying. “The correct witnesses escaped, the remainder were neutralized on-site. The narrative in the media is that it’s an act of domestic terrorism. There’s good footage of our helicopter airlifting the time core free of the Quantum Physics Building.”
“Great. That primes the audience for our second-act involvement. We’re in good shape.”
“Your decision to prematurely demolish the library, however-”
“-was accounted for in pre-planning. It conforms to the narrative of an extremist attack on the Physics Building.”
As an individual, Martin Hatch possessed minimal need for expression. The flex of thumb atop his clasped hands and his level gaze exuded tolerance. “Is it possible that you simply could not bring yourself to shoot a family friend?”
Martin knew him better than anyone, but even so… Paul found the thought of having lost a moment of control over his own transparency unsettling.
“Seventeen years and here we are, on the eve of our work coming to fruition, and you’re questioning my capacity to place our mission first?”
“I never supported the elimination of William Joyce. Our best have striven for years to understand the Regulator. Dr. Joyce could have enlightened us in an afternoon.”
“He resided on the correct side of your cost-benefit analysis, yes, I understand.”
“Six years. That’s how long I’ve debated Dr. Joyce with you. We could have brought him in, interrogated him, and learned. You and I will never know how far it could have taken this company.”
“I helmed Project Promenade for three years before I finally went through the machine. In that time William was a consultant and troubleshooter only. He was never hauled off for questioning. It never happened, so it could never happen. Time is a closed loop. Nothing changes. I know. I’ve tried.”
“The Regulator could have been our Rosetta Stone. It may have saved us, come the end.” Hatch composed himself. This kind of outburst was out of character for him. “There is nothing more to be said. Kim is gone, and now so is Joyce.”