She Who Knows Tomorrow: a sci-fi novella (displaced shadows #1)

I

A/N: This story (and series) is what happens when a kid watches Star Trek and wonders why folks who don't fit their native universes (*cough* Mirror!Miles *cough*) don't just hop over to another one that suits them better.

I mean, Star Trek and other space operas make it so easy (or, at least, feasible). So where are all the expats?

It's worth noting that, when I wrote this, I had not seen The X Files, nor did I know the TV show Fringe existed. (As of this writing, I still haven't seen The X Files. I like Fringe, though.)

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Third, called 'Kitten' by the women she shared an apartment with, kept her attention on the wooden blocks stacked on the dining room table. She wasn't sure whence the game had come, but Janni had left it, not Raleigh—Third could read that much in the wood.

Third and Janni were technically the same person, just from different universes. Different lives. Janni had made Naming, for example, without ever being Nameless.

But they had their similarities, too. Logic and coordination puzzles helped them both. Settled them. Helped them focus on whichever somewhen they were in at a particular moment.

Janni lived more linearly than Third was used to, jumping universes when she needed a break from whenever she was living. Third could jump universes—that was how she had escaped her own, after all—but she preferred living sequentially, skipping around linear time. That was dangerous, though, because time jumping was more likely to get her noticed by Shadow Corps. Shadow Corps feared escapees from her kind of universe, because they were usually Nameless, like her.

Nameless weren't much liked by anyone.

And sometimes time jumping let her learn things she didn't want to know—like how Second was dead and First didn't know yet and Third would have to tell him.

She froze, remembering the cage she would be in—how Second's body would self-immolate, as Nameless were designed to do at death, to dispose of their bodies.

Thanks to a slip ahead, Third had seen it once already, from across the room, but she hadn't been the girl in the cage yet—who had been Third herself, not some alternate universe version of her—digging the governor chip out of her flesh with her wristwire. That was something she'd only dare do if absolutely necessary. She was so close to surviving long enough to warrant a name, and she had the governor chip for good reason.

She would have to experience it all again, up close, as the girl inside that cage. In a day, no more than three, she would witness what her sister actually did to kill their sister-in-law. Poison, maybe. Nev was good with those, and she wouldn't want to risk combat with a Nameless. Later-Third had looked unwell, probably from gamma exposure. Jumpers—especially mergers, like her—were more sensitive to gamma radiation than most primes, enough that Second would be slowed by them, too, though she was navigator class and therefore not as sensitive as Third was.

Of the two of them, Third was more dangerous, anyway.

Nameless were created to be cannon fodder. A Nameless who survived long enough ended up Named, but that was more manipulation than kindness, because it gave Nameless something to work towards, so they wouldn't give up and let themselves die. As the youngest of her particular clutch of Nameless—and as one who was usually sent without any backup, because her clutch had an odd number—Third was very good at killing. Better than other versions of herself, and Janni knew it.