Forever Until Tomorrow (War Eternal Book 5) (20 page)

"You're saying he made it to the city on his own, with severely burned arms?"

"You haven't met him," Origin said. "Mitchell is a warrior. He won't stop fighting until he's dead."

Katherine smiled. That was a quality she could admire. "Why didn't you go back to keep an eye on him?"

"I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Watson."

"What happened?"

"He was never supposed to escape the crash. He should have been nothing more than his core, unable to create a human configuration. Something went wrong."

"You don't know what?"

"No. He has made it into prior recursions and has tried to stop us here before. I don't know how he got free then, or if it is the same way he gets free now. With the state of recursive continuity in flux, it's difficult to know for certain. In any case, I had to distance myself from Mitchell so that Watson wouldn't find him. Clearly, he knew Mitchell was here, or at least suspected, or he wouldn't have caught up to him so quickly."

Katherine thought about it. "Okay, but if Watson's been out there for the last eighteen years or so, why didn't he sabotage the Dove before this. Why does he let things get this far? I'm trying to understand his motives."

"I've been countering him as best I can, fighting him while working to protect and prepare you. At the same time I've been trying to locate his core intelligence, he's been trying to draw me out and capture me. It isn't enough for him to destroy humanity. He wants to rebuild the Tetron, to make them into what they were before I realized the errors in our beliefs. If he wins his war here and now, the Tetron will never be created unless he creates them. He knows that he can't do that without me. He also knows the Dove will bring us together, and that being tied to you will make me more vulnerable."

"Which is why he used me as bait."

"Yes. We eluded him this time, but he won't stop trying. Which is why we need to be cautious."

"Maybe you could write up a manual or a cheat sheet or something? My head is spinning from all of this."

"I'm sorry, Katherine. I'm sorry that you even have to be a part of this. I had no idea of the overall consequences when I created the eternal engine. My attempts to save humankind have caused so many more to suffer. Especially you and Colonel Williams. Especially when you still all die in the end."

A tear rolled from the corner of Origin's eye, running down her cheek and landing on her shoulder. It would have been so easy for Katherine to blame her, to be angry at her, to hate her for what she was and what she had done. She couldn't. If humankind had created a thinking machine, and that thinking machine had destroyed them because it was logical instead of emotional, then it was their own fault for making it. If it learned to be emotional and regretted the decision, that was something to be applauded. That Origin had invented a machine to try to actually do something about it? How could she hate the Tetron for that?

"Maybe we all died in past recursions," she said, approaching Origin and putting a hand on her shoulder and squeezing. "You said the loop isn't immutable. It can be changed. You said the Mesh is broken. We have a chance, a real chance to put an end to this. If I have to be part of it, then so be it. Mitchell's a warrior? Good. I'm a warrior, too. I'm not sorry to be involved."

She stepped back from Origin, standing at attention.
 

"Major Katherine Asher, United Earth Alliance Space Program, reporting. Now, what do we do first?"

"Your meeting tonight was a setup. Who arranged it?"

Mitchell settled into the maglev's first-class cabin, letting his body relax into the wide, padded gel seat, trying to ignore the soreness that had followed the first few hours of their journey. He was getting old, his body was not recovering from exertion the way he was certain it used to. At least they had made it this far, managing to make the transfer without any sign that their travel had been picked up by Watson or the AIT.
 

"Any word out of Norfolk?" he asked.
 

Lyle sat diagonally across from him in their small, private pod, the seats arranged so they could move the seats flat and sleep during the ten-hour ride if they wanted. He looked tired; his eyes red, his face sagging.
 

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing new from home base, either." He reached up and removed the AR glasses.
 

"They're probably regrouping, planning their next move."

"Yeah. If we managed to slip them, they'll want to be more prepared next time. Two targets, two misses. It isn't a good showing."

"At least we have a little breathing room. Maybe we can relax a little bit."

"A moment of calm? I have a feeling you don't get that very often."

Mitchell's smile was weak. "No. I don't think I do."
 

He reached up and rubbed his temple. The cold feeling of loss hadn't faded from him the way it normally did. He was stuck with it, and the constant tingle in the back of his mind was making him increasingly frustrated.

People had died. More people would follow if he didn't catch on to his past and his purpose. Evelyn had died holding his hand. It didn't matter that he barely knew her or that she was a criminal. She was also a human being, and he had failed her.
 

Just like he had failed the others.
 

He glanced over at Lyle. The Detective was staring at him, watching his expressions.
 

"Tortured soul," Lyle said. "I've seen it before. A lot of tortured souls came out of the Xeno War. A lot of people who lost someone close. It was a dirty, messy, cold war."

"I don't know much about it besides what I read in the streams."
 

"First war in over one hundred years. Most of it took place close to Antarctica. South America, South Africa, Australia. Almost every country in the world had soldiers in one of those places, fighting for one of the sides. The U.S., U.K., and Germany had the first units near the crash site on our side. Man, those initial clashes were brutal. I was in the 5th Regiment. We were one of the first units down there. We were completely unprepared, just loaded up and flown down. I think more people died in the first few weeks from hypothermia than bullet wounds. It was like World War One, from what I've read about it. Nobody wanted to risk damaging any of the debris, so it was all small arms fire. Trench warfare. Insane."

"It sounds horrible."

Lyle's face turned to stone again, his eyes growing distant. "Yeah. It was."

Lyle didn't say anything else about it, and Mitchell knew better than to push. He looked out the window instead. The train was starting to move, accelerating quickly to its five hundred kilometers per hour speed. It wasn't as fast as a sub-orbital jet, but it was more relaxing.

He closed his eyes. As soon as he did, the chill began to intensify, the darkness surrounding him. He opened them again, heart pounding.

Lyle was gone. The landscape out of the window had changed. He'd fallen asleep. It had felt like a moment. A flash. An hour had passed.

He caught a hint of his reflection in the glass. A stubble of gray had made its way across his face, and his hair was longer than he wanted it, and also flecked with gray and white. Twenty years, gone. He could barely remember them. Sitting, watching, waiting, preparing. There was nothing else. This was his mission. His responsibility. His destiny.

"You have forever until tomorrow, but not forever until the end."

The words danced across his consciousness. What did they mean? So many questions. So few answers.

"Find her."
 

Major Katherine Asher. She had to be the one he was supposed to find. He was trying, but Watson had forced him to head further away to circle back. Would she survive long enough for him to reach her?

Would he?

Mitchell closed his eyes again. Mitchell. He thought about the name. Every time he heard Lyle say it, every time he thought of himself with the moniker, he grew more convinced it was right. He was Mitchell.
 

"Tell me, Captain Williams. How did you discover the weakness on the Federation dreadnought?"

Captain Mitchell "Ares" Williams shifted in the pillowy expanse of his seat, getting the bright stage beams out of his eyes. He faced his interviewer. Her name was Tamara King. She was known on Liberty as the Queen of Talk, her morning stream the highest rated within the Delta Quadrant. She was a willowy blonde, dressed in tall boots and a fashionable high-cut sweater that hugged her curves like a second layer of skin. She was bombarding him with a smile that could make its way past even the most reluctant guest's defenses better than a well-placed nuke.
 

"It was simple, Tamara," he said. He shifted towards the camera opposite him and returned her smile with a version of his own that was nearly as disarming. "We were watching the fighter formations, tracking the density equations. It was clear they were clustering near a service portal close to the aft, trying to keep our fire away from that portion of the ship. When I saw one of their Kips move into the line of fire and sacrifice itself to prevent one of our tactical's from reaching the boat, I knew there had to be something to it."

He'd practiced the lines so many times. On the transport, in front of the mirror, and in the hundreds of other interviews he'd given in the two months since the United Planetary Alliance had stopped the Frontier Federation's attempt to overpower Liberty and claim the planet.

"And there was something to it, wasn't there?" Tamara asked. She shifted in her chair, getting close enough to him that he could smell her. She was light and sweet.

Mitchell made eye contact, maintaining the smile. "There was, Tamara. A flaw in the design. Weak shield coverage and a direct path for a projectile to hit the reactor. Of course, I didn't know at the time that it would be so effective. I was just taking a shot."

"The Shot Heard 'Round the Universe," Tamara said, drawing cheers and clapping from her audience. She put the tips of her fingers on his leg, resting them there while the crowd quieted. "Your 'twisted snake' maneuver is already legendary. In fact, my nephew likes to pretend he's Ares Williams, and he runs across the lawn yelling 'twisted snake' until he makes himself dizzy and falls over." She paused, waiting while the audience laughed. Mitchell faked a chuckle through his doll-smile. "What's it like, saving an entire planet, everyone here in this studio included, from certain death? How does it feel to be the greatest hero of our time?"

Mitchell's eyes snapped open, and he sat upright. His heart was pounding even harder than before, and his arms were burning. He rolled up his sleeve, looking to the left. The skin was scarred smooth and hairless. It was deep red.

He had gone through this before. Sometimes the circulation would suffer, and his limbs would go numb. He worked to shake them, to encourage the blood to flow again. What had happened to cause the injury? Had it been intentional, too?

"Mitchell, are you okay?"
 

Mitchell looked over. Lyle was back in his seat. He had shaved his face and his head, giving himself a more aggressive appearance. He looked more like a Marine than a Detective now.
 

"My arms. Circulation gets bad sometimes." He continued shaking them, the pain beginning to subside.

"You were talking in your sleep, in bits and pieces."

"What time is it?"
 

"We'll be in L.A. in two hours."

Nearly seven hours had passed? It felt like a blink. He fought to hold onto the already fading memories.
 

"Captain Williams," Mitchell said. "Captain Mitchell Williams. Greylock Company."
 

UEA Space Marines?

That couldn't be right.
 

"Captain, huh?" Lyle smiled. "I figured you for an officer. I've never heard of Greylock, though." He raised his hand in salute. "A pleasure to meet you, Captain Williams."

Mitchell stared at him. He wasn't familiar with the gesture, and he was losing the details of the memory. A hero. He was some kind of hero? That wasn't right. They just thought he was a hero, but he wasn't. That was it. He was a fraud.
 

He opened his mouth to tell Lyle what he was remembering and then stopped. Liberty. Planet Liberty? He'd been watching news streams for years. He knew they hadn't gone to the stars. Not yet. That was the reason for the Dove.

"Mitch?" Lyle said.

Mitchell didn't understand it. How could he be dreaming of himself in a world that didn't exist. That couldn't have happened?
 

Why did it feel so real?

Maybe Katherine Asher knew. Maybe Watson knew.
 

Somebody knew something, and he was going to find out what it was.

"Mitch?" Lyle said again.

"At ease, Sergeant," Mitchell said.