“What are you doing?” he demanded. “You cannot be sleeping? Really?”
Her mouth gaped open, and she snatched the sheet to cover herself, instinctively gathering it around her. When she looked down, she realized she’d slept in her clothes from the previous day. She threw the sheet aside and stood.
“Oculus, are you fucking kidding me?”
He stepped toward her, extending his open palm. His gold and bronze royal Imprint tattoos slid frantically around his forearm. “This isn’t really the time for a noble act of selflessness. You need to get on that ship. Now. Whether you want to or not.”
Adequin pressed her fingers deep into her temples. She thought she’d woken up, but she must still be— Cavalon grabbed her by the arm—not painful, but still fierce. Her skin pinched under his touch. It didn’t feel like a dream.
Her tattoos rushed down her arm, and she shoved Cavalon away with a surge of Imprint-assisted force. He stumbled back.
“Dammit, Rake, we have to go!” he yelled.
Shocked by his temerity, she didn’t know how to respond. His blue eyes narrowed. He reached for her again, but his form shifted and cracked, then peeled away as he disappeared out of existence.
Silence filled the cabin.
The door opened, and Cavalon rushed in again.
“What are you doing?” he yelled. He reached his open palm toward her, then his edges splintered and he disappeared.
She gaped at the door, but it didn’t slide open again.
“What. The fuck.”
Adequin inhaled slowly and tried to calm her nerves. That had easily been the most intense ripple she’d ever experienced. Her mind raced as she tried to determine how that situation could ever come to pass.
She took a deep breath and thought about what Griffith had told her about time anomalies. The crew of the Tempus were experts at dealing with them, after all, for in the interim time spent getting from the Divide to the Argus and back, they were inundated with the same phenomenon.
The general notion was: They meant nothing. They were a fabrication, aberrations of the potential of the future, and they certainly did not always come true.
The more recent the ripple, the more likely it would to come to pass, the fewer factors that could change the outcome. That bratty royal barging into her quarters implied a familiarity she couldn’t fathom in the near, or even distant, future. So she pushed the incident from her mind, because it meant nothing.
She quickly changed, then left her quarters and headed for the bridge. Soldiers milled about in the corridors, some dealing with nearby doppelg?ngers, others clumped in groups sharing stories of strange interactions with the future. Apparently it’d been going on all night.
They snapped to attention as she passed, or dispersed to return to their tasks. She didn’t bother to reprimand them, focusing solely on getting to the bridge as quickly as possible without actually running.
The bridge door opened before her, and Jackin looked up from his terminal, panic lining his eyes. The rest of the crew sat at their stations quietly working, giving furtive glances to nearby duplicates. Adequin strode past the captain’s chair and down the short flight of stairs.
“Good to see you, boss,” Jackin whispered, eyes darting to the crew members closest to them. “I’ve been riding the thrusters all morning to get us back in line, but they’re so fucking slow.”
“Can’t you set it to adjust automatically? Maintain the proper position?”
“I could write new code for that, yeah, but I don’t have time. I have to make constant adjustments.” He glanced back nervously at the crew. “And I can’t exactly ask someone else to do it since I was ordered to keep it quiet.”