JACKIE:

  A man in a hazmat suit shattered the sterile silence. “We have a Code 80. He’s gonna jump!” His panicked voice reverberated through the Life Rite laboratory.

  Six stories up, my top client was about to crap all over my holiday bonus.

  An icy sweat broke across my skin.

  “Let me back in to check the probabilities,” Feraz Tal shouted with arms outstretched.

  Workers in hazmat suits scattered; their rubber soles squeaking against the vinyl floor as they fled. No one wanted to be the fall guy, but as a junior executive, I fought my urge to flee.

  “Feraz, please don’t jump.” My head tipped back, eyes locking onto his distant figure high above me.

  Despite my objections, Feraz swung his legs over the top railing and dangled his feet. “I’m eternal, infallible, indestructible.”

  “What an egomaniac,” I mumbled from the ground floor. Every Flyer exalted themselves, but he was the biggest narcissist I knew.

  The bling from Feraz’s diamond-encrusted watch against the fluorescent lights blinded me.

  “Engage safety protocols!” I called, my pulse hammering in my chest.

  An alarm wailed in response.

  A sickening sense of déjà vu struck, scattering goosebumps across my skin. My face and hands tingled, and a heavy fog smothered my thoughts, making me nauseous.

  “I am a god, and the probabilities are endless!” Feraz jumped from six-stories up.

  I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand.

  His body flipped, sending him plunging headfirst to his death.

  Luckily, his leg caught on a loose cable dangling from the fifth-floor railing, saving his life. He bounced upside-down like a bungee jumper.

  His maniacal laugh made my skin crawl. He was enjoying this.

  “Feraz, no!” My stomach churned violently, rising toward my throat.

  Scientists escaped the laboratory in droves, their long white smocks floating behind them.

  A stocky employee crashed into me, scuffing my new Valanti stilettos.

  “Watch it, Duster,” I sneered, losing all patience.

  The commotion brought out the big boss, my grandfather, Mark Claudi.

  He didn’t look a day over forty in his signature boat shoes and polo shirt. He always looked ready to sail away on his yacht at a moment’s notice.

  I stiffened at his commanding presence. His icy blue eyes pierced straight through me.

  “What’s going on? Come on, Jackie,” Mark scolded. “This is your client. Control him.”

  “Someone get him down. Now!” I said to no one in particular, pretending to wield power over the fragile situation.

  At seventeen-years-old, being a junior executive at Life Rite was a huge deal, and I didn’t want to lose my high Flying status. Otherwise, I’d have to attend Hampshire University, despite school not being my strong suit.

  Of course, I got the job because I’m a Claudi, but I still had a lot to prove, which my family constantly reminded me of.

  “Mr. Tal, you’re in breach of contract!” Mark called.

  “When I jump, time bends,” Feraz replied, hanging upside down. “I’ve walked through eternity and haven’t aged a day.”

  I rolled my eyes and mumbled, “Haven’t aged a day? You’re only in your mid-thirties, and you’re a Life Rite client.”

  “If you try to stop me, I’ll rewrite the timeline without you in it, just to prove I can.” Feraz’s laugh reverberated in the large, open room as he squirmed in frantic, jerky bursts.

  “How could you let this happen, Jackie?” Mark asked.

  “I…” Looking down to hide my blushing cheeks, I picked at my fingernail polish, searching for the perfect thing to say.

  Nothing came to me. A heavy haze clouded my thoughts.

  Feraz’s jittery movements untangled his foot. His gleeful snicker was followed by the splat of broken bones against the vinyl floor.

  I flinched at the gory impact, resulting in a heap of torn flesh and exposed muscle. His skull cracked, blood seeping out from his thick black hair.

  The sickening sight made my stomach heave, my gourmet breakfast threatening to return.

  I looked away, lightheaded.

  For an instant, colors seemed sharper, the shadows deeper, as if I’d slipped into a parallel existence, two worlds existing on top of one another.

  “Geez, Jackie.” Mark wiped blood splatter off his khakis. “You only have a few clients, and you can’t keep them in line?”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, forcing myself to look at the consequence of my inaction.

  Annoyed with me, Mark grabbed the remaining lab technician to boss around.

  A pool of radioactive blood grew around Feraz’s lifeless body. Then it burst into flames, snapping and hissing, sending sparks dancing into the air.

  Under spontaneous and intense heat that struck instantly, his skin liquefied and his brain matter melted from his skull. I couldn’t take my eyes off the harrowing aftermath. The stench, like hair and sweat turned to smoke, made my eyes water.

  Instead of entering Rebirthing Incident Number R64 into my tablet, I got lost in the flames that danced before me. They flickered with wild, unpredictable energy, lulling me into a trance, taking me into an empty void within myself.

  I sat still in its sweet silence.

  Snapping back into the present moment, vertigo hit hard. The lab spun around me as Feraz’s mangled body turned to ash.

  The pounding of my heart thundered loudly in my ears.

  A spinning current of raw energy rose from the ashes. Its embers burst like fireworks. From the flames emerged a newborn baby bird, grotesque and hairless.

  The horrid beast mangled and morphed into a leathery human form, consumed by fire. This unsightly creature grew from baby to adult in a matter of seconds, its skin stretching to cover bones forming and snapping into place.

  As it transformed, Feraz’s impressive stature, broad nose, and pointed jawline returned. His thick black hair grew back in record speed.

  “It’s a full regeneration,” the technician said to Mark.

  His words echoed in my ears.

  I froze, stiff, as an insane thought rattled in my brain.

  I’ve experienced this before. But when?

  Every movement, every word unfolding around me was something I had witnessed in another thread of time.

  I scrambled to sync the timelines, but the harder I tried to pinpoint when I’d lived this before, the more my stomach churned.

  A deep male voice echoed in my head. “Jackie, I don’t know if you’re ready, but it’s time to crush Life Rite.”

  I grabbed my throbbing temples, unsure where the voice was coming from. I looked around, but the lab walls swayed around me.

  I struggled to stay upright. I leaned on a janitor’s cart to steady myself.

  “This won’t be easy, but trust is the glue that holds families together…” the male voice said.

  The boom of this mysterious voice sounded… familiar.

  Who are you?

  A strange energy pulsed through my brain, giving me an instant headache.

  Images of another life, not fully lived, flooded my mind’s eye like a movie montage; my mother walking away, never to be seen again, fields of sacred, fire-blazed lands, and an ancient geometrical symbol I’d never seen before today.

  Memories from a parallel life crashed into my brain like a wave breaking onto shore.

  I remembered riding on the back of a dragon-like phoenix through an ethereal dream world. His scaly skin was hot, but it was a comforting type of heat.

  I whispered, “Firestorm…”

  I gripped my work tablet close to my chest, dizzy from the information overload.

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  The only thing forceful enough to bring me out of my daze was Grandpa Mark’s assertive voice.

  “Baxter? Is that your name?” Mark pointed to the tag on the janitor’s jumpsuit.

  The poor janitor stood by the elevator, frozen with shock at the horrific rebirth happening in the middle of the lab.

  “Get the fire extinguisher, or you’re fired!” Mark bellowed.

  The old janitor sprang into action.

  When I looked at Mark, I saw my grandmother, Beatrice, in his place instead.

  She died before I was born, but I recognized her from pictures. Mark had shrines to his muse throughout his many homes. She stood as a symbol of greatness with her shiny platinum hair, straight white teeth, and iconic wardrobe.

  Reality glitched back and forth between the two star-crossed lovers.

  I rubbed my eyes and saw Mark standing next to the technician. Not Beatrice, my dead grandmother, whom I never met.

  Get a grip, Jackie.

  The janitor, Baxter, grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed Feraz’s flames as he rebirthed on the lab floor.

  Feraz coughed as he lay in the fetal position, covered in white foam. A sinister smile broke across his face.

  Baxter got on his hands and knees and cleaned up Feraz’s bodily fluids. Blood covered his hands, jumpsuit, and his kind face.

  Déjà vu hit me again like a glitch in the matrix. For a split-second, the world flickered, reality doubling over itself.

  “Pops…”

  Like a computer downloading a program, I remembered it all as if it were yesterday. In another life, I loved the janitor dearly.

  How could this be? A Claudi raised by a dusty janitor? How absurd.

  Yet, I was certain it had happened in another life similar to this one.

  My heart pounded in my chest as I remembered the two-story duplex with a cracked brick facade on Wright Road and the last can of corn we shared for dinner the night before Baxter died in the street, protecting me from a Wellness Checkpoint.

  But Wellness Checks don’t exist. Did that actually happen in some parallel universe?

  I tried to make eye contact to see if Baxter remembered me too, but Mark barked at him to get water and linens.

  Baxter’s response time was excellent, but he broke a vial as he reached for a jug at the sink.

  The faint sound of broken glass snapped into my memory.

  Yes, I’d been here before, but the circumstances were different. I was a lowly janitor in another dimension.

  I was a dirty Duster.

  Chills ran down my spine.

  “Check his vitals,” Mark told the technician, who eagerly obliged, a Climber looking for a come-up.

  “Stage two of the regeneration process is underway,” he whispered to Mark. “He’ll be out for a while.”

  Feraz is surfing the Slipstream. What’s he up to in there?

  “Exploring the probabilities,” I whispered to myself, piecing it all together.

  I looked at Mark, but saw Beatrice standing in his place again.

  She had offered me a small bonus to keep quiet. She invited me into the family business. Beatrice built me a Kiln Room to explore the Slipstream, but… the drones were everywhere. The last time I saw her, she sobbed, scared to go into the past to stop the end of the world.

  And now, here I was, a junior executive serving my grandfather, Mark.

  “What a mess… Pull his contract. He’s in breach,” Mark said to me.

  “Yes, sir.” I nodded, pretending to log the incident on my tablet with my trembling finger. “I’m on top of it.”

  “Good.” Mark turned to leave. “Come on, Jackie. I’ve got five minutes to talk about the financials before my next meeting. Let’s walk.”

  I shoved the unexplainable memories away as Mark swiftly left the lab.

  I followed carefully, stepping around the growing pool of radioactive blood.

  On my way out of the lab, Baxter and I locked eyes.

  I once knew Pops intimately, but did he remember me?

  I picked up the pace to keep in step with Mark. He was always in a hurry and didn’t appreciate what it’s like walking in heels.

  “The quarterly financials… go,” Mark pointed at me with a wink, as if we hadn’t witnessed Feraz’s gruesome rebirth. All in a day’s work at Life Rite…

  “Earth to Jackie… You with me?”

  I shook off the ick. I had to talk as fast as we walked through the immaculate halls of Life Rite headquarters.

  “So, um, the manufacturer is having shipping issues with the latest round of face creams. Something about volcanic activity?”

  Mark shook his head and clicked his tongue. “That department is always on island time. You need to light a fire under them.”

  “I’ll get right on it, Grandpa.”

  “Don’t call me that. Raise the price on the next shipment to keep the bottom line balanced.”

  “But the cream is already insanely expensive.”

  Mark shrugged. “Worth every penny. Supply and demand, my dear.”

  My shoe sole caught on the tile floor, sending me off balance. I jerked my weight to avoid eating the floor.

  Mark rolled his eyes as we fell out of lockstep.

  I pulled at my dress as I clumsily stumbled onward.

  Instead of going to his office, he paused in front of the closed steel door to the R&D Department.

  Trying to keep up, I bumped into him.

  He grabbed the doorknob, a deep furrow in his brow. “Anything else, Jackie?”

  “Oh, I guess not. Anything fun going on in the R&D department?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “You don’t have the clearance. Make sure Trystian pulls Feraz’s contract. He’s in breach. And get on the shipping issues, okay?”

  “Got it.” I awkwardly saluted him.

  “You reap what you sow, Jackie.” Mark scanned his DNA Identifier and entered the top-secret research and development lab.

  As he slid inside, a flash of intuition struck. I needed to get inside to see what he was doing.

  I reached out and stuck my tablet into the door frame to stop it from locking, but it didn’t work. The heavy door crunched my tablet as it closed, and it ricocheted into the hallway.

  “Smooth, Jackie.” I picked it up, examined the cracked screen, and glimpsed myself in the reflection.

  I ran my fingers through my silky blue hair, remembering I used to have a red streak there, but not in this life.

  Are these memories real, or am I having a psychotic break?

  In the distorted reflection of my cracked tablet, I noticed Beatrice standing behind me.

  I snapped around to see her, my breath catching in my throat, but there was no one there.

  “You reap what you sow,” I mumbled.

  An electric shock ripped through my mind, tearing open a floodgate of memories.

  I gasped, realizing what happened. “Beatrice never took the serum.”

  Tears threatened to fall as I understood what she had done all those years ago, before I was born.

  She made the ultimate sacrifice to reset the timeline…

  “Okay, what’s my next move?” I wiped my sweaty palms on my dress, lingering outside the R&D department, talking to myself like a madwoman.

  “If everything I experienced in the Slipstream was real, I need to enter that room to see if Alpha’s Redistribution Program is a threat in this probability. And is Life Rite still creating mutants?”

  My heart sank. The weight of both crises fell on my shoulders.

  I rubbed my temples, hoping to rustle up some solutions. “Firestorm, are you there?”

  No answer.

  I leaned against the white wall, closed my eyes, and focused. “Firestorm, talk to me.”

  Silence.

  “Firestorm, please... Beatrice?”

  A realization hit me like a ton of bricks.

  Baxter was originally my most trusted ally. He was still alive, and there was unfinished business between us.

  I threw my broken tablet away and rushed to the lab to find him, with urgency in every step.

  Some Life Rite security goons were locking it down, so I quickly scanned my high-level DNA Identifier to get inside before they tried to stop me.

  Inside the lab, technicians pushed Feraz out on a gurney. Unconscious, he smirked under a layer of carbon dioxide ash.

  Is Feraz in the Slipstream? Do I still have access to that crazy place? Am I still a phoenix gene carrier?

  I brushed my hand through my hair where my red streak used to be, overwhelmed.

  I found Baxter on his hands and knees mopping up brain matter. He always had to clean up my mistakes, but at least it wasn’t his own blood this time.

  “Pops?” I whispered to him.

  At first, Baxter didn’t realize I was talking to him.

  “Baxter?”

  “Oh, hello Miss Claudi,” he finally said. “How may I help you?”

  I didn’t think he shared my memories, although mine were still fuzzy, too.

  “Yeah, um, great to see you, by the way.”

  He gave a tight smile and nodded for me to continue, his hands covered in radioactive blood.

  “So, I need to get into the R&D department, but my DNA Identifier isn’t working. Do you have access to clean there?”

  Baxter wiped his sweaty brow. “Oh? Sorry to hear that, Miss Claudi. Protocol dictates that you should go to security to get your Identifier reauthorized. Would you like me to walk you there?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “That won’t work… I’m… too busy for that. I’m a Claudi after all.”

  Baxter nodded, lowering his eyes to the floor.

  “Can you please let me in real quick?” I asked again. “Just this once?”

  Baxter winced.

  I knew what this job meant to him. He was terrified of losing it. If Mark found out that he had let me into a restricted zone, he’d fire Baxter on the spot and mark him Incapable. If he told a Claudi like me no, he could get fired anyway.

  I appreciated the no-win situation I was putting him in.

  “Anything for you, Miss Claudi.” Baxter gave a strained smile. He looked at the bloody floor he had to clean.

  “Let me call in some backup to help with this mess,” I offered. “Get cleaned up. Meet me outside the R&D department in five minutes?”

  Baxter nodded. “Thank you, Miss Claudi. That’s very kind.”

  “My pleasure. See you soon, Pops.” I stared into his eyes, searching for recognition.

  Baxter had a trained poker face, so it was anyone’s guess if he remembered our past life together.

  I called another cleaning crew, and Pops left to change.

  Then I went down the hall to stake out the R&D department.

  “What is Mark up to in there? What secrets are you hiding, Grandpa?” I paced in front of the locked door, wondering what horrors I might find inside.

  “Firestorm, can you hear me?” I whispered. “I’m about to break into Mark’s sacred space to find Alpha. I’m not sure if Mark is still in there or if he left while I was in the lab with Baxter. Either way, I have to take my only shot at getting inside.”

  Firestorm didn’t respond.

  “Hello, Miss Claudi.” Baxter met me outside the R&D department in a fresh jumpsuit, dry blood caked under his fingernails.

  We stared at each other for an awkward beat.

  “I hope you’re alright after the incident in the lab, Miss Claudi.”

  My eyes moistened at his words of comfort.

  What can I say to the man who raised me in a distant life?

  I had Beatrice to thank for the fact that Pops was still alive.

  Baxter pointed to the door. “Do you still need my DNA Identifier to get inside?”

  “Yes, please.” I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  Pops opened the R&D department with the DNA Identifier implanted in his finger.

  Against my better judgment, I hugged him.

  “I’m so glad you’re alive,” I whispered in our embrace.

  Baxter stammered, “Oh, okay… Thank you, Miss Claudi.”

  “Thank you.” I let him go. “There will be a bonus applied to your DNA Identifier later today. A big one.”

  Baxter’s jaw dropped. “That’s not necessary, Miss.”

  “Yes, it is. Goodbye… for now.” I slid into the top-secret room to see if Mark’s killer drone was on the loose again. I had to find out Alpha’s status, no matter the consequences.

  I took another step into the ice-cold server room, humming with a low vibration like a sleeping beast. Rows of black racks stretched into the distance, each lined with blinking LEDs; colored lights pulsing in hypnotic rhythm. Shelves lined another wall; full of robotic parts, gadgets, old computers, and tools.

  A man appeared from behind and clamped my arm with an iron grip. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Before I could react, he yanked me into his chest, trapping me against his body.

  I whimpered as the air was ripped from my chest. I was caught in a top-secret zone, way above my clearance.