The corridor outside their door writhed like a living thing. Walls throbbed between states—solid stone one moment, transparent crystal the next, occasionally shimmering to show other corridors in other times where other wars raged. Lila held the harmonic disruptor, its weight odd and yet known in her hand, as if she'd held it in dreams she couldn't quite remember.
"Close," Edmund breathed, moving forward with the practiced quiet of a man who'd led boarding parties through enemy ships. The time armor that had formed about them at older Lila's command was confusing—it moved with them, now chainmail, now future polymers, always exactly what was needed.
An explosion somewhere above them shook dust from a ceiling that five seconds ago hadn't existed. Lila heard Edmund's tactical mind cataloging the sounds of battle—energy weapons, conventional explosives, and something else, something that made reality scream.
They rounded a corner and were in the middle of a war zone.
The ballroom of Hartley House had become a war zone between dimensions. There were committee troops in environment suits advancing in formation, firing guns that deleted bits of existence wherever they hit. Guarding them were the inhabitants of the Convergence—a wild, beautiful motley crew of warriors from every possible time period.
Lila saw a samurai who wielded a sword that cut through time itself, leaving behind echoes of battles yet to be. A woman in what looked like 25th-century battle armor fired projectiles that aged their targets to dust. And there, at the heart of the carnage, older Lila walked across the battlefield like a conductor directing a symphony of chaos.
"New arrivals!" someone shouted—a man whose uniform continued to switch back and forth between World War II RAF and that of some war that would not be fought for centuries. "Northwestern wall is breaching! We need—"
He never had the opportunity. A Committee soldier materialized behind him, gun raised. On instinct, Lila raised the harmonic disruptor and pressed what felt like a trigger. The device sang—a chord that existed in only seventeen dimensions simultaneously. The Committee soldier hesitated, then vibrated, then simply. weren't. Not dead, not transported, but erased from this particular reality as if they'd never been.
"Good shot!" the RAF pilot grinned, his face young under eyes that had seen centuries. "Though you might want to lower the harmonic range—at that frequency, you nearly took me out as well. I'm James, by the way. James Chen-Hartley."
Lila's mind stuttered. Chen-Hartley. Her mentor's name combined with—
"Our great-great-grandson," Edmund whispered, and Lila felt his awe through their bond. "From a timeline in which we. in which we."
"Where you lived to a ripe old age and had seven kids," James concurred, ducking as a blast of temporal energy seared by. "Though I'm also descended from the timeline where you had three, and the one where you adopted that orphan from the Mars colonies. Family reunions are complicated here. Duck!"
They dived ahead as the wall behind them blew outward. In the hole, Lila saw the garden—but it was distorted, corrupted by the Committee's power. The fractal roses were dead, their infinite patterns collapsing into normal entropy. The bioluminescent trees flickered and died, and all that was left was ordinary wood that decayed to ancient dust.
"They're trying to impose linear time," they heard the voice of older Lila in their minds—a trick of the Convergence, to allow communication on the battlefield. "They're trying to force us into a single timeline—one that they can control. Don't let them get a toehold!"
Lila raised her gun again, and this time she sensed the presence of Edmund collaborating with her via their bond. His understanding of trajectories and angles merged with her knowledge of quantum mechanics. The harmonic disruptor made a new sound—precise, targeted, deadly. Three of the Committee soldiers breaching the gap in the wall simply did not exist in this timeline anymore, shoved sideways into universes where they'd never joined the Committee in the first place.
"Together," Edmund said, and she knew he didn't just mean their combat. Their connection was expanding, solidifying. She could feel his memories becoming part of her own—not replacing, but augmenting. When she fought, it was with his battle-trained reflexes. When he fired, it was with her mathematical precision.
They advanced into the garden, members of a ragged line of defenders. The Committee soldiers were numerous but were finding it difficult to cope with the anarchic nature of the Convergence. Their tidy formations kept breaking up as soldiers found themselves in different decades, their linear-time-calibrated weapons inoperable against enemies who existed in more than one state simultaneously.
But they were adapting.
"Temporal anchors!" someone screamed. "They're using temporal anchors!"
Lila observed them—machines that looked like metal spiders, running through the garden and burrowing into the soil. Where they stopped, reality stabilized. The fractal patterns fell into place. The several states collapsed into definite, singular forms. The Committee was trying to nail down reality, to force the Convergence into forms they could predict and control.
"We need to take out those anchors," Edmund said, already moving. His naval training was evident as he directed nearby defenders into place, setting up overlapping fields of fire. "You there—the woman with the Viking axe—can you get over to that group by the fountain? Excellent. Samurai gentleman, if you would be so kind as to cover her move."
It was surreal, watching her 19th-century naval captain ordering warriors from across history as if he'd been doing it all his life. But then, in the Convergence, perhaps he had. Perhaps they all had, in some timeline or another.
Lila found herself focusing on the anchors themselves, her scientific mind analyzing their function. They were creating points of fixed spacetime, but it was requiring tremendous energy. Energy had to come from somewhere.
"The rift!" she whispered. "They're draining energy from our first rift—the one Edmund traveled through. It's still open, still bleeding energy between worlds. If they can tap into it fully."
"And then they can anchor the entire Convergence," older Lila finished, appearing beside them in a burst of displaced air. Her armor was scorched, and blood—was it blood? It seemed to be in too many colors—dripped from a slash on her cheek. "Which is why we're not going to let that happen. You two, with me. It's time you both learned why they really fear us."
She led them deeper into the garden, where the combat was thickest. Reality here was more flexible, responding to will and intention as much as physical laws. Lila saw a Committee soldier age a thousand years in seconds when they tumbled into an area of accelerated time. Another battled his own future self, both versions equally confused.
"The Committee thinks in straight lines," older Lila said, her gun singing death across seventeen harmonics. "Past to present to future, cause to effect. But we think in spirals, in loops, in patterns that fold back on themselves. That's our advantage. That's why Edmund adapted so quickly—naval navigation requires understanding that the shortest distance isn't always a straight line."
They reached the glade in which a massive anchor had already started to take root. Reality was coalescing around it, the fluid grace of the Convergence turning rigid and grey. Committee troops had established a perimeter, guns facing outwards.
"Thirty troops," Edmund estimated. "Entrenched position. Good fields of fire. In my day, we'd need three-to-one odds to attack with success."
"Glad we're not in your day," older Lila smiled. "Watch and learn."
She stepped ahead, and reality distorted around her. No—not distorted. She was walking through it, existing in seventeen locations simultaneously. To the Committee soldiers, she was approaching them from everywhere simultaneously. They fired, but their weapons couldn't lock onto an enemy who existed in seventeen different states of probability.
"The mathematics of it," younger Lila breathed, her heightened perceptions letting her catch sight of the equations that ruled the technique. "She's not moving through space—she's moving through possibility itself."
"Can we do that?" Edmund asked.
Lila groped for their connection, for the strange fusion of science and intuition that their bond encouraged. "Together? Maybe. Worth trying?"
"Always," he grinned.
They stepped ahead, hands entwined, minds merged. The universe exploded into possibilities. Lila saw herself from a dozen angles—the timid scientist, the fearless warrior, the lover, the leader, all simultaneously. Edmund was by her side in every form, unwavering through each possibility.
The Committee forces tried to attack them, but how could they strike something that may or may not exist? Lila and Edmund dwelled in the gaps between certainty, in the quantum foam where observation hadn't yet collapsed possibility into reality.
They arrived at the anchor together, being only solid enough to graze it. In their union, Lila was aware of its form while Edmund was attuned to its weaknesses. Together, they found the frequency that would unravel it—not with violence, but with possibility. They showed the anchor all the timelines where it had never been, all the universes where the Committee had decided otherwise.
The device screamed—a wail that was largely in dimensions that human beings could not normally perceive—and began to dissolve. Not destroyed, but indefinite, unable to cohere in a reality that suddenly doubted its existence.
The Committee forces fell back, their cordon collapsing as reality returned to its natural fluidity around them. Some fled. Others, trapped in the possibility storm Lila and Edmund had created, found themselves living every choice they'd ever made simultaneously. Most collapsed, overwhelmed by the weight of infinite choice.
"Well done," older Lila appeared beside them. "You're learning faster than I did. Faster than most versions of us did. That's. interesting."
Before Lila could ask what she meant, a new sound cut through the battle—a harmony that made every molecule in her body resonate. Committee soldiers all over the garden were pulling back, disappearing through portable rifts that snapped shut behind them.
"They're retreating," someone shouted. "Full retreat on all engagement fronts."
"No," older Lila's face was grim. "Not withdrawing. Regrouping. This was a reconnaissance, probing our defenses. The real attack is yet to happen."
As if to emphasize her words, the sky split again. In the openings, Lila glimpsed something that made her heart plummet—an array of Committee ships, each one bristling with time weapons, hanging in the space between realities.
"How many?" Edmund said quietly.
"All of them," older Lila replied. "Every Committee force from every timeline that's aware of us. They've decided the Convergence is too dangerous to exist." She turned to look at them, and Lila saw fear in her older self's eyes for the first time. "And they might be right."
The garden was quiet now apart from the moans of the wounded and the hum of repair crews already at work undoing the damage. Bodies—some human, some only partly so—were being carefully collected. In the Convergence, death wasn't always permanent, but it was always complicated.
James Chen-Hartley came forward, his uniform finally settling on 25th-century military garb. "Perimeter's secure for the moment. We've got maybe six hours before they can attack again. Should I ready the evacuation?"
"No," older Lila said firmly. "We don't retreat. We can't. The Convergence is more than a sanctuary—it's a keystone. If it falls, the damage to the timeline structure could be catastrophic. Every reality it touches would be affected."
"What do we do then?" younger Lila queried.
Its older self grinned, and it was the grin of a person who was about to do something either genius or catastrophic. "We show them what happens when you back a group of temporal refugees into a corner and give them nothing else to lose. James, get word to the houses. Let them know that it is time for the Concord Protocol."
James paled. "Are you sure? Once we activate that, there's no going back. The energy requirements—"
"Will drain every power source we have, yes. But it's that or let them pick us off one by one." Older Lila turned to her younger self and Edmund. "You two are the center. Your bond, your personal resonance—it's stronger than any relationship we've seen. Stronger than mine was at your stage."
"Why?" Lila asked. "What are we?"
"I don't know," older Lila admitted. "But I intend to find out. For now, you need to rest. Eat something. The next battle won't be this one. The Committee's had years to learn about us. They know our tricks, our vulnerabilities. When they strike again, they'll come to kill us."
She strode away, already issuing orders, marshaling the defense of this indefensible kingdom against an implacable foe. All around them, the Convergence hummed with activity—repairs, preparations, and underlying it all, a strand of fear that even these old campaigners of time war could not quite hide.
"She's not telling us everything," Edmund said quietly.
"No," Lila agreed. "But then, would we in her position? How do you explain to someone they're the keystone of a war they barely understand?"
They strolled back to Hartley House, resting on each other as exhaustion hit. The harmonic disruptors had taken more out of them than they'd expected—using weapons that operated on intention and possibility was tiring in a way flesh-and-blood fighting never could be.
When they reached their room, Lila noticed something that made her pause. There was a photo on the bedside table that hadn't been there before. It was of her and Edmund, but older, together in the garden with three children—two girls and a boy, all with Lila's dark hair and Edmund's stubborn chin.
"A possibility," Edmund breathed. "One of many."
"Do you want that?" Lila asked, surprised at how much she wanted an answer. "Kids? A future? Here in this madness?"
He was quiet for a very long time. "I want whatever future we can have together," he said finally. "This one or another one. With three children or seven or none. I've been torn from my own time, shown wonders and horrors beyond anything I could have imagined. But the one constant, the one thing that makes sense any more, is us."
Lila's eyes burned with tears. "Edmund Hartley, are you proposing to me in the middle of a time war?"
"Should I wait for a time of peace?" he asked with a wry smile. "If you haven't noticed, those are in short supply here."
She had no time to respond before still another alarm began to sound—unlike the battle klaxons, this one was almost a dirge.
"Timeline collapse warning," ARIA's voice echoed through the house, somehow following or being recreated here from the station. "Attention, all occupants. We have confirmed cancellation of timeline Beta-7 through Epsilon-3. Estimated casualties: fourteen billion lives that now never were. Moment of silence protocols are in effect."
The house fell quiet. Lila could see through the window, people all over the Convergence stopping what they were doing, heads bowed. The weight of it hit her whole—entire timelines, entire realities, being erased. Billions of people who had lived, loved, dreamed, who were now just. weren't.
"This is what we're fighting," she breathed. "Not just for the Convergence, but for every possibility, every choice, every life that could be."
Edmund pulled her close, and she nestled her face against his chest, breathing in the scent of him—gunpowder and sea salt, ozone and possibility.
"We had best make sure we win, then," he said matter-of-factly.
Outside, the three moons continued their impossible orbit, and in the gap between realities, the Committee's fleet gathered its strength. The real war was beginning, and at its heart, two people who should never have met held each other close, their love the tenuous thread on which the fate of all possibilities hung.
In the dark of their bedroom, the image of their potential children fluttered, showing different faces, different futures, different choices yet to be made. But in all of them, Lila and Edmund were together, facing whatever came with the strength only the impossible made possible could provide.
The moment of silence elapsed. The Convergence stirred again, preparing for a battle that would echo across all the timelines there ever were or ever would be.
And in the quantum foam between the realities, something else stirred—something the Committee did not know about, something older than their rigid order, something that had waited for precisely this confluence of events to finally make its move.