Tailored Realities, page 50
He had his gun aimed straight at her.
Lisa felt cold in that instant. Sweating. Staring him down. Oh … hell.
“Are we … we sure,” he said, stuttering, “that we want to stop this?”
“The apocalypse? Of course we do!”
“But listen. Just listen.” He glanced at Nazeem and her guards, in a cuffed row back in the test room. The smoke was clearing, though some still wafted in around Yung, standing in the doorway of the smaller control room. “I hear … whispers. Very distant whispers. They remind me that I don’t mean anything in this world. Neither of us do. Officer … Lisa. We don’t mean anything.”
“Yes, we do,” she said, standing up carefully. She moved her hands away from her gun. “We do, Yung. Our lives matter. Our hopes matter.”
“That world we could live in,” he said. “Doesn’t it at least interest you? Completely new physics to discover? People to protect? A war to fight, against a terrible enemy? We could make sure you don’t die, so you could join us. Those kinds of events make heroes. The great scientists of the past are great in part because they had something to discover. While we … we sit in classrooms … and merely teach about them.”
“Yung,” Lisa said. “Albert. Meet my eyes.”
He did so.
“This is the moment,” she said, “when you get to mean something. When you choose whether to shoot me, or save the world. Right now. The voice told Nazeem to do what she did, and the you in Dane’s timeline … You don’t have to listen to it though. Be the better man of the two.”
He held her eyes.
Then dropped the gun.
“The code,” he whispered, “is two-seven-four-seven-three.”
She turned and started inputting it. Then froze. “You said that it’s best if we do it at the same time as Dane.”
“Best if you finish at the same moment. To help align the timelines. But … Lisa. I think … I think Future Yung might have killed him. In a timeline where I’m not the better of the two…”
She placed her hands on the workstation table, sweating, heart thundering. Dane …
Dane couldn’t be dead.
She clasped her hand to her bracelet and spun it. Hoping. Praying. Knowing.
Andrew Dane was not dead.
Not while there was a beat left to protect.
Twenty-Eight
5 Minutes to Lightbreak
You should get moving.” Nazeem’s voice. “You won’t want to be here when the explosion happens.”
“I need to be close enough.” Yung’s voice. “To be dosed with the radiation. To become all that I can be.”
“I need to be closer.” Nazeem. “I remember … the power. The invincibility. Our clashes will be legendary, Yung.”
“Heroes,” he said.
“And monsters,” she said.
And some who are both.
Dane knew … floating in darkness … why his wounds hadn’t killed him. He knew why he’d been able to tell a revenant was in a dark building those times when nobody else had spotted them. He knew why he could fall thirty feet and not die.
He supposed he’d known it all along. Why the pain had gone away completely when he’d witnessed Lightbreak—and been dosed by its radiation. Why he’d always felt invigorated, stronger, when he was near a Dead Zone.
The more energy you absorbed, the longer it took to transform you. Those indoors went first. Those outdoors next. Then the guards, shielded in their blast room. Then …
The ones who had taken the most of it. Him and Yung. Even now, Dane could feel—eyes closed—the heat of the other people in the room. Subtle, but there.
He opened his eyes to find his vision ringed by glowing light. He slipped his sidearm free with a calm, quiet motion. The strong ones … it had always taken a few shots, even to the head. The bullet lodged in his forehead hadn’t quite been enough.
And so, with no heartbeat to guide him, Officer Andrew Dane rose again, a revenant. He shot Yung three times straight in the head before turning and gunning down the two security guards who had entered with Nazeem.
The woman herself screamed, ducking back into the doorway and firing his assault rifle, the one Yung had taken from him. Dane hadn’t noticed her appropriating it. He found cover beside some equipment near the teleporter and pressed himself against the wall, feeling the heat of the fallen. Beside him, Yung’s corpse lay with open eyes, a bloody mess.
“I told you, Yung,” Dane whispered. “Always double-check that they’re dead.” He felt so … strangely unnerved without that heartbeat to guide him.
“Do you realize what you’re doing?” Nazeem shouted from where she crouched in the doorway, just out of sight. “We worked so hard for that world! Don’t ruin it!”
He knew his time was running out. But the phone … the phone was dead. Cracked and broken on the floor. He …
His bracelet quivered. Then moved.
Lisa, you genius, he thought as she carefully spun it a specific number of times. A code. Two. Seven. Four. Six. Three. Then a reset, a pause, and a repeat. Ah, he’d counted that six wrong. It was a seven as well.
“You could be a hero,” Nazeem said. “To everyone in this city.”
“There’s only one person I’ve ever wanted to be a hero for,” he said softly. “And she already knows.”
He stepped out from behind the equipment.
Bullets tore through Dane’s body as he calmly sighted, and—to an imagined heartbeat—fired three shots straight into Nazeem’s head. She collapsed.
He slumped against the computer desk. Damn. Looked like his body could indeed only take so much punishment. That would have been useful to know.
With bloodied fingers, he typed. One number at a time.
2.
Lisa started to fade in beside him.
7.
He couldn’t hear her gasp as she saw him, but he could imagine it.
4.
She became more solid. And mouthed, “I knew. Because you are incredible.”
7.
He smiled and raised his bloodied finger, limp as he struggled to hold himself in place, to the 3.
She mimicked his motion. The countdown was under a minute. But … with his free hand, he gave her a deliberate salute.
It was good that she was crying. He’d have hated to be the only one.
He hit the key right as she did. And in so doing, Officer Andrew Dane gave up a world that needed him, to preserve a better one that did not.
The room went white one last time.
Epilogue
Lisa sat in the mayor’s office as he reread her report. He was a brute of a man, former firefighter, with a delicate side he used to enhance his image. He did have three daughters, but the photo of him wearing pink and celebrating with his youngest at her ballet class had been carefully planned.
That was true political shrewdness. Taking who you really were, then presenting a … version of that. With an eye toward plausibility.
“I find this quite difficult to swallow, Sterling,” he said.
The report contained only the half of it. The parts she’d decided that someone in his position might accept.
“I have the press hounding me,” the mayor continued, “calling for answers. I can’t give them this.”
“We have all the testimonies of the officers I involved, the scientist, and the guards. You’ve read it. You know they can’t all be lying.”
“You were still reckless,” he said. “Moved without authorization, warrants, or backup. I have a dead officer and two dead civilian security guards, along with a ton of property damage, cars run off the road, buildings destroyed. Not to mention Nazeem herself—she’ll bring lawsuits…”
Lisa nodded. That was all true. The report indicated the explosion they’d prevented, mentioning nothing about an apocalypse. Instead, she’d used some technobabble from Yung about the devices causing memory loss and erratic behavior. That explained why her people, who were tracked by body cams and GPS to her break-in at the lab, were completely unable to remember being there. It explained why she hadn’t been able to get help.
A version of the truth. Taken and presented with an eye toward plausibility.
She was nervous. She’d grown strangely used to knowing the future these last few days; now she didn’t know what would happen. He might fire her. Her career might be over. But … did that matter? She’d always said she was doing something better, and the good of the city came before anything else. Sitting in that chair, she found she was confident—for the first time in years—that she actually meant that.
She and Dane had saved the city.
Granted, she still wanted her career. If she couldn’t have it … she’d made her decision. And heaven help her if the mayor, or anyone else, discovered that she and Yung had gone to each facility during that night after Moment Zero to completely destroy the wormholes. Yung was the one who had initially stabilized and grown them with power inputs—and as he’d once told her, he knew how to shrink them too. They’d collapsed all three, then destroyed what notes, equipment, and computer files they could.
“We’ll pin the wrecks and deaths on Dane,” the mayor finally said. “You’ll be presented as the level head who got the job done and kept him from going too far. They’ll buy it, after we unlock his records.”
“No,” Lisa found herself saying.
The mayor looked up, surprised. “No” wasn’t a word he liked to hear.
“Detective Andrew Dane,” Lisa said, her voice firm, “was a hero. He gave his life for this city. He will be known for that, or you can have my badge. It’s nonnegotiable.”
The mayor glared at her long and hard. She glared back. She’d bullied the timeline itself. She could handle him.
“You know,” he eventually said, “I was worried you would say or do anything to please me and get that promotion. Good to know there are lines you won’t cross. Infuriating too, mind you, though I’ve learned it’s what I need.”
He stood.
She did likewise.
“It will have to be a commendation for Dane, then,” he said. “This is the harder road. If it goes poorly with the press this next month, I might be forced to roll back your promotion. Hell, might have to give you up for prosecution, if we can’t spin this right.”
“I’ll take that risk,” she said. “And I can handle the press. After all if I can’t, would I be worth giving the job to anyway?”
He smiled, then held out his hand. She took it.
“I think,” he said, “that I’m going to enjoy working with you, Chief Sterling.”
“Likewise, Mister Mayor.”
“Now,” he said, with a wave, “go fix this mess.”
“It is what I do,” Lisa replied. “Whenever it’s appropriate.”
POSTSCRIPT
Here we hit the cornerstone of this book, the big new story I wanted to do so there was a brand-new centerpiece to this collection, other than simply having all these stories in one location.
This is an idea story. The pitch of “cops try to stop the apocalypse from either side of it in the time stream” was too engaging not to try to write. I loved the structure of one person going forward in time a few days, and the other going backward a few days, then both of them moving through the story closer and closer to the central moment when it all went wrong.
The real key to this story came when I discovered the twist—that of the reader (and the characters) not knowing when Moment Zero actually was.
This is a story where I have in my notes a ton of the mechanics for what is happening rules-wise, but I decided not to put most of it in. (Though the final draft does have a lot more of this sort of thing, at the request of my editorial team.) The idea was that I didn’t want the focus to be on the mechanics, but on the flow through time of the characters and their interactions.
The other distinctive thing about this story was writing a relationship that is on its way out rather than on its way in, so to speak. A relationship that is over, and the characters need to come to terms with that. My agents in Hollywood wish that they’d just gotten back together at the end, but I think that would undermine the story too much. We have tons of stories about people hooking back up after a failed relationship, but not many (action stories, at least) about the very natural last days of a relationship that didn’t quite get there. This proved too integral to the narrative for me to pull out during revisions, so I’ve gone with it, and I hope it works.
Anyway, that’s Tailored Realities! Twenty-five years (whew) of Brandon Sanderson fiction packed into one volume. I recognize that the Cosmere stories tend to be more popular, but these kinds of pieces are often where I explore new ways of telling stories that eventually end up informing how I write in the Cosmere. Outside the Cosmere, I often have a little more freedom than I do inside it—and I tend to do things more outside my wheelhouse, so the stories can be a bit all over the place. (I’m looking at you, “Probability Approaching Zero.”)
I hope you enjoyed this book in part as a historical look at my development as a writer over the years, but also as … well, a collection of really fun tales.
Hopefully I’ll have another one of these for you in … oh, another quarter of a century.
—Brandon Sanderson
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Although the stories contained in this tome are mine, getting this book into your hands is an incredible group effort. The following paragraphs contain the names of the many people I have to thank for bringing these tales to readers.
At Tor: Stephanie Stein, the in-house editor for the book, and an excellent team of editors, designers, publicists, marketers and more, including Heather Saunders, Julianna Kim, Peter Lutjen, Rafal Gibek, Emily Mlynek, Eileen Lawrence, Steven Bucsok, Aelxis Saarela, Sarah Reidy, Steve Wagner, Terry McGarry, Christina MacDonald, Hayley Jozwiak, Devi Pillai, Lucille Rettino, Claire Eddy, and Will Hinton.
At JABberwocky Literary Agency: Joshua Bilmes, Susan Velasquez, Christina Zobel, Valentina Sainato, and Brady McReynolds. At Zeno Literary Agency: John Berlyne.
At Dragonsteel: COO, Queen, and Co-President Emily Sanderson
Creative Development: Vice President Isaa< Stewart, Art Director Shawn Boyles, Art Director Ben McSweeney, Rachael Lynn Buchanan, Jennifer Neal, Hayley Lazo, Priscilla Spencer, and Anna Earley.
Editorial: The Inductive Peter Ahlstrom as VP, Editorial Director Kristy S. Gilbert, Continuity Director Karen Ahlstrom, Jennie Stevens, Betsey Ahlstrom, Emily Shaw-Higham, and Jack Rose.
Publicity & Marketing: VP Adam Horne (a.k.a. the Godzilla Expert), Octavia Escamilla, Tayan Hatch, Taylor Hatch, and Donald Mustard III.
Operations & HR: Operations & HR: VP Matt “the HRinator” Hatch, Operations Director Jane Horne, Lex Willhite, Jerrod Walker, Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson, Ethan Skarstedt, Becky Wilson, Christian Fairbanks, and Makena Saluone.
Merchandise & Events: Kara Stewart (VP of Merchandising, Events, and Writing Big Checks), Merchandise Director Christi Jacobsen, Events & Support Director Kellyn Neumann, Finance Director Emma Tan-Stoker, Richard Rubert, Dallin Holden, Matt Hampton, Ally Reep, Brett Moore, Joy Allen, Katy Ives, Daniel Phipps, Braydonn Moore, Mem Grange, Michael Bateman, Alex Lyon, Jacob Chrisman, Camilla Waite, Quinton Martin, Hollie Rubert, Gwen Hickman, Amanda Butterfield, Logan Reep, Pablo Mooney, Rachel Jacobsen, Zoe Hatch, Owen Knowlton, Laura Loveridge, Jake Dellamas, and Mary Nolivos.
Narrative: VP Dan Wells, still the only member of the Narrative Department, because with his One Direction fan fictions being so good, why would we need another?
Arists: Bryan Mark Taylor with the cover art and Jessi Ochse and Ben McSweeney with the interior illustrations.
Law enforcement experts consulting on “Moment Zero”: Troy S. Thurston, Zachary Zavala, Moises Mascorro, and Tiffany Kalinowski.
Beta readers: Kendra Alexander, Jessica Ashcraft, Rahkeem Ball, Joe Deardeuff, Ted Herman, Jana King, Lyndsey Luther, Suzanne Musin, Kalyani Poluri, Billy Todd, Paige Vest, Glen Vogelaar, and Rob West.
Gamma readers included many of the beta readers as well as Amir Kasra Arman, Siena “Lotus” Buchanan, Tim Challener, Taylor Cole, Violette Colla, Dariyan Edsinger, David Fallon, Aaron Ford, Craig Hanks, Joshua Harkey, Brian T. Hill, Alexis “Lex” Horizon, Sarah Kane, Jayden King, Bob Kluttz, Ashley Kowalczyk, Ari Kufer, Valencia Kumley, Erika Kuta Marler, Eliyahu Berelowitz Levin, Mark Lindberg, Brian Magnant, Karen Marks, Chris McGrath, TJ McGrath, Seth “Forger” Mosey, Aerin Pham, Bao Pham, Jennifer Pugh, Rachel Rada, Becca Reppert, Britton Roney, Nisarg “Strifelover” Shah, Amit Shteinheart, Gary Singer, Lauren “Biz’s Mom” Strach, Philip Vorwaller, Spencer White, Deana Covel Whitney, Dale Wiens, Rosemary Williams, Kendra Wilson, Kyle “Dorksider” Wilson, and Lingting “Botanica” Xu.
—Brandon Sanderson
Fiction by Brandon Sanderson®
THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE®
The Way of Kings
Words of Radiance
Oathbringer
Rhythm of War
Wind and Truth
NOVELLAS
Edgedancer
Dawnshard
THE MISTBORN® SAGA
THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY
Mistborn: The Final Empire
The Well of Ascension
The Hero of Ages
THE WAX & WAYNE SERIES
The Alloy of Law
Shadows of Self
The Bands of Mourning
The Lost Metal
THE RECKONERS®
Steelheart
Mitosis: A Reckoners Story
Firefight
Calamity
THE CYTOVERSE
SKYWARD
Skyward
Starsight
Cytonic
Defiant
SKYWARD FLIGHT
(with Janci Patterson)
Sunreach
ReDawn
Evershore
NOVELLA
Defending Elysium
ALCATRAZ VS. THE EVIL LIBRARIANS
