Prologue

"One! Two! Three! Four! Keep your arm steady!"

THWACK! THWACK! CLACK!

Her heart pounded against her ribcage, her mouth open slightly as she tried to draw in as much air as she could. That was, however, proving to be a rather difficult feat to accomplish, especially given the fact that she was wearing a helmet that restricted the amount of sound that flowed to her ears, as well as the amount of air that she could breathe.

Through the bars of the cage-like metal piece that covered her face and protected it from any blows that may accidentally come that way, she watched her opponent circling, his red padded stick at the ready. She shifted her footing, preparing her own blue padded stick, holding it slightly in front of her chest.

She focused on her heartbeat, hearing the sound like a metronome in her mind.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

She shifted footing just as her opponent raced at her, his stick poised to strike at her head – again. She had noted, for quite some time, that he always aimed for her head. That was logical; after all, hitting an opponent on the head always meant higher points. But while always aiming for it meant higher points, it also meant predictability.

And that was her opponent’s mistake.

She quickly took a step backward, the end of her opponent’s stick whizzing a millimeter past her helmet. She dipped down low, and her arm snapped forward, hitting him powerfully on the side of his knee.

He uttered a yelp of pain, and she drew back, worrying all of a sudden if she had hit just a little too hard. She snapped back into a standing position, even before the referee had called for a halt to the match.

The voice of their trainer and referee, Miguel Inosanto, boomed out then: "Hinto!" With that word, which she knew to mean: “stop” in Filipino, the match officially came to an end.

"Are you okay?" she asked softly as she approached her opponent, who was currently sitting on the floor, rubbing the side of his knee.

She heard him chuckle. "I’ll be fine," he told her, a hint of the South floating around in his voice. He rolled up the hem of his jogging pants all the way up to his knee, and she had to wince when she saw the purplish bruise that was already blooming there.

Her eyes widened in horror at the sight. She didn’t think she had hit that hard! "Oh God, I’m really, really, sorry about that..."

Charlie Sanders laughed. "Aw c’mon Celeste, no need to worry your pretty head over li'l ol’ me. I’m a tough guy; I’ll be just fine."

Celeste de la Luna looked up, and noted the grimace even as he spoke. She rolled her eyes at him. "You know Charlie, had you not been injured I would have whacked you upside on the head for that."

"Why don’t you? With this helmet on it shouldn’t hurt that much."

She thwacked him on the head with her padded stick in response. She stood up, and proceeded to undo the Velcro straps that held the helmet against her head. "I’ll go and get some ice for you."

Cool air rushed across the back of her neck and over her face as she slowly pulled the helmet off her head, her ponytail of hair tumbling out from the constraints of the helmet so that the end of it brushed against the nape of her neck. She sighed, placing the helmet down on the nearby table as she walked by, swiping a hand first against the back of her neck, and then over her forehead.

She entered the small side-room at the other end of the training hall, which was officially the clinic though the mini-fridge stored not only ice for the ice packs but also the plastic bottles of water that the trainees brought with them.

Tara McBride, the medic-in-attendance, glanced up at Celeste from the pages of the Michael Crichton novel she was reading. The older woman smiled slightly then. "Ice pack or water?"

"Both," she muttered as she threw the door of the mini-fridge open, reaching for a prepared ice pack and the bottle of water that had her name scrawled across the side. She unscrewed the cap, and sipped the cold water slowly, first because it was too cold and the last thing she needed at the moment was brain freeze, and second because she knew that the stomach did not absorb ice-cold water as readily as cool water, so if she drank too fast she would only start puking it all out.

Tara raised an eyebrow inquiringly, discreetly sliding a bookmark between the pages of her reading material. "Really? Who is it this time?"

"Charlie, and I did the damage," Celeste replied between sips of the ice-cold water.

"Uh-huh. And what did you do?"

"Hit him on the side of the knee really hard. Beautiful bruise bloomed right there like a pansy immediately after I hit him."

"Ah. Pansy. Right. That would explain Kentucky’s pretty little pansy-assed yelp then, eh?"

Celeste gave Tara an expression that the both of them knew was nothing more than a joke. "Tara, please, my precious virgin ears."

Tara always laughed at that, and she did. When she had calmed down, picked up her book again, and opened it to the page that she had just left. "Go and get out there, you hypocrite. The sooner you put ice on Kentucky’s knee, the better."

Celeste rolled her eyes as she screwed the cap back on her bottle of water, before she placed it back in the fridge, and headed back out into the training hall.

When she got there, it seemed as if Coach had called a five-minute break, and she noticed that while there were a few who sat around Charlie in sympathy, most of the others were already on their way to the side-room to get their bottles of water. They were used to people getting injured – it was a matter of course around here, especially when it came to sparring. Those who couldn’t take it were usually the ones who quit early in the training season.

Better that way, Celeste thought as she made her way across the training room towards Charlie. They didn’t need people with weak wills and weak stomachs participating in the annual tournament and mucking things up for them.

Charlie looked up as she approached, and he gave her his usual slick grin. "Come to give me the healin’ touch, sweetheart?"

"Healing touch my ass," Celeste threw back as she handed him the ice pack, which he promptly placed on a rapidly swelling knee.

Charlie just grinned back. "Ya want me to touch your ass? I’d be right happy to do it, sweetheart."

"Don’t force me to bruise you in the face, Charlie, because you know I can do it."

Charlie raised his free hand in defeat. "Alright, alright, you’ve made your point."

Celeste just rolled her eyes, and plunked down on the floor beside him. "How’s it?"

The man shrugged, his usual bravado showing through again. While Celeste had to admit that his cockiness could sometimes be irritating, it had also served Charlie in good stead in sparring matches. "It’ll be okay after a while. The ice’ll keep the swellin’ down good."

"Good. Wouldn’t want a debilitating injury to be on my head."

"Celeste!"

She laughed, and nudged him gently in the side with her elbow. "Just kidding Charlie." She leaned back, and closed her eyes as she pressed the back of her head against the wall she was leaning against. It had been a long and tiring day for her. After classes she went straight to a rather cramped but affordable apartment, where she lived with her father, who was a quantum physics researcher and teacher at Berkeley. She studied there too, taking up mechanical engineering.

For a brief moment her thoughts drifted to her mother, who had died of cancer two years ago, when Celeste was sixteen. She thought of the apartment she shared with her father, and knew her mother wouldn't have much approved of it, but that was neither here nor there. She was glad that she was living with her father, because staying by her father’s side meant that she would have a glimpse at history in the making.

Coach Inosanto stood up, and clapped his hands. "All right boys, get on your feet. The girls can sit down for a little while longer, but get ready, because you’re up next."

Celeste watched as Charlie pulled himself up, and prepared to go through the various anyo, or kata, while Coach Inosanto watched and timed them. Celeste knew that in a few moments, the coach would be calling the girls up to the plate, and she knew that she would have the chance to show off the form she had been working on improving.

In the meantime, her thoughts drifted back to the reason her father was in Berkeley to begin with. Arturo de la Luna and a small team of trusted students and colleagues were working on a very important project: the creation of a machine that would allow the users to teleport objects and people to different planes – what was, in the more popular consciousness, called "time travel." She knew, of course, that the use of "time travel" really wasn’t what it was, but more of a jumping the distance between two points in the space-time continuum. The math had proven the idea was possible – at least in theory. The real problem was the matter of transporting, since the wormholes made in space-time were usually very, very tiny, too small to fit a needle through, much less an entire human being.

And that was why her father was at Berkeley: to put together a machine that would let the impossible happen. Working on the idea of what had been jokingly termed "a quantum fax machine," they were trying to make the impossible into the possible, taking theory and transposing it into the real world – something that could now be accomplished thanks to the development of quantum computers. Her father had designed it, and now Berkeley was going to help him realize it.

At that moment, someone came barreling into the room, and Celeste blinked, recognizing it as Tony MacBallard, one of her father’s research assistants. "Excuse me," he wheezed, obviously not used to running, "is Celeste here?"

"Right here," Celeste said as she stood up, walking over to talk to him. She grinned. "What’s up, Tony?"

Tony’s face was serious and worried, and Celeste figured that he still wasn’t used to her father’s tendency to forget things or simply wander off from time to time. "It’s about your dad."

"What’d he do this time? Did he forget to do something or did he just wander off somewhere? Dad’s not all that old, but sometimes he can act a little senile, I guess. Doesn’t seem to affect his ability to be a quantum physicist though..."

Tony shook his head. "That’s not it." He leaned closer, and held her shoulders. "Celeste, your father was in an accident. Something exploded in his lab, and when we went to check, there was no trace of him at all." His grip tightened. "He’s dead, Celeste."

For a moment, Celeste felt as if the world had gone silent, but then it was quickly followed by a slow, turning sensation that made her nauseous. She tried her best not to stagger, but gravity seemed determined to claim her, so she sank onto her knees on the floor, her heart pounding in her chest and her head.

Her father: dead? No, that was impossible. How could that be? It wasn’t as if he was working on something dangerous…right?

Tony’s hands on her elbows, pulling her back to her feet, roused her to reality, and she looked at him. "Are you sure he’s dead?"

Tony nodded. "We checked his lab, Celeste. There was nothing there." His gaze turned sympathetic. "I’m sorry."

Celeste inhaled, trying to stop the stone in her stomach from sinking. It couldn’t be. She would know, in her bones, if her father had died, like the time she had known, just known, that her mother had died.

No. Her father was not dead. He could not be dead.

She exhaled, and looked up at Tony. "Can I at least go see the lab?"

Tony frowned. "Are you sure you can handle it?"

"Yeah, I think I can."

"...Okay. I’ll take you there."

+---+---+

He woke to the sound of the wind rustling through trees, and to the soft chirping of birds. The sun was warm on his face and bright on his eyes. He sat up slowly, and thought that perhaps he had just fallen asleep outside somehow. It happened from time to time, especially when the weather was so balmy like-

His thoughts ground to a halt as he realized something: he shouldn’t even be outside to begin with. Moreover, it was supposed to be evening, not morning.

Or had he done what he sometimes did: sit down on the grass and then promptly fall asleep without even getting home?

When he sat up and took a good look around, however, he realized that he might have been wrong. The place he was in looked nothing like anyplace he had seen...but how could he be so sure about that?

"Well," he said to himself as he stood up, and dusted off his clothes. "There’s no point in just sitting here." He looked first to his left, and then to his right, and realized that he was standing next to a dirt path that seemed to climb upwards. He followed the path with his eyes, and caught sight of a house at the top of the hill.

He smiled. It was as good a place as any to start. With that thought in mind, he walked along the path, climbing upwards towards the house. When he got there, he looked for a doorbell, but, finding none, rapped on the door instead.

It didn’t take very long for someone to answer it. When the door opened, it revealed a lovely young woman with blonde hair and green eyes.

He smiled at her, hoping that in doing so she would take pity on him. "Ah, good morning to you, my dear. Would you happen to know which way will take me back to Berkeley? I seem to have lost my way..."