Lyon's Legacy: Catalyst Chronicles, Book One (12 page)

Bonus Material:
Twinned Universes
Sample

Paul Harrison always wanted to play Hamlet, but he never expected he’d live the role first.
In the aftermath of a family tragedy on 21st century Earth, Paul discovers he’s the clone of Sean Lyon, his great-great-grandfather and a famous TwenCen musician. Suspecting his mother’s death was no accident, Paul comes up with a plan to trick the answers out of the great-uncle who had him cloned. But in order to make his plan work, Paul needs help from Sean himself—and Sean’s time is running out in the TwenCen universe next door. Although Paul’s family lives on the spaceship that travels between the universes, he’s never been allowed on TwenCen Earth. Now, with the help of his friends, his disguise-creating holoprojectors, and a quantum quirk, Paul must make his way to Sean while evading other time travelers who fear he’ll change the history of the TwenCen universe. If Paul is to achieve justice, he must not only risk his own life, but the wormhole connecting the universes. “To be or not to be” was a simple question in comparison....

Chapter One

P
aul was heading upstairs to his parents’ hotel suite so he could prepare for his matinee performance when a nondescript person accosted him in front of the vators. The stranger held up his handheld as if he were comparing Paul to a holo—or taking one. “Kid, are you Paul Harrison?”

Paul halted. “Yeah, why?” Was he being scouted by a talent agency or a director? Hope soared,
then was dashed as he took in the stranger’s delivery uniform and the long, rectangular package under his arm. Unless the stranger was undercover, Paul wasn’t about to be discovered.

“
Here.” The delivery person thrust the package at him so fast Paul had to accept it in self-defense. “You’re supposed to give it directly to Dr. Joanna Lyon Harrison.”

“For Mom?” The white box bore no address labels. “Who’s this from?”

The guy shrugged. “I was just told to give this to Paul Harrison and tell him to give it directly to Dr. Joanna Harrison. I’m done here.”

“Wait! What’s inside?”

The stranger turned away before Paul had a chance to study his face. He glanced at the mirrored walls, trying to catch a last glimpse, but the delivery person darted between hotel guests and disappeared.

Paul stared at the box in his hands. Why make him give it to his mother when it would be easier to have the hotel
staff bring it up to their suite? And what kind of courier service used unlabeled boxes and didn’t make the recipient leave a thumbscan on the receipt? Earth customs couldn’t have grown that lax since his last visit here, could they?

I’d better check what’s inside before giving it to Mom. It could be dangerous.

The box was loosely secured, as if the sender wanted him to open it—or someone had already tampered with it. Maybe it would be better to leave it alone.

“Hold the
vator, Paul. What do you have there?”

He looked up as his mom approached. Her mouth was set in a frown, but dealing with Paul’s great-uncle would upset anyone sane enough not to be obsessed with TwenCen ancestor musicians. “Someone gave this to me for you.” He stared down at it again. “But it wasn’t a normal delivery service.”

She raised her eyebrows as she examined the box. Then she took her research-grade handheld out of her purse and waved it over the package. “No explosives, no microbial contamination. I guess we can look at it. Let’s take it to the suite first.”

Once inside their top-floor suite, Mom brought the box into the head—or rather, the bathroom, as it was called on Earth.  Paul watched from the hall as she turned the fan on, grabbed a towel, and used that to lift the lid off the box. The exhaust pulled a sickly-sweet scent into the air.

“I’ve never seen anything like this.” Mom showed him a dozen blue-purple roses. “Is this a joke? There’s a note.” She bent her head to read it; long black hair, mixed with a few strands of gray, hung over her face. “Can you believe it? Whoever sent this wants me to gene-tweak the roses so they’re completely blue.”

“Are you going to?”

She snorted. “Hell, no. Not when they present their projects like this.” She took a bottle of booze from the minibar and drenched the flowers in so much alcohol the box warped. “Call room service and have someone take this away. Have them bring extra trash bags.”

As Paul made the request, Mom sneezed. A moment later, he did too.

* * *

A week later, during the matinee performance of
Hamlet
, Paul shivered as he sat with King Claudius’s court during the play scene. He wasn’t getting sick again, was he? He’d recovered much faster than Mom and Cass had. Even RhinRid hadn’t been very helpful with this cold. Mom was still too sick to come to the theater, even though the small speaking part Paul had this season was his most important role with this professional troupe so far. Although the director, Ramirez, generally forbade recording performances, she’d made an exception today so Paul would be able to show his family his key scene later. He sat up straighter. Still two more acts before he got to speak. If his cold was making a comeback, he’d better take some medicine as soon as he left the stage, or else he’d cough or sneeze over other actors’ lines.

Once he exited with the rest of the king’s court, Paul headed to the greenroom down the hall. Crew members dashing around and setting up for the next scene made the backstage area an obstacle course. As he reached the hallway, a costume programmer yanked him off to the side.

“You’re Paul Harrison, right?” she asked. “Your sister’s at the stage door. She says there’s a family emergency.”

He removed his face mesh. The
holoprojector’s lining was sweaty, but the other side still displayed a stage-perfect version of his own face. “Just her? What’s wrong?”

“She was too upset to say.”

Frowning, Paul sprinted down the narrow corridor between the dressing rooms to the back of the theater. Cass peered through the security window. Mascara was streaked across her face, and auburn hair tumbled around her head. After he let her in, she clung to him so tightly her jacket became entangled in his costume holoprojectors.

“What’s wrong, Sis?” He strained his ears to follow the onstage dialogue. “Where’s Dad?”

She looked up at him, her blue eyes glistening. “Mom’s in the hospital.”

It took a few seconds for her words to sink in. Mom often joked that her only risk factor for a heart attack was two teenage kids. Even though she’d been feverish and tired and had trouble keeping her food down, that hadn’t stopped her from teleconferencing with colleagues or ordering personal supplies for their next year in space on the
Sagan
. How could she be in the hospital? “What happened?”

Cass released him. “She was talking to the aunts when she said she had trouble catching her breath. Then she crumpled to the floor and passed out. When Dad couldn’t rouse her, he called an ambulance. He called the theater too, but he couldn’t get through to a live person. The ushers wouldn’t let me in or even take a message to you during the performance, so I came back here and pounded on the door.”

“How is Mom now? Can you check?”

Cass pulled her handheld out of her purse and touched the screen a couple of times. Screams from the stage announced Polonius’s death. Paul still had two scenes before his next appearance. He shifted from foot to foot. The show had to go on, but if Mom was sick
enough for Cass to come after him in the middle of a performance, he wasn’t sure what he should do.

Dad’s holo appeared next to an electronic map on a white wall. “Cass, did you find Paul?”

“I’m here, Dad.” Paul twisted to get into the handheld’s viewing range. “How’s Mom?”

“Still in ICU, still unconscious.” Dad opened his mouth as if he were going to continue, then shut it again.

“What’s wrong with her?”

Dad tugged at his hair. “That’s the thing; they’re not sure. As soon as the doctors found out we’re staff on the
Sagan
, they assumed she picked up a contagious new virus on the other side of the wormhole, on TwenCen Earth. I tried to explain to them that Joanna hadn’t been down to the planet in years, and that the genetic samples we get in the lab are the same species our Earth had in the twentieth century. Everything is the same, so we can protect ourselves against infection. But they didn’t listen.”

Something about what Dad said sounded odd to Paul, but before he could figure out what it was, Cass asked, “So, you think she got sick from something here?”

“That’s the only thing that makes sense. I don’t know if the colds you and Cass had are related to her illness, but you did all get sick at the same time.”

“It was right after Mom got those weird roses,” Paul said.

Dad raised his eyebrows. “What weird roses?”

Had he forgotten, or had Mom never mentioned it? Paul, with unease eating at his stomach, told him about the strange deliveryman and the unlabeled flower box.
Mom had examined it before opening it, but what if her handheld was wrong? What if they’d unleashed a plague? Then again, he and Cass only had colds, and they were almost over them. But he supposed they could still relapse…

“We’d better have you two looked at, just in case. Get here as quick as you can.”

He disconnected before Paul could remind him
Hamlet
wasn’t over yet. As Osric, Paul was the one who invited Hamlet to his final duel. Osric didn’t have any lines until the end, so maybe Ramirez, the director, could put someone else in the role without ruining the play. Between Mom being ill and missing another performance, this day was as shitty as the
Sagan’s
refuse tank.

Cass tugged at him. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Not yet. I have to talk to the director.”

“But what about Mom?”

Paul swallowed his frustration. It wasn’t Cass’s fault he couldn’t be two places at once. He put his hands on his sister’s shoulders and smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. “Mom will be OK,” he told her. “They have more doctors and nurses down here than they do on the
Sagan
. Once they figure out what’s wrong, they’ll treat her faster than I can switch costumes. I’ll bet you ten credits she’ll be up and demanding to be released by the time we get there.”

Cass’s mouth relaxed a fraction, but not any further. What kind of actor was he if he couldn’t convince his own sister everything would be all right?

“Well, the sooner we leave, the better,” she said.

Actors called for Hamlet. Paul’s entrance was coming up. “After the next scene.” He scooped up his
holoprojectors. “Come back here and don’t get in anyone’s way.”

He rushed to the wings, but Ramirez wasn’t in sight. The rest of the king’s attendants were already in place, and they beckoned him over. It would be faster to make his appearance and get offstage than to explain the situation.

“Osric, your costume!” someone whispered. The other actors grabbed his holoprojectors and helped him put them back on. As soon as they were in place, the controller in his neckband recreated the holo of a teal-and-silver doublet with fitted sleeves over his plain T-shirt. Frothy lace cuffs matched his collar. The lower half of his costume—gray breeches and black boots— was still intact, so it didn’t need to be fixed. The actor playing the king gave him a stiff nod and swept onstage, with Paul and the other attendants a few steps behind him.

It was easy for Paul to keep a grave expression on his face as the king spoke with Rosencrantz and Hamlet. The deaths in the play seemed more real than ever, even if it was hard to put himself into his character’s frame of mind. As soon as King Claudius directed his attendants to search for Polonius’s body, Paul crossed the stage and exited. Ramirez strode up to him with Cass in tow. He hoped he wasn’t going to get into trouble for letting his sister come backstage.

“Harrison, I hear your mother’s been hospitalized,” Ramirez said.

He swallowed hard to maintain a professional demeanor. “Yeah. I can’t stay.”

Ramirez’s expression softened, and she patted his shoulder. “I’m sure your mom will be fine. I’ll have Al-Jaber take your part. Break a leg, Harrison.”

She headed toward the green room. Paul sighed,
then removed his face mesh.
If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.
It seemed bad luck to even think about the Scottish play in a theater during a performance, especially with Mom in the hospital. “Where did they take her, Cass?”

“The hospital on Winfrey.”

“Be right back.”

Paul sprinted to the dressing rooms and grabbed his jacket, his handheld, and the case for his holoprojectors from his locker. A notice about his missed messages blinked at him, but he ignored it and requested an
autocab. He tucked each holoprojector safely in its compartment, even though he wanted to rush. They were expensive and hard to get a license for, and he didn’t want to damage them. He made up the time by racing around to the front of the theater with Cass. Light fog made it difficult to see the path, and when a car pulled up, Paul waited for his handheld to confirm that this was his autocab before stepping forward.