Raleigh couldn’t recall getting home, though she distinctly remembered having hot chocolate at a restaurant with Janni and First…the night before.

But now it was morning, and she was sitting at the dining room table, staring at the Jenga game that was stacked in front of her. She had no idea how she had gotten from there to here, nor what she’d done in the hours between.

Puzzling over the blocks was less distressing than fretting about the gap in her memory and what could’ve caused it, so she focused on evaluating what she’d do if she tried to play the game, though she wasn’t entirely sure of the rules. She assumed players had to remove blocks from the stack…

Janni, one of the two women Raleigh shared the apartment with, leaned through the doorway that connected the dining room to the kitchen. Her brow had been furrowed since their other roommate (called ‘Kitten’; actual designation: ‘Third’), had gotten high while Raleigh, Janni, and First—Third’s brother—were at the restaurant the night before. Janni and Third were psychically linked versions of the same person, from universes that left them different enough that Raleigh had lived with the two of them for months without recognizing the core similarities.

“Each player takes turns pulling out a block from inside the tower and setting it on top, until the tower topples,” Janni said about the game, demonstrating that she did, in fact, overhear Raleigh’s thoughts.

Janni hadn’t been overt or obvious about her telepathy, before—but then, there wasn’t much point in hiding it anymore, was there? Not after all that yesterday had revealed about what, precisely, she and Third were.

Raleigh was from what the others called an ‘apex’ universe, ones that engineered people via technological inserts. She herself was a blend of machine and human, with some tech like her gills added by the military. She’d buried her memories of being a soldier, but sometimes events triggered responses that she hadn’t rerouted yet. She could also easily restore whatever memories she needed by accessing particular programming, though she preferred not doing that. Too much risk of killing the wrong person. She kept enough memories active to stay aware of that.

Janni—and all variants of her—were from ‘alpha’ universes, ones where people were bioengineered, with varying degrees of success. They were always able to merge their bio-identities with whatever somewhens they were in, but each one seemed to apply that ability differently. Their other talents, like telepathy, seemed to vary, too.

That was aside from their different choices of occupation. Janni was a programmer; Third was some form of mercenary (which was all she had the training for, really); and there was reputedly a third version of them, Lysacarly, who was part of Shadow Corps, an organization that spanned universes and policed their type of illegal immigrant.

By nature, all versions of her had the same biogenetic modifications (or so Raleigh presumed).

By nurture, the effectiveness, intensity, and stability of those modifications differed.

According to Janni, Lysacarly was the most telepathic of the three of them, and therefore she would also be the most affected by the psychic resonance that could happen between alternate versions of a single person. Janni spoke as if that resonance would be so debilitating to Lysacarly that she and Third, if found, would necessarily be able to escape.

Raleigh had her doubts about that.

A timer dinged in the kitchen, and Janni retreated for a few seconds, only to return and put a hot sandwich beside the Jenga game.

Raleigh stared at it, the rich scent of corned beef and sauerkraut encouraging her stomach to growl. She felt the rumble, felt the hunger, but she couldn’t bring herself to reach for the food.

Janni jostled the table as she set her own plate and bottle of water at her usual spot, which put her back to the door. (Raleigh refused to sit there, and Third rarely would.) Janni dropped into the chair, took a bite of her surely over-peppered sandwich, and made a loud sound of enjoyment.

Raleigh found herself reaching for her own sandwich and noticing how…conspicuous Janni was about eating her own food. And how Janni avoided looking at her while she did so.

“Do I have food problems?” Raleigh blurted before she caught herself. She opened her internal software and started writing a quick macro to track her eating habits, so she could check for herself and confirm the patterns.

Janni’s brow furrowed even further. “Hmm?” She swallowed her mouthful of sandwich. “You aren’t anorexic.”

And that was a dodge, if I’ve ever heard one. Raleigh decided to finish her macro and examine its results for herself, though she had a suspicion as to what she’d find.

She’d rewritten her memory storage and processing years ago, to sidestep that particular conditioning from her childhood. How had it recurred? When had it recurred? Janni’s matter-of-fact reaction suggested that Raleigh had been doing it for a while.

Long enough to lose weight? She hoped not. Her programming made it extremely difficult for her to consume excess calories, and she didn’t have any excess kilos to spare.

She scanned her sandwich. It had the precise ratio of corned beef to sauerkraut that she preferred—a good balance of protein and electrolytes. “This is good. Thanks.”

Janni shrugged.