Hexad: The Chamber by Al K. Line Read Free Book Online Page A

skin feeling dry from the salt of the ocean, toes itching from the inevitable sand that was impossible to eradicate for days after a trip to the beach.
    It was strange being back in their rented accommodation — in Dale's present they had only been in their home for just over a year, seeing the rather squalid state of the rental came as quite a surprise.
    Dale popped his head around the kitchen door and told Amanda he was going to have a quick shower.
    Once he was finished he got dressed and remembered the strange mystery that they'd had when they returned only to find clothes and sand in the laundry basket he never remembered putting there. Well, mystery solved.
    Amanda showered too while he sipped on his coffee in the living room, trying to make sense of things, to come up with some kind of a plan. He drew a blank. Although Amanda had gone over the events that he, or a version of him, had been involved in — no, it was him wasn't it? — anyway, what he'd been told made sense once you accepted the whole premise, but it was still just a story, not actual fact for him personally, so it was hard to really get deep into the problem that now faced them, and everyone else in his world it seemed.
    He tried to make a list in his mind, making a sequence of events up until the present, but it fell apart before he could even get started. How could you make such a list when there were multiple versions of everything going back and forth, countless realities and the converging of multiple versions of the same people all tied together, acting out events that had already happened, just so they would happen in the future?
    Finally, knowing he would be waiting a while for Amanda to finish her beauty regime, he decided once and for all that none of it mattered. How could you take responsibility for things that happened in other versions of a reality you had no experience of? What had been done to eliminate the existence of Hexads in all other possible timelines had succeeded, right? So all he had to focus on was doing what he had to do in his own world to ensure that the future was a good one for him and Amanda.
    He thought about the fact that there was another him and her, in this world, that would put into action everything that he had been told had taken place, and that they were successful, apart from here. So what was the answer?
    Sacrifice one world for many? Billions of lives for countless trillions? He didn't think so — at such numbers it all became meaningless, mere digits, not real live people. No, he had to think of the here and now, or, well, the future anyway.
    So the solution was...?
    Dale decided there was only one answer: somebody was lying to him. Either Amanda or The Caretaker. Maybe both.
    He was no time travel expert, heck, he'd only been doing it for one day, but there was no escaping the fact that if what he'd been told was true concerning what had been done to eliminate Hexads and had succeeded, then it would have succeeded in his own world as well. Surely?
    "Hey Dale, you okay? You seem worried." Amanda appeared looking like a new woman, hair glossy and shining, clothes clean but casual as always: a simple cotton dress that set off her complexion. The only thing ruining it was the frown of concern as she walked across the threadbare carpet.
    "Are you lying to me?"
    "About what?"
    Is it me or does she look nervous?
    "About what? About everything. You said you hunted high and low, jumped about all over the place, and although you only found me, or as close to me as possible here, you said that all other versions of events meant that there were no Hexads, right?"
    "Right."
    Something was clicking with Dale, something important. He just had to let it come, let the knowledge crawl up from his subconscious.
    Here it is.
    "So how did you do that?"
    "What do you mean? With the Hexad of course."
    "But you only get six jumps then you're done. And apart from that, if we succeeded then there shouldn't have been any, should