The technical specifications for the extraction operation covered three cracked tablets and a holographic display that kept flickering because the projection equipment was built from salvaged corporate hardware that had been designed to fail after warranty expiration.
Bataar studied the data with growing unease.
"This is insane," he said finally.
"We know." Weaver stood beside him, her reflection ghosting across the holo display. "But it's the only way."
The plan was simple in concept, catastrophic in execution. Timeline epsilon-9 was scheduled for pruning in sixty-eight hours—corporate designation: "ideological contamination requiring preventative erasure." The branch had diverged from baseline reality seventeen years ago when a labor movement in what would become Prosperity Heights' location had successfully organized workers across corporate boundaries. Instead of megacorp oligarchy, epsilon-9 had developed distributed economic cooperatives where resources were allocated by need rather than profit.
The timeline had to die. Not because it was unstable—Kronos Solutions' own assessments showed epsilon-9 had excellent quantum coherence. It had to die because it was an idea that threatened the fundamental structure of corporate reality.
Three hundred thousand people lived in epsilon-9's version of Prosperity Heights. The city was smaller, less vertical, without the chrome towers and subcity depths. Buildings were built for human habitation instead of profit maximization. The air was cleaner because industrial output was regulated by community consensus rather than shareholder value.
It was, by every objective measure, a better world than baseline.
Which was exactly why it had to be erased.
"Jakob accessed the pruning coordinates," Granite said, pulling up a three-dimensional map of epsilon-9's quantum signature. The big man moved with surprising delicacy around the equipment. "The erasure will begin at the timeline's quantum foundation and propagate upward through reality. People won't even know it's happening until they stop existing."
"4.7 seconds," Bataar muttered, running calculations in his head. "That's our window. How many extraction portals can we maintain simultaneously?"
"We've never managed more than two," Wire—Jakob—admitted. "The equipment wasn't designed for mass extraction. We're improvising with scavenged temporal displacement technology and Dr. Sarangerel's consciousness stabilization research."
Bataar studied the schematics. The extraction system was brilliant in its desperation—quantum entanglement anchors that would connect baseline reality to epsilon-9, consciousness transfer protocols adapted from corporate upload technology, and biosignature stabilization fields to prevent the extracted refugees from decoherence.
It was also held together with literal duct tape in some places.
"We need at least five portals to extract two hundred people in 4.7 seconds," Bataar said. "That means five separate extraction teams, five quantum anchors, five stabilization fields all running simultaneously while reality is collapsing around them."
"Can it be done?" Weaver asked.
Bataar did the math. Checked it twice. Ran probability models using the ancient facility's computational equipment.
"Maybe. If everything works perfectly. If the quantum anchors hold. If the consciousness transfers don't corrupt. If epsilon-9's collapse doesn't cascade into our equipment." He looked up. "If any single component fails, we lose everyone. The extraction teams, the refugees, and potentially destabilize baseline reality enough that Kronos Solutions can track us to this facility."
"So it's a suicide mission," Echo said. She was the oldest of the Anchors visible in the chamber, probably late forties, with augmentations that looked military-surplus. Her voice carried the flatness of someone who'd seen too many operations go wrong.
"It's worse than suicide," Bataar said. "Suicide just kills you. This could kill you, erase you from ever having existed, and take two hundred innocent people with you."
Silence filled the ancient chamber. Somewhere in the depths, water dripped with metronomic persistence.
"I've been doing this for two years," Weaver said finally. "We've saved four hundred seventy-three people. Four hundred seventy-three individuals who would have been erased. Against that, we've lost four Anchors and failed to save approximately three million others." She turned to face the group. "Those are the numbers. Four hundred saved. Three million lost. Four dead. And now we're proposing operation that might save two hundred more or might kill everyone involved."
"Why are we even considering it?" Jakob asked. His youth showed in the question—not challenging, genuinely seeking understanding.
"Because of the three million we couldn't save," Echo answered. "Because every timeline we watch get erased without trying is another compromise we make with genocide. Because—" She stopped, then continued quieter. "Because if we don't at least try, we might as well be working for Kronos ourselves."
Bataar understood that logic. It was the same reasoning that had brought him to this chamber, that had made him give up his payment and block Skovgaard's contact. You either fought or you collaborated. There was no neutral ground.
"I'll need forty-eight hours to modify the equipment," Bataar said. "I can improve the quantum anchor stability and optimize the consciousness transfer protocols. It won't guarantee success, but it'll increase our survival probability from five percent to maybe fifteen."
"Fifteen percent," Granite repeated. "Those are shit odds."
"They're better than zero. And they're a hell of a lot better than what the three hundred thousand people in epsilon-9 are facing." Bataar pulled up the technical schematics on his own cracked tablet. "I'll need help. Someone who understands consciousness upload technology, someone familiar with quantum entanglement mechanics, and someone who can fabricate custom hardware from scavenged parts."
"I can handle the consciousness protocols," Jakob said. "I've been studying my mother's work. I know how Kronos manages timeline pruning at the consciousness level."
"I've got fabrication covered," a new voice spoke up. One of the three Anchors who hadn't been introduced stepped forward, deactivating his scrambler. He was middle-aged, Central Asian features, with hands that showed chemical burns and scarring from working with dangerous materials. "Name's Temur. Former engineer at Axiom Dynamics before I figured out what I was really building. I can make hardware sing or scream depending on what you need."
"And I'll handle quantum mechanics," Weaver said. "I did six years in corporate temporal research before—" She stopped. "Before I learned what timeline pruning really meant."
The group looked at each other. Seven people—eight now with Bataar—preparing to commit temporal crime on unprecedented scale.
"We need to discuss team assignments," Echo said, pulling up a tactical display. "Five extraction teams means twenty-five people minimum. Five operators per team to manage portals, extract refugees, and provide security. We have eight Anchors total, counting Bataar. We need seventeen more."
"Volunteers from the subcity," Granite suggested. "People who've lost family to timeline pruning. People who want to fight back."
"Untrained volunteers in a temporal extraction operation?" Bataar shook his head. "They'll panic when reality starts collapsing. They'll compromise the entire operation."
"Then we train them," Weaver said. "We have forty-eight hours. That's enough time to teach basic protocols."
"It's not enough time to teach them to face non-existence without breaking."
"No one's ready for that," Echo said quietly. "I've done eleven extractions. Every single time, watching a timeline collapse, it breaks something in you. You see reality unravel. See people flickering out of existence mid-scream. See causality itself dissolve into quantum foam." Her augmented eye reflected the holo display's cold light. "You don't train for that. You just survive it or you don't."
The group fell silent again. Bataar found himself wondering about the four Anchors who hadn't survived. What had they seen in those final moments? Had they experienced timeline erasure from inside? Or had they simply ceased, consciousness deleted along with the realities they'd tried to save?
"I need to see Dr. Sarangerel," Bataar said. "If we extract two hundred people, she'll need to handle their stabilization. Her medical facility isn't equipped for that volume."
"Already arranged," Weaver said. "We're setting up secondary stabilization site in Sublevel 11. Sarangerel is coordinating with three other underground doctors. Between them, they can handle two hundred refugees if the extractions are successful."
"If."
"Always if."
Bataar spent the next thirty hours buried in the ancient facility's technical systems, reverse-engineering corporate temporal technology and rebuilding it to do things it was never designed for.
The quantum anchors were the critical component. They had to create stable connection between baseline reality and epsilon-9 while the target timeline was actively collapsing. It was like trying to build bridge to a burning building that was also falling into a pit that was also disappearing from existence.
Temur worked beside him, fabricating custom components from scavenged materials. The engineer had an almost supernatural ability to make incompatible technologies interface. Bataar watched him jury-rig a quantum entanglement stabilizer using parts from three different corporate manufacturers that weren't supposed to work together, binding them with some kind of nano-adhesive that Temur claimed he'd stolen from Axiom Dynamics' advanced materials division.
"This is going to explode," Bataar said, studying the improvised device.
"Only if we're lucky," Temur replied. "If we're unlucky, it'll create localized causality inversion and we'll experience our deaths before they happen. Very disorienting."
"You're joking."
"I wish." Temur connected another component. "I worked on temporal weapons for Axiom. Experimental stuff. They wanted equipment that could erase enemy combatants from timeline—not kill them, erase them so they never existed. Retroactive assassination." His scarred hands moved with practiced precision. "I built three prototypes before I understood what they were really for. Not military use. Corporate elimination of whistleblowers, activists, anyone who threatened profit margins."
"What happened?"
"I sabotaged the fourth prototype. Made it look like accident. Then I disappeared into the subcity before they could consciousness-wipe me." Temur tested the device, nodded with satisfaction. "Been building equipment to undo what I created ever since. Penance, maybe. Or just revenge against the system that turned me into murderer."
Bataar understood that feeling. He'd worked on temporal displacement technology at Quantum Dynamics. Technology that enabled emergency evacuation from collapsing timelines. Noble purpose, he'd thought. Save people from disaster.Except the disasters were corporate-created. The timelines were collapsed deliberately. And the displacement authorization was only granted to valuable employees. Everyone else—families, children, people who worked service jobs or hadn't been deemed economically useful—they were left behind.
Bataar had survived because he was valuable.
Seventy million people hadn't survived because they weren't.
"How do you live with it?" Bataar asked."I don't," Temur said simply. "I exist near it. That's different. Living implies some kind of peace, some kind of acceptance. I just keep building equipment to save people because the alternative is putting my head in a reclamation processor." He looked at Bataar. "You're timeline refugee. You understand. We're not living. We're just refusing to stop."
Jakob arrived at hour thirty-two with intelligence that made everyone stop working.
"My mother knows," he said without preamble.
The Anchors gathered around. Weaver's hand moved toward the weapon Bataar now knew she kept concealed in her jacket.
"Knows what?" she asked carefully.
"Not about me. Not yet. But she knows something is happening. Kronos Solutions detected quantum fluctuations around this facility. They think someone is building unauthorized temporal equipment." Jakob pulled up data on his tablet. "She's sending investigation team. ETA is sixteen hours."
"Sixteen hours," Granite said. "The epsilon-9 extraction is in thirty-six hours. We can't move the operation—"
"And we can't abandon this facility," Bataar interrupted. "All our equipment is here. The quantum anchors are calibrated to this location. Moving them would require complete recalibration, which would take days we don't have."
"So we're trapped," Echo said. "We either abandon the operation or we get caught."
"Not necessarily." Weaver studied the data Jakob had provided. "The investigation team is small. Three people. Corporate security, but not wetwork specialists. They're looking for equipment thieves, not organized resistance."
"We could handle three people," Granite said. His tone made clear what "handle" meant.
"No killing," Weaver said firmly. "That brings attention we can't afford. If corpo security team disappears, Kronos will send heavier response."
"Then what?" Jakob asked.
Bataar studied the facility's layout, an idea forming. "We give them what they're looking for. Equipment thieves. Small-time criminals salvaging temporal technology to sell on black market."
"Elaborate," Weaver said.
"We set up dummy operation in the outer chambers. Leave some scavenged temporal equipment, make it look like amateur salvage operation. When the investigation team arrives, we let them find it. They confiscate the equipment, file report about petty theft, and leave satisfied."
"While we continue working on the actual extraction equipment deeper in the facility," Jakob said, understanding. "They'll never know we're here."
"It could work," Echo said. "But it requires perfect timing. If the investigation team arrives while we're running the extraction operation, they'll detect the quantum signatures. We'd be caught in the act."
"So we make sure the investigation happens before the extraction." Bataar pulled up a timeline. "Jakob, can you influence when the team arrives?"
"Maybe. I could file anonymous tip through corporate channels, claim to have seen suspicious activity. It might prompt them to move up their schedule."
"Do it. Get them here in eight hours if possible. We find the dummy equipment, they confiscate it, they leave, and we have twenty-eight hours to complete the real operation."
"And if they don't leave?" Granite asked.
"Then we abort the extraction and disappear," Weaver said. "Epsilon-9 gets erased, three hundred thousand people die, and we live to fight another day."
The weight of that settled on the group. Three hundred thousand people. Erased because an investigation team arrived at wrong time.
"I'll send the tip," Jakob said finally. "But I need to be gone when they arrive. If my mother sent someone who knows me by sight—"
"Understood. You'll evacuate with the non-essential personnel." Weaver looked around. "Everyone not directly involved in maintaining cover should clear out. Bataar, Temur, and I will handle the investigation team. The rest of you, use the time to recruit and train volunteers for the extraction teams."
The investigation team arrived nine hours later.
Bataar had spent that time constructing elaborate crime scene in the facility's outer chambers. Scavenged temporal displacement equipment—non-functional, but convincing to casual inspection. Evidence of amateur disassembly work. Even some dropped tools and empty food containers to suggest squatters using the facility as hideout.
When the facility's bio-synthetic security system alerted them to intrusion, Bataar, Weaver, and Temur moved to the outer chambers and waited.
The three investigators were exactly what Bataar had expected. Corporate security, mid-level, the kind of employees who investigated equipment theft and filed reports rather than engaging in actual conflict. They wore standard augmentation packages—neural stacks for coordination, enhanced vision, probably subdermal armor, nothing exotic.
They found the dummy salvage operation within minutes."Just like the tip said," the lead investigator muttered, scanning the equipment with handheld analyzer. "Someone's been pulling temporal displacement components. Probably selling to black market."
"Any sign of the thieves?" his partner asked.
"Negative. Place is cold. They're long gone."
Bataar watched from concealment three chambers away, monitoring through wireless feed tapped into the facility's ancient sensor systems. The investigators were thorough but not paranoid. They cataloged the equipment, took samples, ran quantum signature analysis.
"This stuff is old," the third investigator said. "Pre-consolidation tech. Worth maybe a thousand scrip on black market, if that."
"Still constitutes corporate property theft. Tag it for confiscation and let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps."
They worked for another twenty minutes, marking equipment for retrieval and documenting the scene. Then they left, sealing the entrance behind them with corporate security tape that meant nothing in the subcity but made them feel official.
Bataar waited thirty minutes after they'd gone before emerging from concealment.
"They bought it," Temur said, relief evident in his voice.
"They bought what we sold them," Weaver corrected. "Because it fit their expectations. Small-time theft by desperate people. Doesn't warrant major investigation." She pulled up her comm. "Echo, status?"
"Clear. They're back in corporate vehicle, heading topside. No indication they suspected anything deeper."
"Then we're green for extraction." Weaver looked at Bataar. "How much time do you need to finish the quantum anchors?"
Bataar checked his calculations. "Eighteen hours minimum. Twenty would be better."
"You have nineteen. Epsilon-9's pruning begins in twenty-seven hours. We need one hour for final team briefing and eight hours for extraction team deployment to their positions."
The timeline was impossibly tight. But then, everything about this operation was impossible.
The next eighteen hours were blur of technical work, exhaustion, and growing certainty that they were going to fail.
Bataar ran diagnostics on the quantum anchors seventeen times. Each test revealed new problems. Quantum entanglement stability was marginal. Consciousness transfer bandwidth was barely adequate. The biosignature stabilization fields kept fluctuating in ways that suggested they'd collapse under full load.
And they were going to load all five anchors simultaneously while pulling two hundred people out of collapsing timeline.
"It's not going to work," Bataar said finally.Temur looked up from the fabrication station where he'd been building backup power systems. "Which part?"
"All of it. The quantum entanglement can't maintain five stable portals. The consciousness bandwidth can't handle two hundred simultaneous transfers. And the stabilization fields will collapse after maybe eighty extractions." He pulled up the probability models. "Best case scenario, we extract sixty people before system failure. Worst case, we lose everyone including the extraction teams."
"So we scale back," Temur said. "Fewer portals. Fewer people."
"Then we save maybe forty people total. Out of three hundred thousand."
"Forty is more than zero."
Bataar stared at the equipment they'd spent two days rebuilding. At the quantum anchors that were supposed to save two hundred lives. At the probability models that said they'd be lucky to save forty.
"I need to tell Weaver."
The final briefing was held in the main chamber, twenty-six hours before epsilon-9's scheduled erasure.
Twenty-three people gathered around the holo display. Eight Anchors, fifteen volunteers from the subcity. The volunteers were mix of timeline refugees who'd lost families to pruning, baseline humans who'd watched corporate genocide from safety and decided they couldn't watch anymore, and three individuals who were so heavily augmented that their motivations were probably beyond baseline human understanding.
Weaver stood before the group, exhaustion and determination carved into her features.
"Tomorrow, we attempt largest extraction operation in resistance history. Timeline epsilon-9 contains three hundred thousand people scheduled for corporate erasure. We're going to save two hundred of them."
She pulled up tactical display showing epsilon-9's layout, extraction points, and team assignments.
"Five extraction teams. Five simultaneous portals. Each team extracts forty people in 4.7 seconds while reality collapses around them. You'll experience timeline erasure from inside—reality dissolving, causality breaking down, existence itself unraveling. It will be the most terrifying thing you've ever experienced. Some of you won't survive."
No one moved. No one spoke.
"Here's what you need to understand," Weaver continued. "The people we're extracting won't thank us. They'll be traumatized, displaced, turned into refugees in timeline that isn't their own. They'll lose everything—their homes, their families, their entire world. We're not saving them. We're just preventing their erasure."
"Then why do it?" one of the volunteers asked. Young woman, maybe twenty-five, with neural ports that suggested corporate education. "If we're not saving them, if it won't change anything, why risk our lives?"
"Because the alternative is letting three hundred thousand people be erased without resistance," Weaver said. "Because every person we extract is proof that corporate power isn't absolute. Because—" She stopped, then continued quieter. "Because I need to believe that fighting genocide matters even when we can't win."
The volunteer nodded slowly. Others did the same.Weaver continued the briefing. Tactical assignments. Equipment protocols. Emergency procedures for timeline collapse. Evacuation signals. What to do if portals destabilized, if consciousness transfers corrupted, if quantum anchors failed.
The list of things that could go wrong was longer than the list of things that might work.
Finally, Weaver reached the part Bataar had been dreading.
"Bataar has analysis you need to hear."
All eyes turned to him. Twenty-three people who'd volunteered for suicide mission because it was better than doing nothing.
Bataar pulled up his probability models.
"The equipment can't handle two hundred extractions. Best case, we save sixty people before system failure. Worst case, we lose everyone."
Silence. Then angry murmurs.
"You said two hundred," Granite said, his voice dangerous. "We recruited volunteers based on saving two hundred people."
"I know. I was wrong. The equipment isn't adequate. I tried—" Bataar stopped. Excuses didn't matter. "We can extract sixty people or we can abort. Those are the options."
"Sixty out of three hundred thousand," one of the volunteers said. "That's nothing. That's not even statistical significance."
"It's sixty people who would otherwise be erased," Echo countered. "Sixty individuals with lives, families, futures. How is that nothing?"
"Because it doesn't change anything!" The volunteer stood, rage and desperation fighting in his expression. "We risk our lives, maybe die, maybe get erased from existence, to save sixty people while three hundred thousand die. That's not resistance. That's performance. We're making ourselves feel better while the genocide continues."
"So what's your alternative?" Weaver asked. "Abandon the operation? Let all three hundred thousand die without trying?"
"Or admit we can't win. Admit the corporations are too powerful, the system too entrenched. Admit that maybe survival is better than pointless sacrifice."
The chamber erupted in arguments. Voices overlapping, augmented and baseline humans shouting at each other, old debates about resistance versus collaboration playing out again.
Bataar watched the group fracture. This was the real challenge. Not the technology. Not corporate security. But the crushing weight of knowing that fighting back probably wouldn't matter.
Weaver let them argue for three minutes. Then she activated her neural stack's command override—corporate-grade authority protocol she'd somehow kept after leaving temporal research. The room's speakers emitted harmonic frequency that forced everyone's attention to her.
"Enough," she said into the silence. "Here's the truth. We can't win. We're twenty-three people with scavenged equipment fighting corporations that own time itself. Extracting sixty people won't stop timeline pruning. Won't change corporate policy. Won't reform the system. It's mathematically, strategically, politically meaningless."
She paused, meeting each person's eyes in turn.
"But meaningless doesn't mean worthless. Sixty people will exist tomorrow who would otherwise be erased. Sixty individuals with consciousness, identity, futures. That's what we're fighting for. Not victory. Not revolution. Just sixty more people refusing to be erased."
"And if we die?" the volunteer asked. "If we're erased trying to save them?"
"Then we're erased. Same as the four Anchors we've already lost. Same as the billions who've been pruned from timelines over the decades." Weaver's voice carried steel. "But we're erased fighting back. Not collaborating. Not accepting genocide as legal necessity. Fighting."
More silence. Then Granite stood.
"I'm in. Sixty people or six hundred or six, doesn't matter. I'm tired of watching timelines die while I do nothing."
Others stood. Echo. Temur. Jakob, returned from his evacuation. The volunteers, one by one, making choice between survival and resistance.
Finally, all twenty-three were standing.
"Then we proceed," Weaver said. "Extraction operation begins in twenty-four hours. Get rest. Make peace with whatever gods or philosophies you believe in. Tomorrow, we commit temporal crime."
The group dispersed. Bataar remained in the chamber, staring at the quantum anchors that would try to save sixty people.
Weaver approached. "You're having doubts."
"I'm having certainties. Certainty that this won't work. Certainty that we're probably going to die. Certainty that even if we succeed, it won't change anything."
"Then why are you still here?"
Bataar thought about that. About his parents, erased from existence. About seventy million people who'd been his neighbors, his colleagues, his world. About the fifty thousand scrip he'd given up, and the quantum decoherence eating him from inside.
"Because refusing to fight is the same as accepting it. And I can't accept that my parents never existed because of patent violation. Can't accept that genocide is legal if you have good lawyers. Can't accept that corporations own the right to erase reality." He looked at Weaver. "So I'm here. Building equipment that probably won't work to save people we probably can't rescue. Because the alternative is worse."
Weaver nodded. "Welcome to the Anchors, Bataar. Where we lose slowly instead of quickly, and call it victory."
She left him alone with the equipment.
Bataar ran one more diagnostic. The quantum anchors hummed with unstable potential. The consciousness transfer protocols waited like guillotine blades. The stabilization fields flickered like dying stars.
In twenty-four hours, they would open five portals into collapsing timeline and try to pull sixty people from non-existence.
It was impossible.
It was necessary.
And it was going to fail.
But they were going to try anyway.
Because that's what resistance meant in world where corporations owned time itself.
The chamber's ancient lighting cast everything in amber warning.
Always warning.
Never salvation.
Bataar checked the countdown timer.
Twenty-three hours, forty-seven minutes until epsilon-9's erasure began.
Twenty-three hours, forty-seven minutes until they found out if resistance mattered or if it was just elaborate way to die.
He suspected he already knew the answer.
But he kept working anyway.
Because stopping meant accepting it.
And acceptance was the only surrender that mattered.