The three weeks Dr. Sarangerel had given Bataar became two weeks became ten days.
His quantum decoherence accelerated with each passing hour. His left arm was translucent to the elbow now, his hand phasing in and out of solidity. Sometimes he'd reach for equipment and his fingers would pass through it like smoke. Other times his hand would be solid enough to manipulate controls, but felt disconnected from his body, like borrowed flesh that didn't quite belong to him.
He could feel himself dying in a way that had no comparison. Not illness, not injury—dissolution. His consciousness remained intact while his physical form became probability cloud, existing and not-existing simultaneously, quantum superposition made flesh.
The irony wasn't lost on him. He'd spent weeks building equipment to save people from timeline erasure, and now he was experiencing his own erasure from the inside, one atom at a time.
The Anchors had returned to their scattered positions throughout Prosperity Heights' subcity levels after the epsilon-9 extraction. Weaver maintained operational security through compartmentalization—no more than three Anchors in same location, rotating safe houses, encrypted communications that changed daily.
The forty-one saved refugees had been dispersed to various underground medical facilities, given false identities and biosignature spoofing equipment that cost more than most subcity residents earned in a year. They would survive, probably. Live out their lives as ghosts in timeline that wasn't theirs, always looking over shoulders, always one corporate scan away from discovery and erasure.
Cascade—the woman trapped between digital and biological existence—had decoherence-died on day three after extraction. Dr. Sarangerel had kept her sedated in the stabilization pod, had tried experimental gene therapy and consciousness anchoring protocols, but nothing could hold her together. She'd simply dissolved, her quantum signature dropping to zero, her body fading to translucent then invisible then gone.They'd saved her from timeline erasure for exactly seventy-two hours.
Bataar wondered if that counted as victory or just prolonged murder.
Jakob had disappeared after the extraction. Weaver received brief encrypted message: "Mother suspects. Going dark. Will contact when safe." That was six days ago. No one had heard from him since.
Bataar suspected Kayla Skovgaard had discovered her son's betrayal. Suspected Jakob was either running, captured, or already consciousness-wiped—his mind erased, his memories destroyed, turned into breathing vegetable who happened to share her DNA.
The system protected itself. Always.
Bataar worked in abandoned maintenance tunnel in Sublevel 13, surrounded by equipment he was building for the next extraction operation.
Timeline delta-12 was scheduled for pruning in eleven days. Corporate designation: "economic instability requiring corrective erasure." The timeline had developed alternative currency system based on labor hours instead of corporate scrip, threatening the fundamental structure of monetary control. Four hundred thousand people lived in delta-12's version of the Mongolian steppe city. The Anchors planned to save sixty.If they were lucky.
If Bataar could finish the improved quantum anchors before his body phased completely.
His right hand flickered, becoming translucent for three seconds before resolidifying. He waited for it to stabilize, then continued working on the entanglement calibration. The new anchors used different approach—instead of trying to maintain stable connection to dying timeline, they would create rapid-cycle portals that opened and closed in microseconds, pulling refugees through in quantum bursts that required less sustained coherence.
It was elegant solution to impossible problem.
It probably wouldn't work.
Footsteps echoed in the tunnel. Bataar turned, his hand passing through his tool before solidifying enough to grip it defensively.
Weaver emerged from the darkness, her face showing exhaustion that went beyond mere sleeplessness. She'd aged years in the ten days since epsilon-9. The weight of watching three hundred thousand people erase while saving forty-one—watching her own team member dissolve into void—had carved lines into her features that no amount of genetic optimization could smooth.
"We have a problem," she said without preamble."Just one? We're doing better than usual."
She didn't smile. "Jakob is dead. Consciousness-wiped. His mother found out about his involvement with the Anchors."
Bataar felt something cold settle in his chest. Jakob had been twenty years old. Idealistic, desperate to fight the system his family maintained. He'd leaked timeline pruning schedules for eighteen months, had participated in the epsilon-9 extraction, had made choice that fighting genocide mattered more than survival.And his mother had erased his mind for it.
"How do you know?" Bataar asked.
"Corporate medical records. Jakob was admitted to Kronos Solutions' executive medical facility three days ago. Diagnosis: acute consciousness corruption requiring emergency therapeutic intervention." Weaver's voice was flat, clinical, hiding the emotion underneath. "They performed complete consciousness reconstruction. Deleted everything from the last two years. He's alive, but everything he was—his memories, his beliefs, his decision to help us—it's gone. They murdered their son to protect corporate interests and called it medical treatment."
"Does he remember anything?"
"No. According to the records, Jakob Skovgaard is now happy, well-adjusted university student studying quantum mechanics with no interest in resistance movements or timeline justice. They rebuilt his personality from archived backups, made him what they wanted him to be two years ago."
Bataar thought about that. Jakob's consciousness still existed, technically. But the person who'd stood in the ancient facility and helped extract eleven people from dying timeline—that version of Jakob had been erased as thoroughly as the refugees they'd failed to save.
"That's the system," Bataar said. "It doesn't just kill dissidents. It rewrites them. Makes them collaborators. Erases the idea that resistance was ever possible."
"It's worse than that." Weaver pulled out her tablet, showing encrypted data. "Jakob's consciousness reconstruction included embedded monitoring protocols. His neural stack now reports all his thoughts to Kronos Solutions in real-time. They're using him as bait. If we try to contact him, if we try to recruit him again, they'll track us through his stack and eliminate the entire Anchors network."
"So we abandon him."
"We already lost him. What walks around with his face isn't Jakob anymore. It's corporate construction designed to trap us." Weaver closed the tablet. "But that's not the only problem. Kronos Solutions has increased timeline monitoring in this region. They know someone is conducting unauthorized temporal operations. They haven't found us yet, but they're searching. Every extraction we attempt increases the risk of discovery."
"Then we stop," Bataar said. "Shut down operations. Disappear into the subcity. Survive."
"For how long? Until next timeline pruning? Until we watch another few hundred thousand people get erased while we do nothing?" Weaver met his eyes. "I didn't build the Anchors to survive. I built it to fight. If we stop fighting, we're just ghosts pretending to be alive."
Bataar understood. He was ghost pretending to be alive right now, his body phasing between existence and void. The alternative to fighting was just waiting for erasure to finish what it had started."What do you want to do?"
"Delta-12 extraction. Eleven days. We save sixty people from four hundred thousand, we accept it's not enough, and we do it anyway." She paused. "But I need to know—can you finish the equipment? Because if you can't, if your decoherence is too advanced, I need to find another engineer."
Bataar looked at his translucent hands. Looked at the partially assembled quantum anchors. Looked at the countdown on his tablet: eleven days until delta-12's pruning. Three to four days until he started phasing completely.
"I can finish it," he said. "Might not be here to see it used, but I can finish it."Weaver nodded. "Then I'll arrange for Temur to assist. He can complete any work you can't finish yourself." She turned to leave, then stopped. "Bataar—thank you. For everything you've done. For choosing to fight when you could have taken corporate money and survived a few more months."
"Surviving isn't the same as living."
"No. It's not." She disappeared back into the tunnel's darkness.Bataar returned to his work, his translucent fingers manipulating solid equipment, building machines that would save fragments while millions erased.It was all they had.
It would never be enough.
But stopping meant accepting it.
Day fourteen after the epsilon-9 extraction, Bataar's legs phased completely.
He was working on quantum anchor calibration when his right leg became translucent, then shifted into superposition—simultaneously solid and not-solid, existing and not-existing. He tried to stand and his leg passed through the floor, his foot occupying space that was both above and below the tunnel's surface.
He collapsed, catching himself on the equipment table with arms that were still mostly coherent.Temur found him an hour later, sitting on the floor, his lower body flickering between states.
"How bad?" the engineer asked, kneeling beside him.
"Can't walk. Legs won't hold my weight when they're phased." Bataar tried to stand again, failed. "I can still work from here. Can still finish the anchors."
"You need medical attention."
"Sarangerel said there's nothing she can do. I'm past the threshold. Gene therapy can't anchor quantum signature this degraded." Bataar pulled himself back to the equipment table using his arms. "Help me up. I can work sitting down."
Temur helped him onto a makeshift chair—old plasteel crate that had once held temporal displacement components. Bataar's legs phased through the crate's sides, occupying impossible position half-inside the container.
"This is what happens to all of us eventually," Temur said, returning to his own work. "We fight the system until it erases us. Different methods, same outcome. Chen got pulled into void. Jakob got consciousness-wiped. You're phasing out of reality. I'll probably get shot by corporate security. But we all end up gone."
"Cheerful thought."
"Realistic thought." Temur connected two components that shouldn't have been compatible but somehow worked anyway in his hands. "The question isn't whether we get erased. It's what we do before it happens. Do we collaborate and live slightly longer? Or fight and die slightly sooner but die on our terms?"
Bataar knew which option he'd chosen. His translucent legs were proof of it.
They worked in silence for hours, building equipment that would try to save sixty people from timeline containing four hundred thousand. The math was brutal. They'd save 0.015% of delta-12's population. Worse odds than epsilon-9.And they'd do it anyway.
Because the alternative was watching four hundred thousand people erase without trying.
Because resistance mattered even when it didn't change anything.
Because—Bataar's torso flickered, becoming translucent for five seconds.
Temur noticed. "Your decoherence is accelerating."
"I know." Bataar forced his hands to solidify, to maintain coherence long enough to complete the calibration. "How much longer to finish the anchors?"
"With both of us working? Three days. With just me? Six days."
"We have seven days until delta-12." Bataar ran the calculations. "If I can maintain coherence for two more days, we can complete the equipment with one day to spare."
"And if you can't maintain coherence?"
"Then you finish alone and I become ghost before I can see if the equipment works."
His hands phased again, passing through the controls. He waited for them to resolidify, then continued working.Three hundred thousand people erased in epsilon-9.
Four hundred thousand about to be erased in delta-12.
And Bataar's own existence erasing atom by atom while he built machines to save fragments.
The tunnel's emergency lighting cast everything in amber warning.
Always warning.
Never salvation.
Day sixteen, Bataar's arms began phasing.
He woke in the maintenance tunnel—he'd stopped returning to his apartment in Sublevel 7, just slept near the equipment when exhaustion overwhelmed him—to find both arms translucent to the shoulder. He tried to move his fingers and they flickered, existing in multiple quantum states simultaneously.
Solid. Translucent. Absent. Solid again.
His consciousness remained intact. He could think clearly, could understand the quantum mechanics of his own dissolution. But his body was becoming probability cloud, shifting between states faster than his will could control.
He forced his hands solid through concentration—pure mental effort, using his consciousness as anchor for his failing quantum signature. It worked for maybe thirty seconds before his arms phased again.
Temur arrived with food—synthesized protein bars and recycled water, the staple diet of the subcity.
"You're worse," the engineer observed.
"Decoherence is exponential at this stage. Once it reaches critical threshold, collapse accelerates." Bataar managed to solidify his right hand long enough to take the protein bar. "How's the work progressing?"
"Quantum anchors are eighty percent complete. I can finish them alone if necessary."
"It's necessary." Bataar tried to eat the protein bar but his hand phased mid-bite, the food passing through his translucent fingers. He waited for his hand to resolidify, tried again. "I have maybe a day before I can't maintain coherence at all. After that, I'll be fully phased—consciousness intact but body probabilistic."
"Sarangerel mentioned experimental stabilization—"
"Won't work. My quantum signature is too degraded. I'm going to phase completely, exist in superposition, become ghost." Bataar looked at his translucent body. "Question is whether it happens before or after the delta-12 extraction."
"Does it matter?"
"To me? I'd like to see if the equipment works. To the operation? No. You can run the extraction without me."
Temur was quiet for moment. Then: "I've been doing this for three years. Building equipment to fight timeline genocide. I've helped save maybe two hundred people total. Against that, I've watched approximately eight million people get erased in the timelines we couldn't save or didn't know about." He returned to his work. "The math never justifies it. Two hundred saved versus eight million erased. We're not winning. We're not even slowing them down. We're just choosing to die fighting instead of die complicit."
"And that matters?"
"I don't know anymore. I used to think it did. Used to think resistance itself was victory, that fighting was its own justification. But after three years of watching millions erase while we save dozens—" He stopped. "I'm starting to think we're just making ourselves feel better about being powerless."
Bataar understood that exhaustion. The weight of fighting unwinnable war, of watching your victories measure in dozens while your losses measured in millions.
"Why do you keep doing it then?"
"Because stopping means accepting it. Means agreeing that timeline genocide is normal, legal, inevitable. That corporations have right to erase reality for profit." Temur's scarred hands moved across the equipment. "I can't accept that. Even if resistance doesn't change anything. Even if we're just dying slightly slower than the people we try to save. I have to fight because the alternative is worse."
"The alternative is survival."
"No. The alternative is collaboration. And I'd rather phase into non-existence than become complicit."
They worked through the day and into the night, Bataar's coherence failing progressively. His torso was translucent now, his internal organs visible as ghostly probability clouds. He could see his own heart beating in quantum superposition, simultaneously present and absent, alive and not-alive.Three more days until delta-12's pruning.
Two days, maybe, before Bataar phased completely.The equation was simple: finish the equipment or become ghost trying.Day seventeen, Weaver brought news that made everything worse.
"Kronos Solutions moved up delta-12's pruning schedule," she said, pulling up the data. "New timeline: forty-eight hours. They're accelerating the erasure."
"Why?" Bataar asked, his voice distorted by his increasingly translucent vocal cords.
"They detected our preparations. Don't know how—maybe quantum fluctuations from the anchor testing, maybe informant in the subcity, maybe just increased monitoring after epsilon-9. But they know someone is planning extraction." Weaver's expression was grim. "They're pruning delta-12 early to prevent us from saving anyone."
"Can we accelerate our operation?" Temur asked.
"The anchors aren't finished," Bataar said. His hands phased through the control panel he was trying to operate. "We need another thirty-six hours minimum."
"We don't have thirty-six hours. We have forty-eight before delta-12 is erased, and we need at least eight hours for team deployment." Weaver ran the numbers. "That gives us forty hours to complete equipment that needs thirty-six hours of work. If everything goes perfectly."
"Nothing goes perfectly," Temur said.
"Then we improvise." Weaver looked at the partially completed quantum anchors. "Can we use them as-is? Accept reduced extraction capacity, save fewer people, but save someone?"
Bataar forced his mind to focus through the growing dissociation of his phasing consciousness. The anchors at current completion could maybe open two stable portals instead of five. Maybe extract twenty-five people instead of sixty.
Twenty-five people saved from four hundred thousand.
0.00625% survival rate.
Statistical noise.
Rounding error.
Nothing.
"We can deploy with two anchors," Bataar said finally. "Extract approximately twenty-five refugees if we're lucky. If the anchors hold. If nothing fails catastrophically."
"Those are terrible odds," Weaver said.
"They're better than zero."
She nodded slowly. "Then we proceed. I'll assemble extraction teams. Bataar, Temur—complete as much of the anchor work as possible in the next thirty-two hours. We deploy in thirty-six hours whether the equipment is ready or not."
"Understood."
Weaver left to coordinate the teams.
Bataar returned to the quantum anchors, his translucent hands passing through the controls more often than they gripped them. His consciousness was still intact—he could think, could plan, could calculate. But his body was failing, quantum signature dropping, existing less and less in baseline reality.
"You're not going to make it," Temur said quietly.
"Probably not."
"So why keep working?"
"Because twenty-five people will exist tomorrow who would otherwise be erased. Because I've already lost everything else—my timeline, my family, my body. Might as well lose what's left fighting." Bataar managed to solidify his hands long enough to complete a critical connection. "And because stopping means accepting that my existence didn't matter. That I was just ghost passing through reality without impact."
"Your existence doesn't matter. None of our existences matter. We're insects fighting entropy, temporary patterns that will dissolve regardless of what we do."
"Then I choose to be insect that fought instead of insect that collaborated."
Temur laughed—bitter, exhausted sound. "We're all so fucking noble in our pointless resistance. Chen died being noble. Jakob got consciousness-wiped being noble. You're phasing into non-existence being noble. And tomorrow we'll try to save twenty-five people from four hundred thousand and call it victory when it's just prolonged defeat."
"You have better suggestion?"
"No. That's the problem. We don't have better option. Just choice between dying fighting and dying complicit. So we keep building equipment and pretending it mattmatters."They worked through the night.Bataar's body phased completely at hour twenty-eight.
One moment he was mostly solid, hands gripping controls, body occupying chair. The next moment he shifted entirely into quantum superposition—his form becoming translucent, ghostly, occupying multiple probability states simultaneously.
He could see through his own body to the floor beneath. Could feel himself existing and not-existing, his quantum signature spread across multiple possible configurations of reality.
But his consciousness remained intact.
He could still think. Still understand the mathematics of his dissolution. Still operate the equipment when his hands randomly solidified.
"Bataar?" Temur's voice seemed distant, distorted by Bataar's uncertain acoustic properties.
"Still here. Mostly." Bataar tried to grip a tool and his hand phased through it. He waited, tried again, succeeded on the third attempt. "I can still work. Just slower. Need to wait for random coherence spikes."
"You're a ghost operating quantum equipment. This is insane."
"Everything we do is insane. This is just more obviously so."
They continued working, Bataar's ghostly form flickering around the equipment, his hands solidifying randomly to manipulate controls before phasing again. It was like watching probability itself trying to build machines—most attempts failed as his hands passed through solid matter, but occasionally he'd achieve coherent state long enough to complete a task.
Hour thirty-two: First quantum anchor completed. Temur ran diagnostics—seventy percent optimal function. Not great, but possibly adequate.
Hour thirty-five: Second quantum anchor assembled. Sixty-five percent optimal. Worse than the first, but still theoretically functional.
Hour thirty-six: Weaver returned with extraction teams. Two teams of four, eight people total who'd volunteered to risk erasure saving fragments from corporate genocide.They stared at Bataar's translucent form."Is he...?" one team member asked.
"He's phased," Weaver said. "Quantum decoherence. He's basically ghost now—consciousness intact but body probabilistic. He can still help with the operation when he achieves temporary coherence."
"That's horrifying."
"Yes," Bataar agreed, his voice distorted and echoing from uncertain position in space. "But I can still work. The anchors are complete enough to attempt extraction."
"Define 'complete enough,'" Weaver said.
"They'll probably work. Might fail catastrophically. Might only extract fifteen people instead of twenty-five. Might collapse and erase the extraction teams." Bataar's form flickered. "But they're the best we can build in the time available."
"Those are terrible specifications."
"They're better than nothing."
Weaver studied the quantum anchors, then the extraction teams, then Bataar's ghostly form.
"We proceed," she said finally. "Deploy in two hours. Teams, prepare for temporal insertion. Bataar, continue optimizing the anchors as much as possible. Temur, run final diagnostics."
The teams moved to their positions.Bataar returned to the equipment, his translucent hands attempting to make last-minute adjustments to quantum entanglement protocols.Two hours until deployment.
Forty-eight hours until delta-12's accelerated pruning.
Twenty-five people who might be saved from four hundred thousand about to be erased.
And Bataar's consciousness, trapped in failing body, existing in quantum superposition between being and non-being.
He could feel his identity fragmenting. His memories remained intact, but his sense of physical existence was dissolving. He was becoming pure consciousness without anchor, awareness without location, mind without body.
Soon he'd be fully ghost—unable to interact with physical reality at all, just observing consciousness watching from quantum void.
But not yet.
He had two hours.
Enough time to make the equipment slightly better.
Enough time to save slightly more fragments from the genocide.
Enough time to matter, even if mattering was measured in single-digit survival counts.
His hands flickered solid.
He made another adjustment.
The countdown continued.
Nothing was going to get better.
But they were going to fight anyway.
Because the alternative was worse.