The Meridian

The neon sign flickered against the oily sky.

Hotel Meridian.

This was the place. But was it the time?

That was what mattered. That was where the danger lay.

Sym moved through the shadows at the edge of the parking lot, collar high, head low. Every detail mattered. Every sign, every nuance. She had worked too long for this chance; there would not be another. She fought to steady the adrenaline. The prism’s sequence had been uncharacteristically clear. She knew she was walking toward death.

She tested each car as she passed.

The blue sedan: peeling Baby on Board sticker. The red pickup: wing mirror missing. The Harley Davidson beneath the stuttering lamp.

Yes. This was the moment.

She had ten minutes.

As she slid past the reception office, she risked a single glance inside at the night porter hunched over a black-and-white screen. The Eagle was on the lunar surface. Armstrong climbing down the ladder.

Her chest tightened. For a moment she froze, Sarah’s face flashing in her mind. The two of them in that cramped tattoo parlour, the smell of ink and disinfectant thick in the air. The artist’s needle buzzed while, above the counter, a battered TV showed the moon landing in grainy black-and-white. Armstrong climbing down the ladder, the whole world holding its breath. She and Sarah laughing, gripping each other’s hands, matching blue swifts taking shape on their wrists.

She clenched her jaw. It was another time, another place.

She climbed the metal stairs, each step trembling faintly beneath her boots, until she reached the narrow landing of the first floor.

Room 11.

She paused, scanned the lot one last time, and pushed the door open.

The room was constricted by the dull orange shadows cast by the neon glow leaking through the lone window. Two double beds stood neatly made, untouched. She slipped inside, eased the thin curtains closed, and crossed to the space between the far bed and the wall.

This was it, the right place, at the right time. To live, she now had to know how to die.

Kneeling, she pulled her coat over her head, and drew the prism from her pocket. Light burst forth at once, a violent kaleidoscope flooding the dark. It had taken years for her to learn the language of its shifting images — the streaks that hinted at choices, the entangled glimpses of past and future. The prism only gave fragments. Possibilities. Yet one rule seemed absolute: the sequence always found a way.

Sarah’s face appeared first, laughing, young, before the fireball took her.

She couldn’t linger. She had to push past.

Her hands shook as she tried to control her breathing, to focus beyond, releasing the images that flashed before her.

The images quickened, shifted onto another temporal plane.

Mark buying her a drink. Carrying boxes into their flat.

She pushed harder, past the distractions of a life lost.

The light flared, images growing in intensity as they closed in on the present.

There, at a deeper level, she saw it. The sequence started again. The blue sedan, the pickup, the Harley. The moon landings, Door 11.

It was getting closer now. Closer than ever before. The possibilities were converging. The time-frame was narrowing.

Sweat dripped down her face as she concentrated to keep the image clear. She mustn’t miss a single detail.

A figure. In the shadows. Knocking at Door 11.

A silenced pistol, raised to the spy hole.

Sym’s eye, pressed against the door.

A hot white flash.

Her body falling.

Blood pooling across the floor, her prism pried from her hand.

Blackness.

That was it. It was what she needed. What she’d worked for months to see. Yet her stomach knotted — the prism had never lied. Every vision she’d tried to remold had bent back into shape eventually.

She glanced at her watch: 3:27.

Six minutes.

In six minutes the temporal assassin was coming to end her, to close the fracture she’d carved — a temporal dilation wide enough to change the present. The past. The future.

She jammed the prism back into her pocket and stood.

She knew she was close; rarely did it give such detail. Such certainty. That could only mean one thing: there was no variation. This would happen exactly as she’d seen it. The assassin knew that too. She had to use that to her advantage. They expected the events to unfold exactly. That would be their blind spot.

She needed something, anything, that could be a weapon. She surveyed the room. It was stark.

A Formica lamp? Too flimsy.

A tinfoil ashtray between the beds? Useless.

A chair? Too imprecise.

She had to be sure. The assassin had to die.

She walked to the bathroom. An olive suite, dimly lit, bath towels and a flimsy shower curtain strung along a cord above the bath.

Perfect.

She pulled the curtain down, separated the cord and bound it around her fists, pulling hard.

It held.

She needed the assassin to think — to know — even if just for a few seconds, that she was dead. To lower their guard. That was when she could strike.

She pulled the dressing gown from the wardrobe and stuffed it with pillows, shaping it into a rough approximation of a body. She carefully placed it in front of the door. The prism had been clear and precision mattered.

But doubt gnawed at her. If the prism’s pattern was unbreakable, was she building a trap for him … or for herself?

Something was missing. The illusion wasn’t complete. Her eyes scanned the minibar. Bottles of vodka, whiskey, Heineken. Then, at the back, a single bottle: tomato juice. Not ideal, but close enough. She poured it carefully over the pillow-stuffed cadaver, letting it soak into the fabric. It didn’t have to be perfect. Just convincing enough to sell the illusion for a few seconds, in the dark, to someone who thought they knew the future.

The clock read 3:31. Two minutes. It was now or never.

Sym crouched to the side of the door, her fists bound in the cord, and she waited, her mouth dry, every nerve alert.

The prism had shown her the sequence, but this was reality now. She couldn’t afford a single misstep.

The assassin would knock any second, fire his pistol, and enter expecting the body. If he took the bait — if he saw what she wanted him to see — she had a chance. A chance not just to live, but to keep the fracture alive. A chance to reach back for Sarah.

The clock blinked 3:33.

Footsteps approached.

They stopped.

A pause.

Knock.

Knock.

Sym readied herself. The shot would come any moment.

A dull thud. A shaft of light shot across the room, the neon glow entering the new bullet hole in the door.

The handle turned, the door opened slowly.

A silhouette filled the doorway. The lithe assassin stepped softly inside.

Sym saw the gun first, held out in front. Then the arm, shoulders, the head hidden behind a dark hood.

The gun lowered.

She rose in one swift motion. The shower cord looped over the assassin’s head as she drove a hard kick into the back of their knees. They buckled, just as she’d hoped. She hauled the cord back with all her strength.

The gun hit the carpet with a dull thud.

The assassin clawed at the cord, thrashing, but Sym dropped to the floor, using her weight, her fury, to pull tighter, tighter. She willed it to end.

At last the body sagged, twitching once, twice, before going still.

It was done.

Sym shoved the weight aside, forcing herself up.

There was no time to breathe. The fracture would already be unraveling — she had seconds at most.

She snatched the gun, thumbed the safety on, shoved it into her waistband. Then to the body. Jacket pockets, empty. Trousers, empty.

“Shit, where is it?”

Her gaze froze on the outstretched hand, fingers still clenched on a leather pouch.

She lunged, and prised the fingers open, pulling the assassin’s prism out into the darkness.

Light exploded, flooding the room with violent color, every surface masked by shifting, kaleidoscopic fire.

Her heart hammered. She had two prisms now. What she needed.

She pulled hers from her pocket, set it beside the other. At once the light intensified, threads of time writhing and braiding together.

The pull of the nexus caught her, her body began dissolving grain by grain, dragged toward the fracture she had fought so hard to build. The plan was working.

She turned for one last look.

The body sprawled between the beds.

The hand, still reaching.

A wrist.

A tattoo.

A blue swift.

Like hers.

Like Sarah’s.

She froze.

What had she done.