Time Indivisible: Time Immemorial Book #3

By Leanna Renee Hieber and Thom Truelove

A stunning conclusion to the Time Immemorial trilogy.

Elizabeth Marlowe is being hunted through time and space. She is targeted for her unique power: the ability to experience her past lives as though they are concurrent, easily switching her consciousness from druidic Britain, to aboard Victorian steamships, to war-torn London, and even into the frontiers of space travel. But she’s not the only one with this talent. Donald Silver is like a dark mirror to Elizabeth, a version of himself plaguing her in each lifetime. He believes that by killing her, he can prevent future generations from developing psychic powers.

But Elizabeth is tired of running and hiding. It’s time to take what she’s learned about her enemy, herself, and the psychic community around her and go on the offensive. If she wins this fight, she’ll be able to help carve out a safe haven and a better future for all those with psychic powers. But is she ready to risk her own life for this noble goal? To put it all on the line?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Jul 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094416779

Leanna Renee Hieber

Raised in rural Ohio and obsessed with the Victorian Era, Leanna’s life goal is to be a ”gateway drug to 19th century literature.” An actress, playwright and award winning author, she lives in New York City and is a devotee of ghost stories and Goth clubs. Visit www.leannareneeheiber.com

Book preview

1

24th century

Captain Liz Marlowe was stunned, staring at the beautiful planet before her. It positively glowed in the center of the Gothic quatrefoil window of the cathedral ship, beckoning. The porthole displayed the lush blue-green sphere in a four-lobed, clover frame; lucky find indeed. And it was calling to her.

"It’s … amazing. Can you all feel that planet? With your psychic powers heightening, I imagine.…"

Yes, Captain, we can. The young officer beside her, the XO of the Dark Nest ship, Intan Tseng, smiled, his light ochre skin offset beautifully by the deep purple and black of his ship robes. The planet hid its location until we needed it. Somehow, incredibly, it was cloaked. We had radar indications that didn’t match up. Then, after the Light Nest exploded from the Homeworld’s sabotage and our own self-destruct systems were triggered, the planet, Sanctuary, fully appeared. We do feel it. We think, somehow, it’s psychic too.

Fascinating, Liz breathed, wanting to rush back to the Reverie to begin research on it as her ship had special sensors to determine a planet’s gifts – a much better use for a ship, she thought, than the piracy deterrent she’d been sent out for. But she didn’t want to do anything that could possibly give the Homeworld information about the place.

As much as she wanted to indulge the overwhelming desire to touch down on the planet’s surface, to go and meet this place that already felt more like an entity than a planet, there were things to do first. Safety. Battles. Rescue.

As she stared at her reflection in the glass, three other faces appeared, floating close to her, peeling off from her form as if phantoms were escaping her body’s confines to haunt her. But they were all her. All her consciousness. Lizzie, her Victorian self in her favorite riding habit; L’Bet in her druidic priestess robes; Beth in her Women’s Royal Air Force uniform trying to survive the London Blitz; and her: starship captain in this twenty-fourth century in a burgundy suit with artful lapels.

Is that all of you? the XO asked gently, nodding to the reflections. Your iterations, your simultaneous timelines? Professor Saire told us that a connection across time, ‘past lives lived in present tense’ she’d said, may be possible for some of us. I didn’t know it was you that proved the possibility.

Liz swallowed hard at the mention of her beloved mentor’s name. She missed Saire more than she could possibly put words to and wondered just how terrified the poor woman was now that the Psychically Augmented populace was under the attacks she had so feared. Liz ached to think she might never get the chance to apologize for not believing or supporting her. Or to tell her how sorry she was she’d cut off contact. But Saire wouldn’t want her to be mournful, she’d want her to act.

You can see the timelines too?

Intan nodded. Since Sanctuary revealed itself, it seems we all are proving more of an open book, psychically and energetically. So much has been revealing itself to us.

Liz sat with the extreme discomfort of this. She’d hidden all her life; her gifts, her talents, the fact that she was present in four different consciousnesses across four timelines were things only a few trusted people in her life knew. But now, it was becoming a critical fact that could hurt or help her, depending on who she revealed herself to. Recent events were encouraging her to trust the acute empaths she found herself surrounded by, regardless of her comfort level.

The voice of that very woman, the teacher and mother figure who had been the first to truly help her understand herself, across all timelines, was suddenly heard off to the side of the central nave of the ship. Liz turned to the sound hungrily.

Light from a monitor screen played off two youthful faces watching it, Lieutenants Asha and Lee. Partners, they were also fiercely determined problem-solvers. They were shifting their attention between the screen and small tablets and communicator cuffs in their hands, adjusting code and programming with swift keyboard strokes.

The monitor showed a grainy recording, and a more youthful Saire, a bit blacker strands in her hair than the silvery white Liz had last seen. Striking as ever, that hadn’t changed.

I hear you, the professor called out gently. I hear your mind. It’s Omal, isn’t it? I hear you in the darkness. Please don’t give up. I’ll try to find you. Please do not despair, though I hold your pain in my heart. You’re not alone and you’re not the only one.

Liz approached as if magnetized. Lieutenant Asha, lithe and brown-skinned, an officer likely in their early twenties with a brilliant smile and expressive eyes that were filled with tears, looked up at Liz’s approach.

This is the message I got on my video phone when I was a child, Asha explained, when my head hurt so badly from hearing others’ thoughts and feeling others’ hearts that I almost walked into the sea. At this, Lieutenant Lee looked up from the communicator cuff they were rewiring and briefly squeezed Asha’s hand in comfort. Lieutenant Asha wiped tear-stained cheeks and continued.

But Saire reached out. She found me. A week later, I was at the training school in the Western State Alliance. I was one of the first ones to sign up for the Nest missions. I’ve kept her message ever since, to remind me of how close I was to giving up.

We think, Lieutenant Lee chimed in hopefully, lifting up a communicator cuff, "that we can actually use the psychic note and signature that brought Asha and I back together and calibrate it to see if we can find Saire. Dark Nest command has indicated that while the Homeworld Training School has been attacked, there may be escape