Chapter 1
Anonymity is a thing of the past, Corrine thought as they broke through the clouds over Norway. Fjords unfolded gracefully below them as the jet made its slow descent. Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, TikTok: she had studiously avoided them all for the last five (or was it ten?) years.
It had made no difference in the end. Years of hiding, of playing innocent to SHIELD, had won her nothing more than scars and hard work. She would have been content with those as long as they came with peace and her treasured anonymity, but she had been found. She took little comfort in the fact that it had taken the CEO of Stark Industries herself to discover her, hiding right under her nose. She looked across at Pepper Stark, completely composed and serene as usual and wanted to call her a bitch. But she did not. All of her ‘bitch’ criteria applied equally to herself: independent, competent, willing to make the world bend to her will. Indeed, she wished she was as good at being a bitch as Pepper was.
“You can fly me around the world, but you’re still wrong,” She sighed at Pepper for the hundredth time.
“I can afford it,” Pepper smiled indulgently. She pointed out landmarks to her daughter Morgan as the private jet slowly continued its descent. Corrine decided to pull her ace while it was just the three of them.
“So she’s a Bubbler too, huh?” She nodded bluntly at Morgan. The girl smiled up at her at the whimsical term and went back to staring out the window.
“A Bubbler?” Pepper asked as she uncrossed and re-crossed her legs in a sign of feigned innocence as she leaned forward, and Corrine rolled her eyes. Pepper knew full well what a Bubbler was. She may even be one herself.
“You can never get him back, you know?” Corrine cut right to the chase. Not that she hadn’t tried before in the last twenty four hours, but it was still worth a shot with the head honcho.
“I’m not trying to,” Pepper stated calmly.
“Then what are you trying to do?” Corrine tried to keep the seething anger from her voice, but failed.
“Solve the world’s greatest problems,” Pepper answered serenely.
“I have nothing to contribute to those,” Corrine replied with a huff and leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest. World hunger? Climate change? Weird memories of the last five years blurring into ten? She had nada.
The phenomenon had started two years ago. It wasn’t the size of the epidemic that was alarming – less than twenty people had been diagnosed so far. It was the nature of the sickness that was deeply troubling. Certain people were being driven mad by conflicting realties. Not knowing who was dead or who was alive. Recalling events that had never happened as if they were the defining moments of their lives. The patients were all stuck reliving a five year period that began two years after the Attack on New York and ended at the Battle of Stark Tower, but they were living with two versions of that period of their lives. And it shattered their minds. They simply could not untangle the threads of conflicting memories into a coherent narrative. These people were stuck in a five year period of time. A bubble they repeated and could never exit. Hence the slang in medical circles: Bubblers.
Corinne suffered from the phenomenon herself, but she had managed to parse the deluge of fragmented memories into two separate narratives that she held in parallel in her mind and had thus managed to keep her sanity. She had never spoken of it to anyone, had never made a traceable record of her thoughts.
In one of her realities, half the world’s population of animals, plants, and humans had disappeared with one snap of Thanos’ fingers. She had spent five years quietly organizing collectives to help starving and grief-stricken people pick themselves up and learn to survive in a world that had suddenly lost the foundations of its society. She had started near her family’s home and then ranged further and further abroad until she’d found herself in Africa and Asia, drilling wells and plotting acreage for a world gone awry.
In another, the current, reality she worked for Stark Industries. Joining and then eventually leading their commercial arm of artificial intelligence development. She had cowered in the bowels of Stark Tower two years ago, helpless and furious with her own uselessness, when Thanos arrived for the first time and was defeated. The world still grieved the loss of its greatest mind, Tony Stark. No one grieved this loss more than the two women before her. Pepper wore the streaks of gray in her hair and the new crowfeet around her eyes as badges of honor. She had taken that grief and used it to build Stark Industries far beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. Corrine bet that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk had wet dreams over Pepper, but no one would ever replace Tony Stark in her heart. Everyone knew that. Morgan Stark was becoming a force in her own right. What was she? Seven now? And already she was taking over her father’s mantle. She was a genius with Tony’s aptitude for engineering and Pepper’s self-control. In another ten years, that girl was going to be ruling the world.
In all realities she had spent the years before the time split living in deathly fear of SHIELD. Hence the job at Stark Industries. No other company so publicly and savagely thumbed its nose at SHIELD. Stark Industries was the safest place she could be. She had moved into the tower immediately after being released from a SHIELD hospital and never looked back. Corrine absently stroked her left forearm and flexed her gloved hand. Both were covered in a complex pattern of raised, diamond shaped, whorled scars.
They were her souvenirs of a terrifying alien encounter that would have killed her but for her willingness to cross all boundaries and embrace power far beyond her capabilities in order to survive. They were the reason that SHIELD stalked her every move. They suspected, but could never prove, that she was lying when she insisted that she had no memory of events past the first, devastating attack by aliens that had come through the tesseract in an experiment gone horribly wrong. They watched her every move, looking for a slip, a clue, a hint that she was lying to them. They knew that there was something unique and powerful about her scarring. And if they ever found out the truth behind how she’d acquired them, they would lock her in a cell and study and interrogate her until there was nothing left. Hell, they would have done that anyway if she hadn’t been under Tony Stark’s protection.
In both realities she had met, loved, and lost, Loki Odinson before she’d even understood his importance to her.
In both realities, he was dead.