They were not followed by the white tree. For generals and janitors alike, it remained a perplexing secret in the Pentagon. But the orchard lived now within Tatiana, a peaceful, brilliant weight. She could feel them, the 230 fruits of possibility, hanging in the internal branches of her decided spirit. They were not burdens, but they were possibilities, and in a world still shaped by Benjamin’s ruthless authorship, possibility was a vulnerability. In a leased safehouse, a plain, furnished flat in Arlington with beige walls and the scent of stale coffee, Tatiana made a new commitment. Not of harmony, but of brutal editing. “We are not living 230 more variations,” she warned Alexander, her voice low and forceful. They sat at a laminate table, tiny Mira asleep in a carrier near them. The Pentagon tree's lone pearlescent fruit rested between them like a piece of paper. “He built this narrative to be endless. A trap with limitless doors. We close them. All of them.” Alexander gazed at t

The air in the safehouse crackled with aftermath. Mira-20 stood tall and delicate in her newfound adulthood, surrounded by the smell of ozone and spent potential. Ten years, vanished. The math was awful. Alexander took the lead, removing his own sweater and placing it over his daughter's shoulders. His hands trembled. He was looking at a ghost, the woman his little girl will become, pushed into being by a war she didn’t cause. “You will not do that again,” Tatiana said. She spoke in a low, icy voice. Where wings had once been, a deep ache in her back started to sear. Not with the heat of feathers, but with the frigid fire of full negation. Mira-20 adjusted the sweater, her motions beautiful, foreign. “It’s the only way that works, Mother. The roots have to be cleaned from within. I am the only one who can traverse them. I am the heir. The continuum.” Her eyes softened with a grief befitting a much older soul as she gazed at Alexander. “There’s another way to end it cleanly. A surgi

The final fruit shone in Mira's hand as the Reflecting Pool's still waters reflected its light. It was quiet for a Sunday evening. Tourists had dispersed; only a few joggers lined the paths. Unaware of the cosmological decision being made on its behalf, the planet seemed ordinary. Alexander and Tatiana walked gently toward one other, their footfall resonating on the marble. They were no longer trying to stop her. They were out of plans, out of fire, out of will. They stood before their daughter, who contained the seed of their end or their beginning. Mira gazed from the fruit to them, her expression unreadable. Then, with a sigh that seemed to hold the weight of all her skipped lifetimes, she knelt. But she did not plant it. She laid it lightly on the marble step at the foot of Lincoln’s statue. As soon as it left her hand, the fruit began to transform. It grew. Not into a tree, but expanded to the size of a melon, its iridescent skin becoming translucent. Inside, they could see n

Her blood was the ink of the real. As it flowed along the gaps, the mirror stopped shattering. The scarlet threads of her life held the fractures together as they stabilized. Eventually, the thousands of small, flickering images inside the fractures vanished, leaving only a plain, dark glass that was tinted with her blood. Then, the blood began to move. Not drip, but to flow with purpose, spreading itself along the fissures. It gathered in certain junctions, pooled in specific forms, as if obeying the directions of an invisible architect. The mirror itself began to shift, the frame dissolving and reforming. The pearlescent material flowed like heated wax, stretching, narrowing. The rectangular mirror collapsed in on itself, the blood-lined crevices becoming seams in a new construction. In less than a minute, the mirror of all possibilities was gone. In its place stood a door. It was simple, made of the same white, iridescent substance, now matte and chilly. It had a basic, circul

Underfoot, the grass was genuine and cool. The sound of the sprinkler was just a sprinkler. The distant laughter was just children. The world kept its shape. It did not change into a warehouse or sprout a white tree. They strolled to the swing set. Alexander picked up Mira and placed her on a green bucket seat designed for young children. He gently shoved her. Her squeal was the most exquisite melody Tatiana had ever heard; it was an unadulterated, pure ecstasy. She stood behind him, watching their daughter swing back and forth, back and forth, a perfect, uncomplicated pendulum of bliss. The repetitive creak-creak of the chains was a lullaby. Alexander’s hand found hers again. Instead of Mira, he was staring at her. His concentrated look was filled with awe that was entirely focused on the woman next to him and had nothing to do with magic. “It’s over,” he replied, not as a question, but as a man finally believing the dawn. “The war is,” Tatiana corrected quietly, letting Mira’s