The aliens came to uplift humanity—and brought with them quantum computation that allows chosen humans, called cognates, to travel between parallel universes. Jirayu’s wife Yvette disappeared when the aliens arrived. When Yvette returns, she’s an artifact of the future, a soldier from another timeline . . . and she carries with her the answer to why Jirayu is targeted by killers who have snuffed out every other version of Jirayu. Yvette lost her wife Jirayu once before, and she’s determined to keep this version alive at any cost. But as she learns more and more of the aliens’ plans, she realizes she has a choice to make. She can continue being their weapon, or escape with her wife to a world where there is no war, no aliens, and where both of them can set the terms of their fate—forever.

Drawn into an extraterrestrial war, Ingvild Tang will do anything to meet her anchor, the cognate meant to be the other half of her quantum pair. When sent to retrieve an anomaly—the husk of an alien neither dead nor alive—she encounters an enemy agent who looks too Hua Ziyi, a version of a woman she loved and lost, but from another timeline. They soon begin a chase, cat and mouse, seducer and seduced, as warring factions fight for supremacy. Each of the women has a unique connection to the anomaly. Each of them could make or break the war—or shatter spacetime for good. All they have to do is to each other, or their factions victory?