Captain Blite knows that someone, or something, is trying to kill him. But a device he possesses, known only as the dark diamond, won't let that happen. After surviving a series of catastrophic accidents and assassination attempts, Blite realizes that whenever he dies, the dark diamond reverses time to a moment before his death. He must go through the traumatic experience again and again until he escapes. Every encounter Blite survives generates a time flash that reveals potential futures. This extraordinary phenomenon attracts the attention of Polity agents and the crab-like p-Prador who wish to acquire this power for themselves. Hunted across space and time, Blite must uncover the true nature of the dark diamond before it causes his destruction.

Ottanger is a rebel and mutant on an Earth governed by a ruthless Committee. But after its Inspectorate experiments on him, Ottanger realizes the mutation allows him to reach alternate worlds. The multiverse is revealed in all its glory and terror --- and he understands that he finally can flee his timeline. Then Ottanger meets the Fenris, an evolved human, visiting his Earth from the far future. He’d engineered the original world-walking mutation, so those altered could escape the Committee’s nightmarish regime. Yet this only worked for a few, and millions continued to suffer. And Ottanger sees that that Committee will become unstoppable if not destroyed. However, the Fenris has drawn yet another threat to Ottanger’s Earth. With the power of its trillion linked minds, it craves world-walking biotech and will do anything to get it.