Keri is a secondary character in Fractured Echoes, but she is crucial to the emotional life of the protagonist, Shatner Barnes. She primarily exists as the representation of the life Shatner is fighting to preserve and caught in the collateral damage of time manipulation.
A Figure of Trust: After the timeline is reset, Shatner is completely honest with her about the incredible truth, that the world is fundamentally different and that she only has memory of the new reality.
Keri’s personality is shaped by her resilience and her role as an anchor in an unstable world, though she is unaware of the true instability.
Unaware Victim: Keri does not possess the unique knowledge of the time shift and the resulting dystopia. She is, therefore, an innocent victim of Ramses’s actions, living in a manipulated reality.
The Subject of Hope: Her existence provides Shatner with the motivation to fix the broken timeline.
Keri’s challenges are internal and secondary, focused on absorbing the impossible truth presented to her.
Accepting an Existential Truth: Her biggest challenge is coming to terms with the reality that the world she remembers is not the “real” world. She had to “come to terms with what was now their reality”.
Lack of Agency: Keri has no agency in the core conflict; she is a passive but essential figure. Her safety is dictated entirely by the success or failure of Shatner’s mission, making her a high stakes emotional leverage point for the antagonist.
