“Someone very special gave them to me. Someone who’s no longer in my life.”
Adeline’s counterpart set the box down beside her plate. “Sorry, I need to—”
Adeline rose. “Please try them on.”
Hastily, she attached them to her ears and forced a smile.
Adeline leaned forward, fingers interlocked. “They’re perfect.”
That’s how she would remember her younger self, in that moment, wearing the earrings that were the bridge between her past and this person’s future.
What came next was less pleasant.
Her counterpart excused herself, retreated to the half bath in the hall, where Adeline knew she was exchanging text messages with Elliott.
Adeline sent a message of her own—to the private security team.
Proceed with phase 1.
A reply came a few seconds later:
Commencing
Adeline didn’t like this part. But it was the path of least resistance.
Right now, the second security team was breaking into Elliott’s home. The city’s security cameras would capture it all, but it wouldn’t matter. The vans had old license plates taken from a junkyard. The team members were wearing balaclavas.
Adeline had verified that Elliott’s wife wouldn’t be home (she was in Europe). There was no chance she’d be harmed. But the police would respond. They would call Elliott, and he would have to leave the lab.
Adeline knew he would return. But not in time. At least, not in time to stop her from sending her younger self to the past. She knew because it had already happened.
Hiro was a tougher challenge. She needed him. But she would cross that bridge when she arrived at it.
Adeline moved to the hall off the foyer and stood by the door to the half bath. She drew the injector pen from her pocket and waited until the door opened. The younger woman turned when she realized someone was standing there, but it was too late. Adeline held the injector to her neck, pressed the button, and reached out as her body went limp.
*
From the security cameras, Adeline knew Hiro was still in the lab with the door locked, as Elliott had instructed. What the two men didn’t know was that Adeline had updated the software on those door locks. It had an override code only she knew.
At the Absolom Sciences building, the private security contractors unloaded the box at the loading dock.
The security guard merely said hello to Adeline. He was used to the scientists bringing items into the labs at all hours. Asking questions of the person who owned the company—and ran the experiments that kept it going—would only get him fired. As such, he didn’t ask any questions.
Adeline had the security team bring the box down to the lab level and set it outside the door to the Absolom Two lab. She didn’t want them to see what was inside—or what was going to happen beyond the door. She instructed them to wait outside the building and alert her when Elliott returned.
With her phone, she unlocked the door.
Hiro was standing at a rolling cart beside the Absolom Two prototype, studying a computer screen. He spun when the door lock clicked open and reached down to his pocket, Adeline assumed for his mobile phone, to call Elliott.
“Don’t do it, Hiro.”
“How’d you get in here?”
“I had the software updated.” Adeline threw a letter-size envelope at his feet. “Look at those pictures, Hiro.”
He reached down, opened it, and began rifling through the historical photos Tesseract had found. The photos that showed Adeline in the past. And the others.
“What is this? A trick? Photo manipulation?”
“It’s real, Hiro. It’s the past. And our future. It’s the answer we’ve been looking for.” Adeline turned and pointed at the box outside the door. “And here is the other one.”
Hiro shook his head. “This is a ruse. You’re going to kill Nora.”
“Look at what’s in the box, Hiro. Please.”
“No.”
“I know you’re going to walk over here and look inside this box because you’re the only one who can operate Absolom Two. Besides Elliott. And he’s too suspicious of me. This has to happen. Because you have to send me back.”
Hiro swallowed hard and shook his head. “No.”
Adeline walked over and opened the top of the box. Two body bags were lying inside. One was breathable. The other wasn’t. She unzipped them enough to expose the faces, then stepped away, giving Hiro plenty of room.
Hiro had said no, but he walked closer and looked down at Adeline’s younger counterpart, breathing in and out, still knocked out from the drug Adeline had injected her with, but alive and well.
“Nineteen years ago, I woke up in that Absolom machine. It transported me back to March of 2008. My birth name is Adeline Anderson.”
Hiro’s voice was a whisper. “You’re lying.”
“I had cosmetic surgery a few years after I arrived in the past.” She studied him, mentally searching for the key that would unlock his trust.
“In that home in Las Vegas, in the basement, you saw me when you exited the tunnel.”
Hiro studied Adeline’s face as she continued recounting the memory. “You grabbed me and pulled me inside and locked the door and turned and walked down the tunnel, to the room with all the doors and the muscular bouncer sitting on a stool. He was reading a hardback book that was wrapped in thin plastic like you might find on a library book.”
Hiro’s eyes went wide.
“Look at the other body, Hiro.”
He stared down. “What is this?”
“The other answer. All this time, we made an assumption. A very big assumption. And we never even thought to question it. That assumption was wrong. We can fix all of this, Hiro. But I can’t do it without you. And we need to hurry. You know I can’t operate the machine. And soon, I’ll need to go through it myself.”
Still staring at the bodies, he swallowed. His chest rose and fell in labored breaths.
“Okay.”
*
Hiro helped Adeline drag the two bodies into the lab and place young Adeline in the Absolom machine. He set about programming two recall rings for Adeline—for the next phase of the plan—and then began prepping the machine for the first departure.
“Date, time, and location?” he asked.
“Monday, March 17, 2008. Around 10 a.m. Stanford. Lomita Mall, right next to the machine shop.”
Hiro typed on the keyboard. “Okay. Ready.”
Adeline peered inside the machine. Her younger self was waking up, looking around, confused.
A fist pounded on the door, and Elliott’s muffled voice called into the room. “Daniele! I’m calling the police.”
“Sorry,” Adeline whispered as she swung the door to the Absolom chamber closed.
She stepped closer to Hiro. “Send her.”
Adeline watched as Absolom hummed to life and transmitted her younger self to the past.
One down. Two to go.
“What now?” Hiro asked.
“Now we get Dad back.”
SEVENTY
Elliott pounded harder on the door, screaming.
Hiro stood at the computer terminal next to the Absolom prototype. “We should tell him.”
“It’s too risky,” Adeline said. “He could try to stop us. We tell him after. Help me get the body in the machine.”
When the black bag was inside Absolom, Adeline closed the door, and Hiro keyed in the departure sequence.
As the machine hummed and the bag disappeared, Elliott stopped pounding on the door. He was leaving. Adeline didn’t like that—he could be going to the police. But she couldn’t let him in. She couldn’t take the chance that he had a gun—and could stop her. The past had to happen as it had.
She would deal with him after it was over.
Adeline felt nervousness growing in her stomach. The next thirty minutes would determine everything: her future, her father’s future, and the fate of the universe itself.
No pressure.
She walked over to the metal table and put the large envelope of photos Tesseract had found back in her pocket and then slipped the recall ring on her wrist. She put the other ring in her pocket. She would need it soon.