“I want my files back.” I thrust out my hand. “I need to know what else they’ve been hiding from me.”
Yellow hands them over, and the woman lets out a loud snore and thrashes her arms.
“We have to get out of here,” Yellow whispers. She rubs her hands up and down her arms. “I’m in deep trouble. I projected back in time again. I wasn’t supposed to do that. Red is monitoring me. He probably thinks I followed up on another lead, but Alpha is going to know. He’s just going to know. And then they’re going to come after me.”
“So go back.” I shrug. “Let me be and go back.”
Yellow shakes her head. “I want to know what you’re planning on doing.”
“I don’t know, but Alpha needs to be stopped. He tried to get me to kill an innocent man, just like . . .” Just like my dad. Goose bumps line my arms. Was my dad an innocent man, too? Was he set up by Alpha? There’s so much I still don’t know. So much I have to find out.
“Just like what?” Yellow says.
“Nothing.”
“Look, I’m not going back if your plan is to sneak into Annum Hall in the middle of the night and kill everyone.”
“Wow,” I spit. “Do you really think I’m a sociopath? Honestly. I’m not going to kill anyone. I’m going to . . . I don’t know. Gather all of this evidence and take it straight to the Department of Defense?”
Yellow’s eyes get wide. “You can’t do that.”
“Sure, I can. I just have to collect—”
“No, I mean you really can’t do that. Alpha must have anticipated that you would try to turn him in to the authorities. We’ve already gone back. We’ve changed it. You can’t . . .”
What is she talking about?
“Will you stop with the verbal diarrhea and just tell me?” I say.
“You’re on the most wanted list,” Yellow says, and my neck reels back like I’ve been slapped. “The one they don’t hang in post offices. The one that only a handful of people get to see. You step foot inside DC and you’re done for.”
My body feels light. I made a rash decision when I ran away, and now I can’t ever return. Because I’m wanted.
“Yellow, go back and leave me alone. I’ll figure this out.”
“I’m not going back. I just told you that they’re going to realize I made an unauthorized projection.”
“So tell them you were following a lead!”
Yellow sighs and walks over to the old woman lying in the bed. There’s a plastic drawstring bag on the table next to the bed. Yellow picks it up, opens it, and tosses me a flowered muumuu and a pair of fleece-lined plastic mules. “Put these on.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m not stealing an old lady’s clothes.”
“Put them on,” she snarls. “Someone from Annum Guard is going to be here any minute. Do you want the manhunt to end before it’s even started?”
I huff but realize she’s right. I slip the muumuu over my head, then take off the hospital gown underneath it. I slide my feet into the shoes, and Yellow grabs my hand and leads me out the doorway.
“Yellow, what are you doing?” I hiss as we run down the hallway. But Yellow zips this way and that until we’re running down the stairs and into the emergency room. People are everywhere. Doctors, nurses, patients. But Yellow charges ahead as if she belongs. She flings open the curtains to the triage beds as she goes. There’s a little girl holding a broken arm. An old man whose breathing is all raspy. And then there’s a doctor with a mobile suture cart rolled up next to him, working on a teenage boy with a gash on his calf.
“Who are you?” the doctor practically snarls. He’s young, probably a resident, and has bloodshot eyes with defeat written all over them.
“Sorry!” Yellow says. “Wrong bed. Looking for my mom.” The doctor turns back around, and Yellow swipes a scalpel from his tray. I raise my eyes at her, but she tucks the scalpel into the sleeve of her sweater and leads me out of the ER, onto the street. Only then does she drop my hand.
She hands me the scalpel and holds out her arm. “Cut it out.”
“Excuse me?”
“The tracker. Cut it out of my arm.” Her hand is shaking. The scalpel waves in front of me like a flag in the wind.
“I’m not cutting anything out of your arm. I want you to leave me alone. Go back to the present, Yellow.”
“Like it or not, I’m your only ally now. Alpha has everyone convinced that you’re trying to bring down Annum Guard.”
“So go back and convince everyone otherwise!”
“You don’t understand the climate there. It’s freaking scary, Iris. Alpha has everyone on lockdown. There are cameras all over the place. More cameras. Everyone thinks you’re dangerous. Even my dad.”
I shake my head. “Why should I believe that your dad wasn’t a part of this setup from the get-go? He knew my dad, too.”
“I don’t know what he knew.” She drops down onto a bench and cradles her head in her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe my dad did know about you all along. Maybe he’s been in on the lie. I don’t know who to trust anymore. And that’s why I can’t go back there. So I’m staying, and you’re going to help me cut this damned tracker out of my arm. That’ll send a message. My tracker will deactivate, and they’ll know I’m not a puppet anymore either. That will rattle them.”
“Or they’ll think I killed you, and that will only strengthen their resolve.”
Yellow holds out her arm again. “Cut it out. Now. Or I will.”
“Yellow—”
“Use the scalpel, Iris!”
“You’re going to need medical attention. How are you going to get it if Annum Guard is already following up on every arm injury to teenage girls recorded in the last—whatever—years? You’re going to get caught.”
Yellow doesn’t respond, but her teeth tug on her bottom lip, so I know she didn’t think about that.
“We’ll go back before there were records,” she says. “We won’t get caught if we go back far enough.”
“And you also might die of blood loss.”
“1812,” Yellow says. “This date, 1812. Set your watch.”
“Yellow, that’s ridiculous. I’m not going to—”
POP!
Yellow and I gasp and turn. Orange stands a few feet in front of us at the entrance to the hospital. His eyes narrow when he sees us.
“Yellow,” he snarls. “What the hell are you doing?”
Yellow turns to me with panicked eyes. “Do it!”
My fingers fumble with my watch as I turn the year dial. The hands fly around the face, and I pray I counted right.
Yellow shuts her pendant, and there’s another POP! as she disappears out of view.
“No!” Orange screams, then he looks right at me. “Don’t you dare!”
“Don’t believe everything you’re told,” I tell him. And then I project back to 1812.
CHAPTER 21
When I land, I’m standing on an empty tract of land where Massachusetts General Hospital will one day be.
“Sixty seconds,” Yellow gasps beside me. “That’s all we have. More like fifty seconds now. Cut it, and we’ll project again!”
“This is crazy, Yellow, where do you expect to project to?”
“Forty-five seconds!”
I grab the scalpel from her. “Damn you!” I snarl. “Hold out your arm and grit your teeth!”
Yellow steadies her feet and turns her head to the side. “Do it.”
I take a breath and dig the tip of the scalpel into Yellow’s forearm. She gasps but doesn’t yell. But then I cut deeper, and she does. She lets out a scream that echoes across all of Boston. I’m hurting her. I flinch, but then there it is! I dig the little green chip out with the blade of the scalpel. The cut is much cleaner than the one I made on my own arm. Having a proper medical tool sure helps.