by Kate Norris
“But you do think he’ll have some of the papers here, right?”
Her whole plan relied on the hope that he would. So far, everything had gone so smoothly, but that wouldn’t mean anything if they couldn’t find what they were looking for.
“I mean, I think so—there has to be something.” Scott gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “It’s a good plan, Winnie.”
“I think so too,” Winnie said. “But I thought that about our other ones also.”
* * *
• • •
They decided the best plan of attack was to quickly skim through the files and pull anything that looked especially important, then set it aside for further review. It would be easier if they could make a mess, but the break-in was supposed to have happened before James’s death a few days earlier, so they couldn’t leave any obvious sign that things had been disturbed.
“Oh, now, this is interesting,” Scott said. “It’s a copy of Gamow’s article on quantum tunneling. Fermi has marked up the margins everywhere. It looks like he thinks that quantum tunneling might allow not only energy but matter to pass through barriers—barriers like the ones between different realities.”
“That is interesting. Does he say how?”
Scott frowned. “No, he doesn’t mention a mechanism of travel. Not here, anyway.”
“Let’s take it,” Winnie said.
“I don’t think a published article is going to—”
“Not to plant on Hawthorn.” Winnie gave him a faint smile and shrugged. “I just want to read it.”
They continued to pore over materials, focusing on anything handwritten: mostly diagrams and scribbled experiment results.
They spent the next hour or so skimming Fermi’s files, sorting the papers they pulled into three piles: the first, papers they were (almost) certain were worthless, but that contained some handwritten note from Fermi about the Manhattan Project; the second, experiment results that seemed important and needed a closer look; and the third, copies of memos that appeared to detail his results in more plain speech for the military higher-ups. By the time they were on the final file, Winnie’s brain was starting to feel a bit mushy from scanning so many equations, and they had yet to find anything that seemed a fail-safe way to send Hawthorn to prison.
She tossed a folder onto Fermi’s desk, a bit careless from exhaustion, and accidentally knocked the doodle-covered day planner off his desk. As she bent over to pick it up, she noticed a folded piece of draft paper lying on the desk—it must have been tucked under or inside the planner. As soon as she touched it, a sick frisson shivered up her arm, as if the paper were somehow charged not with electricity, but something just as deadly and far stranger.
She laid the paper flat on the desk. It was a large sketch of some sort of pod, the bulb of it tapered then extending to a platform. The thing looked like a weapon—a torpedo, perhaps. She quickly scanned the specifications and began to shake.
“What is it?” Scott asked.
“The bomb,” she whispered. “It’s the schematic for the atomic bomb.”
It was just a piece of paper, but it detailed a terrifying force.
This was exactly the sort of thing they’d been looking for.
Scott whistled low. “Now, that does look treasonous, doesn’t it?” He gave a relieved-sounding laugh. “Yeah, I think that should do.”
Winnie agreed that this must be just about the last piece of paper government officials would want in outside hands.
“This is the kind of thing that could be sold to the Axis for money that would make even Hawthorn blush,” Scott said with a grin.
But Winnie found it impossible to return Scott’s smile.
She passed the paper to him. She didn’t want to touch it anymore.
“Did you see the output?” she asked.
Scott nodded. “A sixty-terajoule blast!” He sounded dazzled.
Winnie frowned at him. “Scott, an explosion like that . . .” She trailed off. “It’s a terrible thing,” she finished after a moment, unable to find the words to adequately express how it horrified her.
“Yes,” Scott said, nodding seriously. “I’m glad it’s ours.”
“It shouldn’t be anybody’s. It shouldn’t exist!”
“Well, that’s debatable,” Scott said, “but the fact is, it does exist—or it will. There’s nothing we can do to change that, even if we wanted to.”
Winnie frowned at him, trying to think of some way around the harsh truth of his words. There wasn’t one. The plans for the atomic bomb were surely duplicated in other offices, and more irretrievably, in other minds. They couldn’t eradicate them all.
“Winnie,” Scott said gently, “this frees us. We found our ticket out of the whole mess, just like you planned.”
Slowly, Winnie nodded her head.
“So, let’s go,” he said. “We’ll plant this in Hawthorn’s office. Then we can go home.”
Winnie carefully folded the schematic and tucked it securely in the pocket of her skirt. She tried to shake the guilty feeling it gave her, using something so awful for her own ends. She was just one girl. She couldn’t stop people from killing each other. She couldn’t end war. But maybe she could save Scott. Maybe she could save herself.
* * *
• • •
They put Fermi’s office back in order carefully. Winnie refiled most of the papers they’d pulled, but kept several of the more important-looking ones, in addition to the bomb schematic. They wanted enough evidence that it would be irrefutable that Hawthorn had stolen items from Fermi’s files, not just stumbled on one vital piece of paper.
When they were done, Scott reinstalled the doorknob. Then he checked his watch. “My god! It’s almost five!”
Winnie gave a tired laugh. “You sound surprised, but that feels about right.”
“We need to plant these in Hawthorn’s office quickly, so we can get you back home before Professor Schulde wakes up.”
She hadn’t thought about how long things might take when they were coming up with this plan. Father usually got up around six o’clock.
“You’re right—we’d better hurry.”
“At least for that, I have a key. Hawthorn’s office is in the same suite as your”—he looked away guiltily—“as Winnie’s father’s.”
“I didn’t expect to just take her place,” she said. “You know that, right?”
“I know,” he said.
But he still wouldn’t look at her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The physics department’s administrative offices were down on the first floor, close to the lab Winnie had so briefly seen when she met James. As head of the department, that was where Hawthorn had his personal office, along with the offices for Nightingale staff.
Scott unlocked the exterior door. As soon as they opened it, Winnie noticed a light was on—a small lamp on the receptionist’s desk.
The two of them looked at each other nervously. “Do you think—”
The door to Hawthorn’s office swung open.
It was him.
Hawthorn looked at them with surprise, then delight.
“It’s her, Scott—isn’t it? You’ve brought her to me!”
For a moment, Winnie thought she’d been tricked. If her own double could betray her—
But one glance at Scott showed he was as shocked as she was. And Hawthorn noticed.
She started backing toward the door.
“Stop right there,” Hawthorn said. “All it takes is one call, and Scott’s finished. I have evidence to back up my accusations, you know.”
Winnie closed her eyes tight for a moment in frustration—the papers they had on them, the ones they’d meant to use against Hawthorn—if the police came now, she and Scott would be in more trouble than Hawthorn knew. Scott had some of the papers in
his satchel, and the bomb schematic was right in her pocket. If she were frisked, the police would find it.
Winnie’s heart began to pound even harder. If the night ended with her as Hawthorn’s captive, that would be awful.
But if it ended with Scott in prison?
That prospect was unbearable.
Winnie had been so sure their plan was a good one. She felt like a fool.
Now she didn’t know what to do, except try to stall and hope that some other idea for escape would take shape.
“What are you doing here so early?” she asked.
Hawthorn scoffed. “What, you think I would let Schulde start work before I do? There have always been jealous whispers, wondering how I lucked into my success. Well, there’s no trick to it. I am always working harder than anyone around me.”
Winnie looked over at Scott. She could tell he was thinking hard, trying to puzzle out some way for them to slip this noose. Her own mind was a terrifying blank.
“The real question,” Hawthorn continued, “is what are you doing here?”
“What does that matter?” Scott said quickly. “You’ve obviously spoiled our plans. So, what now?”
Hawthorn cocked his head. “I have a Faraday cage in my personal laboratory down the hall—very comfortable, I assure you. It has a bed, a toilet, anything she could need.”
Scott clenched his fists. “She’s not going in a cage.”
Winnie was scared, but she was also a scientist. Her interest was piqued. Why was it a Faraday cage Hawthorn meant to keep her in?
They had utilized one themselves, and so had Father, but only as a way of protecting Winnie from the electricity necessary for their experiments. Hawthorn seemed to think that not just any cage would hold her—it required a cage that blocked electromagnetic fields.
Even though she was terrified at the prospect of being a prisoner, Winnie still felt excited to learn that they’d been on the right track with their experiment. Her abilities were electromagnetic in nature, and required an energy field to “activate,” just like she had theorized.
Apparently, they were right in thinking that was all she needed. If her travel required additional equipment, Hawthorn wouldn’t be so worried about keeping her isolated from atmospheric electricity.
But there wasn’t anything for her to do with this information now. She and Scott were trapped.
“Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be, Scott,” Hawthorn said. “We’re taking her to the cage now. Like I said, it’s comfortable, and I have no intention of harming her in any way. Why would I? She’s—special. And I need her. With James gone, I need her now more than ever.”
Winnie was scared, but she was also furious. How dare Hawthorn think he had some right to her just because she could do something he couldn’t. She wasn’t property. She was a person. Not a tool built for his use.
“Yeah, well, James might not have had any sort of powers, but he was special too,” Scott said, “even if you didn’t think so.”
“Stop!” Hawthorn said fiercely, slamming his palm on the receptionist’s desk. “I loved him like a son.”
The worst part was, Winnie believed it.
“I had no idea his body wouldn’t be able to withstand the serum,” Hawthorn said, in a softer voice now. “But, Scott, don’t you see? She can save him!”
Scott blinked in surprise. He looked back and forth between her and Hawthorn. If he was looking for answers, he was looking in the wrong place. Winnie had no idea what Hawthorn meant, although she was intimately familiar with the urge to undo a death you were responsible for—no matter how unintentionally.
Was Hawthorn just—crazy? If he was, what did that say about her?
Or was he onto something? Scott had already confessed to lying about how time dilation worked, but he also said he didn’t really understand it. What if Hawthorn knew something they didn’t?
“What do you mean?” Winnie asked. “Save him how?”
Hawthorn sighed heavily. He shook his head, then let out a sharp bark of a laugh. “If there’s a god, he’s laughing at us. This incredible power—and he gives it to you! You could control the very fabric of space-time, and you don’t even bother to learn how to sew.”
Ah. A new verse for Father’s old song. She didn’t work hard enough to master her gift; she didn’t deserve it. That had been the refrain all her life.
“My mother,” Hawthorn continued, “she called it her ‘intuition.’ But when Father tried to get her to help him pick investments, she acted like he was asking her to rob a bank! She could have had the world on a platter, but she never accomplished anything.”
What would Hawthorn make of Winnie’s mother? Not much, she supposed. Because it was Schrödinger who took home the Nobel Prize—for a groundbreaking paper that never would have been written without her.
“Say whatever you want, but we both know the truth,” Winnie said. “I got here. You have your state-of-the-art lab and government funding, but I’m the one who can travel between worlds.”
“Then what are you still doing here?” he asked smugly. “Either you have no idea how to get home . . . or you have a home that’s not worth going back to.”
Or both.
He was right on the money, and boy, did it sting.
“You have the animal instinct,” Hawthorn acknowledged. “But I can show you how to use it.”
Scott glared at him. His face was full of loathing.
“You really think you’re something, huh? You’re a murderer.”
“I already told you. She can bring him back! But if she won’t do it—if you won’t convince her—what does that make the two of you?”
What did Hawthorn know? Could she really bring back James?
Did that mean she could bring back Scott too?
. . . and her double?
She had to know.
“How,” Winnie said flatly.
Hawthorn scoffed.
“You’re not going to understand the mechanics of it.”
“Well, I guess you’d better explain it very carefully, then,” she said.
“You’re going to be a real delight to work with, aren’t you?”
“Just tell us!” Scott spit.
Hawthorn placed both hands on the receptionist’s desk. “When you came here, that opening created a connection between our realities. The space-time of our respective worlds—it’s stitched together at that point. It always will be. And that connection, it’s a sort of fulcrum.”
“Like on a seesaw?” Winnie asked.
“Yes! Very good!” Hawthorn said, like she was a puppy who’d learned a surprising new trick.
But Winnie was too distracted by this development to feel insulted.
When she had theorized that there was an inverse relationship between their timelines . . . could she actually have been right?
“So when we go forward in time—‘up’ on the seesaw—my world goes back?”
“The model of a seesaw is an oversimplification, but yes. When you crossed into our world, you didn’t just connect our two timelines to each other. You linked them to yourself. You and the two timelines are connected variables now. Change the position of one timeline, and you necessarily change the other. We can use this connection—we can use you—to manipulate the timelines.”
“How does that help James?” Scott asked.
Winnie knew the answer.
“When I return home,” she said. “I could spring forward. And that would send you all back.”
“You’re a quicker study than I’d hoped,” Hawthorn said, beaming.
She wished she weren’t.
She wished she hadn’t asked Hawthorn to explain.
She wished she didn’t understand.
Scott had been lying when he told her about time dilation, but he had acc
idently hit on the truth. Hawthorn never would have told her any of this if he’d had any inkling that there was also a death in her own world she would want to undo, but now she knew. And now she had to choose.
She could go back. She could save Scott.
But that would mean leaving all her messes for this world’s Scott to clean up. Leave her double dead. Leave James dead. Leave her double’s parents without a daughter.
Or she could go forward. She didn’t know how yet, but if Hawthorn said it was possible, she believed it. She trusted his expertise, if nothing else. It wouldn’t take a big leap. Just a week into her own world’s future, and they could go back to before she got there. Her double and James would be okay.
But her Scott would be gone forever.
And she would never see Mama again.
If she went through with it, would this Scott even remember what had happened? Would Hawthorn? What would stop Project Nightingale from continuing? What would keep Hawthorn from killing James again?
Winnie didn’t have any answers, but she knew the right thing to do.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The realization of what she had to do stuck in her throat like a piece of dry bread.
She didn’t want to go.
Of course, that assumed she could even figure out how.
“So, you’re going to just let her leave?” Scott asked, voice dripping with skepticism. “You’re going to send her into her own world’s future so that we go back to before James’s death? That’s awfully selfless of you. But if that’s true—why the cage?”
Scott thought Hawthorn was lying. But Winnie was sure he was telling the truth. She could feel the rightness of it in her bones. This wasn’t like when she had jumped on Scott’s suggestion of time dilation because she was so desperate to believe she could undo the past. This was making a sacrifice, moving forward, and fixing the mistake she’d made by coming here.
“Scott,” Hawthorn said with a chuckle, and shook his head, “no. Of course I’m not letting her go! Not until I can create a tether. Some kind of leash—made of energy, not matter, of course—that lets me pull her back after she’s gone.”