“Or the other way around.”
Bryn trailed her fingers over the display. The gesture brushed away the dirt along one corner of the screen, and Rett noticed a small logo emblazoned there. Something cold and hard dropped into his stomach. “Bryn, look.”
She followed his gaze to the graph of overlapping lines accompanied by a single word. “Scatter,” Bryn read. “This device belongs to Scatter.”
The silver of the box gleamed in the angled light. Rett reached into his pocket and brought out the rock he’d found in the depot. The bright veins flashed silver.
“Where did you get that?” Bryn asked.
“From the depot.”
Bryn took the rock from him. “That man said Scatter was collecting meteorites. So they could strip an alloy from them.”
“So they could build this thing,” Rett agreed, surveying the box. “But what is it?”
Bryn examined the display again—the list of names, the antenna icons. “The mechanisms they put in our heads…”
“They’re communicating with this box. Why?”
Bryn mumbled something to herself. Rett strained to make out the words. “Every time we get scared, we start over,” Bryn said. “The mechanisms in our head know when we need to get away. They send a signal … and this box sends a signal back…”
“Why? What does it do?”
Bryn turned to him, a faraway look in her eyes. “The GPS unit. The date—what’s the date on the display?”
Why does it matter? But Rett took the unit out of his pocket and handed it to Bryn.
“Still wrong,” Bryn said. “Six years in the future.”
“It’s broken.”
“No. It can’t be wrong. It’s connected to a satellite.”
Rett let out an impatient huff. “The satellite’s wrong.” Who cares?
“It’s not wrong.” Bryn pocketed the unit with a trembling hand. “We woke up in the depot—no, outside the depot. We just showed up there. That’s how we first got to this place. We showed up six years in the future.”
“What?” Rett shook his head again. “That doesn’t make any sense.” But the images swimming in his head said otherwise: dates printed on foil and scratched into the metal of a wall in the depot. All future dates.
“And every time we get scared, we go back to that original point,” Bryn said. “Because of the mechanisms in our heads. Because of this box.”
“Are you saying—?” Rett couldn’t quite make the words come out.
“We’ve been traveling in time,” Bryn said. “And this box is how we’ve been doing it.”
Rett’s fingers went to the scar on his scalp before he realized what he was doing. They put something in our heads … An urgent voice came to him: There’s only one way left to do this. You’ll have to find it.
They’d sent him to do a job. In the future. Some experiment they weren’t willing to try on themselves. Only on orphans no one would miss if they never came back.
“Why did Scatter send us to dig up their own device?” Rett wondered aloud.
Bryn touched the silvery metal. “The government’s guarding this thing.”
“Maybe they know Scatter is using it and they’re trying to catch them.” Rett fought against the panic needling its way under his skin. “Maybe they don’t want Scatter to use it.”
“But why?”
“Maybe the government wants to use it for themselves.”
Bryn lifted her gaze to Rett’s, her eyes wide. “They could use this device to go back in time. Reverse the experiment that turned this place into a wasteland. That made everyone sick.”
Rett took in the sandy crawl surrounding them. “It doesn’t look like they’re doing that.” Why not? If we can go to the future, why not to the past? His nerves went electric at the thought. We could go to the past and prevent this disaster from ever starting. My mother would never have gotten sick, we’d never have gone hungry. And all those other people—
“They don’t want to,” Bryn said. “They don’t want to change what they did. The man in the depot said all the government really cares about is getting more rare metals. They need to use this crisis as an excuse to go to war.”
Rett felt as if he were sinking into the soft dirt. “Scatter could use this device to go back in time and make everything better, but the government’s trying to stop them.”
Bryn’s voice shook when she next spoke. “Which means we walked right into the government’s trap.”
A distant hum that had been building in Rett’s ears now grew too loud to ignore. He looked up. Far off, a black smudge moved across the sky. “The signal from the alarm box,” Rett said, rigid with fear. “The government knows we’re here.”
Bryn followed his gaze. “A helicopter. They’re coming for us.”
“They know we found the device. They don’t want it dug up.”
The buzz of the helicopter was loud enough now that Bryn had to raise her voice. “Why did Scatter send us here in the first place? Are we supposed to bring this back with us?”
Rett looked from the device to the helicopter, his heart beating to match the thrum of the blades. Wind from the blades whipped up the dirt around them so that Rett had to cover his face with his arm. “We have to go now.”
The helicopter descended. Rett gripped the sides of the box, hoping it would go with him wherever he was transported to. After a moment, Bryn did the same, her hands touching his. “Lighthouse,” Rett said, and Bryn joined in. “Boat, gulls, clouds.” The wind from the helicopter’s rotors tore the sound from their throats. “Waves, stars, fish, home—”
2:07 P.M.
The drum of the helicopter gave way to the low hum of an air vent. The whip of wind and dirt vanished. Rett sat in a stuffed armchair, facing a window that looked out on a garden where green vines tumbled down to meet a thicket of green leaves. His mouth watered at the sight.
He eased himself out of the chair and found cool wood under his bare feet. Pain and thirst no longer knocked a steady beat against the inside of his skull. Air from a vent ruffled the sleeves of his clean white jumpsuit.
A crumbling canyon. Then—a cool, clean room.
The shock of it made his legs tremble so that he almost had to sit back down. Where am I?
A narrow bed lay along one wall of the small room, a bookcase along another. The window shared space with a nicked wooden desk. A pair of cardboard slippers stuck out from under the armchair. Rett moved to a record player on a little table and set the needle in the groove of the record waiting there. A tinkling melody filled the room, so familiar he stumbled back. The song. The one Bryn sang in the depot.
Bryn.
Where is she?
What is this place?
He yanked open a desk drawer. Inside lay a single sheet of thick stationery marked with a logo of jagged lines. Familiar words were printed on it.
…
One lonely lighthouse
Two in a boat
Three gulls circle
Four clouds float.
Five foaming waves fall
Six stars glow
Seven fish follow
Eight steps home.
…
The song. The passphrase that had initiated their return home.
I’m home, Rett thought, testing the idea. Is this home?
He looked around the room. No metal walls, no buttons or levers. No dust or mysterious gouges. Only a bed, a desk, a table, a bookshelf.
A window showing the green world outside.
He opened another drawer in the desk and found a sheaf of papers inside. Sketches of strange artifacts: amulets and staffs and a battered treasure chest. I drew these. He recognized them from the comics he’d created at Walling, except these sketches were smoother, the shading better. I sat at this desk and drew these.
He touched the drawing of the treasure chest and conjured an image of a metal box unearthed from a wasteland. Unease settled over him. I was just in a wasteland, and now …
The keypad over the door handle.
He scrabbled at the handle, punched the keypad. “Hey!” The door shuddered under his fists. “Hey!”
He landed a kick on the door, and then, to his surprise, it opened.
A woman in a white lab coat stood on the other side, holding the door handle.
I know her. Flushed cheeks, shatterproof expression. He knew what her voice would sound like before she spoke: calm, careful.
“Rett?” She peered at him, eyes wide with concern. “Is everything okay?”
He gaped at her, picturing her standing over a hospital bed, listening to her urgent warning in his ear. You’ll have to find it …
Two men in white scrubs stepped into the room with her, and then Rett found himself sitting on the narrow bed while a penlight shone in his eyes. One of the medics held his wrist, checking his pulse.
“He seems disoriented. Rett, how do you feel?” The woman’s musical lilt worked like a spell to calm Rett’s nerves.
But something was happening to him while he sat trembling under her concerned gaze. The room around him seemed to gather closer, or at least, it was losing its strangeness. He felt he had sat in this place before, had spent nights sleeping in this bed, days gazing out that single window into the bright garden. He knew this woman, Dr. Wells. In fact, he’d lived in this room for weeks—months, maybe. Ever since he’d left Walling Home.
But how could that be true?
“Rett?” Wells’s voice cut through his tangled thoughts. “You know it will take some time. You can’t expect to learn how to use the mechanism right away.”
Rett stared at the logo on her shirt, the overlapping jagged lines. Reality splintering to pieces, he thought. I was lost in a wasteland, I’m safe in this room. It didn’t make any sense.
“The mechanism,” he mumbled, touching the scar on his scalp.
Wells lowered herself into the armchair facing the bed and gave him a sympathetic smile. “It may be years before you’re able to use it. These bursts of frustration, pounding on the door—”
“Years?” Rett didn’t understand. “But I’ve used it already.”
Wells’s gaze snapped to the medics standing now to one side of the bed. One of them entered a number on the keypad, and then they both slipped out and closed the door behind them. Rett felt the click of the lock down to his bones.
“Rett.” The woman’s voice trembled with what Rett thought might be surprise. She leaned forward to claim his attention and settled her featherlight fingers on his arm. “Rett, can you tell me the coordinates?”
“The coordinates?” Rett echoed, unnerved by her sudden fascination.
Uncertainly shadowed her gaze.
“I didn’t get the device,” Rett admitted. “I found it, but I didn’t bring it back here.”
A flicker of confusion crossed Wells’s face. “Do you know the coordinates?”
Rett closed his eyes, recalling the coordinates he’d entered into the GPS unit in the wasteland. He recited them.
When he opened his eyes, she was fumbling with her tablet, pecking at the screen with a shaking finger. She read something in the display and then looked up at Rett, mouth agape.
The next moment, she straightened, her face blank.
What was that about? Rett wondered.
“Tell me what happened—how you got the coordinates,” Wells said in her careful voice.
The air coming through the vent chilled Rett’s neck. But his skin still remembered the heat of the wasteland, the itch of sweat mingling with dirt. “I was in a wasteland.” Out in the wasteland, digging in the sun—and then here, in the cool air. “It was terrible—nothing alive for miles around. Like an ocean, a poisoned ocean.”
Wells’s hand settled on his arm again, and he calmed.
“Bryn was there, too,” he said. “Good thing—I don’t know if I would have survived on my own.”
Wells gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Your mechanisms are synced.”
“Synced?”
“So that if you should find yourself in the future, she will find herself in the future, too.”
A thousand needles pricked Rett’s skin. “You sent us to the future.” Six years into the future. How can that be possible?
“We activated the mechanism.” Wells gave him a surprised smile. “We didn’t realize you would try to use it so soon.”
Rett touched his scar again. His fingers curled away almost instantly. We were right. They put something in our heads. It sent us to the future. “You sent us to find something: the device in the wasteland.”
“You found the device?”
“Yes, we had to dig it up. We hiked for miles, we had hardly any water.”
Her gaze flicked from Rett to the tablet she still held, as if she didn’t know which of them to consult. “That wasn’t part of the plan. If you were ever able to get the mechanism to work, if you were able to reach the future, you were supposed to get the coordinates from representatives in Scatter Labs.”
Scatter Labs—the phrase rang like a bell in his head. That’s where I am: Scatter Labs, six years before the nightmare in Scatter 3.
And I was supposed to stay in these labs when I traveled to the future. But somehow I ended up in that depot in the wasteland.
“That sounds like a lovely plan,” Rett said with a frustrated sigh. “Much nicer than almost dying of thirst in a metal canister. Or of injuries in a wasteland.”
Wells studied him for a moment, head tipped to one side as if he were a puzzle to solve. “You dug up the device.” Her brow furrowed. “Did you see the ID codes? The string of numbers that would have been next to your name?” Her fingers tightened around the edge of her tablet so that Rett thought the screen might shatter.
“I don’t remember. Was I supposed to remember those, too?”
“No, you’ve done fine.” She patted his arm, and Rett was embarrassed to find himself happy to gain her approval. She waited for him to say something, her gaze probing. “What else can you tell me?”
What does she want me to say? “You only wanted the coordinates? Because … someone stole the device from Scatter? And you’re trying to find it?” Helicopter blades thrummed in his head. The government was guarding it. “They put it in the middle of that wasteland.”
“You’re confused. You weren’t supposed to find the device.”
Frustration clawed at Rett. “Can’t you just explain it from the beginning?”
Wells took a long breath that seemed meant to prove her patience. “We successfully implanted the mechanism in your head ten weeks ago.”
“Ten weeks?”
“We turned it on and synced it with Bryn’s. You were told that if you were able to get the mechanism to work—if you ever reached the future—you should ask someone at Scatter Labs for the coordinates of the device. Then you would return to your origin time—here, to this time—and report the coordinates. That would prove that you had visited the future.”
Rett shook his head, trying to clear away the static behind his eyes. “How would that prove it?”
“Because the device doesn’t exist now, in our time.”
Now Rett was really confused. “How do you know it exists in the future?”
“Because it’s sending a signal all the way here to the past. When our team first discovered that signal, we founded Scatter Labs to investigate it. All of our research and development has gone into finding ways to engage with the signal. This was a test run, meant to prove that you could successfully employ the mechanism in your head—that you could travel to the future.”
“The device is sending a signal from the future? And that signal is what allowed me and Bryn to time travel?”
“It interacts with the mechanisms in your head.” Her gaze went to his scar. “The mechanism opens your consciousness and the signal guides it to other moments in time
, moments in your own future.”
Rett shook his head. “What does that mean?”
Wells thought for a moment, her gaze roving the room. “Normally, your consciousness is tied to the present.” She spotted the sheet of stationery on the desk and picked it up. “Your life is like a list of moments that you read in order.”
She held the paper before him so that the blank side faced him, and ran her finger down it like she would down a list.
Except Rett’s side of the paper wasn’t actually blank.
A message was scrawled there that made Rett’s heart speed up.
Wells continued, oblivious to Rett’s anxiety: “But what if you could skip down the list? Skim over some of those moments and read the ones toward the bottom of the paper?”
Rett wanted to nod, to show he was following and not thinking about the words scrawled just next to the woman’s fingers wrapped around the paper. But his muscles wouldn’t obey.
“That’s what the mechanism in your head does,” Wells went on. “It allows you to … skip ahead.” She laid the paper on the bed, message-side down, and Rett could breathe again. “We’ve been over this before. Do you understand now?”
“So you’re saying I…” Rett tore his eyes from the paper on the bed and struggled to process what she’d told him. “I somehow moved forward to a time in my life when…” His stomach lurched as he realized— “You’re saying that the wasteland—being trapped there—that’s my future? That’s where I’ll be six years from now? I skipped ahead in my own life, and that’s where I end up?”
No. That can’t be.
Please say it’s not true.
Wells smoothed Rett’s sleeve. “I’m saying—”
He jerked away. “I’m supposed to find my mom. She’s sick, she needs me—”
“Of course. We can help you with that.” Her voice was smooth, placating. “Whatever you experienced in your future, it’s not set in stone.”
“Other people have changed their futures, then?”
Wells hesitated. “No one’s ever done this before.”
“No one…” Rett gripped the edge of the bed. “You’re saying Bryn and I are the first people you’ve tried this on?”
Wells pressed her lips together. She seemed to be trying to come up with something to say.
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