We freeze and turn toward the sound, raising our weapons. Five soldiers stand with the smoke curling around them and their guns pointed directly at us.
“Lower your weapons,” the soldier at the front says.
“Not going to happen,” Zahra replies.
Five against five, and all of us have guns. I’m debating the odds when we hear a snarl nearby. It’s hard to see anything in the smoke, but we all glance around, though we keep our weapons trained on one another.
An Infected woman grabs one of the soldiers and snaps her teeth onto his neck. He screams and tries to fight her off, but before anyone can help him, more of the Infected emerge from the smoke. The soldiers turn their guns on them and begin firing, while we use the distraction to start running. There’s more gunfire and screaming behind us, but I don’t stop to look back, even though my stomach twists at what I just saw.
Paige peers around the edge of a building before turning to the rest of us. “We have a problem. Our escape route has been overrun with Infected. Seems the noise of the explosion attracted them. A lot of them.”
“Shoot our way through?” Zahra asks.
Jesse shakes his head. “Too many. We’d never make it out.”
“We don’t need to make it out,” Paige says. “Only Adam and Elena do.”
“No.” I don’t want my friends dying for me if I can help it. “He’s right. It’s too risky.”
“How much time before the aperture opens?” Zahra asks.
I check my watch. “Forty minutes.”
“Dammit,” Paige says. “That’s barely enough time to get you back to downtown.”
“I might know another way out of here,” Adam says.
He heads west, and we follow close behind him, guns ready to shoot anything that moves in the smoke. We pass a dead soldier with an Infected chewing on his arm, which Paige shoots in the head with one blast of her shotgun. She pumps it and reloads, and we continue on, past dead bodies, both of soldiers and Infected. So much death, and all of it because of us. None of their deaths are real, I remind myself over and over as more cries fill the courtyard. None of this will ever happen.
Adam leads us to a large building that looks like an airplane hangar. He grabs the door handle, but it’s locked. I reach around inside my backpack for the guard’s keys, while the others form a protective circle around us.
A raspy breath is the only warning we have before we’re attacked. Hands reach for us, teeth gnash together, but by then it’s already too late. They’re upon us.
Paige’s shotgun rings out, followed by other gunshots echoing in the smoke. I raise my own gun to shoot the Infected closest to me, but another one slams into my side, making me stumble. I’m dragged down onto the grass, and I lose the gun. Fingers reach around my ankle, and I kick, kick, kick, scrambling to get away, terrified I’ll feel their teeth on me at any second.
There’s a gunshot nearby, and then the fingers around me loosen. Adam reaches for my hand. “You okay?”
I nod as he helps me to my feet. “There are too many of them.”
“We have to get in that door.”
I scramble to find the guard’s keys, while the others keep firing around us. Adam stands at my back and shoots another Infected that gets too close. I try one key in the door, and then another, and another. Someone screams, and I nearly drop the keys, but I keep going, my hands shaking.
Finally I find the right one and throw open the door, rushing inside. “Hurry!”
Adam crowds in after me, and we slam the door shut as soon as the others get through. Two Infected come with us, but we deal with them quickly and then step back. We’re in a large garage full of armored cars and trucks, but there don’t seem to be any soldiers inside.
“I saw this place when I first arrived here.” Adam heads for a nearby cabinet and grabs a set of keys. He leads us to a large armored SUV. Paige grabs the keys from him and hops in the driver’s side, while the rest of us pile in.
All of us except Jesse.
“Get in,” Zahra says. “There’s enough room for all of us. Barely.”
“I can’t.” He’s covering his arm, but now he removes his hand, showing the bloody gash underneath. “I’ve been bitten.”
“No,” Paige cries. She starts to jump out, but Jesse holds up a hand to stop her.
“Someone has to open the gate,” he says. “Go. Get them out of here.”
Paige’s lip trembles, but she nods. Her fingers tighten around the steering wheel as she swallows, and then she starts up the car. Jesse hops onto the bumper, grabbing the back of the car for a short ride to the gate. A garage door clicker along the driver’s visor opens a huge door at the end of the hangar, and we drive through it, leaving safety behind.
The smoke has dissipated a little, but that only makes it worse because now we can see the destruction around the base. Bodies are scattered in every direction. The Infected shuffle through the courtyard, while soldiers hunker down along the edges to fight them off. For a brief moment, I wonder what happened to Vincent. Did he escape all of this, leaving his people behind? Or did he watch as his base fell because he wouldn’t let us go?
When we near the gate, Jesse jumps off and sprints to the control room. There’s one person guarding it, but Jesse knocks him out quickly and slips inside. Now we wait.
“I’m sorry,” Zahra says to Paige. “I know he was your favorite trainee.”
Paige nods, wiping at her eyes. I glance at Adam, who stares out the window with a grim expression. Wombat—Jesse—has been in every future we’ve been to, always helping us in some way. Once, as a friend of Future-Adam’s who got us fake IDs and hit on Zoe. In another timeline, he worked for us at Future Visions and dated our daughter. Now he’s giving up his life to make sure we get out of here, even though he barely knows us. I was upset about him dating Ava at first, but not anymore. If we fix all this and return the future to the way it should be, I’ll gladly give him my blessing—because in every timeline, he’s proven himself to be a good guy.
The gate begins to open, and Paige grips the steering wheel tighter. Jesse steps into the doorway of the control room and gives us a farewell salute, before a bullet strikes him in the shoulder. He staggers but manages to yell, “Go!”
Paige slams her foot on the accelerator the second the gate is open wide enough, and we haul ass through it, tires screeching against the pavement. Gunshots fire after us, shattering the back window, but Paige doesn’t slow. When the bullets stop, Adam and I turn to glance behind us, but Jesse isn’t in sight.
“We left him behind,” Adam says.
“We had no other choice,” I say.
This future isn’t real, I tell myself over and over. It’s. Not. Real.
But it sure as hell feels real.
04:47
Paige pulls up outside the Aether building with a screech of tires. I fire off another round at the three Infected following us. One drops, but then my gun clicks empty. I reach around in my bag, looking for more ammo, but come up empty. I toss the gun aside. “I’m out.”
Adam fires at one of the remaining Infected, but his shot misses. I knew I should have made him come to the shooting range with me. “I’m out too,” he says.
As we come to a stop, Zahra leaps out of the car and shoots both Infected in the head. Her time at the range has definitely paid off. “We’re clear.”
The rest of us get out of the car, but Paige moves a little slower than before. Blood trails from a wound on her leg.
“You okay?” I ask her.
“I’ll get over it.” Paige glances back the way we came, back toward the base where we left Jesse, and then shakes her head. “How much time left?”
I check my watch. “Eleven minutes.”
Another group of the Infected emerges from a building across the street and begins loping toward us. I count five of them, but then three more jump out of the shadows and trail behind. As they approach, I grab the knife I took off the guard and grip it tightly. Za
hra reloads her handgun with her last rounds of ammo. Paige can’t have much ammo left either. Taking on all of them is going to be tough.
Paige pumps her shotgun. “We’ve got this. You two get inside.”
I glance back and forth between the Infected and our friends. Leaving them here now, outnumbered and with barely any ammo, will be signing their death sentences. And no matter how much I tell myself that none of the deaths here matter, it’s different when it comes to my two best friends.
“We can’t leave you with them,” I say, as the Infected get closer and closer.
Paige removes the baseball bat from her back and hands it to Adam. “Don’t worry about us. Just head to the aperture.”
Zahra rests her hand on my shoulder, looking me in the eye. “You need to go. Get back to the present and make things right.”
My throat is tight, but Adam speaks for me. “We will,” he says. “We’ll fix all of this.”
Paige and Zahra take up positions outside the Aether building, ready to defend us with their lives. They both have to know they’ll never make it out of here, but they’re sacrificing themselves so we can escape. So we can undo everything that’s happened in this future.
“We won’t let you down,” I promise them.
“Go!” Paige yells before firing her shotgun at the first Infected. It drops to the ground, and she shoots another. Zahra begins firing too.
“Come on!” Adam grabs my arm and yanks me inside the building just as the Infected attack. I stumble after him and over some debris, the broken glass crunching under my boots, trying to ignore the sounds of combat behind us.
As we near the stairwell door, I make the mistake of glancing over my shoulder. The Infected have surrounded our friends, and Zahra’s ammo clicks empty. She drops her gun and pulls out her sword as one lunges for her. A choked cry escapes me, but there’s nothing I can do but keep going. Especially since some of the Infected have broken off from the main group and are rushing toward us, their jaws snapping, their eyes glazed and hungry.
Adam slams one with the baseball bat, right in the face, with a ferocity that surprises me. I give a hard kick to the one coming for me and send him sprawling back, then turn on the other with my knife. Cold, rough hands grip my arm, tugging me toward them.
I yank my arm free and yell, “Run!”
Adam rushes ahead and throws the door open. I fight off the one nearest me with a slash of my knife to its throat, then turn and run toward Adam as fast as I can.
But just as I slip through the door, hands grab onto my backpack and yank it off my shoulder. “No!”
Adam is already closing the door behind me. I reach for my backpack, but it’s already being dragged away and ripped open, as the Infected search it for food. The door shuts and locks, and the only light comes through the cracks around it.
I reach for the door handle. “The photo was in there! We need to get it back!”
Adam grabs my hand to stop me. “We can’t. We’ve got to hurry if we’re going to make it to the aperture in time, and there’s no way we’d survive against all of those things.”
The Infected pound on the door with metallic thuds, and I know he’s right, but I also feel sick to my stomach at the idea of going back without that photo. Adam and I both saw the man in it, but without the photo, we can’t show it to anyone else or use it to warn people.
“How will we change things without the photo?” I ask.
“We’ll have to rely on your memory.” Adam rests his hands on my shoulders to steady me. “We’ll figure it out. We always do.”
I nod, but I’m not sure I agree with him. Things are so much worse than they ever were before, and we have so little information to go off. But we’ll worry about that once we return to the present. Our time in the future is running out.
We rush down the stairs, trying not to trip over our own feet as we descend into darkness. The basement is pitch-black, and we move through it by touch and instinct. Without my lantern, it’s so dark it’s almost painful. My eyes keep trying to make sense of shapes but can’t latch onto anything real. My heartbeat pounds in my chest, while my mind tries to convince me that we’re not alone, and that something is going to jump out at me. I rely on the sound of Adam’s feet shuffling against the laminate floor, the feel of desks and office chairs and computer keyboards, and the smell of dust and mold and decay.
Finally, we reach the smooth metal of the accelerator and feel our way along it until we find the door. We step inside, moving to the center, and bump into each other in the dark. Adam wraps his arm around me, and I bury my face in his shoulder as we wait for the aperture to open.
“Paige and Zahra…” I whisper.
“I know,” he says, his voice rough.
“We have to change this future. For our friends. For our daughter.”
He rubs my back slowly. “We’ll fix it. Whatever it takes.”
The golden light appears around us like dust sprinkling the air. We straighten up, and I’m so relieved to be going back to the present that I want to cry. But as the light thickens, I hear something moving outside the dome. Footsteps.
“What—” I ask, turning toward the accelerator door. Have the Infected managed to find their way in? They won’t be able to return with us to the present, at least. Only people who have traveled forward in time can go back, according to Dr. Campbell.
The world explodes into light. For a split second, I see a dark figure standing in the doorway of the accelerator. And then we’re gone.
PART III
THE PRESENT
THURSDAY
There’s a third person in the accelerator with us.
It should be impossible, but I sense their presence beside us as my eyes adjust to the fading light. I can’t make out many details yet, except for a vague feminine outline. I grip my knife tighter, just in case. Maybe Dr. Campbell was wrong, and one of the Infected did return with us. Or someone else.
The accelerator door opens. Something hits the floor near my feet with a loud flash. Smoke begins to fill the air, turning it to a murky gray almost immediately. I cough and cover my mouth, but the gas seeps into my eyes and nose, burning me up from the inside out. The dark figure darts away while my head spins and my knees hit the floor.
I reach for Adam before the void swallows me.
I open my eyes. I’m lying on the floor of the accelerator, and my chest hurts. Scratch that, my everything hurts. I feel like I got run over by a truck, multiple times. Plus my eyes are damp and scratchy, like I’ve been crying or something. Returning from the future always results in some physical side effects, but never as bad as this.
My first thought is that I’m suffering from future shock. But as I sit up, the moment before I blacked out comes rushing back to me. The third person who came with us from the future. A woman. She threw some kind of smoke bomb at us that knocked us out, and then she escaped.
Adam coughs beside me. “You okay?”
“I think so.” A million questions rush through my head about who attacked us and why. And where they are now.
My legs still feel unsteady, but we both manage to get to our feet. Faint traces of smoke linger in the air, causing us to cough and squint our eyes. The accelerator door is still open, but it’s oddly quiet outside it. I step out of the machine carefully, keeping my eyes and ears peeled for any hint of danger. The mysterious person could still be out there. But all I see are the scientists and the CEO of Aether Corporation on the floor, and all I hear is the low hum of computers and electrical equipment.
Adam moves to check on the others, who aren’t moving at all. “They’re still alive, but knocked out like we were. Some kind of gas maybe that put us all to sleep for a few minutes. But who would do this?”
I glance around the room, looking for anything out of order. Was something stolen? If it was, I can’t tell. “There was someone else with us in the accelerator.”
Adam’s head snaps up. “Impossible. Only those who travel to the futur
e can return through the aperture.”
“Then Dr. Campbell was wrong…” A new thought occurs to me, and my eyes narrow. “Unless someone else went to the future with you?”
Adam’s brow furrows. “You know I went alone.”
“Sorry. It’s a little hard to trust you at the moment.” My voice comes out harsher than I intend, but now that we’re safely back in the present, my frustration with him is creeping back in. Ever since I found out he quit school and went to the future alone, I’ve worried there’s something else he isn’t telling me, some secret he’s keeping from me. I’m not sure that will ever go away.
He sighs. “I assume you went alone too?”
“Of course I did. I wasn’t risking anyone else’s life.”
The sound of movement and a sharp intake of breath distracts us from whatever we’re about to say next. Vincent is sitting up, rubbing his forehead. “What happened?”
“We’re not sure,” Adam says.
“Someone knocked us out and then took off,” I say, while Vincent slowly gets to his feet.
The other scientists are waking up too, stretching their limbs with pained expressions. Adam helps Dr. Walters up, offering his arm to help steady the older man. Dr. Kapur wears a deep frown and mutters something about how we should all be checked out immediately, but we all ignore him.
Vincent brushes off his suit and surveys the area with clear eyes. “Nothing appears to be stolen, but I’ll check the video from the security cameras. Whoever did this won’t get away with it.”
“But who would do this?” Dr. Walters asks.
I hesitate but decide it’s better to tell them the truth. “Someone might have come back through the accelerator with us.”
“Is that possible?” Vincent asks. He’s moved to one of the nearby computer terminals and is typing something on the keyboard, his eyes intent on whatever is on the screen.
Adam shakes his head. “According to Dr. Campbell in one of the futures we visited, no. She tested it out but couldn’t send anyone back in time.”
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