After class, I pick up Adam, who’s slept away most of the day, thanks to the powerful antibiotics Dr. Kapur put him on. I study him closely as he gets into the car. He’s moving carefully, like his side is still hurting him, but his color is better. He’s wearing a dark suit with a gray tie, he’s shaved his face, and his hair has been tamed. I’ve never seen him in a suit before, and it’s hard to look away from the handsome, confident man in front of me.
“You look nice,” I say. “Going somewhere special?”
He adjusts his tie with a grin. “Maybe I just wanted to look good for you today.”
We drive over the hill into Van Nuys to check out the address on the man’s driver’s license first. A quick scan of the last names at the apartment building shows this is probably a dead end. Harrison must not be living here yet.
Our next destination is Aceso Pharmaceuticals. I pull into the parking lot of a run-down strip mall with a doughnut and kabob shop, a shoe repair place, and a dry cleaner. “Is this the right address?” I ask, as I turn off the car.
“Yeah. I think it’s on the second floor,” Adam says.
I lean back and survey the place. “Now what?”
“I came up with a plan while you were gone.” He holds up a folder he brought with him. “I’m going in.”
“By yourself?” I already hate this plan.
He rolls his eyes. “Yes, by myself. I printed out my résumé, and I’m going to ask if they have any positions available right now. They’ll probably say no, but maybe I’ll learn something about them or get a glimpse of this Harrison guy. That way I can confirm whether it’s him or not.”
I grab the folder from Adam and open it up, then scan the paper inside. I have to admit, his résumé is pretty impressive. He graduated from college with degrees in biochemistry and molecular biology by the time he was eighteen, interned for three years for some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies around, and even volunteered at a children’s hospital for two years. He probably could get a job at a place like this, if he wanted.
I close the folder and hand it back to him. “Just be careful.”
He leans over and presses a soft kiss to my cheek. “I will.”
He gets out of the car, brushes off his suit, and then heads for the stairs to the second floor. I watch him and touch the spot on my cheek where he kissed me, then clutch my origami unicorn pendant. He’s going to be fine, I tell myself. Nothing bad is going to happen.
I keep an eye on the parking lot while he’s gone, watching out for Harrison Weiss or the woman in black. The minutes tick by, and I begin to worry something’s gone wrong. Dozens of scenarios play through my head about what might have happened to Adam, each more ridiculous than the next. For all we know, this place is full of neo-Nazis bent on destroying the world, and Adam just walked in there without any protection.
After forty-five minutes he steps outside, and relief flows through me. He slips back into the car and closes the door, then turns to me. “Well, that was a bust.”
“What happened?”
“After making me wait for thirty minutes in their lobby, I found out they’re not hiring right now, but they said they’d keep my résumé on file. I didn’t get a glimpse of Harrison Weiss. And I found out they make diabetes medicine.”
All the breath rushes out of me. “Another dead end.”
“Maybe. He might still work there, but even if he does, I don’t think they’re involved with any neo-Nazis or the virus. At least, not yet anyway.” He glances over at the doughnut and kabob place. “I haven’t eaten all day. You want something?”
“Sure.”
We head into the small shop, which does in fact sell both doughnuts and kabobs. A strange combination, but it works for some reason.
As the guy behind the counter rings us up, the door chimes and a man walks in. He’s wearing a polo shirt, has medium-brown hair, and is average height and weight. The kind of guy who blends in easily and is perfectly forgettable.
Except that I’ve seen him before.
His head isn’t shaved. He doesn’t have a beard. There’s no swastika tattoo on his arm. But it’s definitely the same guy.
“Hey, man,” the guy behind the counter says. “The usual?”
“Please,” Harrison says.
I give Adam a sharp nudge with my elbow, and he looks over at the guy. His eyes widen, and he glances back at me. I nod and wonder what we should do, feeling awkward and way too visible. But the man completely ignores us, and we step outside without him giving us a second glance.
Once we’re back in the car, Adam asks, “That was him, right?”
“Yeah, it was. He looks a lot different though.” I rest my hands on the steering wheel, but they’re shaking. His menacing voice comes back to me. You stupid girl. You have it all wrong. It’s hard to believe that guy is going to become the man I will face in ten years, but somehow, he will.
“Okay. This is good.” Adam stares out the window as Harrison heads back up the stairs to the office. “We know where he works now. We can wait ’til he leaves and then follow him home.”
We dive into our food and then wait. The sun goes down. Cars pull in and out of the lot. We change stations on the radio over and over. Until finally, Harrison Weiss walks out of the office and gets into a white sedan.
I start up the car. “Here we go.”
I trail behind him at a safe distance, and within fifteen minutes, he pulls into a parking space of a small apartment building. Unlike our building, there’s no lobby or gate, and anyone can walk right up to each apartment’s door. We park a safe distance away on the street and watch as he unlocks one of the apartments and slips inside. Lights flicker on, and he appears at one of the windows, then opens it to let in some air.
We get out of the car and move closer, sticking to the shadows and avoiding streetlights. Once we’re close enough, we catch a glimpse of Harrison sitting on a couch, watching TV with a beer in his hand.
“What do we do now?” Adam asks.
“I don’t know.” I study the man for another minute. “I guess I thought we’d find something more. Some connection to the White Outs. Some clue he’s a neo-Nazi. Or some hint he’s working on the virus.”
“Maybe he hasn’t gotten involved in any of that yet.”
I drag a hand through my hair. “There has to be something. We can’t watch this guy for the next ten years.”
Adam’s face is grim. “We might have no other choice.”
“We could get Paige to break into his apartment to look for evidence. She’s good at that stuff.”
He shakes his head. “We agreed not to involve our friends yet. And I’d rather not resort to breaking the law unless we have no other option.”
“Could you get into his office somehow?”
“Probably not. It’d be pretty suspicious if I showed up again so soon.”
A dark thought occurs to me. “We could just…kill him.”
Adam looks at me like I’ve gone mad. “What? No.”
“Think of all the lives it would save. We’d be changing the future for the better.”
His voice rises, his face incredulous. “And destroy our only link to the White Outs. Not to mention, we’d be killing an innocent man.”
I set my hands on my hips. “Innocent? In ten years that man is going to help release a virus that will kill millions of people. He may be innocent today, but he’s going to be a murderer soon.”
“We can’t condemn him for something he might do in the future. Remember when everyone thought you were going to become a murderer too?”
“This is different! I was there, Adam. I saw the way he looked at that black family. I found the virus in his backpack. I even spoke to him about it.” I’m shaking again, remembering that moment like it’s happening right now.
Adam sighs. “Right now he’s just a lonely guy with a crappy job who’s trying to unwind after work. He hasn’t done anything wrong yet. Until that changes, there’s nothing we can do but wa
tch and wait.”
“Dammit!” I stomp back to the car, my shoes tearing at the grass under me. I hate that Adam’s right and that we’re out of options again. Desperation and frustration are warring for control of me, and everything we do seems to end in a dead end. We have to do something. But what?
We’re halfway back to our apartment when Adam’s phone gets a notification. He pulls it out of his pocket and frowns at the screen, his eyebrows drawing together.
“What is it?” I ask.
“The smoke alarm’s gone off at the lab. Probably a false alarm, but maybe we should check it out. Just in case.”
My fingers tighten around the steering wheel. “Maybe Ken’s working late?”
“I’ll text him and ask.”
I switch direction to head toward Adam’s lab, although my gut twists at the idea. His lab represents everything causing distance between us. He hasn’t been there since he was shot, and I thought he might have finally broken free of genicote’s clutches.
Adam’s phone buzzes again, and he lets out a long, strained breath. “Ken’s not at the lab.”
Uh-oh. “Then we need to be careful. This could be a trap.”
He stares out the window, his knee bouncing slightly. “It’s possible, although the lab’s security alarm didn’t go off. I would have gotten a notification.”
I open my mouth to reply, but as soon as we turn onto the street, it’s clear there is something wrong. Thick, black smoke rises from the lab and sirens blare nearby, getting closer and closer. Two fire trucks show up in front of the building at the same time we get there. Adam makes a choking sound as I throw the car into Park, and then we both jump out, running for the smoking building.
We’re stopped by a firefighter in his full gear. “You can’t go in there!”
Adam’s eyes are wide, and he gestures frantically. “That’s my lab! All my work is in there!”
“And we’re going to put out the fire as fast as we can. For now, we need you to stay put.” He gives us both a stern look and turns back to his team.
Adam starts forward again, but I grab his arm and yank him back. “There’s nothing we can do.”
His mouth falls open, but no sound comes out. He shakes his head, his face as pale as the moon above us.
We’re forced to stand at a safe distance and watch while a dozen firefighters shout orders to one another, grab a long hose, and head for the building. They have to break down the door to get inside, and then they vanish into the smoke.
I wrap my arm around Adam, and he leans against me. I can only imagine how awful this must be for him, to watch all his hard work go up in flames, not knowing if any of it will make it through the night—or who’s responsible. Even though I wished he would spend less time in the lab, I never wanted this.
It’s two hours before the fire’s out, and another two hours before they’ll let us into the building to look around. By then, we’ve already talked to investigators from both the fire department and the police, but they have no information for us and we have nothing for them either. Everyone seems to know a big, fat nothing about who started the fire or why.
Adam leads the way through the broken-down door into the charred ruins of the building. The lobby’s walls are singed, and the smell of smoke clogs my nose, but the damage only gets worse the farther inside we get. We step over debris and broken glass as we head into the main part of the lab.
“My God,” Adam says as his eyes take in the destruction. He takes a tentative step inside, his shoe crunching on a broken beaker. “All my research. All my samples. Gone.”
The lab is a hollowed-out, blackened husk of what it used to be, almost completely unrecognizable from the sterile white space I visited a few days ago. The fire must have started in here because only rubble and ash are left on the linoleum floor.
“I’m sorry,” I say, even though it’s not nearly enough.
Adam bends down and sifts through the wreckage. His face is devastated as he picks up a piece that used to belong to a computer, then tosses it aside. He continues like this around the entire room, though I’m not sure if he’s searching for anything specific or just trying to salvage whatever he can. When he reaches one side of the room, he pauses for a long time before finally rising to his feet.
“Who would do this?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” I nudge what remains of a chair with the toe of my shoe. “Do you think they took the cure?”
His empty eyes sweep across the room again. “I can’t tell, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Can you salvage anything?”
“No. Thank God I gave Chris a backup of all my files with some of the vials of genicote, in case something like this ever happened.”
“You should warn Chris. Whoever did this might go after him next.”
Adam nods, his face grim. “I’ll send him a message, but he should be safe. The only people who know about the backups are the three of us.”
“Maybe, but we don’t know who you might have told in the next thirty years.” A piece of the drywall crashes to the ground, making us both jump. “We should get out of here.”
Adam’s mouth is set in a thin line, but he nods and reluctantly leaves the room with slow steps. It’s almost midnight by now, and we’re both exhausted and covered in ash, but once we’re in the car, I wait to start it.
“I couldn’t get into the lab when you were missing,” I say. “You changed the security code on the door.”
He takes off his glasses and wipes them clean with his shirt. “I changed it after I met with Aether in case they were watching me. I was going to tell you the new code. I just forgot.”
“Who else knew it, other than you and Ken?”
“That’s it.” His frown deepens. “I changed the code to our daughter’s birth date, thinking no one in the present would know the significance of those numbers except you and me…”
“But someone from the future might be able to guess it,” I finish for him.
That seems to rule out Vincent or Nina, at least. Future-Zahra or Future-Paige are starting to look more likely. I find it hard to believe they’d shoot us though. Maybe we’re facing two different threats.
Of course, there’s one other person who could do this. “Could it be Ken?”
“I considered that, but he said he was with Paige when I texted him, so it seems unlikely,” Adam says. “Besides, he has no motive for destroying the cure when he’s worked on it with me for months. After all, he’s modifying it to work for Huntington’s disease too.”
“Good.” I didn’t want to believe for a second it might be our friend, but I had to consider every possibility.
“The only thing I can think of is that someone stole the cure in order to create the virus, which means the terrorists are already planning their attack…or someone from the future is trying to stop the virus before it’s even been created by destroying the cure now.”
“I think you’re right.” I sit up a little straighter. “Maybe we should do the same thing.”
Adam glances at me with a weary expression. “What do you mean?”
“We know Harrison Weiss is involved, right? What if we go, I don’t know, five years in the future or something. Once there, we can break into his apartment or the place where he works and look for clues. If that pharmaceutical company is the one who stole the cure and developed the virus, we can destroy their lab with all the vials and all the data, just like someone did here.”
His eyebrows dart up. “How will we know which year to go to?”
“We can try five years. Then seven years. We’ll keep trying ’til we find something. We have a time machine; we might as well use it.”
Adam looks at me like he doesn’t know who I am anymore. “I can’t believe that after all we’ve been through, you want to go to the future again. Multiple times.”
I drag a hand through my tangled hair. “I don’t want to go, but I don’t know what else we can do at this point.”
&
nbsp; “Assuming Vincent even lets us use the accelerator again, which I doubt, we’d need a much better plan than just picking a time and hoping we find something. Especially since every time we use the time machine our risk of future shock goes up.”
“We’ve been fine so far. We have another year or so until we’re old enough for future shock to affect us, which is why we have to do this now. What’s our other option? Sit around and wait for the end of the world? Or for someone to come after us again?”
Adam stares out the window at what’s left of his lab. “I don’t know. And I don’t think we should decide tonight either.”
He’s probably right. We’ve had a long day, it’s past midnight, and he’s still recovering. Maybe in the morning we’ll have a genius idea for what to do next.
But I seriously doubt it.
TUESDAY
The door opens, and Adam’s mom beams at us. “Come in! Come in!” She gestures for us to step inside, and Max rushes forward to bounce at her feet.
“Hey, Mom,” Adam says, giving her a hug. “You look good.”
She does look a million times better than the first time I saw her, when she was at death’s door thanks to the cancer ravaging her body. She’s no longer so thin she looks like a twig that might snap at any second, and her hair’s grown back in soft waves. Even her skin looks brighter. It’s hard to imagine that was a year ago and that the cancer is completely gone now. She was the first person Adam ever cured, although she doesn’t know what he went through to save her.
“Thank you, dear.” She gives me a hug next. “It’s so great to see you, Elena.”
“You too,” I say, squeezing her back. Parents usually hate me, with my tattoos and attitude, but Adam’s mom has treated me like family from the moment we met. I figure it’s because Adam never brought home a girl until me.
Max demands Adam’s mom’s attention, and she bends down to give him a back rub. “Hello, little man,” she says. “I heard you’re going to be staying with me for a little while.”
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