“What?” His hands slam against the transparent barrier. “No! How? Are you sure?”
“I followed Vincent into the parking garage, and he sprayed me with one of the canisters. He said he was immune, and then he took off. Harrison left in a separate car, but hopefully Zahra is tailing him now.” I drop my head. “I couldn’t stop them. I’m sorry.”
Adam bangs on the wall. “No, no, no. I refuse to believe it.”
“I’m sorry. Locking myself in here was the only way to keep you safe.”
Despair fills his eyes as he stares at me. “Elena…”
I press my hand against the wall on the opposite side from his. The closest we’ll get to touching for the rest of my life. “Go, Adam. You need to stop Vincent. He’s going to release the virus.”
“No, I won’t leave you,” he says, his voice desperate. “I’ll find a way to save you. I just need some time. There has to be a way!”
“You’re the only one who can stop Vincent now. You need to go. Please.”
“I can’t.” The sadness on his face breaks my heart a thousand times. “I don’t want a future if it isn’t with you. With Ava.”
Our daughter. My throat tightens, and a hand involuntarily goes to my stomach. I’ll never have her now. Never get to watch her grow up to become that eighteen-year-old girl Adam and I met once. She’ll never be born now, all because of Vincent.
My hand drops to my side. I’m going to die. I always imagined I’d go out in a more violent way. A knife or a bullet or a beating. Never of old age. Never of cancer or anything like that. And certainly not like this.
“There’s nothing you can do for me now,” I whisper. “Please go. Stop Vincent. Then I can die knowing you’ve saved the future for everyone else.”
Adam presses his forehead against the wall, his hands in fists, his face anguished. “I won’t lose you, Elena. I can’t.”
He turns around and heads back into the lab, looking around like he’s searching for something. But there’s nothing he can do. There’s no cure for what’s flowing through my veins, and even if it were possible, there’s no way he could make a cure in time.
“There must be something here, something I can do…” he mutters as he goes through things on the countertops, throwing papers aside. A beaker smashes to the floor and shatters as he shoves things out of the way in a frantic search.
“Adam, please.” My voice catches. I’ll never touch Adam again. Never kiss him again. Never hold him again. A tear escapes my eye and slides down my cheek.
“It should be me in there, not you,” Adam says, as he tears apart the lab, still searching for something impossible. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t gone to the future, if I hadn’t rushed the cure, if—”
I bang on the wall with my fists. “Stop! It’s not your fault. And you’re going to get through this. You’re going to make sure the pandemic never happens. And then you’re going to finish genicote and save millions of lives.”
He shakes his head. “Even if I could stop the virus and go on without you, I can’t make genicote now. Someone is always going to use it as a weapon, and anyone who doesn’t have cancer will be at risk.” At those words he freezes, and something clicks in his eyes. “Unless…”
I straighten up. “What is it?”
“Vincent said he was immune to the virus, right?”
“Yes. And Paige was immune to the Infected’s bites in the future too.”
“Of course she was. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.” His eyes are determined as he returns to the antechamber. “I have an idea, but I need to get some things. I don’t know how long it will take. Just…hang in there. Okay?” He presses his palm to the wall between us. “I love you.”
I rest my hand in the same spot. “I love you too.”
He turns away and dashes out of the room. I slump to the floor, wondering if I’ll ever see him again. Fatigue settles over me, but it’s not from the virus. It’s from knowing the end is coming for me, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
I wait for what seems like an eternity, drifting in and out of restless sleep, until my body becomes sore from lying on the hard floor. I get up, exhaustion making my limbs slow, and something tickles my nose. When I rub at it, my fingers come away bloody.
The first symptom of the virus.
I check my watch. It’s 5:08 a.m. That makes it about four hours since I was infected. Exactly as Dr. Campbell said. I won’t have another symptom for twenty-six hours, but there’s no way I can deny it now. I really am infected, and I’m going to die a slow, painful death over the next few days. If I’m lucky, I’ll die of thirst or starvation first. Damn, I should have brought Nina’s gun inside with me and made it quick. Too late now.
I pull out the plastic bag that held our chloroform-soaked rags, which has one left. I have no idea how long it will knock me out, but I don’t care. Anything is better than this slow march to death.
I lie down, cover my mouth and nose with the rag, and take a deep breath. A pungent, sweet smell fills my nose, and my fingers and toes begin to tingle. My vision darkens, and the electrical buzz from the computers and lights fades away.
I close my eyes and succumb to the inevitable.
“Elena.”
Adam’s voice coaxes me back into the world. My eyes feel like they’re glued shut, but I force them open. A sound comes out of me like a croak. My limbs are stiff and heavy, as if they haven’t moved in hours. Everything aches, and every breath sends fire through my sinuses.
I blink until my vision adjusts to the light. I’m still on the floor of the contamination room, but Adam’s beside me. He helps me sit up and hands me a plastic cup full of water. I take it and swallow gratefully, but the room keeps spinning.
I’m alive. For now anyway.
Adam slowly strokes my head while I drink. “It’s okay,” he says. “You’re okay now.”
It all comes back to me, and I jerk away from him. “What are you doing? You can’t be in here!”
“It’s fine. You’re not carrying the virus anymore.”
My mouth falls open. “You mean…you did it? You made a cure?”
“Not exactly.” A tiny smile touches his lips. “I gave you cancer.”
“You…what?”
“I injected you with live cancer cells. Like I did with mice in the lab in order to test genicote on them.”
My forehead throbs, and I press my palm to it. “I don’t understand.”
“Genicote kept being used as a weapon in the future because it’s deadly to anyone who doesn’t have cancer. Since the Black Friday Virus was derived from genicote, I thought it might work the same way. That’s why Paige and Vincent are immune. I checked, and they both had cancer when they were younger.” He helps me to my feet as he talks. “I searched this building and found another lab that was also doing cancer research. After I injected you, the cancer cells and the virus attacked each other, effectively canceling each other out—and when they were done, they left you with nothing more severe than a cold.”
I take his face in my hands, my chest bursting with pride and relief. “You did it. You found the way to stop the virus and keep the cure safe at the same time.”
He nods, his eyes bright. “All this time I was searching for a way to make the cure safe, but in retrospect it was so obvious. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. I’ll have to work on it some more, of course, and find a way to modify genicote with this new information, but now I know it can be done. It can be made safe…and we can stop the virus too.”
Tears prick my eyes, and emotion clogs my throat. I’m so glad he didn’t give up on me or on the cure. “You saved my life. And our daughter’s life too.”
He pulls me into his arms. “I told you I wasn’t going to lose you.”
I never thought he would be able to make genicote safe, but he did—and by doing so, he may have prevented the end of the world. “I never should have doubted you.”
“You had plenty o
f reason to doubt me. I haven’t been the best boyfriend these past few months. I got too wrapped up in work, and I forgot why I was doing all of this. I made a lot of mistakes, and I lost sight of what was important—our future together.”
For the past few days, I’ve kept Adam at a distance, unsure if I could forgive him after what he did or how I’d ever be able to trust him again. Going to the near future and seeing that we weren’t married made me question everything between us, and wonder if we weren’t meant to be together after all. But Paige was right—Adam made a mistake, but I’ve made similar ones. If I’d been in his shoes, I would have done the same thing. And I’m tired of worrying about the future of us. If my near-death experience has taught me anything, it’s that I want to be with Adam, now and forever.
I draw in a long breath. “Adam, I forgive you. For all of it.”
His eyebrows dart up. “You do?”
I nod. “From the very first time we met, every mistake we’ve made was because we didn’t trust each other or weren’t completely honest with each other. I’m just as guilty of that as you are. But from now on, I promise to be honest with you.” I tighten my arms around him, gazing up at his face. “Our future is worth fighting for. I’m not going to give up on it. And I know you won’t either.”
“I won’t. I’ll never keep secrets from you again. I swear it.” His fingers run through my hair as he stares into my eyes. “The only future I want is with you. I love you, Elena.”
“I love you too.”
Our mouths meet in a slow kiss, full of grief and forgiveness and hope. And, above all else, love. Love for each other. For our friends. For our daughter. And for the promise of tomorrow, which we’ll fight for until our dying breaths.
I pick up Nina’s gun on the way out of the lab. I hope I won’t need it, but Vincent is still out there, and he has to be stopped. He used one canister of the virus on me, but he and Harrison could have up to four others on them. We’ve got to track them down before it’s too late.
When we get down to the lobby, the sun is bright outside, and the security guards are gone without a trace. I stare at my watch, trying to make sense of the numbers there. It’s 6:12 p.m., more than thirteen hours since I got my nosebleed. Was I really out that long?
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
Adam holds open the door for me. “I don’t know. I suspect Vincent had the guards clear out after Ken was shot. The entire building’s been empty all day, which was good for me at least.”
I nod slowly as I step outside. “How’s Ken?”
Adam’s face darkens. “Last I heard he was in surgery. Paige is with him. She said they’re not sure if he’s going to make it.”
My heart sinks. Ken is responsible for the virus being in Vincent’s hands now, but he’s still one of us. I don’t want to lose him too. “And the others?”
“Zahra’s been keeping an eye on Harrison. No one knows where Vincent went. I know he’s out there somewhere with the virus, but I was so focused on saving you that I couldn’t think about anything else.”
I try to come up with a plan as we walk across the parking lot, but the heat rising off the asphalt makes my head spin. I probably need more time to recover from the virus or whatever Adam did to me, but that isn’t an option right now. “We can check his house first. If he’s not there, we might find some clues as to where he’s gone. Of course, he might already be on the way to Napa for all we know.”
Adam is about to reply when someone steps out of the shadows in front of the car. A woman, dressed entirely in black, with a hood pulled low enough to cover her face. We jerk to a halt, and I raise the gun, but it feels especially heavy in my hand and my movements are sluggish.
“Stay back!” I tell the woman, aiming the gun at her chest. I hope she can’t see how my hand shakes ever so slightly.
Her hands come up, like she’s surrendering, showing us she is unarmed. Then she pulls back the hood, revealing her face.
My face.
“Elena?” Adam asks, although I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or to her.
I gasp and nearly drop the gun. No, it can’t be. Michael told me my future self had been dead for many years. But the truth is staring me in the eye right now. I’m the one who came back from the future with us. I’m the one who shot Adam. I’m the one who burned down the lab. And I’m the one who killed Chris.
Her dark hair hangs limp around her face, the way mine gets when I haven’t washed it in a few days. Her tattoos are identical to mine, although they’ve faded, and she’s wearing the same origami unicorn necklace as me. She’s much thinner than I am, and her brown eyes are shadowed with tight, fine lines. I can’t tell her age. I met my forty-eight-year-old self in another timeline, and in some ways that version of me seemed both older and younger than this one.
“Why?” I manage to get out. “How?”
“I’m here to kill Adam,” she says, glancing over at him. But she doesn’t reach for a weapon or make a move.
The words are too impossible for me to comprehend. Me, kill Adam? Never. My fingers tighten around the gun. “Why?”
“To stop the virus and save the world.”
“But you…you killed Chris.” I can barely get the words out. A memory of the light leaving his eyes as he bled out on the ground flashes through my mind. How could I have done that to him?
Her face is grim, but her tone’s not apologetic. “That was an accident. I never meant for him to get hurt.”
“And the lab?” Adam asks. He’s surprisingly calm, considering she plans to kill him. Maybe he doesn’t believe she will do it, but I’m not so sure. I barely recognize myself in this future version of me.
“It had to be destroyed as a precaution, along with everything in it,” she says. “The backups too. If genicote is never finished, then the Black Friday Virus will never happen.”
Adam sighs. “You’re too late. Vincent’s already stolen the virus.”
“I know.” Her voice is so dry that it’s barely recognizable as my own. “The timeline changed because I came back to stop you. But I still have time to fix it.”
This is her fault. She’s been two steps ahead of us because she’s lived through all of this already, but after she shot Adam, Ken went to the future with me instead of him. By returning to this time period, her actions changed the future, but only made things worse. If it weren’t for her, Vincent wouldn’t have the cure now, and we’d still have years to stop him—instead of hours.
“We tried to stop the virus.” She gazes off into the distance, her eyes weary. “We did everything we could. And when we failed, I tried to dig up information on the White Outs. I found that photo of the man in the Beverly Center and gave it to Michael. But I knew it wouldn’t be enough. There was only one way for me to stop the virus from happening—by coming back and killing Adam myself.”
“How?” Adam asks. “Time travel to the past is supposed to be impossible.”
“It is, but I found a loophole. I time traveled to the future—and then came back with you to the past.”
Something clicks in my memory and my eyes widen. “You’re me from fifteen years from now. Michael said you died near Aether while fighting the Infected so he could escape.”
She nods. “That’s what I wanted him to think. Instead I used the accelerator to send myself to the future, to a few minutes before you were supposed to return to the present.”
“But how did you avoid a paradox?” Adam asks. “You were both in the future at the exact same time.”
Paradoxes are caused when a person time travels to the same moment in the future more than once and meets their other time-traveling self. Dr. Walters explained that when two versions of a person are out of sync with time, it causes instability in the timeline that could reset it or destroy it completely. Because of that, we’ve always made sure to never time travel to the same moment we did before—except when we returned to the future to rescue Chris and Ken. I almost caused a paradox then when I saw my
other time-traveling self, and it felt like I was being torn apart. I barely made it out of there—and that was just from looking at her. If we’d actually interacted, who knows what would have happened.
The other Elena brushes hair back from her face. “I made sure to time it so we had as little overlap as possible, then hid in that basement and avoided looking at that Elena until the aperture opened. After you both disappeared, I waited a few seconds and then followed you into the aperture. I wasn’t sure if it would actually send me back with you, but it did.”
I understand how she did it, and it proves that time travel to the past is possible under certain circumstances, but I still can’t fathom the reason for it. “But…why?” I ask. “How could you possibly think you could kill Adam? Don’t you still love him?”
“Of course I love him.” Her voice trembles as her eyes fall on him. “That’s why I’m doing it. Why it has to be me. He made me promise him I’d be the one to end his life.”
Adam’s mouth falls open. “I told you to come back and kill me?”
“You did. After Ava died, you were the one who fixed the accelerator. You told me to go back in time and kill your younger self. At first, I refused. I couldn’t bear to lose you too.” A single tear slides down her cheek, but her face remains hard. “As soon as the accelerator was ready, you killed yourself. You didn’t want to give me any reason to stay.” She draws a gun from inside her jacket. “And now it’s time to fulfill my promise.”
“No!” I move in front of Adam, protecting him with my body, leveling the gun at her. She won’t kill me. If she does, she might erase herself from existence or cause a paradox or who knows what.
Adam moves beside me, meeting my future self’s steady gaze. “Killing me won’t change anything now. I know I asked you to do that, but that was before. I’ve found a way to make genicote safe and stop the virus. The future you lived through isn’t going to happen anymore.”
She turns the gun on Adam again. “You don’t know that. Even if you stop Vincent now, it will only delay the inevitable. Someone will eventually use genicote as a weapon and wipe out the world with it. I’ve lived through that. I did everything I could to stop it, and I failed. Killing you is the only way to make sure genicote is never created. As long as you’re alive, the entire world is at risk.”
Future Lost Page 19