Future Lost

by Briggs, Elizabeth;

  “Vincent’s the one with the virus now, not us,” I say, trying to reason with her. “We’re wasting time when we should be out trying to find him. You could help us. If we work together, we can stop him. Please.”

  “Don’t worry I plan to take care of Vincent next,” she says. “I’ll make sure every trace of the virus is destroyed.”

  “What about Ava?” I ask, my heart racing. “If you kill Adam now, she’ll never be born!”

  “That might be for the best.” The other Elena draws in a ragged breath. “You have no idea what it’s like to lose a child. To watch her die in your arms, knowing you’re the reason for it, and that no matter what you did, you weren’t able to save her…No, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

  I step forward, clutching my gun. “If you shoot Adam now, you’ll be killing Ava before she’s even born. What if we can change the future and save everyone? Even if there’s only a one percent chance of us being successful, wouldn’t that be enough?”

  She stares at Adam for a long time, and the gun twitches in her hand. I’m certain she’s going to lower it, but then she shakes her head. “No. If you’d seen what I’ve seen, if you’d stood helpless as the entire world fell into ruins, knowing you were the cause of it and that everyone you loved would die because of your failures, you’d understand why I have to do this. If it takes the sacrifice of Adam and Ava to ensure that the rest of the world lives on, so be it.”

  My fingers tighten on my gun. “I won’t let you do this.”

  Her eyes narrow. “If I have to kill you, I will. I always knew this trip would result in my death, one way or another.”

  “Sorry, but I’m not ready to die just yet.” I pull the trigger.

  Her mouth falls open right before the bullet pierces her skull. My older self staggers back, and then her knees give out. She collapses to the cement, her gun skidding away, and she doesn’t move again.

  Oh God. I just killed my future self.

  I drop the gun and sink to the ground, my knees suddenly weak. Adam’s beside me instantly, calling my name, but his voice sounds far away. I glance at my other self again, and bile rises to my throat at the sight of the blood leaving her lifeless body. She was me. An older me, a different me, one who had memories I’ll never have of Adam and Ava and all our friends and a life I can’t imagine. Now they’re gone forever because I killed her.

  Adam’s arms slide around me, and I bury my face in his shoulder. He’s shaking too, as much as I am, and we cling to each other and try to ride out the shock and pain.

  “You had to do it,” Adam says.

  “I know.” In that split second before I pulled the trigger, I knew with utmost certainty that she was about to do the same thing. I knew it because she was me, and I was her. And I couldn’t let that happen. “But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” He sighs. “We need to get going.”

  I nod. Someone might have heard the gunshot. Anyone could drive by and see the body. And Vincent is still out there with the virus. But I can’t move. It’s too much. The weight of everything that happened over the last couple days pushes me down, making my limbs heavy.

  Adam slides his arm around my waist and drags me to my feet. “Come on. We can’t give up now.”

  He’s right, of course, but it all seems so pointless. “No matter what we do to try to prevent the future we saw, we only seem to make it worse. How are we supposed to keep fighting?”

  “We keep fighting because the only other option is to do nothing. Neither one of us has ever been good at that.”

  “But what if Future-Vincent and that other Elena are right, and the end of the world is inevitable? Maybe we should be grab some supplies and find a bunker to hide in so we can ride it out.”

  He turns toward me with an arched eyebrow. “Hey, I didn’t spend all night saving your life so you can sit on your butt while the apocalypse happens. Besides, does that really sound like you?”

  I let out a choked laugh. “No, I guess not.”

  He cups my face in his hands. “We’re going to stop Vincent. I know how to cure the virus now. We’re going to prevent the future we saw from ever happening. But first, we need to get out of here.”

  I draw in a deep breath and nod, getting control of myself. This isn’t over yet.

  We shove the other Elena’s body in the back of our trunk, not knowing what else to do. If we leave her there in the lab’s parking lot, someone will find her and then the cops will have a lot of questions for me. Questions I won’t be able to answer. We’ll figure out what to do with her later, after we find Vincent.

  Adam drives toward Vincent’s house. My hands are shaking badly, so I clutch them in my lap while the memory of my older self hitting the cement replays in my head. Now that the initial shock has passed, I don’t regret killing her, not at all. But even so, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a hell of a messed-up thing I just did, and something that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  He glances over at me. “Are you okay?”

  I ball my hands into fists to make them stop shaking. “Yeah. Or at least, I will be.”

  That future version of me lived through terrible things and made choices I can’t even imagine. Her life was shaped by death and heartbreak and survival. Once, I would have assumed that becoming her was inevitable. But after changing the future so many times, I know better.

  Nobody gets to decide our fate except ourselves.

  I grab my phone and call Zahra. She answers on the first ring. “Elena?”

  My shoulders relax at the sound of her voice. “It’s me.”

  “Are you okay?” she asks, sounding frantic. “Adam told me what Vincent did to you. I’ve been so worried.”

  “I’m fine. Adam managed to cure me.”

  “He found a cure?” A relieved sigh escapes her. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day. Any chance he has more of the cure around?”

  “I don’t know. I can ask. Why?”

  “We’re going to need more of it soon. A lot more.”

  My stomach drops out from under me. “What happened?”

  “I lost Harrison for a few hours, but I hacked into the police’s plate scanner technology, added his license plate, and a hit popped up eventually leading me to LAX.”

  “He went to the airport?” I ask.

  “He did,” she says, her voice grim. “And by the time I got there, he’d already started releasing the virus. I couldn’t stop him. Then he disappeared, maybe onto a flight somewhere. I’m not sure.”

  I swear my heart stops at the sound of those words. “Jesus. We’re too late.”

  “We weren’t prepared for this. We thought he’d hit a mall, not the airport.” Zahra sounds more shaken than I’ve ever heard her. “There’s no way to know how far it’s spread already. Hundreds of people could be infected on airplanes right now, flying across the country or to other parts of the world. And I still can’t find Vincent. For all we know, he’s releasing the virus in other places too.”

  Adam pulls the car to the side of the road and watches me with worried eyes. “What is it?”

  I switch on the speakerphone so Zahra can hear us. “Can you cure more people with those live cancer cells?” I ask him.

  “Eventually, yes,” Adam says. “But I don’t have any more right now. I used everything that lab had to save you, and all of mine were destroyed.”

  “Dammit. How soon can you get some?”

  His brow furrows. “I don’t know. It’s not exactly something you can buy at the store. We’d need to find the right kind of supplier, and then it would have to be slowly administered over the course of a few hours to each person who was infected.”

  “It’ll be too late by then,” Zahra says.

  I draw in a long breath. “It’s better than nothing. Zahra, you can help us find whatever Adam needs to cure people. I’ll look for Vincent. We’ll make it work somehow. We have to.”

  Adam nods. “I’ll head to Zahr
a’s place so we can go over everything.”

  “No!” Zahra says. “You can’t come here.”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Because I’ve been infected too.”

  I close my eyes as despair washes over me. “Zahra, no. Are you sure?”

  “It’s fine,” she says, but her voice breaks. “I’m going to hole up in my apartment and do whatever I can here to monitor everything. For as long as I can anyway.”

  Emotion forms a knot in my throat. “We’ll find a way to save you. I promise.”

  “I don’t know if there’s anything you can do at this point. Vincent’s probably used his canisters too in some other location. But I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  “You can contact the CDC,” Adam says. He briefly explains to Zahra about the live cancer cells and how they work. “They might not believe you, but maybe it will help.”

  “I’ll call them,” Zahra says. “Or better yet, I’ll make sure all their computers get an internal notice about the virus and how to stop it. After that, I’ll go to the news. I’ll make sure everyone knows who started this virus too. Vincent won’t get away with it this time.”

  “Good,” I say, but it won’t be enough. By the time the authorities and media act on this news, it’ll be too late. Thousands will die over the next few days, including Zahra. The virus will spread across the world within a week. By the end of the month, civilization as we know it will be over. And this time none of us had a chance to prepare for it.

  By trying to prevent the future we saw, we ended up accelerating it. We thought we had ten years, but in the end, we had less than ten days.

  If only my future self hadn’t come back with us, we might have been able to fix all of this. But by traveling back in time, she set off a course of events that doomed us all.

  I sit up with a jolt. Traveling back in time. That’s it.

  I turn to Adam. “Call Dr. Walters and ask him to get the other accelerator ready tonight. I know how we can undo all of this.”

  “How?” he asks.

  “By time traveling to the moment we arrived in the future for the very first time. If we return through their aperture, it will take us back to a little over a year ago.” My heart picks up speed as I realize what this idea means. “We can return to the past and save everyone. Not just Chris and Ken and Zahra, but Trent and Zoe too. We can stop all of this from ever happening.”

  Adam adjusts his glasses as he considers. “That might work, except it might also cause a paradox. Remember what happened to you the last time you almost met another time-traveling version of yourself. Your future self could only come back here because she managed to avoid you.”

  Of course I remembered. I hadn’t even gotten that close to my other self, and I’d nearly blacked out and suffered strange flashbacks and symptoms. “Okay, so it won’t be one of us. We’ll get Paige to go back, since she wasn’t with us on that first trip to the future. She’s immune to the virus, so she won’t accidentally bring it back with her either. She can tell our younger selves everything.”

  “Except it’ll probably be a one-way trip for her.”

  “Unless she simply goes to the future, talks to our younger selves, and then comes back here.”

  He taps his fingers on the steering wheel. “Hmm. That might work. But what happens when she returns here? Will the future she arrives to be different? Will we remember any of this? Or will her actions cause a new timeline to split off from this one?”

  My head spins from everything he’s saying. “I don’t know. It’s a risk we’ll have to take. And even if nothing changes in this timeline, at least we’ll know that somewhere out there, other versions of us are going to be okay.”

  He sighs. “I guess that’s better than nothing.”

  Adam calls Dr. Walters to tell him to get the other accelerator ready, while I text Paige and ask her to meet us. She’s hesitant to leave Ken’s side, but agrees when I tell her it’s urgent. We arrange to meet outside Zahra’s apartment so that Paige can quickly grab a change of clothes.

  When we pull up outside the building, Paige runs down to the car and hops into the backseat. Her eyes are all red and puffy from crying, but she looks ready for anything.

  I turn toward her. “How’s Ken?”

  “He’s in a coma,” she says, her voice strained. “They did everything they could, but…” She stops and squeezes her eyes shut. “They don’t think he’ll make it through the night.”

  “God,” Adam says, resting his forehead on the steering wheel. “Not Ken too.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “But we think we have a way to undo all of this…and maybe even save Ken, Zahra, and Chris. But we need your help, and we don’t have much time.”

  Her eyes pop open. “Whatever it is, I’m in.”

  Above us, Zahra stands at her window. She gives us a sad wave as we drive away, and I quietly pray that we can save her.

  Our headlights illuminate a place out in the desert that I never thought I’d visit again. Six months ago, Adam and I blew up the original accelerator and the building it stood inside here. The place should have been a pile of rubble and little else, but it’s clear Vincent’s been busy.

  Instead of a five-story office building, it’s now only one floor and about the size of a small house. A chain link fence surrounds the property, with No Trespassing signs all over it and barbed wire along the top. There’s nothing else around for miles, except the freeway in the distance.

  The gate is open already, and two cars are parked inside the fence. Neither one is the car Vincent drove off in, but I’m still wary. Our tires kick up dust as we drive inside.

  As Adam parks the car, two figures move outside the house. One is Dr. Walters, wearing his usual white lab coat. The other is Dr. Campbell. The last time I saw her was in the future, leading the Miracle Mile refuge. I’m surprised to see her here, since she helped us destroy the previous accelerator.

  The three of us step out of the car into the crisp night air and look around. “It’s hard to believe Vincent got all of this built so quickly,” Paige says.

  Dr. Campbell greets each of us with a quick hug. “It’s good to see you all again, even if I never thought I’d be back here.”

  “Neither did we,” Adam says.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask her.

  “I asked Dr. Campbell to help me, since we’re in a bit of a time crunch,” Dr. Walters says. “The accelerator is just about ready to go.”

  “Thank you.” Adam glances back and forth between the two of them. “We couldn’t do this without your help, and I know you’re both risking a lot by coming here.”

  “When Dr. Walters told me what was going on, there was no way I could refuse,” Dr. Campbell says.

  The two scientists lead us inside the building. I’m hesitant to enter it again after everything that happened on this spot, but this facility looks nothing like the other one did. Instead of the fancy lobby the other one had, this one has unremarkable gray floors, white walls, and nothing that indicates it’s owned by Aether. It’s also completely empty.

  “The place seems to have been abandoned,” Dr. Walters says as he hits the button for the elevator. “I’ve been coming here over the last few days, ever since we talked, and I’ve never seen anyone else inside. Vincent must have shut the project down.”

  “He’s got other things on his mind,” I mutter.

  “Is it true he’s got some kind of biological weapon and is planning to use it?” Dr. Campbell asks.

  “Pretty much,” I say. “And he could arrive at any minute to try to stop us.”

  She tilts her head. “I knew Vincent had questionable morals, but I never imagined he’d do something like this.”

  “What have you been doing the last six months?” Adam asks her, as the elevator heads down, below the ground.

  “I’ve been teaching physics at a local community college. It’s much less stressful than working for Aether, although not nearly as inter
esting. I confess, I got excited when Dr. Walters called me and said he needed my help. I don’t like Aether’s methods or motives, but it felt good to be working on something big again.”

  “We appreciate your help,” Adam says.

  The elevator opens to a large subterranean room, as massive as the previous one was. The accelerator is exactly where the old one stood, which I’m sure isn’t a coincidence, although this one is a lot smaller. It’s about the size of a small shower or closet, clearly meant for one person only.

  “We’ll need a few minutes to finish getting ready,” Dr. Walters says.

  Adam touches Dr. Walters’s arm lightly and says in a low voice, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get you the cure for Armando. I promise I’ll retrieve whatever I have left when this is all over.”

  Dr. Walters pats his hand. “I understand. And if we’re not successful today, then it won’t matter anyway.” He and Dr. Campbell turn toward a row of computers near the accelerator, leaving us alone to wait.

  Paige looks at the small accelerator and takes a deep breath. “Remind me again what I’m supposed to tell your younger selves once I’m there?”

  “Maybe we should write everything down,” Adam suggests.

  I find a yellow notepad and start writing. With Adam’s help, I warn the original team not to trust Lynne and instruct them on what she’s going to do and how to get out alive. We tell them about Team Echo, to make sure they meet Zahra, Paige, and Ken. We write about Jeremy and his betrayal. And then we tell them about Vincent’s plan, about the future we saw, and about how genicote is always going to be used as a weapon by someone or other. Then Adam instructs himself on how to make it safe.

  By the time we’re done, our letter to ourselves is five pages long. I fold it up, put it in a plain white envelope, and seal it before handing it to Paige. “That should cover it all.”

  “The accelerator is ready,” Dr. Walters says. Behind him, the machine hums with an electrical buzz and glows with low blue lights.