“Big enough for, say, a 777.”
“Exactly that size. In fact, that was about all we could manage with the electricity generated from the Gibraltar Dam. But it’s all we needed. Yul believed he could build the endpoints for this quantum bridge within a few years, but it proved to be far more complicated than the Q-net alterations. It took him sixty-seven years. When we were ready, Yul sent the schematic for the device back to himself in 2015. He also sent directions for your Yul to pass to Sabrina.”
I see it now, the last piece, the answer to why some of the passengers died of old age, and others didn’t. “The vaccine.”
“Correct. We knew who would be on Flight 305, and we told the Sabrina in 2015 that she needed to carry out a series of experiments outside the lab, making sure that the vaccine reached the passengers well before they boarded the flight. We assured her it was related to her progeria research, and it probably looked that way to her. There were two groups: control and experimental.”
This seems like as good a time as any to ask whether I’m doomed to die of a plague in which I age rapidly and perish in days. “Am I . . . which group—”
“Relax. You were in the experimental group. You received the vaccine before takeoff,” my clone says casually, as if I’m worrying about a nagging cold.
“How exactly—”
“Did we administer it? You really want to know?”
“Actually, no.” That would probably just freak me out.
“After the experimental group was vaccinated, the last piece was for Yul and Sabrina to board the plane with Yul’s device. That brings you up to the point right before things went very wrong during the flight.”
“Very wrong, as in a plane crash.”
“That was unintended, and extremely unfortunate. It was however, only a consequence of a larger problem. As I mentioned, the Titans had a moral dilemma. In creating your separate timeline, we had created a world destined to repeat our mistake, in which every person on Earth, save for our thirty-eight, would perish.
“Oliver and I still felt responsible for the fall of our world, and we couldn’t bear to see your world suffer the consequences of another of our well-intentioned experiments. We arrived at a very simple solution. Your plane would land at Heathrow, where we’d evaluate the passengers. If the vaccine worked, roughly half, a hundred and twenty or so in the experimental group, would live. That would tell us if we had a viable vaccine. We confirmed that our vaccine works from survivor autopsies yesterday. For Oliver and me, the next step was clear: do nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Our plan was simple: let your plane and the survivors remain here in 2147. In your world, in 2015, Flight 305 would simply vanish over the Atlantic, never to be found. And that disappearance would save the lives of over nine billion people roughly fifty-six years later.”
It never occurred to me. “Because of who was on the plane. Sabrina, Yul, and me.”
“And Grayson. We had an incredible opportunity: a flight where the key people involved in the Titan Foundation and in our great mistake could be taken out of your timeline, ensuring the catastrophe never happened. To us, the loss of two hundred and thirty-four lives from your world for the safety of billions was a simple choice. There was only one problem: Yul and Sabrina.”
“I don’t follow.”
“They wouldn’t hear of allowing the passengers of Flight 305 to stay. They argued that removing those two hundred and thirty-four passengers from your timeline could have unintended consequences, create a far worse catastrophe that might strike the next year, or in ten years. Philosophically, they believe that changing another universe is a dangerous game. If the quantum bridge between our worlds remained open, someone from your universe might eventually find it and make their way here when they needed something from us, which could be perilous. They advocated noninterference, reasoning that if interfering with another universe was a viable survival tactic, we would have already been visited many, many times.”
“Fascinating. You compromised, then?”
“You’ve had some experience with Yul and Sabrina by now?”
“A bit.”
“Then you know that compromise isn’t their style. Oliver and I had no choice. Yul and Sabrina controlled the science, which was the key to the plan. Our only option was to sit and wait. Yul designed the quantum bridge so that it could be reset, removing all traces of Flight 305 from our timeline and restoring it to yours. In 2015 it would be as though our experiment never happened, as if your plane had stayed on course and landed at Heathrow as planned. He intended to reset the bridge right after we had verified the vaccine’s efficacy here in 2147.
“Oliver and I couldn’t allow that to happen. Shortly after Flight 305 crossed the bridge into our time, we struck. We made our move here at Heathrow, attempting to take control of the quantum device on our end. The Titans were split. About twenty were loyal to us, and believed in trying to save both worlds. Yul and Sabrina’s group made up the other eighteen. Yul tried to reset the quantum bridge when he found out we were trying to take control.”
“That caused the turbulence, the crash.”
“Yes. After that, we had no idea where your plane was, or if it had even survived at all. We thought maybe it had broken up in midair or crashed in the Atlantic or possibly on land. But that wasn’t our biggest challenge at that point. We were fighting for our lives.”
“That’s what this has been about: the airships, the battles. It’s a Titan civil war.”
“Yes. In the battle here at Heathrow, half of the remaining Titans perished, including our Yul and Sabrina. The surviving members of their faction began frantically searching for your plane. It’s their only play.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Both factions have been doing their best to find and recover the passengers—to determine whether the vaccine is viable so we can bring the colonists home. But their faction has been looking for two passengers in particular: Yul and Sabrina.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Yul truly is brilliant. And somewhat untrusting, as perhaps you’ve seen.”
“I have.”
“He designed the quantum bridge so that only he could operate it, hoping to ensure his survival. The other faction escaped with the device, which was very unfortunate. They’ve taken it back to Titan City, at the center of the Gibraltar Dam. Their plan was to capture the Yul from your timeline, so he can operate the device, resetting the quantum bridge. And they need Sabrina for a futile experiment.”
“Yul and Sabrina were with us, outside Titan Hall, at the battle.”
“Yes. The others took them. Along with a woman.”
My mind flashes to the scene in the burning green park, to Harper falling after the shot. “Harper Lane.”
“Yes. The biographer. So this is it, Nick. Right now Yul is in Titan City, working on the quantum bridge, trying to figure out his future self’s notes—seventy years of research, crammed into a few days. If he’s successful, and the bridge is reset, you and everyone from Flight 305 will disappear from this world and return to your timeline with no memory of the crash, as if none of this ever happened. In the coming days you’ll establish the Titan Foundation with Oliver Norton Shaw, and in fifty-six years you’ll watch the entire rest of the planet die. That’s what the other faction wants. That’s what the Yul and Sabrina of my time wanted to do. And I believe their younger selves will agree to finish their work.”
Nicholas stands and moves away from me, giving me space. This is what he’s been working up to.
“Here’s the decision you have to make, Nick. If we capture the device and stop Yul from resetting the quantum bridge, you’ll be trapped here in 2147. You and the other passengers of Flight 305 will never go home. But the people you left, everyone in 2015, they’ll have a chance of surviving.” He holds my eyes. “What’s your call, Nick? Are you in?”
“If I say no?”
Nicholas shakes his head. “Then you walk out of here
unharmed.”
What a call to make. My decision will determine the fate of my world and his. Nicholas needs me. He can’t take Titan City alone, and perhaps a few of the other passengers will follow me. The whole thing turns on what I say next.
Faces flash through my mind, the people I might never see again in 2015: my sixty-one-year-old mother, smiling up at me in her light-filled sewing room; my sister, holding her firstborn child, a daughter named Naomi; my three college roommates, drinking and laughing in the ski lodge we rent every year in Park City. I’ll never see any of them again. They’ll attend my funeral and move on with their lives. But their children will have a chance to grow up, and so will their children’s children. Then I see other faces: the passengers of Flight 305 I’ve come to know in the past week. But there’s really only one face for me in this group, one person I can’t get out of my mind.
I wonder, if we’re successful—if we can stop Yul from sending us back to 2015—what my life will be like here in 2147, in this desolate world, alone. Or maybe not alone. Either way, I’ll be starting over. In some sense, that’s what I wanted to do before Flight 305 took off six days ago, to try something new. Maybe this is fate, a blessing somehow. Maybe, through this bizarre set of circumstances, I’ve wound up in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Even if the right time is 2147.
Nicholas waits by the long window, glancing from me to Oliver and Grayson Shaw, no doubt having a similar conversation on the other side of the window. Despite the enormity of the stakes, he seems completely calm.
“I think you already know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”
“I do,” he says. “I know what I would say. That’s why I was so glad when you showed up. There are only twelve of us left, Nick, and we could really use your help. We’re about to make an assault on the most advanced, secure structure on Earth. The Titans built the Gibraltar Dam to last an eternity and the city at its center to endure just as long. Bringing it down is our last chance to save both our worlds.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Harper
IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. SHE’S DEAD. I SAW HER LIFELESS body in the lab not two minutes ago—unmoving, frozen in a body bag. Yet here Sabrina stands, living and breathing.
She inches toward me, and I instinctively take another step back, toward the edge of the platform at the top of the Gibraltar Dam. I glance over, down the thousand-foot drop-off to the rocky basin where the Mediterranean Sea used to be. For a moment the only sound is the waterfall crashing into a pool far below. The five towers—fingers—rise above me; Africa, what was Morocco, spreads out to my left, and Europe, what was once Spain and the territory of Gibraltar, lies to my right. Two battered, burned airships sit on the platform at the base of the buildings. I briefly consider running, but both sides are miles away. I’m trapped.
More people pour out of the building, but I focus only on the two I know, or at least recognize: Sabrina and Yul.
I squint, searching their faces, but I can’t find a single difference between them and the bodies I saw in the lab. How?
“It’s me, Harper,” Sabrina says, taking a step closer.
I edge back. “I saw your body.”
“That wasn’t me. I’m the person you met on the plane, after the crash.”
I shake my head. A cool gust of wind blows my hair across part of my face. I’m six feet from the precipice.
Sabrina steps forward. “You injured your leg during the rescue at the lake, when you and Nick and the others saved all those people. Your leg got infected. It was bad. Nick insisted I give you antibiotics. He was very angry with me when I didn’t. You helped me, agreed with me that we should conserve the antibiotics, use them to save more lives. It’s me, Harper.”
I don’t know if it’s the fact that I saw the other body with my own two eyes or simply all the surreal stuff I’ve been through in the last few days, but I just can’t believe her. Paranoia is getting the best of me. Maybe they interrogated Sabrina before killing her and cloning her. I’ll issue a test. “After the crash, I became suspicious of you and Yul. Why?”
Sabrina answers without hesitation. “You heard us talking in the cockpit, arguing about what might have caused the crash and whether we were involved in it. We didn’t explain that conversation until Titan Hall, right before the battle began”—Sabrina motions to the people around her—“right before these Titans rescued us.”
Rescued.
“Step away from the ledge, Harper. We’ll explain everything.”
MY HEAD IS GOING TO explode. For the past hour Sabrina has conducted a one-on-one history lesson and Q&A session with me about what in the world has been going on.
Quite a lot, it turns out. And to top it off, there are two worlds—the one we left in 2015 and this one, where we crashed six days ago. It seems I’m involved in a conspiracy that spans space and time and a conflict whose outcome will determine humanity’s fate in two separate universes.
I’m never flying again.
And I’m not exactly thrilled about being used as a lab rat for a vaccine either.
“That’s where the issue arose,” Sabrina says, sitting on a stool before a raised lab table.
“Issue?” I ask.
“The plane crash.”
A plane breaking in half and crashing in the English countryside might constitute more than an issue in my book, but I let that one go.
Sabrina continues her history lesson as I perch on the stool across from her in the empty lab like a bad pupil at detention.
“But the plane crash wasn’t due to a technical fault,” she says. “Yul’s devices—the one built in the past and the one here in the future—performed as they should have. It was the Titans—some of them, that is—who caused our plane to crash.”
Now that surprises me.
“Shortly after our plane crossed into this universe, a civil war between the Titans broke out at Heathrow, and they’ve been fighting ever since. The battle at the crash site and Titan Hall are just the two we’ve seen.”
“War over what?”
“Over whom. To put it simply, they’ve been fighting over us, the passengers of Flight 305, two in particular. After Yul proved he could connect to Q-net in the past, the Titans debated what to do with the passengers once Flight 305 arrived. Oliver and Nicholas—”
“Nick?”
“I’m told that the Titan in 2147 goes by Nicholas.”
“Oh.”
“Oliver and Nicholas wanted to keep the passengers of Flight 305 here. They thought that extracting Nick, Yul, and me from our world would prevent the Titan Foundation from achieving its goals, in particular derailing the immortality cure and thus preventing the subsequent plague.
“The other faction, led by Yul and Sabrina in 2147, wanted to reset the quantum bridge between the universes after the passengers were evaluated and the vaccine was verified. They believed that the Titans had no right to take two hundred lives from the other universe, half of whom wouldn’t survive exposure to the virus. This universe’s Yul and Sabrina favored nonintervention, but the Titans felt they had a moral obligation to prevent the pandemic in our universe. They wouldn’t approve any plan that didn’t include saving our world. Yul arrived at another, even more incredible solution: a reset for the quantum bridge.”
“Reset?”
“When activated, the reset would close the quantum bridge, sending Flight 305 and all its passengers back to 2015 with no knowledge of what transpired here.
“But it didn’t matter, because the other faction never really cared about any of this. Not the vaccine, not the passengers, not the disruption of time. It was all a cover for their true goal: ensuring that the passengers of Flight 305 remained in this universe forever.”
“What? Why?”
“Love. Oliver and Nicholas chose Flight 305 because it carried two people they loved very much, at crucial points in their lives.”
“Grayson.”
“Yes. Oliver wanted to fulfill his last d
esire: to give Grayson a second chance at life. Flight 305 was perfect—it took off at a turning point for Grayson, right before he would throw his life away.”
“And for Nicholas?”
“Love of a different sort. Flight 305 was his only chance to see the love of his life again, a woman who died in the aftermath of the outbreak. For seventy-six years he’d dreamed of the day he could bring her here, start over with her, the woman he could never be with in his time, not as long as he was an immortal Titan and she wasn’t. For Nicholas, the object of bringing Flight 305 here was you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Harper
FOR A MOMENT, SABRINA’S VOICE ECHOES IN THE empty lab, her words hanging in the air, waiting for me to respond. But my mind is blank. I can’t wrap my head around it. Nicholas, the future version of the Nick Stone I’ve come to know, crashed Flight 305 to bring me here.
“Me?”
Sabrina gives a curt nod. “In the years after the creation of the Titan Foundation, you and Nicholas worked very closely together. You became close friends, then much more. In 2071 he stole the immortality therapy to save your life.”
The passages from my journal . . . My forbidden love. It was him. Nick. No. Nicholas. God, it’s so confusing. I turn the facts over in my mind, trying to make sense of them. He stole the therapy for me, my future self, to make me a Titan so that we could spend eternity together. It’s bizarre and dramatic, but at the same time . . . it’s so very romantic. I’m not used to that.
“Nicholas’s plan was simple. After you received the therapy, you and he would undergo surgery to alter your appearance, then depart as settlers on a new orbital colony sponsored by the Titans. Oliver and Grayson would join you.”
I can only sit, in a daze. My mind is completely blown at this point.