“Fire in A-Wing!” Connor cries. “We need all units. Come on!”
There’s a pause, then the barely audible swish of a door opening.
“There’s no alarm,” a soldier says, “or radio call.”
“We can’t leave our post,” a second adds.
The sudden pop of two gunshots reverberating off the hard walls is deafening. I clap my hands over my mouth.
“Come on!” Connor shouts.
Finn starts to run, so I do too, rounding the corner and approaching the control room, which is surrounded floor to ceiling with bulletproof glass. The two soldiers are slumped in the doorway, a pool of dark blood beneath them, spreading with each second. I never could have imagined so much blood. The movies didn’t prepare me for the sight of two men whose heads have been blown off, either.
Connor stands inside the control room, on the other side of the guards’ broken bodies. His face and uniform are speckled red, and I shudder when he holds a hand out to me. It’s his right hand, the one he used to shoot with, and the blowback has left a shadow of tiny red dots across his skin. I force myself to take it, and he helps me jump over the bodies of the dead men. Finn leaps after me, but his foot lands in the edge of the spreading pool of blood and slips out from under him, sending him sprawling to the floor. I help him up, and he kicks off his sodden slippers.
“I hope to God you know how this thing works,” Connor says, staring at the rows and rows of machinery and flashing lights on the console. Above them is a viewing window that looks into a second, smaller chamber that’s only accessible from a door in the corner of the control room. The tiny room is an arresting sight, eerily devoid of color and texture, a smooth, empty box in shades of gray.
“I have an idea,” I say. “Someone used to talk my ear off about it. Finn, can you—”
“On it,” he says, already sliding into the chair in front of the main computer terminal. “If I know anything about our doctor, the system was designed to be simple to use.”
Finn taps away at the keyboard, a faint line of concentration crossing his brow. I know he’ll get snappish and stressed if he’s interrupted, so I turn to Connor. “Thanks for doing this.”
He wipes the back of his hands on his trousers. “No problem.”
“Why are you helping us?” I ask. “I mean, how did I convince you? I’ll need to know.”
He shrugs. “I was a glorified security guard, and you gave me the chance to be a hero. Besides, some of the things I’ve seen . . .”
“How bad is it out there?”
“Bad.”
Connor looks scared, and that terrifies me. This is a man who calmly drugged his very well-armed colleagues and just shot two men through the head without blinking, but whatever’s going on in the outside world has him tight-lipped and tense. When Finn and I were captured, American drone planes were attacking China, Israel was in a nuclear standoff with Syria, and a good chunk of Houston had just been wiped off the map. It was hard to imagine that things could get worse.
But I guess they did.
“You really think you can change all of this?” Connor asks, and I can see now the desperation hiding deep in the back of his eyes.
I run my finger along the edge of the plastic bag in my pocket. “I think we won’t stop until we do.”
“Oh, here,” he says, reaching into his own pocket. “I almost forgot. You’ll need this.” He pulls out his wallet and works a small photograph of a woman with honey-colored hair and a bright, toothy smile from the photo flap. He hands it to me.
“What’s this?”
He grins. “That’s the real way you convince me to help.”
I smile. “Oh. She’s pretty.”
“And she said yes to a loser like me, can you believe it?”
I put the photo in my pocket along with the note in plastic. “Yeah, I can.”
“Okay, I’ve got it,” Finn says, entering a few final keystrokes. “Everything’s pretty much automated, so I just need to input the date and then Connor can start up the collider once we’re inside.”
“Wait,” Connor says. “If you input a date, won’t he follow right behind you? Or show up ten minutes before you do and shoot you the moment you appear?”
“We’ve already thought about that,” I say.
“I know a code that will hide the real date we use and show something else,” Finn says. “Are you sure about January fourth, Em? Last chance.”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay,” Finn says. “I’m going to make it seem like we went to the seventh. That’s when the doctor will expect us, and it should give us plenty of time to take care of things before he comes back for us.”
“How do I start the collider?” Connor asks.
“Once we’re inside the chamber”—Finn points at the return button—“press this. The automation will do the rest. It takes the accelerator about two minutes to get the particles to the right velocity for collision, and after that we should be gone.”
“Seems easy enough,” Connor says. I repress a hysterical urge to laugh. “I guess there’s nothing left to say but, you know, good luck.”
Finn shakes Connor’s hand, and he and I walk to the far side of the control room, where the door to the inner chamber is. When Finn pulls it open, an earsplitting siren explodes through the building. My hands fly to my ears, my body curling into itself and away from the deafening sound, and Finn swears.
“Get in!” Connor hollers over the din. “Before they get down here! I’ll hold them off!”
Connor slams the door to the inner chamber behind us. I pull Finn after me into the heart of the room so that we’re both standing on the large black circle that marks the center of Cassandra, the miles-long subatomic particle collider that’s built deep under the ground of this facility. Connor barricades the door to the chamber, tipping what looks like a backup server rack in front of it. The siren is so loud, I don’t even hear the bang of the server hitting the floor. Connor runs back to the computer, and the wail of the siren is joined by another sound, a rumbling so low I think I might be imagining it until the vibrations travel up from the collider thousands of feet beneath me and into my feet. Energy hums around Finn and me, lifting the hair off the back of my neck and sending gooseflesh up my arms.
This is only the beginning, I know. I’ve never made this trip that fourteen past versions of me have, but I’ve heard it explained often enough to know what comes next. When the particles whirring beneath my feet around the miles of pipe big enough to drive a truck through finally slam into one another at nearly the speed of light, the explosion will be so powerful, it will fracture time itself.
I’m suddenly very scared. Not of the explosion, which defies my comprehension, but of what I’ll have to do when it’s all over. Of what all this is for.
You have to kill him.
Either Finn senses my fear or he feels it himself, because he puts his hands on my cheeks, lifting my eyes up to his.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says, the words barely audible above the roar.
But then things get very quiet, for me at least. Somehow I find silence in Finn’s dark blue eyes. God, how did I survive so long in that cell without being able to see those eyes?
I’m hit with a crashing realization. Something so obvious, I can’t believe I haven’t thought of it until now. My heart breaks and spills white-hot misery into my body.
“Finn,” I say, and I tell him the terrible thing I’ve finally understood, too late to do anything about it.
He looks into my eyes and tells me why I don’t have to worry. I memorize the words and hold them close.
Over his shoulder, I see a flash of movement, and the world and its noise are back. The soldiers have arrived. While we weren’t looking, Connor cleared the bodies of the dead from the doorway and closed off the control room, but the door’s a paltry barrier to them. I watch in horror as they send it rocketing open. Connor fires into the press of bodies that crowd the doorway, taking dow
n soldier after soldier, but they have more numbers and more guns. He’s quickly overwhelmed. I hide my face against Finn’s chest after a volley of bullets knocks Connor back and he sags to the floor.
But I can’t look away for long. Soldiers are pouring into the control room. Most go straight for the server rack jammed against the door to the inner chamber. If they get the door open, Cassandra will automatically shut down, stranding us here.
But the sight that truly fills me with dread is the doctor entering the room in the wake of the soldiers. Our eyes meet through the four-inch glass of the chamber’s viewing window, and the fury in his face chills me to my marrow. I think he must know what I plan to do. Even if we get away, I know that look will haunt me across time.
He goes to the computer terminal. The rumbling beneath our feet is like an earthquake now, but between the doctor at the keyboard and the soldiers at the doorway, we only have seconds. I squeeze Finn’s hand in mine so tightly, I feel his bones rub together. They’ll shut Cassandra down and finally kill us in some slow, inventive way.
But they’re too late.
As the soldiers heave open the door, the world explodes, and my body dissolves in an agony of fire.
Four
Marina
Four years earlier
I pick absently at the pink polish on my thumbnail as I gaze out over the driveway next door, and Tamsin slaps my hand.
“Stop that!” She examines the nail and sighs. “I’m going to have to do that one over.”
“It was uneven anyway,” I say. “You’ll live.”
Sophie, who’s sprawled out on my bed, doesn’t look up from her phone when she says, “At least she doesn’t bite them anymore.”
“I know, right? So gross.”
Of course, I do bite them sometimes, but I’m careful not to do it around my friends. I still can’t get used to the feel of polish; it’s like my nails are suffocating. But Tam says she’s honing in on my perfect color, something to go along with the plum-colored “Sophie So Fine” and bright red “Tam-erica the Beautiful.”
“Marina . . .” Tamsin says as she applies a coat to the fingers of my right hand. “Marina . . . Your name doesn’t rhyme with anything.”
Sophie’s head snaps up. “Aqua Marina!”
“Well, duh, but I’m painting her nails pink, genius. Goes better with brown hair.”
I’m only half listening, my eyes drifting toward the window and the house next door. Tamsin looks up and catches me.
“He hasn’t shown up since you checked ten seconds ago,” she says, flashing me a grin.
I think about playing dumb, but end up just rolling my eyes. “Shut up.”
There’s no point pretending I’m not waiting for James to get home. I got a single text from him in the three weeks he was gone, to let me know he’d be back from Connecticut tonight. Normally we would have been exchanging phone calls and texts the whole time he was gone, but it felt too awkward given what happened before he left.
“He’s totally going to ask you out,” Sophie says, crossing to my closet where she starts to rifle through my clothes. “I can’t believe you’re going to be James Shaw’s girlfriend!”
“I don’t know. . . .” I say. I’ve been in love with James pretty much as long as I can remember, but I’ve never had any hope he’d feel the same way. Given who he is and who I am, it’s basically impossible.
“Oh, please.” Tamsin blows across my newly pink nails. “He almost kissed you, and for James that’s, like, practically a proposal. Has he ever kissed a girl before?”
I doubt it, but even the idea of James kissing another girl makes my stomach hurt. “He hasn’t even talked to me since, though! Doesn’t that mean he regrets it?”
“No, he was just freaked out by the realization that he’s madly in love with you,” Tamsin says. “But now that he’s had time to wrap his big brain around it—”
“Bet that’s not the only big thing he has,” Sophie says, wiggling her eyebrows.
Tamsin groans, and I say, “Gross!” But Sophie just laughs and pulls on my new cashmere sweater, checking her reflection in the mirror.
“I’m serious!” she says. “You know you’re going to have to make the first move with him, right?”
“Totally,” Tamsin says. “But play it cool.”
“How do I do that?” I say. I get shaky and sweaty just thinking about it. “Not all of us have jumped so many boys that it’s that easy.”
“With that boy?” Sophie says. “It sure as hell should be easy.”
Sophie makes lewd moaning noises and kisses the back of her hand, and Tamsin and I laugh. This is the best thing about Sophie; she’s never scared of looking dumb. Maybe because she kind of is. Meanwhile, Tamsin, with her posh British accent and Bollywood-star looks, instantly makes anything she does or says seem cool, so it’s really only me who’s constantly worrying about making a fool of myself. I just can’t bear to go back to being the friendless loser I was before.
There’s a knock on my bedroom door, and Sophie claps her hand over her mouth. “Are your parents home?” she whispers.
I wave my hand. “It’s just Luz. Come in!”
Luz, who’s been our housekeeper since I was little, pokes her head in the door.
“I’m going home, mi querida,” she says. “Are you okay until your mama gets home?”
Tamsin laughs, and I stiffen.
“I’m sixteen, Luz,” I say. “I think I’ll manage.”
I see a troubled look pass over the woman’s face and briefly feel bad. Luz is one of the few people in the world who really loves me, but I wish she wouldn’t treat me like such a little kid. It’s embarrassing.
“There are empanadas in the refrigerator if you girls want a snack,” she says.
“Okay,” I say, knowing there’s no way we’ll eat empanadas. She looks like she might say something else—like sleep tight or you don’t eat enough or I love you—so I jump in. “Bye, Luz.”
“Good night, mi querida.”
When she’s gone, Tamsin starts on her own nails and Sophie tries on a couple of the dresses I bought during our latest shopping trip. Every one of them looks loose on her perfect body. I decide to eat nothing but salad for the next week before school starts.
I look over at the Shaws’ place again. A crew came to shovel the driveway and sidewalk this morning in anticipation of the congressman’s return. Any second, a sleek black town car will drive up. It will happen by the time I count to five.
I tick off the numbers in my head, drawing them out. Three, four . . . five.
Nothing.
I reach for my phone and dash off a text to our friend Olivia, who’s in Switzerland with her parents for break. She invited me to go with them, but I decided not to just so that I’d be home when James got back. I’m so stupid. Wherever he is, James isn’t jittering with anxiety over seeing me again, running his mind over the moment three weeks ago where his mouth lingered an inch from mine before drawing away. I’m popular and reasonably smart and very independent; I don’t need to be obsessing over some boy like this, like such a pathetic little girl.
Tamsin and Sophie stay over until my mom comes home from her planning meeting for the symphony benefit and slams the front door behind her. The sound echoes up the stairwell, and suddenly the air is tense and thick, like Mom brought a thunderstorm in with her. It doesn’t take my friends long to decide to clear out. I only wish I could go with them.
“Text me later, okay?” Tam says at the front door. “I want to hear what happens.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
Sophie kisses my cheek. “Go get him, tiger!”
“Oh my God, you’re such a dork,” I say, even though my stomach tightens. I push her out the door and wave as they climb into Tam’s Cabriolet. She shouldn’t be driving without an adult since we’re not old enough for licenses yet, but she always sneaks it out of the garage when her parents aren’t home. I close the door gingerly behind them, tryin
g not to make a sound, and lunge for the stairs.
“Marina?” Mom calls from her studio at the back of the house.
I groan and stop on the fourth stair. So close. “Yeah?”
“Don’t yell across the house; come here!”
I roll my eyes savagely and barely avoid calling back that she’s the one who started the yelling. I tromp back to her studio, where she makes paintings that no one wants to buy and which inevitably end up hanging in one of our guest bedrooms. I think she actually dreamed of being a great artist once, but the closest she gets now is hosting fund-raisers for the National Gallery.
“What is it?” I say.
“Watch the tone,” she says, blending a couple of reds on her palette. “Have you talked to your father today?”
You’d think in this age of e-mail and cell phones they wouldn’t need to use me as a communication medium, but lately they only seem to talk to me as a means of passing messages to each other. “No.”
“Can you call him, please, and ask him if he plans to be home for dinner?”
“Why can’t you?”
She levels a look on me over the top of the canvas. “I’m working here, Marina.” Like her painting is so important to her. She’ll spend hours planning parties for some museum or hospital, or at the salon getting her hair highlighted, but the second she gets home she has to lock herself up in her studio.
I think she just can’t stand to be near me.
“Fine.” I turn to leave.
“Don’t text him!” she calls after me. “You know he never replies!”
I dial Dad’s office line as I take the stairs back to my room. It always takes him forever to answer, so I put the phone on speaker and rest it on my dresser as I change into pajamas. Mom hates it when I wear pajamas to dinner. These were a gift from Luz, and my skin sighs in relief when I slip out of the suffocating skinny jeans Tamsin insisted I buy and into the cheap, soft fleece. I feel a brief pang as I remember Luz’s face when I snapped at her. Questionable taste in pajamas aside, I do love the woman. She’s one of the few people who doesn’t make it a total secret that she cares about me, even if that means she embarrasses the hell out of me every chance she gets.