Departure (19 page)

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 desire: 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.”

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.

Sabrina drones on, oblivious to my catatonic state. “When you and Grayson died after they stole the therapy in 2071, Nicholas and Oliver were devastated. Since that day, they've devoted their lives to recovering the two of you, to starting over. They manipulated the Titans, steered Yul and Sabrina here in the future, and us in the past. They tricked and connived, all to get you and Grayson here. Nicholas will go to any length to be with you. He's killed for you, and he's planning to kill again.”

It's hard to imagine the Nick I know taking a life, but I have to remind myself that this is another person, separated by over 130 years' time, someone who has changed a great deal, no matter what he may look like.

Sabrina pauses, reading my expression. “After our plane crossed into this time, Nicholas and Oliver launched their attack at Heathrow. Their first targets were Yul and Sabrina, the keys to resetting the quantum bridge and returning the passengers of Flight 305 to 2015. During the fighting Yul tried to reset the bridge, but he was unsuccessful—he only sent a series of disturbances along the link.”

“Which crashed our plane.”

“Yes. Nicholas killed Yul and Sabrina before the bridge could be reset.”

“Those are the bodies I saw in the lab next door?”

“Correct. About half of all the Titans were killed at Heathrow. Ten remain loyal to Oliver and Nicholas. There are twelve here. Since the crash, they've all been looking for the three of us, but it was . . . my future self's faction that found us.”

“Why?”

“They want Yul and me to complete our counterparts' work, to reset the bridge and return Flight 305 and its passengers to 2015.”

“Is that possible?”

“We're not sure. We've been working on it. And another project, the original plan to save the world we came from.”

Sabrina's usually stoic mask fades a bit. That makes me nervous.

“We believe, however, that we may be almost out of time. A few hours ago one of our surveillance drones spotted Nick—the Nick you and I know—and Grayson entering the Titan camp at Heathrow. We believe they were searching for the three of us. Motivations aside, Nick and Grayson are with Oliver and Nicholas right now, who are no doubt feeding them misinformation, enlisting their help in a final assault.”

Don't like the sounds of that. “Final assault?”

“They're coming here, to Titan City. Their goal, as I said, is to destroy the quantum device, ensuring that the bridge can never be reset. Only one thing has kept them from destroying the city and the quantum device with it.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“You, Harper. You're Nicholas's one true desire; he would never risk killing you. So long as you're here, Nicholas and Oliver can't make a direct strike on the city. They'll have to come in to extract you.”

“So, I'm . . . bait?”

“Leverage.”

Now we're playing word games with my life.

“You're the only thing that's prevented everyone here from being killed already. I've told you all of this because I believe you might determine all of our fates. When the time comes, when Nicholas, Oliver, Nick, Grayson, and their Titans invade the city, you'll have a decision to make.”

Oh, God, anything else. I put my face in my hands. I'd like a stiff drink about now.

“Harper, are you listening to me?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No, you don't. In a few short hours, you'll have to decide whether the passengers of Flight 305 return to our time or stay here in 2147.”

Blimey.

I THINK SABRINA IS AS PAINED BY OUR
hour-long discussion as I am. We keep going back over the same things, debating, running through scenarios and what-ifs, but in the end it's all quite simple:

Once Nicholas has me, this whole place will go up. Game over. And the passengers of Flight 305 will never have any chance of returning home. Those hundred and twenty-one souls who didn't get the vaccine, who either died in the crash or the outbreak after, will be dead forever, and the rest of us will be trapped here. It will be as if Flight 305 disappeared over the Atlantic. The world will assume it crashed, all passengers and crew lost.

We'll never see our families again. They'll bury us. Mourn. Move on (hopefully). But they might also avoid the pandemic that claimed every life on Earth in this time, save for the Titans who now wage a civil war over the fate of Flight 305.

And then there's the other side, the possibility that Yul and Sabrina will succeed and we'll all return to Flight 305, unaware that anything ever happened. I will have never met the Nick Stone I came
to . . . know (I want to use another word, but I won't let myself; it will only make my dilemma worse). Must keep emotion out. Must make a rational decision. So easy to say . . . but the Nicholas from this world and my future self, they . . . Okay, last time I'm thinking about that.

“What's your decision, Harper?” Sabrina presses.

They're anxious to know what I'll do when Nicholas and friends arrive. I wonder if they'll jail me if I say the wrong thing.

“I don't know.”

“Unacceptable.”

I let my face fall into my hands and mumble while I massage my eyelids. “I don't know, Sabrina, okay? It's a lot to take in. I just need . . . some time, all right?”

“We don't have time.”

I just stare at her.

“Very well. Perhaps some rest will give you the perspective you need.”

She walks to a cabinet and retrieves two notebooks I recognize well. “I believe these are yours.”

The tranquilizing burr is still stuck through my journal, and the Alice Carter notebook is as I remember it.

“Thanks,” I mumble. I glance around the lab, unsure where to go. “Can I . . .”

“You're free to go anywhere you wish, Harper. This isn't a prison.”

Sabrina runs down the layout of Titan City, which contains five towers, each dedicated to one of the original five Titan Marvels and shaped like human fingers, together forming a hand reaching out of the massive dam toward the sky, the ocean to its backside, its palm facing the new land the Titans created, waving.

I'll give it to them for originality.

Our current tower (finger?), which houses the labs, lies in the middle, rising slightly above the two on each side, to symbolize the central role of science and research. Facing the Atlantic, the tower to its right is a hotel; the ring finger represents the Titan union with humanity and visitors. The shorter, narrower tower closest to Gibraltar holds the Titan apartments. On the left side of the lab tower, the pointer finger holds an office complex, and the thumb, which points toward Africa, is dedicated to support staff and storage.

I leave the lab tower through the double doors and walk awhile along the promenade that overlooks the waterfall, down the dam into the shadow of the five fingers, which I had been too close to make out before. There I stand for a long time, staring at the ribbons of sunlight that slip through the fingers. From here I can see the Atlantic all the way to the horizon to my left and the deep, jagged canyon the dam created to my right. The charred airships sit placidly at the base of the hand of Titan City, awaiting their final battle. My hair blows around again, strands lashing my mouth and eyes.

In the sky just left of the last finger, I notice a streak like a red-hot poker, driving down through the clouds. It wasn't there before. What could it be? A meteor? A comet?

BACK INSIDE, I EXPECT TO
find Sabrina in the lab where she and I spoke at length, but it's empty. She and Yul must be inside the lab tower somewhere.

On the second floor I hear a voice—Sabrina's—talking at length, with no give and take. Not surprising. I approach the door, but something makes me wait. The tone . . . it's different somehow. It's Sabrina, yet not as robotic.

“Okay, I'm telling you this . . . well, just in case.”

Sabrina pauses.

“I want to walk you through my notes on the therapy, but first, there's some personal things I want to say, that could . . . help you if you manage to make it back with these memories.”

It's Sabrina—future Sabrina—talking with herself.

“The first is to stop seeing your social limitations as an excuse not to socialize. For most of my life I saw my social inability as a reason not to build personal relationships. I felt I was incapable and that it was therefore useless to try. I was wrong. Every mind has limits. Some have a relative disadvantage in language production, short-term memory, math, or spatial ordering. Your mind has a significant limitation in social awareness and interaction. You have some capacity, and it will only erode with lack of use. You must see your mind differently. If math is a weakness, you must do math to get better. In the same way, you must socialize and try to form bonds with people
to get better at it. It will be awkward. You will believe it's a waste of time, but it isn't. Your range is limited, but it exists—I know for a fact. I've had a hundred and sixty-seven years to prove it. When you get back, you must commit yourself to making an effort, and when you fail, ask yourself what you can learn. I kept a journal and reviewed my findings regularly, drawing correlations from my experiences. Your social shortcomings are like anything else: you must practice to get better. You must try, fail, learn, and try again to ever improve.

“There's one other thing. Steven, in your lab, has a huge crush on you, but he's far too intimidated by you to ask you out. In three years he'll marry another tech in your lab. They will never be happy, and she will leave him in another five years. He'll never be the same after that. Ask him if he wants to have coffee after work, and tell him there's only one rule: you can't talk about work. See where things go from there.

“Now. On to my notes. For years I made very little progress. The breakthrough was realizing that a person dies with the same neurons they are born with. Neurons don't age like other cells. They don't divide or die off and are rarely replaced by new ones. You are born with and die with the same roughly one hundred billion neurons. However, over the course of your life, the electrical impulses those neurons store changes. The electrical changes are your memories. Like the nodes in Q-net, the neurons in your brain are made of the same particles in both worlds. The only difference between here and there is the placement of electrons. . . .”

I inch around the glass door to the lab, just far enough to peer in. Sabrina sits on a stool with her back to me, hunched over a lab table, her black hair unmoving. There's another Sabrina staring out at me, her eyes not quite as lifeless as the ones I've come to know. She's still talking. It's a recording, playing back on a giant screen on the far wall of the lab. The future Sabrina made a video, a just-in-case encapsulation of her notes. These people think of everything.

Instinctively I back away. The technical talk is beyond me, but I'm sure of one thing: whatever future Sabrina is telling her past self, it can't possibly have to do with the vaccine—that's already been solved.

So it's a new experiment—something Sabrina didn't tell me about.

I'm lost in thought as I turn the corner. The next corridor is the
same as the last: glass doors set in marble walls. In the echoing space, I hear another voice. Yul. As before, I draw close enough to the door to hear him. It's another recording, but it may as well be in Chinese; I can barely understand a word. It's all mathematical theories and variables and stuff I can't even wager a guess about.

Then it loops, starting from the top. Yul must be working while listening to the recording in the background.

“Okay. Sabrina wants me to make this video as a backup, a guide to my work in case . . . the worst happens. And I agree there's a chance of that, but the truth is this: there's little chance you're ever going to complete my work—”

Someone shouts offstage—Sabrina, I think—and the video cuts out. It resumes a second later.

“I guess this is take two. I'm supposed to provide personal guidance to you, anything that could help you live a better life, assuming you make it back to 2015 with your memories, which, again, is doubtful—”

Another shout, and the camera cuts out again. The voice resumes after a few seconds.

“Anyway, on to the task at hand. The first thing you should know is that your understanding of quantum physics is incomplete. Woefully. In a few years—your time—an experiment at CERN will change the way you see the quantum world. Space-time isn't what you think it is. It's far stranger. Your current understanding is simplistic and limits your thinking. The discovery at CERN will be the breakthrough that makes everything in the next hundred and thirty years possible. So I'm faced with the impossible task of condensing over a century of breakthroughs in particle physics down into a two-hour video course. Even though I'm teaching a younger version of myself, I still believe it's impossible, that it will take you years to even grasp the concepts my work is based upon, much less achieve the level of understanding necessary to complete it in weeks or days. Nevertheless, here we go. You've been warned.

“And before you get any wild ideas, let me stop you: time travel to the past is impossible. Even under the new paradigm, matter can only travel into the future, as your plane did. We can, however, change the state of linked particles that exist in both times. The problem is
power. The more massive the particle, the more power you need. The dam only generates enough power to change the state of very small particles, those with a minute amount of mass. Electrons are the most useful, for our purposes. That's how I sent the messages via Q-net. Here's where it gets tricky. . . .”

What follows is the balance of the lecture I caught the end of, again in a language wholly foreign to me, spoken in English but in the vernacular of mathematics and physics.

After a few minutes of listening, I come to a conclusion: we're screwed. I mean, why didn't the Yul of the future just program an off switch on the thing? I guess to ensure his safety. Or maybe it's more complicated than that. It certainly sounds like it. Or maybe the task at hand isn't related to the quantum bridge at all. Maybe it's another experiment completely—possibly related to Sabrina's work. I feel like a revelation is just out of reach, a piece I haven't connected. There's something they aren't telling me.

I peer around the doorframe. Inside the lab, Yul's head rests on his crossed arms on the raised table in the center. He's not working. Or is he . . .

I push the door open, and he looks up at me with bloodshot, watery eyes.

“What's wrong?” I ask quietly.

“I can't figure it out. He's right.”

He shakes his head.

“And I've got a migraine. It's killing me.”

“Sabrina can't help?” I ask.

“We're not . . . speaking right now.”

“You have to, Yul.”

He sets his head back on his arms. “I'll die first. We're all probably going to anyway.”

I back out of the lab, pace out of the wing, returning to Sabrina's lab. I pause outside, waiting for the deeply personal part where she talks about the tech in her lab to pass, then push her door open.

She turns, surprised to see me. Her hand moves quickly to the table, and the screen blinks out.

“Harper . . .”

“Yul needs you.”