Find Me Where the Water Ends (So Close to You) (12 page)

Chapter 13

“S
eventeen,”
the older man says.

My mouth is open, but nothing comes out.

“We are aware that this may be a shock.” Future me’s voice sounds familiar, but it is deeper than mine. Colder. She continues, “Regardless, you’ll need to debrief both of us on the events of the mission.”

“You’re . . .”

“You. Yes.” She wears a slim beige dress that clings to her thin frame, and her dark-red hair is pulled back in a tight bun. Her skin is as pale as mine. She looks like she’s in her late thirties, but I wonder how old she really is, in this age of stem-cell technology. Fifty? Sixty?

She crosses the room and sits down at the desk, her movements quick and efficient, with a grace I’ve never been able to possess.

The older man moves to sit next to her.

“General Walker?” I whisper.

“Colonel Walker. General Walker was my father.”

The two men look startlingly similar, with the same graying hair, square jaw, and straight nose.

“You can call me Agent Bentley.” This future version watches me closely as she speaks. Her voice isn’t as cold as the colonel’s, but it’s not exactly warm either. She seems . . . blank. Like a recruit.

“Agent Bentley?” I glance between her and Walker. She’s not just a recruit—they’re using my last name, with a title I’ve never heard before in the Project. “What does that mean?”

“Agent Bentley is here as a consultant. The mission you were on was significant. Since Bentley lived through it, she came back here as a favor to help us out. Now we’re especially thankful she did, since something in the time line was altered.” Colonel Walker gestures at the chair across from the desk. “Sit down, Seventeen.”

But I cannot move away from the window, my muscles locked tight. “I would never help—”

“Things change.” Colonel Walker raises his thick brows. “Sit, Seventeen.”

This time it is a command, and I automatically cross the room and sink down into one of the sleek chrome chairs.

“Tell us what happened in the woods,” Walker says.

“Don’t you know already?” I glance at the future version of me—Agent Bentley. While Colonel Walker slouches, she sits perfectly still, her back straight. He isn’t treating her like a subordinate, which means she must have some power here.

“The time line has changed,” she says. “You were supposed to be found in Times Square with Recruit Eleven, but this time you’re alone. Colonel Walker and I want to know why that shift occurred.” Her voice stays cool, but as she says Wes’s number, a muscle twitches in her cheek.

“I . . . I don’t know.” I have a hard time looking into her—
my
—face, and I stare down at the silver metal desk as I answer. “This is my first time in the future. I didn’t even know something was different. Eleven . . . he couldn’t come with me.”

“The president is dead, which means the mission was a success.” Colonel Walker reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. They are the new nontoxic, non-tar kind that burn clean. He lights one, blowing the smoke out into the room. “But we’re concerned about what this shift means. Eleven isn’t our priority, but if he’s dead, then it could affect the time line in other ways in the future. We want to be prepared.”

He speaks of Wes’s death so casually, and I struggle to keep calm. Agent Bentley is better at it, though I see the slight way she flinches at the colonel’s words.

“Ti—” I stop. If Agent Bentley still has my memories, then she knows what name I was about to say, but she makes no comment. “Thirty-one was killed in the field. I was forced to abandon Eleven and Twenty-two when they were shot to come here. I’d like permission to go back to the start of this mission and change what happened, so they’ll survive.”

“Now why would we authorize that?” Colonel Walker takes a long drag of the cigarette. It still smells like the old ones, sharp and acrid, and Agent Bentley scrunches up her nose as the smoke curls in front of her face. “Sardosky is dead. The nuclear war we’ve been trying to stop will never occur now. Except for the time line shift, the mission was a success. We don’t know yet how Eleven’s disappearance will affect the future time line, but it might be insignificant. He was an older recruit, right?” He looks over at Agent Bentley, who nods stiffly. “Then he probably wouldn’t have lived for much longer anyway.”

I push forward in my chair until I’m sitting on the very edge. “Eleven
is
significant to the time line.” I know my voice is desperate, but I can’t help it. “I can go back to the woods. I can find them there before the Secret Service finds us. Sardosky will still be dead.”

Colonel Walker is already shaking his head. “There’s no point. Maybe later, if we find out that Eleven was important in some way. Right now we’ll try to pinpoint the exact moment of the change, using Agent Bentley’s knowledge of what happened. But I suspect those three recruits are expendable.”

“Expendable?” I whisper the word. A shadow passes over Agent Bentley’s face, but she makes no outward movement. I’ve always known that the Project felt that way about recruits, but this is Wes. And Tim. They don’t deserve to be treated like this.

The colonel takes a drag of his cigarette. “Recruits come and go.”

“Is that why you didn’t try to get us out after we completed our mission? Is that why you left us in the woods, being hunted like animals?” I sound like I’m being strangled, and I swallow hard.

“We knew you would make it to New York. It’s what was originally supposed to happen,” the future me says, her voice softer than it was before.

“Why didn’t you tell us that when we were prepping for the mission? Why did you just let us wait in the woods for days?”

“We only knew for sure that you and Eleven would live, at least in that version of the time line. We couldn’t tell your whole team about the outcome, not when half of them were destined to die. And besides, there were too many eyes on the woods. There was no way to do a safe extraction.” Colonel Walker puts out his cigarette on the table, grinding the red tip into the metal until it is just ash. “But you made it out in the end. That’s what really matters.”

I lay my hands on the desk, feeling the cold sink into my fingers, and I ask the question that has been plaguing me for days. “Why does it matter that I was the one who lived?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” He tilts his head toward Agent Bentley. “She might be an agent now, but in a few years her title changes to Director Bentley.”

I look at her—at myself—in horror. “Director?”

“In about twenty years, you’ll be running things,” the colonel says.

I was always different from the others. General Walker must have been lying when he said my destiny was to kill Sardosky. Or maybe that was part of it, but not the whole story.
This
is what they saw as my destiny—running an organization that stole everything from me. Becoming something I hate.

“No.” I shake my head violently back and forth. “It isn’t true. I don’t believe it.”

“It’ll happen, whether you believe in it now or not,” Agent Bentley says. Walker smiles at her, but she does not acknowledge him.

“If you’re so powerful, then let me go back. Let me save them.”

She doesn’t answer.

“How could I have become like you?” I whisper the words. “Someone who would leave them out there to die? What about Thirty-one? Eleven?”

I stare at the older version of myself, willing her to say something, to fight for Wes. I need her to show me that I still exist inside of her, that I haven’t become exactly like Colonel Walker. But she just sits there, her hands folded neatly on the table in front of her.

Through it all, even during my training, even when I felt so lost inside the Facility, I never stopped trying to save the people I love. If she won’t even speak up for Wes, then I know that I am gone, that the Project has won.

I hunch over the desk, needing to hide my face from them. Tears fall onto the scarred metal, small drops that slowly start to form a pool.

“What are you doing?” I hear a scrape as the colonel pushes back his chair. “Show some respect in front of your officers.”

He is standing over me, hovering, but I still don’t look up.

“Put your arm down, Colonel.” Agent Bentley’s voice is quietly commanding. “Remember that when you hit her, you’re hitting me.”

I lift my head to see him standing over me, his hand raised in the air, his face turning red. It is the first time an officer from the Project would have physically struck me. There’s something personal about hitting someone in anger that doesn’t quite match my experience with the Montauk Project, and I wonder if Colonel Walker is taking some frustration with Agent Bentley out on me.

He slowly lowers his arm, though he doesn’t stop glaring at me. “I apologize, Bentley. But remember that you’re not in charge yet. Not in this time period.”

She stands without looking at him. “We’ll continue the debrief when you’re ready to cooperate, Seventeen.”

Hearing her say my number instead of my name is a physical blow. I suck in air, but I cannot catch my breath. She has stolen everything.

I lie back on the hard mattress, staring up at the mirrored ceiling. My face looks back, tired and pale and small. I am dressed in the all-black uniform of the recruits, after showering in the small bathroom off the side of this room. I’m clean for the first time in days, but I still feel as dirty as I did before, like I’m forever covered in dirt and grime—in blood.

I turn over onto my side and face another white wall. This room is a small square box designed to feel like a prison cell. I don’t know how long they’ll keep me here, but I know that it’s only a matter of time before I’m sent out into the field again, forced to do mission after mission until I end up as cold and empty as her.

I won’t accept this future. I cannot become something I hate, willing to put the Montauk Project in front of the lives of my friends and family. What will happen to my grandfather? To Tim and Wes?

But how will I get out of this place? I need to go back to the beginning. I have to find some way to make it right.

The bright lights overhead suddenly disappear. I sit up on the bed, fuzzy spots moving in front of my eyes. The Center never gets dark. Not unless something is wrong.

They flicker once, then come back on again, burning white. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, and then I see myself—Agent Bentley—standing in the middle of the room.

“What are you—?”

She puts her hand up. “I’ve cut the camera feed to this room, but we don’t have much time. You need to listen to me.”

I scramble up from the bed, my boots falling heavily on the slick tile floor. I want to trust that she’s here to help me, but I cannot get her vacant expression out of my head. Was it all just an act? Is this the act now?

“What do you want?”

“I know you, Lydia.” She takes a step forward, her hand still stretched between us. “I
am
you. You’re curious about me, and you know that you could never have changed as much as the woman in that meeting had.”

I stare at her for a beat before I nod. She smiles slightly and it transforms her face, making her look softer, more human. More like me.

I cross my arms over my chest as I wait for her to speak. I’m willing to listen to what she has to say, but I’m guarded, wary. Still, I feel relief start to unfurl inside of me. Coming to this room is something I would have done, which means Director Bentley couldn’t have changed that much.

“When I did this mission, We—” She blinks rapidly and looks down at the ground. I wonder why she can’t bring herself to say Wes’s name. “Eleven and I were the only ones who made it. We came to New York to try and find out who was behind the radio advertisement. The Project found us in Times Square and had a recruit deliver us to the Facility. They wouldn’t let us go back in time to try and save Thirty-one and Twenty-two, but I eventually accepted their decision, because . . .”

“Because you had Wes,” I say.

She nods. She seems like a different person now, her face more expressive, her hands moving as she speaks.

“We stayed with the Project. We couldn’t find a way out. And then General Walker told me that my destiny was to run everything one day. It’s true that I was supposed to be on the Sardosky mission, so in a way it was
a
fate, but it wasn’t why I was recruited. My true destiny was to eventually become the director. That’s why they picked me. That’s why they didn’t push me as hard as the other recruits.”

I shake my head, but she keeps going. “At first I fought against it, too, but Eleven helped me see how it could be a good thing. I could create change. I could make the Project a better place.”

I take a step backward until my knees hit the edge of the bed.
Wes
helped her see that? “But nothing has changed. You heard Colonel Walker in that meeting. He didn’t care if any of the recruits but me made it out alive.”

“Change doesn’t happen all at once. There are still men like Walker, who learned from his father how to run this organization without mercy. He might be in charge in twenty forty-nine, but in twenty seventy-seven, I’ll run everything. Right now the Project has vague ideas about controlling the time line, with no real organization or communication across different eras. Sometimes they do good, but more often they are changing history so frequently that no one remembers what the original time line was in the first place. And the recruits are dying young.” Her hands fall, and she suddenly seems smaller, frailer. She drags her fingers across her face before she speaks again. “In the future, you and I fix all that, starting by disbanding the Recruitment Initiative and sending fewer recruits through time. There are no more children taken from the streets or from their families. The recruits are all volunteers, and are trained with safer TMs. The days of the Montauk Project’s reign of terror are over. Our job is still to watch over the time line, to save people when we can, but we’ll be smarter about it. More careful.”

A safer Montauk Project? Is that even possible? Could she, could
I
, really make a difference? I can tell this future Lydia believes what she’s saying. But— “That’s years from now. How many people have to die in the meantime? What happens to Wes and Tim? To Twenty-two?”