Future Shock (21 page)

I hear the sound of running water from behind a closed door. I try to convince myself that Zoe is just taking a shower, but I remember the crime scene photos and I know what’s coming. I’m already crying as I open the door.

The shower’s on and the room is like a sauna, full of hot, moist air. I smell something metallic that sends waves of primal horror through me. I choke and cover my mouth with my shirt. It’s a tiny bathroom, just a sink, a toilet, and a tub crammed together. I force myself to push aside the shower curtain.

Zoe’s lying in the tub with the shower’s spray directly above her head. It drips down onto her blue hair and over her limp body, the water mixing with the blood and turning pink before washing down the drain. There’s more blood on the wall where the water doesn’t reach, and bullet holes in the tile behind her. My mind processes all of this and files it away before I can react, before I drop to my knees beside her and clutch my head, hyperventilating and making little gasping sounds.

I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing I could scrub the image of her body from my brain. I already saw it once in the photos, but it’s a thousand times worse in person. I didn’t know Zoe long, but in those few short hours, she became my friend. She proved to be braver than I originally thought when she convinced Wombat to help us and later when she crawled through those ducts and set off the smoke bomb. She wanted to go to art school and to be reunited with her little sister and give her a better life. But I failed her and now she’s dead like Trent.

Maybe Future-Adam was right, and we can’t change the future. Maybe, no matter what happens, our fate is already written and we’re just puppets being pulled along by strings. And by traveling to the future, the five of us are forced to relive this loop over and over.

I switch off the water and briefly touch her blue hair to say good-bye. I might have failed Zoe and Trent, but I still have a few hours until my own clock runs out. I can still escape, get out of the city, try to flee my fate.

But what about Chris? He has a kid on the way—I can’t abandon him. I need to tell him the others are dead at the very least, but he won’t answer my calls.

I have to track him down in person.

Downey Automotive is a hole-in-the-wall mechanic shop that fixes banged-up cars that were in accidents and fender benders. They’re scattered across the lot behind a chain-link fence. As I approach, a big black dog barks at me from the other side. A guy looks up from the hood of one of the cars, but he’s not Chris.

The inside of the shop is hot enough to melt your skin off, with one wimpy fan blowing in the corner. Sweat rolls down my back, hot and slick under my tank top. Behind the counter is a guy in his twenties who’s completely covered in tattoos, even along his neck and hands. Three days ago he totally would have been my type.

He gives me a slow once-over with a grin. “Hey, mami, con que te ayudo?” I get the feeling he’s asking if I need help with more than just my car.

“I’m looking for Chris.”

“He’s gone.” The guy leans back and crosses his arms. “You the one who called earlier?”

“Yeah. Could you give me his number, por favor?”

He rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I can’t just hand out his number to some random hyna.”

“It’s an emergency.” I lean on the counter and give him my best pleading look. The guy’s eyes immediately dart down to my chest. He’s not exactly subtle. But he isn’t budging either. “It’s about Shawnda,” I add.

He gives my boobs another long appraisal and clears his throat. “Yeah, okay. But don’t tell him you got it from me.”

“Gracias.” I glance at my watch while he scribbles numbers on a Post-it. Chris only has an hour before the window of his death begins. This is my one chance to warn him before then, and if this number doesn’t work, if this guy is playing me, there’s nothing else I can do.

But just as I’m slipping the number in my pocket, Chris walks into the shop. “Cortez, give us a minute,” he says, and the guy behind the counter disappears into the back.

I almost want to hug Chris it’s such a relief to see him alive. But he glares at me, the muscles in his neck twitching, a heavy wrench clutched in his hand.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asks.

“Trent and Zoe are dead,” I say quickly. “I think you’re next. You have to get out of here. You have to—”

“What?” His eyes bulge a little. “How do you know they’re dead?”

“I-I went to see them and found their bodies.”

He grips the wrench harder and growls, “Get out of here. Now.”

“Chris, listen to me. I’m not the killer. I don’t even have a gun!”

“Yeah? And where’s your boyfriend?”

“I don’t know! But I don’t think he’s the killer either.”

“No, course not. ’Cause he tricked you, and now he’s going to set you up.” He shakes his head. “You’re the one who should run.”

“But Shawnda and your son—”

“I don’t need your help!” he yells, getting right up in my face. “I have it under control! Now get out of here before I call the cops!”

I step back, stunned by his outburst. I don’t think he’ll hurt me, but then again, he had no problem punching me before. The fan whizzes behind us as I stand there, staring at him and willing him to listen to me. But he just smacks the wrench against his palm, his eyes hard, and I finally turn around and walk out.

I can’t believe he’s so stubborn. I did everything I could—I called, I tracked him down, I tried to help him—but I guess he can take care of himself. If he would just
listen
to me, we could work something out to save both of us. But as usual, I’m on my own.

I don’t know where to go or what to do next. My body moves mechanically, my brain completely shut down. I only snap out of it when I realize I’ve walked five blocks under the relentless sun and I’m dying of thirst.

I stop at a convenience store to buy some water and then get the bathroom key from the manager. Once inside, I take a minute to dig the blood out from under my nails, but the sight of it flaking into the sink brings back all the images of Trent and Zoe. Everything hits me again—the bodies, the smell, the lifeless look in their eyes—and I rush to the toilet to throw up.

Once my entire stomach is empty and my throat burns, I slump next to the toilet. The floor’s covered in piss and a cockroach skitters by, but I can’t find the will to get up. My gut aches from the vomiting and my cracked rib, and now that I’ve stopped moving, my ankle feels like it’s on fire. But the real pain is from knowing my friends are dead, and there’s nothing I can do to fix it. I wish I could go back and do everything over, but the only time travel to the past is regret.

No, dammit, I’m not dead yet. I heave myself off the disgusting floor and clean myself up in the sink. I need another plan.

I call Aether again, but Lynne is still out of the office. I scramble for other ideas. The evidence from the future is still in my bag. I said I’d go public with it if any of us were killed, but the truth is, I’m not exactly sure how to do that. I was hoping Katie could help me—she’s a bit more computer savvy than I am—but when I text her, she says she’s about to meet with her social worker. I’m hesitant to involve her in this anyway. I don’t need anyone else to get killed because of me.

Maybe I should enlist my foster mother for help. I don’t want to put her in danger either, but at least she could hang on to the hard copies of the reports, in case something happens to me.

I dig through my bag for the reports and my hand brushes something else made of paper: Adam’s origami unicorn, the one he made from a napkin at that first lunch together. It’s a bit crushed and rumpled now, but as I run my hands over the folds, all the memories of Adam that I’ve tried to repress flood my brain.

My feelings for him made me blind, made me go against everything I’ve learned in my seventeen years: to not trust anyone but myself. But despite everything that happened, despite the fact he lied to me and betrayed our team, I still can’t believe he’s a murderer. He may have been working for Aether, but the way I found Trent and Zoe…Adam could never have done that. I don’t know if anything between us was real, but I
know
him on some level, and he’s not a killer.

It doesn’t matter. I’m done with Adam. We had a brief fling, but it’s over now. If he cared for me at all, he would have been honest with me about what he was doing. I crumple the unicorn into a ball and throw it across the bathroom.

Future-Adam’s words come back to me, telling me to trust his younger self when the time came. I thought he meant that moment in the rain when Adam asked me to open up to him, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe he meant before the aperture opened, when Adam said he was recruited to get the cure. He never got the chance to explain, and I never gave him another one. And like Future-Adam said, we’re never going to see each other again.

I head for the door, but as I step over the crumpled unicorn I pause. Wait. Future-Adam said he never saw any of us after we got back. Does that mean if I go to Adam now I’ll be doing something different, something that didn’t happen in the other timeline? Or did he lie to me about that too?

I have to make a decision. But whatever I choose, there’s no way to know if I’m changing my fate or just following through with it.

The first path is the one the normal Elena would follow, the one my head says to follow now—to forget Adam and go through with my plan to use the evidence against Aether.

But the other path is a complete shift from everything I know, the opposite of what I’d normally do, and the thing my heart desperately wants me to do: to trust Adam.

I pick up the origami unicorn and make my choice.

Adam lives near LAX—I saw his address in our file, when we broke into Aether headquarters—on a street of identical one-story houses. The grass hasn’t been mowed in a while, and there’s an older Toyota sitting in the driveway. I check the numbers on the porch again. This is it.

I can turn around now. I can run away, escape down to Mexico or something, and try to save myself. But I can’t shake the feeling there’s something I missed, some clue I can’t put together, and Adam is the key. I don’t know how, but he is. And though every thought, every nerve, every muscle is yelling at me to turn around, I ring the doorbell.

Adam opens the door in a button-down shirt and jeans. His hair is messy, his eyes are tired and his glasses slightly askew, but he’s more handsome than ever. He sucks in a breath at the sight of me. “Elena.”

I don’t know what to say. There’s too much to explain, too many words between us, too many questions and explanations and apologies. I’m torn between wanting to throw myself into his arms and trying to shake the answers out of him. Instead I blurt out, “Trent and Zoe are dead.”

“What? Dead—are you sure?”

“I saw them. They were shot, just like Future-Adam’s files said.”

Before I can say anything else, a brown dog pokes his head around Adam, tongue panting. The dog tries to lurch past Adam to get to me, but Adam pulls him back. This must be the dog Adam told me about.

“Sorry about Max,” Adam says. “Do you want to come in?”

I step into a small living room with striped furniture and a table with a huge stack of untouched mail on it. Max spins in circles, tail wagging, butt wiggling, a big doggy grin on his face. I kneel down and wrap my arms around his neck, burying my face in his warm fur and happy body. It’s exactly what I need right now.

“Are you okay?” Adam asks. “Sorry, that’s a stupid question. Of course you’re not okay. But I mean, you’re not hurt, right?”

“I’m fine.” I reluctantly stand up, and Max bounds off to do laps around the sofa. “But Trent and Zoe are both dead, and someone saw me with Trent’s body, and I tried to warn Chris but he wouldn’t listen, and I only have a few hours left before I’m going to die, but I don’t know what to do, and—”

He stops my rambling by putting his hands on my shoulders. “Elena, it’s okay. Slow down, and we’ll figure it out.”

Footsteps sound down the hall, and we both jump back like we’ve been caught kissing. An older woman in a green robe and fuzzy slippers stands in the doorway. She has a scarf wrapped around her head.

“Adam, is everything okay?” she asks, eyeing me. Not in a suspicious or hostile way, the way some parents might look when confronted with a tatted-up Mexican girl in their living room, but with curiosity. I imagine Adam doesn’t bring many girls home.

“Yeah, Mom. This is Elena…She’s a friend.”

I can’t help feeling like I don’t belong here, but I step forward and offer her my hand. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. O’Neill.”

“Very nice to meet you too, Elena.” She grips my hand and I’m shocked by how bony hers is, how thin her fingers are. She looks older than she probably is, her skin sallow and hanging from her bones. There are bruises along her arm, like she’s been injected or had blood drawn many times. She takes her hand away and adjusts the scarf, and I realize she has no hair.

I flash back to Adam saying his mom was “having a hard time.”
Of course.
She has cancer. That’s why he develops the cure in the first place, why he brought it back from the future, and why he couldn’t let the others take it.

He did everything to save her life.

His mom gives us a tiny smile, like she knows what we’re up to. “I’m going to get some water and then I’ll leave you two alone.”

“I’ll get it for you,” Adam says, already moving toward the kitchen. “You should go back to bed.”

When he’s gone, there’s a second of awkward silence as I stand there with his mom. But she keeps smiling at me. “Adam’s a good son.”

“I know.” I rub a finger over my mother’s watch, missing her all over again. If I’d had a chance to save her, I would have taken it too. Even if it meant lying or stealing or betraying someone close to me.

Adam returns with some water and helps his mom back to her room, Max bouncing behind him. I hear Adam say something about giving her another shot soon, and then he tells her to rest.

He returns to the living room, his hands shoved in his pockets. “Elena—”

“Your mom,” I interrupt. “She has cancer.”