I gulp, swallowing the emotion building in my chest. If I stay here, I’ll never see Adam again—not the Adam of my time anyway. Future-Adam is the same person, but he’s thirty years older than me, and it just isn’t the same somehow. I’ll never have a future with this Adam. But it’s worth it to save the others. And if I go back and then kill myself, I won’t have a future with Adam anyway. At least this way we’ll all live.
I touch Adam’s face softly, memorizing the curve of his jaw, the feel of the stubble on his chin, the way his eyes shine in the darkness. “I’m sorry, Adam. I wish it didn’t have to come to this, but it’s the only way the others will be safe. I won’t risk killing them.”
Zoe gives me a quick hug, and Trent slaps me on the back. Chris shakes my hand. “You’re doing the right thing,” he says.
“I know,” I say, even if my gut is screaming no, no, no. Adam looks heartbroken, but there are no words that can fix this. It’s better if he just lets me go.
“Elena, you can’t do this,” he says. “You have a life in the present. You can’t give it up now. And I can’t lose you.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him quietly. “I’ll go to your future self and he’ll help me out. You’ll see me in thirty years.”
“We still need a plan,” Chris interrupts. “If we’re not suffering from future shock, we should pretend like we don’t remember anything from the future. And if we are suffering from it…then we won’t remember this conversation anyway. Either way, we don’t want Aether to know what we did in the future or what we found. We need to leave behind everything we bought in the future…and your sketchbook too, Zoe.”
She bites her lip but removes the sketchbook from her bag and hands it to me. I hold it close to my chest, grateful I’ll have this one piece of her to keep.
They remove everything from their backpacks that wasn’t originally in them—flashlights, walkie-talkies, the laser pen, the jammer—and even peel off their fake fingerprints. There’s no reason for me to do the same. I just watch, trying to detach myself from the situation and convince myself I don’t care. Even Adam finally sighs and starts dropping things on the floor, and the sound kills me.
Something heavy and metallic clatters to the ground by Adam. We all swing our lights over, right as he reaches for it. It’s a silver case with the word BIOHAZARD written all over it, popped open to reveal six vials full of yellow liquid. I can’t make out the label from here, but I see a G.
Chris shines his light on Adam’s face. “What. The fuck. Is that?”
Adam quickly snaps the case shut. “It’s nothing. Just something I grabbed from the lab.”
“What—” I ask, my brain working fast. I remember when Adam disappeared in the lab. He must have taken this case then. But why would he want it? And why keep it a secret from us? There’s only one thing it could be. “Is that genicote?”
“The cure for cancer?” Trent asks.
“Yeah, it’s the cure,” Adam says as he shoves the case in his backpack.
I scramble for words, but all I can get out is, “Why?”
“I…” He hesitates and then takes a long breath. “This is why I was recruited. To bring the cure back to the present.”
His words are like a blow to my gut. He knew about the cure all along. Why didn’t he tell us? And that means Aether knew about the cure too. Is this the real reason we were sent to the future?
Chris lets out a string of obscurities. “I was right! You’ve been working for Aether this entire time!”
“Wait, let me explain—”
“Your future self set us up!” Chris starts toward Adam. “He convinced us to break into the lab just so you could grab that, didn’t he?”
“Stop!” I yell. “Let’s listen to what he has to say!” I turn to Zoe, who’s been quiet this entire time, her face twisted in shock. “Zoe, tell them!” But she just shakes her head slowly and backs away.
Chris grabs Adam’s jacket and shakes him. “Is that why you live and we die? Because you’re working for Aether?”