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.