Future Shock (15 page)

13:28

The others don’t say anything when we get back in the car, but from the looks they give us, I can tell they know something’s changed. Chris has fixed the car’s navigation, and once we punch in Lynne’s name, the car starts forward again.

Adam sits in the backseat with me, and every time I sneak a glance at him, he gives me a hint of a smile. I don’t know what this thing is between us now, but opening up to Adam has unlocked something inside me, freeing something I didn’t know was caged. I’m not in this alone anymore. Together, we’ll change our future.

I slide my hand down my leg until it brushes the back of his thigh. He tenses, but then I feel his fingers wrap around mine. We stare forward with our hands secretly locked between us, the rest of the car oblivious to the fire racing up my arm and spreading through my entire body.

It’s finally stopped raining by the time we reach Lynne’s house in Malibu. Her place is at the end of a little cul-de-sac that butts right up against the ocean. It’s not as big as Adam’s house, more like a large beach cottage with a sandblasted look, as though the wind and salt water have worn the paint down to almost nothing.

The door opens the second we pull into the driveway, like she’s been waiting for us. Lynne stands on the porch, and you can barely tell any years have passed from the Lynne of our time. Her hair is almost exactly the same—maybe a little shorter but with the same blond highlights. She has wrinkles around her eyes but not as many as you’d expect considering it’s been thirty years. I wonder if she’s had some work done.

“Oh my God.” She covers her mouth with her hand, shock etched on her face. “Adam said it was today, but I guess I never truly believed it until now.”

“He told you we were coming?” I ask.

“Yes. I’ve been waiting all day for you.” She stares at each of us in turn, like she can’t believe she’s not in a dream. “I always knew the accelerator worked, but to see real proof right in front of me…I’m sorry. Please, please come inside.”

We follow her into a brightly lit living room that smells faintly of cinnamon, with a view of the beach from her floor-to-ceiling windows. Seeing the dark water crash against the shore only feet away brings back the image of my body lying on the sand, half submerged by the waves. I shudder and turn away.

“Can I get you anything?” Lynne asks. “Something to drink or eat or…?”

“Coffee would be nice,” Trent says with a yawn.

“Of course. You poor things, you must be cold and exhausted. Just give me a minute.”

She disappears into her kitchen, and we spread out around her white-and-blue furniture. She’s taken the beach theme a little far, with seashells on the table and a dolphin sculpture in the corner. Even her flexi has a little orange starfish on it.

There are framed photos all around the room of a pretty blond who looks a lot like Lynne. At her graduation. At her wedding. In doctor’s scrubs giving a thumbs-up. With her husband and two kids at Disneyland.

One larger frame catches my eye, and I move closer to get a better look. It’s a collage, with a bunch of photos of the girl when she was younger, ranging from baby photos to prom photos. In some of the earlier ones she’s in a hospital bed, like she was sick a lot, but she’s always smiling.

“My daughter,” Lynne says behind me. She’s returned with a tray full of steaming mugs and sets it down on the table. “She’s a pediatrician now.”

We each take a mug, and after one sip I already feel a lot warmer. I don’t drink much coffee, but I’m so tired I can barely think. We’ve all been awake for way too long, and we’re running on nothing but fumes and adrenaline at this point. But there’s no time to sleep—so coffee it is.

“We need your help,” Adam says, right when I say, “We have some questions.”

“Of course.” Lynne looks back and forth between us. “What can I do to help?”

I look at Adam and he nods, letting me go ahead. I briefly tell her everything we’ve learned about our deaths and about future shock. I leave out any mention of me being the killer and hope she gets the hint not to bring it up.

“Future shock…” She bows her head. “It was horrible, what happened to those other people, but Aether wouldn’t stop the program. From the brief hints we got from the other test subjects, we knew the aperture was working. The accelerator was sending people thirty years in the future and bringing them back. We just needed to find a way to keep them sane. We decreased the time to ten years instead of thirty, but that didn’t remove all of the problems. That’s when Dr. Kapur suggested we use teenagers.”

“So you knew when you recruited us that we might go crazy?” Chris asks, leaning forward, fists clenched like he’s about to jump out of his seat and attack her.

“Dr. Kapur promised us that none of you would suffer from future shock. He showed us studies of teenage brains…” She sighs and stares at her hands folded in her lap. “I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t my call. And we all thought you were going ten years forward, not thirty. I had no idea you went so far ahead until Adam told me many years later.”

“If you didn’t like it, why didn’t you quit?” Chris asks. “Or expose what they were doing?”

She stares into her coffee mug. “You have no idea how hard it is to be a single mom trying to pay the bills. Especially one who desperately needs health insurance for her kid. I
couldn’t
quit.” She sucks in a long breath. “But after what happened to you, not a day goes by that I don’t wish I’d done something to stop it. That’s why I helped Adam bury the project—so Aether could never send people to the future again.”

I like her excuses and apologies about as much as Chris does, judging by the look on his face, but there’s nothing we can do about that now. “We know Adam lied about losing his memories, but what about the rest of us?”

“I’m not sure,” she says. “At the time, we believed you had all suffered from future shock. It’s hard to say if that was true or not, especially since you were all killed only hours later…”

“Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves from future shock?” Chris asks.

“Not that I know of. I’m sorry.”

“There has to be
something
,” Trent says.

“The only thing would be to stay here in the future, I suppose. Dr. Kapur thought that the act of traveling back to the present was what triggered it, although he couldn’t ever prove it.”

Chris shakes his head. “Staying here is not an option.”

I don’t know. Staying in the future doesn’t sound too bad. I could live out the rest of my life here and never kill the others or myself. Although staying here would mean giving up my dream of going to college, plus there’s that whole problem of having no identity here and the police being after me…I doubt they’d let me off lightly for beating up two cops. No, staying in the future isn’t an option.

“There’s one more thing you need to know,” Lynne says. “A few hours after you got back, I overheard Dr. Kapur arguing with Dr. Walters about sending younger kids to the future. He said something like, ‘It will work if we purge this round of test subjects and erase any evidence they were involved. Then we can start over with a new group.’ A day later, you were all dead.”

“So you think Dr. Kapur had us…purged?” I ask. A tiny spark of hope flickers in my chest at hearing this could all be a cover-up. That would mean I’m not really the killer after all. And now we have a real person at Aether to pinpoint this all on. A person we can focus on stopping.

Lynne nods. “That’s always been my suspicion, but I never found any other proof.”

“Dr. Walters never mentioned any of that,” Zoe says.

“Of course he didn’t,” Trent says. “He was in on it the whole time!”

“That son of a bitch,” Chris growls. “I’ll kill him!”

“Maybe there’s another way.” Adam leans forward, setting his mug on the table. “My older self said we could get something to blackmail Aether with, some sort of evidence. Do you know anything about that?”

Lynne tilts her head, considering. “There might be something you could use in the old files we kept from the project. They’re all locked away in Adam’s lab in the Aether building.”

Adam exchanges a look with me. “My future self was right. We
do
need to break into Aether Corporation.”

Lynne glances back and forth between us, her brow furrowed. “Break in?”

“Hold up,” Chris says. “If Future-Adam knew we’d need evidence, why not just get it himself?”

“Adam isn’t allowed in his lab anymore,” she says. “I’m surprised they let him in the building at all.”

“How could he not be allowed in his own lab?” I ask.

“Adam’s on…well, they call it a ‘personal leave’ but he’s actually been suspended. The board of directors are calling him unstable, but really it’s because of genicote.” At our blank expressions, she continues. “Genicote, the cure for cancer? Adam created the cure many years ago, but he needed funding and distribution and factories that could make it in bulk. He came to me for help, and I convinced Aether to start a pharmaceutical division for him with me as the director. We both knew there were risks working with Aether, but I thought if I helped him, I could protect him from them. And for many years I did.”

“What do you mean, protect him?” Trent asks.

“There’s a…problem with the cure. When used by people with cancer, it’s a miracle drug. With just a few treatments they’re completely cured for life. But if used by someone who doesn’t have cancer, it causes massive mutations that quickly result in death.”

Adam’s jaw drops, his face horrified. “And I could never get rid of this problem?”

“No. You said it wasn’t possible, due to the way the cure works to manipulate DNA. Naturally, the drug had to be tightly controlled to make sure it was never in the wrong hands. That’s one reason it took so long for genicote to be approved and distributed—the risks were too high.” She stares out the window at the crashing waves, lost in the memories.

“Together, Adam and I made sure the truth about genicote remained under wraps, and for years it worked. Until Aether had a few rough years and got greedy. They wanted to sell the drug to the military to use as a weapon. Adam wouldn’t back down, and he’s too well respected and influential for them to ignore. Instead, they’re trying to discredit him. Telling the world he’s a mad scientist so no one will listen if he goes public with what they’re doing.”

“He
did
seem a bit mad,” Zoe says. “No offense, Adam.”

“Yeah.” Trent nods. “They say there’s a fine line between madness and genius, right?”

Adam rolls his eyes. “Again, standing right here.”

“I can assure you, Adam is perfectly sane,” Lynne says. “But unfortunately he can’t get into his lab anymore, and neither can I. They demoted me to a useless project, managing statisticians.” Her mouth twists like she’s tasted something sour. “I used to oversee some of the most cutting-edge projects in the world that saved millions of lives, and now I work with a bunch of math nerds.”

Chris drums his fingers on the coffee table. “But if you and Adam can’t get in, how are we supposed to get into the lab?”

“I don’t know. Without the code for the keypad, there’s no way in.”

“Keypad?” I repeat. Memories of our time in the Aether building rush back to me. “The heavy door we passed down the hall from Future-Adam’s office—was that his lab?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“Adam wanted us to see that door,” I say as all the dominoes fall in my head. “He made sure we’d walk by it, and he gave us the device to disable the cameras. And—the air conditioning! He was showing us everything we’d need to break into the place.”

Chris nods quickly. “You’re right. There must be a way to get to his lab through the ventilation ducts.”

“But what about the lobby?” Adam asks. “He must have had us run through it for a reason.”

“Good point,” Chris says. “Maybe he wanted us to know there were guards there.”

“You’re
actually
planning to break in?” Lynne asks, her voice rising. “No, definitely not. I can’t let you do that. There are too many guards, too much security—you’ll get caught for sure.”

“Not if you help us,” Adam says.

She shrinks back against her couch. “Me? No. No, I can’t risk it.”

“And what, lose your job?” Chris asks. “We’re going to
die
. You owe us for this.”

“I don’t know…” She bites her lip and turns to Adam, almost like she’s asking him for permission. Maybe because they’re friends in the future she probably trusts his judgment more than the rest of us.

“You can make this right,” he says. “No more guilt.”

“Okay, okay,” Lynne says with a sigh. “I can let you in the building, in case they’ve blocked Adam’s access, but that’s it. And you’ll have to go very early in the morning to make sure the building will be empty. No one can see me helping you.”

That would only give us a few hours before the aperture back to the present opens—but we’ll make it work. We have to.

“Thanks, Lynne,” Adam says. “What else can you tell us about the lab?”

She takes a moment to compose herself, taking a long breath. “The door can only be opened with a numeric code and a fingerprint—even from the inside—and there’s always a guard stationed behind the door.”

Chris runs a hand over his head. “I could try to take the keypad apart or something, but it might be too advanced…Or what about explosives? We could blast our way in.”

I blink at Chris. “You want to blow a hole in the wall?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Um, because it will bring every cop in the area to investigate, not to mention the guards in the lobby?”

Lynne shakes her head. “No, that wouldn’t work anyway. The doors and walls are reinforced.”

“You got any other ideas?” Chris asks.

“I do,” Adam says. “But we’ll need to go shopping first.”

14:36

We develop a plan to break into Aether Corporation and make a shopping list of everything we’ll need for the perfect heist. I have no clue if we’ll be able to pull it off, but for once we’re actively trying to change the future and I’m anxious to get started.

We say good-bye to Lynne—she’ll meet us at Aether later to avoid suspicion—and take the car to the nearby Aid-Mart, a huge drugstore like the one Trent stole from earlier in the day. It’s mostly empty at this hour, and we split up to quickly get everything on the list. Zoe and I head to the toy section to pick up some kneepads for her upcoming crawl through the air ducts. She’s the only one of us small enough to fit inside.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she says.

We pass under some way-too-realistic-looking pterodactyl toys that fly up and down the aisle on their own, letting out random shrieks. I’m a tiny bit worried they might actually attack us, but we make it by unharmed.

“What do you mean?” I ask. She didn’t seem nervous about the plan earlier when we were going over it. Maybe she feels more comfortable talking about it now that the guys are gone.

“It’s just a lot of responsibility.” She tugs on a strand of blue hair. “What if I mess up? Like, what if I get lost in the ducts and can’t get to the lab? Or what if I can’t start the fire or…”

“You won’t mess up. And Adam will be right there the entire time in case there’s a problem.”

She nods, but she bites on the edge of one of her black fingernails. “The rest of you are just so smart and talented. You and Chris can fight. Adam’s a genius, and Trent’s basically a ninja…but I’m just a girl with a sketchbook.”

Okay, she is
way
overestimating Trent’s skills. I stop and turn to face her. “You are
not
just a girl with a sketchbook. You helped us with Wombat, remember? We wouldn’t be able to buy any of this stuff now without your help. And you’re the only one who can fit in the air ducts.”

I feel like I should say something else and try to imagine what Adam would do in this situation. I give Zoe a light hug, unsure where to put my arms. Hugging doesn’t exactly come naturally for me. “You’re going to do great.”

“Thanks, Elena,” she says, hugging me back.

We find the aisle with the skateboarding kneepads and grab some that look like they’d fit her. Then Zoe sees something and skips down to the next aisle.

“Look!” She holds up a walkie-talkie headset for kids. “We can use these to keep in touch.”

“Good idea. See, you’re making the plan better already.” I grin at her and we throw six of them in our basket. “Let’s grab some ice and see what kind of trouble the guys are getting into.”

We track down Chris and Adam in the aisle with the household cleaners, where they’re loading the cart with rags, latex gloves, bleach, and God only knows what else. Trent joins us a minute later with some flashlights and one of those laser pens he stole earlier, and then we head to the checkout. There’s nobody working in the store—just a self-checkout—which saves us any awkward questions about why we need so many cleaning products.

I check my watch. It’s 9:16 p.m. “We have about six hours before we’re meeting Lynne. Maybe we should get something to eat.”

“We’ll need some time to get all of this ready,” Adam says. “But yeah, we should probably eat first.”

“And a nap wouldn’t hurt either,” Trent adds. “Don’t want to be tired when we break in.”

“Shh!” I glance around quickly, but no one’s close enough to hear him.

He shrugs, and we bag all our stuff and head back to the car. Once we’re driving along the Pacific Coast Highway with the dark ocean to our right, Chris asks, “Where should we eat?”

As the white spray splashes against the shore, I think back to my body again. I still don’t know why it ends up on the beach or why I’ll choose that spot to kill myself. But I have a few hours to find out. “Let’s go to the pier.”