Future Shock (9 page)

07:17

No, it can’t be. But the words stare back at me.
Self-inflicted gunshot wound. Suicide.

No, no, no. It doesn’t make sense. I would never kill the others—would I?

I know I have a temper. I know sometimes I itch to fight, to let my rage out, to show other people I’m not weak. I know I’ve done some stupid shit in my past—but to actually kill someone? And not just someone, but three people I’m starting to think of as…friends?

No, never. I refuse to believe it. And I’d never kill myself either. Not in a million years. It must be a setup. Aether Corp or whoever is behind our deaths did this to us and then placed the blame on me to tie it all up with a nice string.

But I’m the only one with a gun, and I would bet money the gun in my backpack is the same one that’s going to shoot the others. I even turned it on Chris less than an hour ago. And despite what I told him, I would have pulled the trigger.

Oh my God, it is me. I really am the killer. I’m going to become the one thing I swore I’d never turn into: a murderer like my father.

I guess it’s inevitable. It’s in my blood.

My nails dig into the desk, sending sharp, shooting pains up my fingers. I can’t look away from the image with my fate written on it. But if I am the killer, why would I do this to them? I can’t think of any reason I’d want to kill them. Maybe I snap at some point between now and then…and afterward my grief drives me to shoot myself. But if that’s the case, why do I spare Adam?

I need to know more. Maybe I can find some hint of a motive, or learn when and where the others were killed so I can stop it from happening.

I won’t become a killer. I
won’t
.

I close the genealogy program and open a new search for old news articles. I input my name plus suicide, and half a dozen articles show up from various local news sites. I click on the first one, with the headline:
Four Teens Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide
.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – Four teens, all in the foster care system, have been found dead in an apparent murder-suicide.

Three of the teens suffered fatal gunshot wounds yesterday in different locations across Los Angeles County. Coroner’s assistant Edith Moore said the victims were shot multiple times. The names of the victims have been withheld.

Police suspect the final teen, Elena Martinez, 17, killed the others before taking her own life. A lifeguard discovered her body early this morning near the Santa Monica Pier, with what police believe to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. No suicide note was found. The investigation is ongoing.

Any lingering doubt I had is gone. This is going to happen.

The other articles all have similar headlines. I go through each one, hoping to learn more, but none give any hint as to
why
I did it. Most of the articles are short—just another random murder in a big city. They don’t even have pictures of our bodies or names or locations or anything I could use.

“Hey,” Trent says.

I jump and twist around, using my body to block my screen. Trent’s leaning back from his cubby, which is next to mine. His face looks even whiter than usual, bleached out by whatever he’s learned. Does he know I’m the one who is going to kill him? If they find out, I might not make it to tomorrow. Zoe wouldn’t do anything, but Chris or Trent? I’m not sure.

“Are you…” He stops and closes his eyes for a moment, but I know what he means.

“Yeah. I’m dead too.” I rub my sweaty palms on my jeans and watch him for any reaction.

“Tomorrow?”

I nod. He’s not freaking out at me and neither are the others, so they must not know that I’m the one who killed them. Good. But if they keep poking around, they’ll find the same articles I did sooner or later. I can’t let that happen.

I close the screen—everything I saw is imprinted in my memory forever anyway—and spin around. “Did you guys find anything?” I ask, loud enough for the others to hear.

“Just that I’m gonna be shot tomorrow,” Chris mutters, turning away from his screen. “Like Shawnda said. What about you?”

He doesn’t know. Thank God. My shoulders relax, and I tilt my head at Trent. “Us too.”

We all pull our chairs close so we can talk quietly. Adam stands on the fringe of our group, silently watching our discussion. He’s the only one who isn’t going to be dead tomorrow. I study him for a moment, with his black glasses and rumpled brown hair, wondering why I will spare his life.

Zoe hangs her head in her hands, hiding her face. “Everything my sister told us…it’s all true. It’s all in my death certificate.”

“Cause of death, multiple gunshot wounds,” Trent mumbles, and my throat clenches up.

Chris swears and runs a hand over his scalp. “So all four of us, tomorrow?”

“Looks that way,” I say.

“But why?” Zoe asks. “Why would someone do this?”

I need to think of something, quick. Otherwise they might start digging through the past for more information. “It has to be Aether Corporation.”

Zoe blinks at me. “You think…you think Aether did this?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s the only connection between us, other than foster care.”

Chris studies me, his brow creased. “You think they killed us to keep the project secret?”

“Maybe. Or maybe we learn something in the future they don’t want getting out.”

“Elena might be right,” Trent says. “Think about it. The empty research building. The lies about going crazy if we look into our own future. The fact that we went forward thirty years instead of ten.”

“There’s something else too.” I wasn’t going to tell them about what I heard, not after Adam dismissed it, but it might keep the suspicion on Aether and off me. And I’m still not sure they
didn’t
kill all of us. “I overheard Dr. Kapur and Dr. Walters last night.”

I briefly tell them everything I heard. How the scientists were worried something might happen
again
, and they might have to use younger kids next time. I leave out that I already told this story to Adam.

“You’re sure? You’re one hundred percent sure that’s what they said?” Chris asks.

“Elena has a perfect memory,” Adam says, speaking up for the first time since we got here.

“That’s your talent?” Chris raises an eyebrow at me, and I nod.

“But Adam’s not dead,” Trent says, and every head swivels to look at Adam. “Wouldn’t Aether kill him too?”

“He’s right.” Adam takes off his glasses and stares at them. “I’m still alive in this future. That store we got the flexis from, Smartgear—it’s owned by Aether Corporation. They’re still around. And”—he takes a breath—“my future self works for them.”

My stomach drops, like someone’s punched me in the gut. Future-Adam, working for Aether? I don’t believe it. Except…a part of me does. I saw the faces of those salespeople at Smartgear when they realized who he was.

“What do you mean?” asks Zoe, her eyes wide.

“I knew you were involved somehow,” Chris growls, jumping up from his chair.

Adam throws up his hands. “We don’t know if it means anything. I’m just as surprised by this as you are.”

I don’t want to admit it, but Chris might be onto something. It would explain why Adam defended Aether when I told him what I overheard. Chris was right before—I don’t know anything about Adam. I have no reason to trust him.

“Are you working for Aether now?” I ask him, taking a step forward.

“What? No.” Adam looks shocked. “I was recruited by Aether for this research project just like you guys were. That’s it. I don’t know anything else.”

Chris grabs the front of Adam’s shirt and drags him close. “You’re working for them, aren’t you? Double-crossing us!”

“I’m not! I’m not working for Aether. I swear it!”

I don’t know what to do, whether I should interfere or not. Until now I’ve always stuck up for Adam, but now I have my doubts too. And I can’t ignore the fact that he
isn’t
like the rest of us. He wasn’t recruited out of foster care. We still don’t know why he’s really here.

A librarian approaches us. “Please keep your voices down.” She looks back and forth between Chris and Adam, eyebrows raised. Chris lets go of Adam’s shirt, and they both take a step back. The librarian eyes them for one tense moment and then leaves.

“Just wait,” Adam says to us, and then he looks like he’s squinting. “Maybe if I show you this—”

A video blares to life inside my head and I jump. It sits in a corner of my vision, a little box over the world I can see.

“What the hell is this?” Chris asks.

“Just watch.”

There’s an image of Adam, but an older version of him, maybe in his forties. He’s standing at a podium giving a speech, while an announcer talks. “On next week’s episode of
Celebrity Profiles
: Adam O’Neill. Billionaire genius…or mad scientist?”

A logo for the show flashes on the screen with the subtitle underneath. The video then shows a clip of Adam in a lab coat, looking a few years older than he does now and grinning at the camera.

“Adam O’Neill changed the world when he developed the cure for cancer at the young age of twenty-eight,” the announcer continues.

I want to pause the video and ask if this is real, but it keeps switching clips—to Adam accepting an award, to images of him in hospitals standing next to people with bald heads, to shots of him shaking hands with government leaders. Everyone is smiling, crying, and hugging. No wonder the girl at Smartgear looked at him with such awe—Adam is a freaking saint.

“Once the drug became available to the public, Adam O’Neill’s cure quickly decreased the rate of cancer deaths to two percent worldwide. It was hailed as a miracle, as a gift from God, and he became one of the youngest people to win a Nobel Prize for this ground-breaking discovery. And as head of the new pharmaceutical division of Aether Corporation, Dr. O’Neill later went on to develop other drugs and technologies to combat Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.”

The video switches to some other scientist with a thick beard. “Adam O’Neill is without a doubt the most influential scientist of the last fifty years.”

It cuts away to an older woman with white hair and paper-thin wrinkled skin. “Adam O’Neill saved my life. I had stage four cancer and only had months to live when his treatment became available.” She dips her head for a moment and comes up with tears in her eyes. “And I’ve been cancer-free for eighteen years.”

“Adam O’Neill is celebrated as a hero worldwide,” the announcer says. “His discoveries have changed the face of modern medicine. But who is he really?”

The music darkens, and the screen switches to Adam staring off into space, his expression haunted. Another clip shows him rushing away from the press and into his car. “How much do we really know about this billionaire hero?”

A man in a suit speaks to the camera. “Adam O’Neill has never been married. He has no close friends or family. He’s almost never seen in public. What is he hiding?”

“His experiments have grown…erratic,” says a woman in a lab coat with an upturned nose. Underneath her name, it says she works for some company called Pharmateka, which I’ve never heard of. “There are rumors he’s an alcoholic.”

The video switches back to an image of an older Adam, sitting at a desk with his head in his hands. “With rumors of an alcohol problem and a dark secret in his past, the world is beginning to wonder if Adam O’Neill is an eccentric hero…or a mad scientist. It’s all revealed on the next
Celebrity Profiles
.”

The video vanishes, and for a second all I can do is blink as my focus returns to the room around me. “You…cured cancer?” I ask. “And won a Nobel Prize?”

Adam slowly nods. “It seems I did.”

“Great,” Trent mutters. “We’re dead and this guy becomes a freaking billionaire.”

Chris crosses his arms, glaring at Adam. “And he works for Aether Corporation in the future.”

“Future-Adam is a hero,” Zoe says. “I can’t believe he’d have anything to do with our deaths.”

Trent shrugs. “I don’t know…They said he had a dark secret.”

Zoe rolls her eyes. “Those shows always say that kind of stuff.”

“He might be a hero then, but that doesn’t mean he is now,” Chris says.

“But if Future-Adams works for Aether, why wasn’t anyone at the research facility?” Trent asks.

“Maybe…” Adam sucks in a breath. “Maybe we should talk to my future self.”

“No way,” says Trent. “I’m not causing a temporal paradox or whatever that was called.”

Adam adjusts his glasses, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Aether said we’d suffer brain damage if we learned about our futures and that hasn’t happened. Maybe the paradox thing was a lie too.”

“I don’t know,” Chris says. “Looking into your future is one thing…actually meeting yourself is another.”

I stay silent while they argue, trying to wrap my head around everything from the video. I have to agree with Zoe—it’s hard to believe the guy who will cure cancer and save millions of lives could have anything to do with our deaths. But I’m still not sure I can trust him.

“Look, my future self has lived through all of this already,” Adam says. “He might be able to tell us what happens after we get back to the present.”

“And maybe he’ll know how to change this future,” Zoe adds, her voice hopeful for the first time in hours.

But if Future-Adam’s lived through all this, then he’ll know that I’m the killer. Would he tell the others about me? He left me the silver origami unicorn—was that a sign or something? Adam gave me the first one as a gesture of thanks or maybe a token of friendship. I have to hope that the second unicorn was placed there to send a similar message.

I finally speak up. “If you’re wrong and the paradox thing is real, you could be stuck here in the future.”

Adam meets my gaze with his piercing blue eyes. “I know.”

Chris grabs his backpack. “Fine, we’ll talk to Future-Adam. But I still don’t trust you.”

For a few minutes we discuss our next steps. We can’t find Future-Adam’s address, so the only option is to go to Aether Corporation’s office building here in downtown LA and somehow track him down. It’s risky if they are the ones who killed us, but we have no other choice.