Adeline pulled up the history of the cameras inside her home. Nora fixed a sandwich, read a paperback book at the kitchen island, and went upstairs and napped. When she got up, she went to the bathroom, and when she came out, she marched directly to the camera in the bedroom, peered into the lens, pulled it free, and jerked the wire out. She repeated that throughout the house, depositing the cameras on the dining room table.
They were waiting there when Adeline arrived.
“I found these cameras hidden all over my house!” Nora yelled, pacing in the hall outside the dining room.
“How?”
Adeline knew she had said the wrong thing as soon as it left her mouth.
Nora cocked her head. “Did you know? Did you do this? Please don’t lie to me, Dani.”
“Yes.”
“You knew, or you did it?”
“They’re my cameras.”
Adeline expected Nora’s anger to explode. Instead, she deflated. Hurt replaced her fury.
Nora’s voice was a whisper.
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Is it because of Sam?”
“No.” But that wasn’t entirely true. It was because of her father. And Nora.
“Please tell me the truth. It’s all I ask.”
“The truth is complicated.”
“We built a time machine to an alternate universe together. I think I can handle complicated. Tell me. You owe me that.”
“I can’t.”
“Then get out. And don’t come back until you can.”
Adeline walked out and stood on the front stoop, trying to find the words that would heal the rift between them. She knew that if she didn’t, she wasn’t coming back—not before Nora died. Unless, she was, in fact, the one who had killed her.
But she couldn’t find those words. She stared at the door, feeling her last chance being washed away by time.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Adeline pulled it out and read the message from Elliott. It had been sent to the group: Nora, Sam, Constance, and her.
Hiro and I need to see you in the lab. It’s urgent.
It had begun.
Again.
SIXTY-THREE
When all of the Absolom Six were present in the lab, Sam said, “Why all the cloak and dagger?”
Elliott pointed to a prototype for Absolom Two, which was sitting in the center of the room.
“You’ll see, Sam.”
Elliott reached in his pocket, took out a small tuning bar, and walked past the group, letting everyone see the Absolom Sciences serial number.
He placed the metal bar inside the Absolom machine, closed the door, and moved to a computer terminal nearby. He typed the departure sequence. The machine hummed and flashed, and the bar disappeared.
The room was utterly quiet as Elliott walked to a metal table, picked up a hard plastic box, and opened it so the group could see the contents.
It was a tuning bar that was discolored and pitted with age. But the serial number was still readable. It was the same number as the bar that had just been sent to the past.
It was clear to everyone present what the bar meant: Hiro and Elliott, during their time in the lab and digging in the desert, had figured out how to make Absolom Two send payloads to our universe.
Sam stared at the box. “Impossible.”
“It’s real, Sam. After all these years, we’ve finally done it. What we always meant to. But it’s more than that—”
Nora cut him off. “It’s Pandora’s box, is what it is.”
Elliott shook his head. “What do you mean? This is the future. The biggest discovery in human history.”
“No, Elliott, this could be the end of human history.”
Elliott exhaled. “That’s absurd.”
Nora pointed at the box. “Think about it. What if this is the reason for the Fermi Paradox? Why are we alone in the universe? What if this is the reason?”
Sam glanced between the two of them. “I don’t follow.”
“What if,” Nora said, hands held out, “every sufficiently advanced civilization ends shortly after this discovery? That’s what’s going to happen if we use this machine to send something to the past that doesn’t belong there. A causality failure. In an instant, our universe ceases to exist. Is the risk worth it? Of course not. We should destroy it. And never tell anyone it’s even possible.”
“We’re not going to destroy it,” Elliott said. “And besides, we still have work to do.”
“What work?” Adeline asked.
“We have two issues,” Elliott replied. “Location and time. We’ve been working on it, but we can’t get the payloads to arrive exactly where and when we want.”