Adeline knew he would return. But not in time. At least, not in time to stop her from sending her younger self to the past. She knew because it had already happened.
Hiro was a tougher challenge. She needed him. But she would cross that bridge when she arrived at it.
Adeline moved to the hall off the foyer and stood by the door to the half bath. She drew the injector pen from her pocket and waited until the door opened. The younger woman turned when she realized someone was standing there, but it was too late. Adeline held the injector to her neck, pressed the button, and reached out as her body went limp.
*
From the security cameras, Adeline knew Hiro was still in the lab with the door locked, as Elliott had instructed. What the two men didn’t know was that Adeline had updated the software on those door locks. It had an override code only she knew.
At the Absolom Sciences building, the private security contractors unloaded the box at the loading dock.
The security guard merely said hello to Adeline. He was used to the scientists bringing items into the labs at all hours. Asking questions of the person who owned the company—and ran the experiments that kept it going—would only get him fired. As such, he didn’t ask any questions.
Adeline had the security team bring the box down to the lab level and set it outside the door to the Absolom Two lab. She didn’t want them to see what was inside—or what was going to happen beyond the door. She instructed them to wait outside the building and alert her when Elliott returned.
With her phone, she unlocked the door.
Hiro was standing at a rolling cart beside the Absolom Two prototype, studying a computer screen. He spun when the door lock clicked open and reached down to his pocket, Adeline assumed for his mobile phone, to call Elliott.
“Don’t do it, Hiro.”
“How’d you get in here?”
“I had the software updated.” Adeline threw a letter-size envelope at his feet. “Look at those pictures, Hiro.”
He reached down, opened it, and began rifling through the historical photos Tesseract had found. The photos that showed Adeline in the past. And the others.
“What is this? A trick? Photo manipulation?”
“It’s real, Hiro. It’s the past. And our future. It’s the answer we’ve been looking for.” Adeline turned and pointed at the box outside the door. “And here is the other one.”
Hiro shook his head. “This is a ruse. You’re going to kill Nora.”
“Look at what’s in the box, Hiro. Please.”
“No.”
“I know you’re going to walk over here and look inside this box because you’re the only one who can operate Absolom Two. Besides Elliott. And he’s too suspicious of me. This has to happen. Because you have to send me back.”
Hiro swallowed hard and shook his head. “No.”
Adeline walked over and opened the top of the box. Two body bags were lying inside. One was breathable. The other wasn’t. She unzipped them enough to expose the faces, then stepped away, giving Hiro plenty of room.
Hiro had said no, but he walked closer and looked down at Adeline’s younger counterpart, breathing in and out, still knocked out from the drug Adeline had injected her with, but alive and well.
“Nineteen years ago, I woke up in that Absolom machine. It transported me back to March of 2008. My birth name is Adeline Anderson.”
Hiro’s voice was a whisper. “You’re lying.”
“I had cosmetic surgery a few years after I arrived in the past.” She studied him, mentally searching for the key that would unlock his trust.
“In that home in Las Vegas, in the basement, you saw me when you exited the tunnel.”
Hiro studied Adeline’s face as she continued recounting the memory. “You grabbed me and pulled me inside and locked the door and turned and walked down the tunnel, to the room with all the doors and the muscular bouncer sitting on a stool. He was reading a hardback book that was wrapped in thin plastic like you might find on a library book.”
Hiro’s eyes went wide.
“Look at the other body, Hiro.”
He stared down. “What is this?”
“The other answer. All this time, we made an assumption. A very big assumption. And we never even thought to question it. That assumption was wrong. We can fix all of this, Hiro. But I can’t do it without you. And we need to hurry. You know I can’t operate the machine. And soon, I’ll need to go through it myself.”
Still staring at the bodies, he swallowed. His chest rose and fell in labored breaths.