For the third time in her life, she watched Absolom send her father to the past.
Then, for the second time in her life, she stepped into the machine and felt it hum and vibrate and she joined him in the past.
SEVENTY-ONE
Adeline arrived in the foyer of Nora’s home.
Hiro’s targeting was good but not perfect. She was about two feet off the floor when she snapped into existence. She landed awkwardly, feet thudding on the floor as she reached out to brace herself on a wall with her hand.
“Hello?” Nora called from the kitchen.
She stepped out into the hall and stared at Adeline. “I told you not to come over.”
Nora’s gaze drifted to the front door. The locked door. “Wait. How did you get in here?”
Before Adeline could answer, the air next to her crackled and began to hiss.
She stepped aside and watched as her father appeared, also a few feet off the floor.
He landed with more grace, in a crouch.
Nora’s mouth fell open. Adeline could only imagine what was going through the woman’s mind. She had just seen this man leave her home—dressed in normal clothes, at a normal weight and well-groomed. Now he was wearing what Nora would instantly recognize as an Absolom departure ensemble, and he was slightly emaciated and completely dirty. He smelled terrible.
“What is this?” Nora asked.
“It’s Absolom Two,” Adeline said.
“I got that far. Why are you here?”
Adeline could see that Nora was scared now. It was the sight of her father that had done it. The fact that he had been sent via Absolom for some crime in the future. She could almost see Nora putting it together.
Nora took a step back, as if she was going to run. Her foot crunched on the broken glass on the floor.
Adeline glanced around. The package should arrive any second.
“Nora, it’s not what you think.”
The air between them in the hall crackled again. Adeline expected to see the black bag emerge.
Instead, Elliott appeared.
His foot slipped on the rug as he landed, crashing to the floor, but he scrambled to his feet, raising his right arm, a gun held out, trained on Adeline.
“Don’t move!”
Adeline’s heart hammered in her chest. This wasn’t part of the plan. She expected the universe around her to shatter, to dissolve like an oil painting exposed to heat: the view bubbling into blisters that peeled and flaked away. But reality held. For now. So far, this had already occurred.
Elliott didn’t look back at Nora. He took a step toward Adeline. “She’s here to kill you, Nora.”
Adeline’s father cocked his head. “Is that true, Dani?”
“No.”
“Activate your recall ring,” Elliott said. “Leave this time, right now.”
Adeline ignored his command. “How did you get here?”
“I broke down the lab door and tied Hiro up. He told me the lies you used on him.”
“They’re not lies, Elliott. I can prove it.”
As if on cue, a crackle emanated from the edge of the foyer, just inside the dining room.
The black bag snapped into existence and dropped to the floor with a thud.
Elliott’s eyes went wide.
“Open the bag,” Adeline said.
“What is it?”
Adeline turned to her father. “Unzip it.”
He stared at her and then at Elliott and finally Nora. He stepped toward the bag.
Elliott held out his other hand. “Stop, Sam. It’s probably a weapon.”
He was too late.
Adeline’s father reached down and unzipped the bag, revealing the body that looked exactly like Nora. He reeled back at the sight. Elliott froze, gun still held on Adeline.
“How?” Sam asked.
“A long time ago, I funded a company called Syntran. It grows organs for transplant. Along the way, they figured out how to grow human bodies from a DNA sample—even how to use telomere trimming and epigenetic manipulation to age the specimens. They grow the replica, age the organs so that they’re the right size, harvest them, then provide the remaining body to families for burial in cases where their loved one couldn’t be recovered.”
“The morgue,” Elliott whispered.
“Yes,” Adeline said. “That’s why I had Nora’s body exhumed—to verify that it had the Syntran serial number. To verify that a Syntran replica had been buried.”
Adeline pointed to the body on the floor. “This is the corpse the police will find. It will be buried. Not Nora.”
For a long moment, it was utterly quiet. “We made an assumption,” Adeline said. “We assumed that Nora was murdered tonight. That assumption was wrong. She wasn’t. She was replaced—and made to look like she was murdered so that we would complete Absolom Two. So the future would take place. There’s a far larger process at work here.”