“What is?”
“It’s going to hurt, but I promise you, it’s going to get better. You just have to give it some time.”
Adeline’s eyes filled with tears. Somehow, in that moment she knew what Daniele was going to tell her. One feeling rose above the others: rage.
“Everyone keeps telling me everything is going to get better. But things just keep getting worse.”
“They always do,” Daniele said. “Before they get better.”
*
A short time after he signed the confession, they came to transport Sam.
The guards shackled his feet, but they didn’t handcuff him. They put him in a straitjacket.
One of them, a young man who looked to be in his early twenties, shrugged as he held the garment up. “I’m sorry, sir, but it’s protocol.”
Sam understood. People sentenced to Absolom were desperate individuals. They had no future. Nothing to lose. No hope.
People with nothing to lose were the most dangerous thing in the world.
The transport van was windowless. Two guards sat across from Sam, stun batons in their hands, at the ready.
Although the Absolom technology had been licensed to every government on Earth, there was only one operating Absolom machine in the world, and it was here, in Absolom City, in the middle of the Nevada desert. The reason was simple: safety.
Victor Levy had been right about one thing: the world was still a little afraid of Absolom, in the same way they had feared the atomic bomb and the Large Hadron Collider when it had first started up. It was a new technology, one that seemed almost surreal at first, a leap forward some still weren’t comfortable with. If there was an accident with Absolom, people didn’t want it to occur near a populated area.
The other reason Absolom Sciences kept the only functioning Absolom machine under their control was practical: they didn’t want anyone studying the technology and reverse engineering it. At the moment, they had a monopoly on exiling criminals from this universe.
Sam felt the van angle downward. They were on a descending ramp now, which meant they had reached the Absolom departure facility in the heart of the city.
The cell they led Sam to wasn’t nearly as plush as the holding room at the police station. It also had a few strange modifications. The walls were padded. There was no metal at all. No bathroom. No mirror. Only a soft floor, a ceiling that couldn’t have been over eight feet tall, and a squishy foam mattress.
He understood why. There was no way for an Absolom prisoner to hurt themselves in here.
The guards removed the straitjacket and left Sam alone in the room for a long time—how long, he didn’t know. There was no clock and no view of the sun.
A woman’s voice came over the speaker and asked him a series of questions—ones Sam had anticipated.
What would he like his last meal to be?
Who would he like to be present for his Absolom departure?
Would he like to update his will?
Who would he like to visit with before his departure?
When Sam had finished answering, the woman told him that he had received several requests for visitation and that it was up to him if they were allowed to visit. The list was one he could have guessed: Elliott, Constance, Hiro, Daniele, and Adeline.
Sam said yes to all of them.
He needed to say goodbye.
THIRTEEN
In the padded cell, one of the wall panels lifted slightly, revealing a Styrofoam tray with dinner.
Sam took it, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat.
The woman’s voice over the speaker asked if he wanted to watch a movie or TV or read a book or listen to an audiobook.
Sam didn’t.
He wanted to think. It was the only thing that might save his life. And his family.
The lights dimmed soon, and Sam lay there on the mattress, staring up at the padded ceiling, trying to wrap his mind around what was happening.
Sleep wouldn’t come. But at some point in the night, bad thoughts did. Thoughts of blaming himself. And others. And even worse than that: what-ifs.
With his last bit of strength, he forced those thoughts from his mind and tried to hold his mind still, to think about nothing at all. Somewhere in that void, sleep found him.
*
He didn’t know how long he had slept, but Sam sensed that it hadn’t been much time. When he opened his eyes, the lights were bright, and the woman’s gentle voice over the speaker was calling to him again.
“Dr. Anderson, can you hear me?”
“Yes,” he croaked.
One of the wall panels opened, like a door swinging in, revealing a shower stall, a toilet, and a sink. There was a change of clothes waiting atop a foam cube next to the sink.