For a while, her life was solely focused on work. At the Queen Anne-style mansion on Cowper, the small team refined the design for the Absolom prototype. They worked late most nights, kicking around ideas and running computer simulations.
Adeline got to see a side of her father and the Absolom founders she had never known—what they were like in those early days, at work, behind closed doors.
Hiro easily logged the most hours. He even slept in his office some nights. When he was in the midst of a technical problem, it dogged him like a ghost haunting his mind. And it was a brilliant mind.
When his work came to a logical stop, he would take two days off. Sometimes it was the weekend. Other times it was the middle of the week. He simply disappeared and returned, not exactly looking refreshed but ready to work again.
Adeline knew where he went. She had seen it in the future.
Sam and Elliott worked closely together, like two physics detectives working a case, sharing notes, and drawing on a whiteboard. Both men looked stressed, and Adeline knew it was not because of the load at work but because of the challenges at home, the problems they couldn’t solve.
Nora and Constance worked together on the machine’s hardware, trying to integrate Sam and Elliott’s theoretical ideas with Hiro’s software. They were the bridge between those two islands, and in a way, they were their own island, working away from the group most of the time.
That was fine with Adeline. Whether it was conscious or not, she had avoided Nora. She knew what would happen to her and that getting close would only make it tougher for Adeline to see that her murder occurred.
One night, at 2 a.m., Adeline’s phone vibrated on her bedside table. She had always been a light sleeper. The stress of starting Absolom and ensuring things happened exactly as they had before had only made her more restless.
She answered the call and heard Hiro’s voice on the line, sounding agitated. “I need an advance on my salary.”
“How much?”
“Twenty thousand.”
“Hiro…”
“I’m at the Bellagio. Ten to pay my marker, and ten so I can win everything back.”
Adeline sat up in bed.
“You know I’m good for it,” Hiro said. “I’ll sell you some of my stock.”
“You’re not selling any stock. I’ll send the money, but promise me: when it’s gone, you’ll come home.”
“If it’s gone.”
“If. And when. Do we have a deal?”
That became a pattern, with Adeline serving as Hiro’s financial firewall and Vegas giving him the release between long work sessions.
Constance periodically left for medical treatment and to visit someone from her past, to notify them of her medical condition and provide any assistance she could, including financial and moral support.
In the days leading up to those trips, Constance always looked stricken, as if the disease was overtaking her. Adeline soon learned that it wasn’t that—it was the anticipation of what was to come, of delivering what might be a death sentence to someone from her past.
Many of the people she came into contact with had already presented with symptoms of the disease. A small number hadn’t. And some tested negative.
Adeline could tell how the visits had gone—the person’s outcome—just from Constance’s demeanor upon her return. HIV was slowly destroying her immune system, leaving her vulnerable to a deadly infection. But it was what Constance had decided to do about her past that was killing her. And Adeline admired that—her courage and her honesty and her sacrifices. In fact, it made Adeline feel guilty for ever suspecting her of murder. Constance was perhaps the most selfless person she had ever met.
*
In the months that followed, Adeline caught glimpses of the other secrets the Absolom Six were keeping.
Outside the door to Elliott’s office, she heard him pacing, talking on the phone, sounding exhausted.
“I don’t care if he hates the counselors. You tell him we moved heaven and earth to get him in there. If he leaves, that’s it—he’s cut off.”
A pause. Elliott sounded even more helpless when he spoke again. “Well, what choice do we have? If we don’t draw the line, he will keep pushing our boundaries, Claire. We talked about this. We’ve got to take a stand. For our sake and his.”
*
One morning, at the team’s weekly check-in, Sam was late.
“I’ll go get him,” Adeline had said, rising and leaving the conference room before anyone could object.
She found the door to his office cracked. Her father was sitting in a desk chair, swiveled toward the window, a phone held to his ear.