Again she nodded.
"Fantastic." He shook his head. "I can't wait!" Hestepped toward her and took her elbow with a light touch. "We should go.The security system will be back online any second." His hand brushedalong her arm toward the wristwatch. "I can set it on the way, if youlike."
"Go ahead."
He snapped off the BackTracker and began programming itmid-stride. They exited through the garage's side door and kept to the shadows,moving like ghosts through a neighborhood of identical single-family homes deepin slumber.
"Where should we go?" she said in a low murmur. Wherecould they go? "Underground?"
"Therewould be less people to notice our sudden appearancedown there." He paused, adding as an afterthought, "I just wouldn'twant to reappear in the middle of a concrete block or chunk of earth—or in thepath of a speeding train." He glanced up at her and smiled wryly."Know what I mean?"
Then what do you suggest?
They continued on course...to nowhere in particular. It would beblocks and blocks of silent houses before they reached the lights of Broadwayin the heart of NewCity. That's where they were headed. Drawn, as if there werenowhere else for them to go in all the world. Irena, with the infant form ofher husband in her arms, beside the clone of her father, who held a time traveldevice in his hands, thumbs working in a blur of speed.
This is so bizarre.
"Done." He reached over and snapped the watch back ontoher wrist.
The baby stirred in her arms, but he didn't wake.
"Sorry." The clone backed off.
She glanced at the BackTracker. "So we're set."
"As soon as we find the right spot, we're good to go."He smiled at her as though he knew the confusion that was thrashing through hermind. "What do you think?" He glanced around the neighborhood."Where will all of this be in thirty years?"
"It won't."
None of it. These homes would be bulldozed to make way for thefashionable tenements of HellTown, home to NewCity's zombies and other humanundesirables. She and Harry would make ends meet as a detective-for-hire and acommunity psychologist, calling building 3166 their home, spending their nightstogether on the eighth floor, sixth unit down. When he wasn't at the office,pouring obsessively over his case files.
Searching for my father.
"What happens?" the clone said.
She gave him an incredulous look. "Don't you alreadyknow?"
"I've never been out of the lab before." He saidsheepishly. "Your fatherfrom the future didn'tgive me a rundown on the entire history-to-be of NewCity. I know only what Ineed to in order to assist you in this undertaking. Nothing more."
She looked away, accepting his answer without believing it. She'dseen this clone lie convincingly once before, when the two of them had appearedunexpectedly in the lab of those Alpha Geminorum scientists.
"The Enemy blasts our continent to hell," she said withoutskipping a beat. "Most of the humans are killed off. The ones left overare allowed to live rent-free in rat trap tenements—government housing for theless fortunate. While synthetics like you, manufactured by the thousands, buyup all the swanky apartments in the heart of NewCity with their inexhaustiblelines of credit."
"I see." His jovial expression faded.
She stopped in the middle of the dark street. No need to worryabout curfew and the Blackshirts during this when. There was no cameramounted on the streetlamp half a block away. The clone slowed to a halt,turning back to listen.
"From what I remember, this street will run between buildings3955 and 3954—but it'll be more of an alleyway." She nodded, half toherself, doing her best to convince them both. "No one will see us.Everyone's usually Linked up."
He gestured at her wrist. "All you have to do is press ENTER,and all three of us will return to this BackTracker's origin point, thirtyyears from now."
She pressed ENTER without giving it another thought. This was it.Now or never.
She'd already seen the results of never: Harry lying deadin his office, Cade with a directive to kill Harold Muldoon at any cost.
Will he come after us?
"Three decades," the clone mused, giving her shoulder alight squeeze. He kept his hand on her, resting gently. "To thefuture!"
The screen of the BackTracker blinked on, glowing white, bleepingas a digital countdown commenced.
The infant stirred, gurgling, warm and content. But soon he wouldbe without his home or his parents. Irena would need to keep him warm, keep him healthy, keep him alive—
"I should warn you," the clone said in her ear, hisvoice grave. "Things may not be exactly as you remember them..."
The BackTracker bleeped again and again, culminating in a rapidsuccession of alarms as she turned to ask him what he meant.
But the world swam around them in a frigid, electric-blue blur,and she felt her insides follow suit. She clutched the baby close to herbreast, but it didn't feel like her arms held anything. She suddenly didn'thave any arms. Or a body, for that matter.
The chill of the night shocked her back to her senses.
The baby wailed, thrashing chubby limbs and straining against her.She struggled to pull him close and crouched with one knee on the dew-slickasphalt. Jutting up now on either side of the street were the looming tenementsof HellTown, where quaint family homes and yards and driveways had been momentsbefore. The clone stood with his head tilted back, gazing upward in awe.
"Good call." He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply."We didn't end up inside any of those concrete walls. Nicework, Irena."
"He's freezing." She laid her cheek against the babyboy's forehead, shushed him, rocked him side to side. But he wouldn't have anyof it. "He needs another blanket."
"On it." He knelt beside her and rummaged through thediaper bag. Handing over the spare blanket, he tapped the Backtracker. "Doyou want to hang onto this?"
"I don't plan on going into the past again anytime soon, ifthat's what you mean." But she was still in the past—her past. Ten yearsago, when Harry disappeared. "Can it take
