We drive through the streets in silence. I don’t want to talk and am consumed by thoughts of what I’m leaving behind and what awaits us in the Facility. Wes keeps glancing at me, sensing my dark mood. Finally he pulls over, parking on the side of the road just out of town.
“Why are we stopping?”
He turns to me. “Are you okay?”
I press my lips together and shake my head.
“I’m sorry that you have to leave them.” His voice is low. “But this isn’t your time. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I know.” I take a deep, shaky breath. “But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier.”
He watches me try and collect myself. “I don’t know what it’s like to have a family.” His voice is so quiet I barely hear him.
“You don’t remember your mother at all? Or your father?” I turn to face him.
“Sometimes I think I do. The sound of a woman’s voice. Arms around me. But who knows if it’s even real.” His face changes, hardens. “They’re gone now, and I’m alone. I do what I have to in order to survive.”
“You’re not alone anymore.” I reach out and touch his hand. He flips it over, so that he’s cradling my fingers in his.
“I can’t remember the last time another person was kind to me.”
My heart is in my throat as I listen to his words.
“I live in the Facility. I have no friends. I don’t even have my own bed …”
“Don’t you have anything that belongs to you?” I ask.
He hesitates, then pulls away from me. He reaches into the collar of his shirt and tugs out something gold. It’s a pendant on a chain, and he slips it over his head. “Just this.”
I pick it up from his outstretched hand. I’m holding a small gold pocket watch. The decoration is plain, a leaf border and thinly etched lines. I notice that the time is frozen at a few minutes after four o’clock.
I turn it over in my hands. The moon is bright through the window of the jeep, and I can just make out the inscription on the back: With Love, WLE.
“What does this mean?” I ask, rubbing my thumb over the tiny letters.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember.”
I look at him in surprise. “They let you keep it? When you were taken?”
“No.” He pauses, and I know the memory isn’t one he’s comfortable with. “I wasn’t wearing it when they took me. One of the first round of sessions I had was on forgetting my past. Anytime I remembered my old life they would …” He doesn’t finish.
“What?”
He looks away from me, his eyes shadowed. “You don’t want to know, Lydia. And I don’t want you to.”
My stomach turns over as I picture the room full of lost children, knowing what will happen to them, if it hasn’t already.
“I’m sorry.” I squeeze the watch in my hand, more determined than ever to get to Dean and stop the Recruitment Initiative. I can’t save Wes from his memories, but I might be able to save others from the same fate.
“Training lasted two years,” he says. “Once that phase was over, they started to send us on missions. I started time traveling. I would report back to a scientist or general in one time period and then I’d need to do something else. The head scientists stay connected to each other by using the recruits as their go-betweens.”
“Throughout all of time?”
“Certain periods are more active than others. I’ve never traveled past twenty fifty, or before nineteen fifty.” He looks at me. “At least, I hadn’t before you.”
I smile.
“After I was doing missions for a year, they sent me to New York to find out what would happen if some small event was changed. I don’t even remember what it was anymore. But I was out doing reconnaissance when I realized I was near my old home in the subway station. And I just thought, if I go down there, no one will know.”
His eyes are sort of glazed, and I know he’s reliving it: the fear, the thrill rushing through him. I touch his arm in an effort to bring him back to the present. He jerks a little and his eyes clear. “I went in and got the necklace and I’ve kept it ever since,” he finishes quickly.
“A moment of defiance.”
His gaze locks on me. “One of them,” he says slowly.
I feel my cheeks heat up, but before I can ask him what he means, he takes the watch from my hand and lifts the chain back over his head, tucking it beneath his shirt again.
“We need to go.” He glances at me one more time before he starts the engine and pulls out onto the road.
When we’re close to Camp Hero, I crawl into the back of the jeep, pulling an oil-stained blanket over me. I listen as Wes speaks quietly with the guards, and then we rattle and bump through the uneven roads of the base. In what feels like no time at all, we’ve reached the south side of the park.
I stay still and silent as Wes pulls the truck over. His door opens and closes, and in a few moments he’s yanking the tarp back. I blink and take his hand when he offers it to me.
We jog through the trees until we reach the vent again. “It’s the quickest, safest way in,” he tells me as he pushes the heavy metal covering aside.
This time Wes drops down first, and catches me as I lower myself after him. It’s dark and musty inside. I take shallow breaths. The smell of bleach and acid hangs in the air.
Wes leads and I follow. Somehow
