He smiles, deep enough that I can see the dimple in his right cheek. Our eyes meet and hold. We don’t break eye contact. Not even as he backs away, not even as he pushes the button.
The door slides shut, and the machine closes around me.
CHAPTER 21
When I can think again, I’m huddled on the floor, panting and clutching my sides. I slowly rise to my feet. I have only four minutes to get out of here.
The door automatically slides open, and I stumble out of Tesla’s Machine and into chaos. Red, blinking, throbbing light. A screaming alarm. It’s all strangely familiar, as though the last six days never happened, as though I’m still curiously, naively, wandering down into the depths of Camp Hero.
I cross the empty room and enter the hallway. It’s deserted, the guards off to address the security meltdown. I run quietly down the hall, following Wes’s directions: right, left, door, right, door. Finally I’m back in the dirty hallway with the dark staircase that leads to the camp outside.
I hear a noise above me and I sink into the shadows behind the stairs. Someone is walking down slowly. I watch as the figure emerges, dark red hair blending into the shadows behind her, a black-and-white shirt tucked into jeans, and my mouth falls open. It’s me. I’m walking into the Facility for the first time, running my fingers along the sticky wall, smelling that odd mixture of bleach and battery acid, and wondering what I’ll find at the bottom of these black stairs.
I can stop her. I lean forward as she passes me. As I pass me. I’m ready to call out, to warn her. But I pause. This week I was almost killed. I failed to save Dean. I couldn’t recover my grandfather’s lost childhood. But I also met my great-great-grandparents. I found a sister in Mary. I uncovered the truth of what was really behind my great-grandfather’s disappearance.
And I fell in love.
I want to be a journalist because it forces you to face the truth, even if it might not always be easy. I have to believe that the same is true in my life—that the truth is worth knowing no matter what. I can’t hide from what happened in the past. Dean is gone. But I refuse to let what I had with Wes disappear—I don’t ever want to forget what it feels like to fall in love, even if that love is an impossible one.
So I’m silent, watching as this inquisitive girl, face curious and open and nervous for what she might find, glides past me. She steps through the door at the end of the hallway, and then she’s gone.
I emerge from behind the stairs and begin to climb out of the darkness and into the light of the open bunker. I hurry through the split in the concrete. It’s raining outside, just as I remember, misty and damp. My sweater is where I left it, a soggy, wet ball on the ground. This day hasn’t changed at all, but I know I have.
I turn back to the concrete as it starts to groan, creak, and then slide shut.
I wonder where I am, if I’m in the time machine room, if I’ve run into Wes, if I’m already in Tesla’s Machine, or in 1944.
I touch the watch hanging at my chest. Wes is down there somewhere. He’ll become a recruit again, a slave, holding on to the memories of the second time he defied the Montauk Project. But I know that it’s not over. That we’re not over. I’ll see him again one day.
I walk through the park, down the paved roads, past the buildings that crumble once again. The radar tower is a rusted cage on the skyline. I follow it toward the parking lot near the bluffs.
There’s a tall figure leaning against the old Honda, the ragged cliffs of Montauk Point behind him. I start to walk down the hill and then I’m running, ready to fling myself at my grandfather. But I slow when I realize that it’s not my grandfather. It’s my father.
“Dad.” I lean forward to hug him and he puts his arms around me hesitantly, as if he’s surprised by my actions. I can see the ocean spread out over his shoulders, the waves breaking against the rocks below, forever seeking the shore. I breathe deep, knowing I’m finally home.
“Lydia. Have you had your fill of exploring the camp? Your mother is expecting us for dinner.” He pats me on the back awkwardly before pulling away.
I scan the parking lot. There are a few cars but no other people. “Sure, I’m ready to go. But where’s Grandpa?”
Dad pauses with his hand on the door handle and looks at me. “What are you talking about, Lydia?”
“Grandpa!” I smile. “Where did he go? Is he at home?”
My father gives me a strange look, half confused, half smiling. “Your mother’s father is upstate, where he lives.”
“Dad, stop kidding around.” I laugh nervously. “Where’s Grandpa? You know, your father, who lives with us?”
“Lydia.” I’ve never heard my father’s voice sound so empty. “You know why he’s not here.”
I shake my head. Dread spreads through my body, numbing every part of me.
“Tell me,” I whisper.
“Your grandfather disappeared over twenty years ago.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to the team at Full Fathom Five, especially James Frey, for believing in me from the beginning, and Jessica Almon, for being a constant source of support. Thanks, too, to Eric Simonoff and Matt Hudson, who represented the series.
Thank you to everyone at HarperCollins, especially my editors Tara Weikum and Sarah Dotts Barley. You both made what could have been a painful process of revisions surprisingly easy and fun,
