It is pitch-black inside, and when I try to walk forward I trip over something. A rake, or a shovel. Maybe this is a toolshed after all. Or maybe that’s just a good cover in case someone manages to find their way inside. I hear the sound of plastic brushing against stone, and I realize Wes is running his fingers over the opposite wall looking for another slot.
He finds it: I hear the swipe of his card and then a low grinding noise. Light floods the small room as a door opens in the stone, and I see a dimly lit stairwell that descends into the ground below the park.
With a strong sense of déjà vu, I follow Wes down the steps. From somewhere nearby, I hear the sound of water dripping, and the walls around us are dotted with green and brown mold. At the bottom of the stairs is another heavy-looking door. Instead of a black pad for DNA authorization, it has a simple keypad next to it. Wes inputs a ten-digit code. The door slides open to reveal a small room.
I expect to be scanned again, but as soon as we enter the space, the door shuts behind us and a computerized screen appears on the wall. Wes pushes a button marked FLOOR 9, and we drop so quickly my stomach flips over. The Center is deep, deep below the park, probably even lower than the subway systems. No wonder no one ever finds this place.
We reach our floor with a jolt, and the door in front of us glides open again. The dim hallway we step out into is lit with sputtering fluorescent lights, and the musky, mothball smell makes me wrinkle my nose. It feels like a sewer system down here; the ceiling is a curved, wide arch, and there are exposed pipes running along the walls.
We turn left out of the elevator. The hallway abruptly ends at a wide metal door. Wes inputs another ten-digit code and it opens slowly.
In front of us is a long, gray hallway. It is sleek, made of chrome and glass—so different from the entryways we just passed through. The ceiling is still curved, but that’s the only similarity: this wing of the Center looks like a fancy office building transported hundreds of feet below the ground.
There are several people in the hallway. I stare at my feet as we walk forward, praying that no one realizes I’m not Seventeen. When we pass a black-uniformed guard, my whole body tenses and I press my palms into the scratchy material of my dress. But he barely notices us.
We pass several recruits, and like Wes and me, they are in clothing from 1989. Some are dressed like punks, complete with piercings and Mohawks. Some are dressed in bright pink tops and white sneakers. They look like normal teenagers, though their blank eyes give them away.
A few doors dot the walls on either side of us, but Wes ignores them. He moves through this place fluidly, assertively, and I realize he must have spent a lot of time here. As if to prove me right, he suddenly stops at a completely nondescript door and uses his ID card to open it. We enter another hallway. This one also has several doors attached to it, and Wes uses his keycard again to open one on the right. Inside is an empty room with two sets of metal bunk beds tucked onto either side of the walls.
The door shuts behind us. I feel Wes’s breath near my ear. “This room isn’t bugged. You can speak, though try not to move your mouth much. There are cameras.”
“Okay,” I breathe.
There’s another door on the back wall, and Wes walks across the room to open it—to my relief, it’s a private bathroom.
“You can change in here if you want.” I have to walk halfway across the room in order to hear what he’s saying. “Clothes are there. Put your dress aside, you’ll need it for tomorrow.” He cuts his eyes to the right and I see shelves lining the walls, covered with neatly stacked black clothing.
Keeping my movements brisk, I pick some clothes from the shelf and go into the bathroom to change and wash my face. By the time I come out, Wes is lying on the lower bunk of the bed closest to the door. His eyes are closed, his breathing steady, and I can’t tell if he’s asleep or not.
I crawl into the lower bunk right next to his, and lie so that our heads are close together. We can’t see each other, but if I reached out, I would touch his hair.
It has been almost a day since I last slept, but I lie awake, staring at the metal bottom of the bunk above me. The room is bright—the lights never seem to go off in these places—and after a while it makes my vision blur.
“Are you awake?” I hear Wes whisper.
“Yes.” The word sounds slurred as I answer him without moving my mouth.
“Tell me about your life now. What happened after you got back to two thousand twelve?”
“You don’t know? You always seem to know everything.”
I hear a rustling noise, like he’s turning over. “I watched you sometimes, when I was in Montauk and could get away. You seemed . . . happy enough.”
“I’ve been pretending. With everyone.”
“Tell me, Lydia. I want to know.”
So I tell him about my parents, about Hannah, about missing journalism, about Grant. Wes breathes more sharply, but he doesn’t say anything. It is hardest to explain about my grandfather, but I manage to get the words out without crying.
“I’m worried that it’s my fault,” I whisper. “I was the one who lost Dean, and now Grandpa is in Bellevue because of me.”
“You didn’t choose to go back to nineteen forty-four,” he replies. “It was an accident.”
“Yeah, but once I was there, I chose to try and change the future, even though you tried to stop me.
