“Get to New York, find out who was trying to contact you. If it’s the Project, then you might be able to change our fate. You can fix this, Lydia.”
If I am caught too, we will both be prisoners, waiting for a rescue that may never come, or a death sentence that definitely will. Chasing after the radio advertisement is a long shot, and odds are it won’t lead to anything. But there’s the smallest bead of hope inside of me—hope that I can save Wes and Tim and even Twenty-two. And right now that’s all we have.
I reach out and touch his hair, his cheek, his lips. “I’ll make this right,” I whisper. “Believe in me.”
“I always do.” He gives me that lopsided smile of his, the one I haven’t seen in months, and I do not think; I just press my lips hard against his, pulling away before he can react.
It only takes a second to stand, to sprint toward the road. I do not turn around as I leap onto the back of a pickup truck and swing myself into the low bed, falling heavily onto my side. I lay my body flat on the cold metal, listening to the gunshots ring out, fade, and fall away, until all that’s left is the screaming of the wind.
Chapter 12
As soon as the truck stops, I crawl out from the back of the pickup. We are in the parking lot of a convenience store, though I don’t know what state this is. The truck was headed north when I jumped on it, but I couldn’t recognize any of the landmarks we passed, with the landscape altered so drastically since my own time. I can only trust we were moving in the right direction.
It is barely morning, the light caught somewhere between black and gray, and the lot is deserted except for a large semitruck. During the drive here, I lay on my back and stare up at the stars, waiting for the moment the government would shut down the grid and grind the cars on the highway to a halt—but it never happened. The FBI and Secret Service must have been too far away to see which vehicle I escaped on, and they couldn’t justify stalling transportation across several states.
The driver of the pickup never even knew I was in the bed of his truck as he automatically drove down the dark highway. Now he is inside the gas station, buying food or using the restroom. The old gas pumps, abandoned and no longer functional, aren’t far from where we’re parked. Cars run on solar power, and the grid provides the electricity. Drivers pay for their vehicles, they pay to use the roads, but they do not need to fill up their tanks anymore.
The semitruck has New Jersey plates and an I Love New York sticker on the bumper. I hop up onto the back and crouch down, steadying myself as I lift up the unlocked back door. It’s heavy. I only manage a few feet—just enough for me to crawl inside. In the semidarkness, I shut the door again. Now the only light is a thin strip near the floor. The driver comes back within minutes. I hear him start the engine, the ground vibrates beneath me, and soon we are on the road. He is carrying bananas, hundreds of them, stacked in wooden crates all around me.
When I am hungry I eat the underripe, still-green fruit. I try to sleep a little, my head resting on a crate, but I keep jerking awake, feeling Tim’s blood hot on my hands, seeing Wes kneeling in the dirt, his fingers white as he pressed them to his shoulder.
Because the truck drives so smoothly, I barely feel it when we stop. A door opens and closes, and I crouch behind a box of bananas, waiting. I only hear silence.
I lift the back door up a fraction of an inch and peer out the small sliver of space to see red brick and a stack of wooden frames. I push the door up farther, slide out, and close it again quickly.
I am in a narrow alleyway, so tight that I have to squeeze against the side of the truck to inch my way forward. Up ahead I see light, white and blazing and preventing me from seeing the street. The closer I get to the sidewalk the more I make out: the long shape of a building, cars moving past in quick, efficient rows. It is a city, and I cross my fingers as I emerge from the alley. Someone bumps into me and I back up, watching the streams of people hurry past, speaking English, Chinese, Russian. The lights above are flashing neon, even though it’s midday. Times Square, New York.
I’ve been to New York countless times with my grandfather, but I’ve never seen Times Square like this. The advertisements are holograms, three-dimensional images that pop out of their frames and fly into the air. The city is quieter, no horns honking, no brakes screeching. The cars move forward on the grid, orderly lines that stop and start on invisible magnetic tracks that are hidden in the concrete. The streetlights are gone, but the walking signs remain and pedestrians push forward as soon as the lights turn green.
The heat is overwhelming, making the back of my shirt stick to my skin. I keep my head down, one hand pressed to my forehead like a visor. I had not thought past the initial rush to get to New York, but now I realize how exposed I am here in this massive crowd. If anyone scans my face with an I-unit I could be instantly detained. But maybe a crowd is the best place to be—most people ignore me, too busy looking at the gleaming metal towers that stretch up and
