He speaks of Wes’s death so casually, and I struggle to keep calm. Agent Bentley is better at it, though I see the slight way she flinches at the colonel’s words.
“Ti—” I stop. If Agent Bentley still has my memories, then she knows what name I was about to say, but she makes no comment. “Thirty-one was killed in the field. I was forced to abandon Eleven and Twenty-two when they were shot to come here. I’d like permission to go back to the start of this mission and change what happened, so they’ll survive.”
“Now why would we authorize that?” Colonel Walker takes a long drag of the cigarette. It still smells like the old ones, sharp and acrid, and Agent Bentley scrunches up her nose as the smoke curls in front of her face. “Sardosky is dead. The nuclear war we’ve been trying to stop will never occur now. Except for the time line shift, the mission was a success. We don’t know yet how Eleven’s disappearance will affect the future time line, but it might be insignificant. He was an older recruit, right?” He looks over at Agent Bentley, who nods stiffly. “Then he probably wouldn’t have lived for much longer anyway.”
I push forward in my chair until I’m sitting on the very edge. “Eleven is significant to the time line.” I know my voice is desperate, but I can’t help it. “I can go back to the woods. I can find them there before the Secret Service finds us. Sardosky will still be dead.”
Colonel Walker is already shaking his head. “There’s no point. Maybe later, if we find out that Eleven was important in some way. Right now we’ll try to pinpoint the exact moment of the change, using Agent Bentley’s knowledge of what happened. But I suspect those three recruits are expendable.”
“Expendable?” I whisper the word. A shadow passes over Agent Bentley’s face, but she makes no outward movement. I’ve always known that the Project felt that way about recruits, but this is Wes. And Tim. They don’t deserve to be treated like this.
The colonel takes a drag of his cigarette. “Recruits come and go.”
“Is that why you didn’t try to get us out after we completed our mission? Is that why you left us in the woods, being hunted like animals?” I sound like I’m being strangled, and I swallow hard.
“We knew you would make it to New York. It’s what was originally supposed to happen,” the future me says, her voice softer than it was before.
“Why didn’t you tell us that when we were prepping for the mission? Why did you just let us wait in the woods for days?”
“We only knew for sure that you and Eleven would live, at least in that version of the time line. We couldn’t tell your whole team about the outcome, not when half of them were destined to die. And besides, there were too many eyes on the woods. There was no way to do a safe extraction.” Colonel Walker puts out his cigarette on the table, grinding the red tip into the metal until it is just ash. “But you made it out in the end. That’s what really matters.”
I lay my hands on the desk, feeling the cold sink into my fingers, and I ask the question that has been plaguing me for days. “Why does it matter that I was the one who lived?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” He tilts his head toward Agent Bentley. “She might be an agent now, but in a few years her title changes to Director Bentley.”
I look at her—at myself—in horror. “Director?”
“In about twenty years, you’ll be running things,” the colonel says.
I was always different from the others. General Walker must have been lying when he said my destiny was to kill Sardosky. Or maybe that was part of it, but not the whole story. This is what they saw as my destiny—running an organization that stole everything from me. Becoming something I hate.
“No.” I shake my head violently back and forth. “It isn’t true. I don’t believe it.”
“It’ll happen, whether you believe in it now or not,” Agent Bentley says. Walker smiles at her, but she does not acknowledge him.
“If you’re so powerful, then let me go back. Let me save them.”
She doesn’t answer.
“How could I have become like you?” I whisper the words. “Someone who would leave them out there to die? What about Thirty-one? Eleven?”
I stare at the older version of myself, willing her to say something, to fight for Wes. I need her to show me that I still exist inside of her, that I haven’t become exactly like Colonel Walker. But she just sits there, her hands folded neatly on the table in front of her.
Through it all, even during my training, even when I felt so lost inside the Facility, I never stopped trying to save the people I love. If she won’t even speak up for Wes, then I know that I am gone, that the Project has won.
I hunch over the desk, needing to hide my face from them. Tears fall onto the scarred metal, small drops that slowly start to form a pool.
“What are you doing?” I hear a scrape as the colonel pushes back his chair. “Show some respect in front of your officers.”
He is standing over me, hovering, but I still don’t look up.
“Put your arm down, Colonel.” Agent Bentley’s voice is quietly commanding. “Remember that when you hit her, you’re hitting me.”
I lift my head to see him standing over me, his hand raised in the air, his face turning red. It is the first time an officer from the Project would have physically struck me. There’s something personal about hitting someone in anger that doesn’t quite match my experience with the Montauk Project, and I wonder if Colonel Walker is taking some frustration with Agent
