He slowly lowers his arm, though he doesn’t stop glaring at me. “I apologize, Bentley. But remember that you’re not in charge yet. Not in this time period.”
She stands without looking at him. “We’ll continue the debrief when you’re ready to cooperate, Seventeen.”
Hearing her say my number instead of my name is a physical blow. I suck in air, but I cannot catch my breath. She has stolen everything.
I lie back on the hard mattress, staring up at the mirrored ceiling. My face looks back, tired and pale and small. I am dressed in the all-black uniform of the recruits, after showering in the small bathroom off the side of this room. I’m clean for the first time in days, but I still feel as dirty as I did before, like I’m forever covered in dirt and grime—in blood.
I turn over onto my side and face another white wall. This room is a small square box designed to feel like a prison cell. I don’t know how long they’ll keep me here, but I know that it’s only a matter of time before I’m sent out into the field again, forced to do mission after mission until I end up as cold and empty as her.
I won’t accept this future. I cannot become something I hate, willing to put the Montauk Project in front of the lives of my friends and family. What will happen to my grandfather? To Tim and Wes?
But how will I get out of this place? I need to go back to the beginning. I have to find some way to make it right.
The bright lights overhead suddenly disappear. I sit up on the bed, fuzzy spots moving in front of my eyes. The Center never gets dark. Not unless something is wrong.
They flicker once, then come back on again, burning white. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, and then I see myself—Agent Bentley—standing in the middle of the room.
“What are you—?”
She puts her hand up. “I’ve cut the camera feed to this room, but we don’t have much time. You need to listen to me.”
I scramble up from the bed, my boots falling heavily on the slick tile floor. I want to trust that she’s here to help me, but I cannot get her vacant expression out of my head. Was it all just an act? Is this the act now?
“What do you want?”
“I know you, Lydia.” She takes a step forward, her hand still stretched between us. “I am you. You’re curious about me, and you know that you could never have changed as much as the woman in that meeting had.”
I stare at her for a beat before I nod. She smiles slightly and it transforms her face, making her look softer, more human. More like me.
I cross my arms over my chest as I wait for her to speak. I’m willing to listen to what she has to say, but I’m guarded, wary. Still, I feel relief start to unfurl inside of me. Coming to this room is something I would have done, which means Director Bentley couldn’t have changed that much.
“When I did this mission, We—” She blinks rapidly and looks down at the ground. I wonder why she can’t bring herself to say Wes’s name. “Eleven and I were the only ones who made it. We came to New York to try and find out who was behind the radio advertisement. The Project found us in Times Square and had a recruit deliver us to the Facility. They wouldn’t let us go back in time to try and save Thirty-one and Twenty-two, but I eventually accepted their decision, because . . .”
“Because you had Wes,” I say.
She nods. She seems like a different person now, her face more expressive, her hands moving as she speaks.
“We stayed with the Project. We couldn’t find a way out. And then General Walker told me that my destiny was to run everything one day. It’s true that I was supposed to be on the Sardosky mission, so in a way it was a fate, but it wasn’t why I was recruited. My true destiny was to eventually become the director. That’s why they picked me. That’s why they didn’t push me as hard as the other recruits.”
I shake my head, but she keeps going. “At first I fought against it, too, but Eleven helped me see how it could be a good thing. I could create change. I could make the Project a better place.”
I take a step backward until my knees hit the edge of the bed. Wes helped her see that? “But nothing has changed. You heard Colonel Walker in that meeting. He didn’t care if any of the recruits but me made it out alive.”
“Change doesn’t happen all at once. There are still men like Walker, who learned from his father how to run this organization without mercy. He might be in charge in twenty forty-nine, but in twenty seventy-seven, I’ll run everything. Right now the Project has vague ideas about controlling the time line, with no real organization or communication across different eras. Sometimes they do good, but more often they are changing history so frequently that no one remembers what the original time line was in the first place. And the recruits are dying young.” Her hands fall, and she suddenly seems smaller, frailer. She drags her fingers across her face before she speaks again. “In the future, you and I fix all that, starting by disbanding the Recruitment Initiative and sending fewer recruits through time. There are no more children taken from the streets or from their families. The recruits are all volunteers, and are trained with safer TMs. The days of the Montauk Project’s reign of terror are over. Our job is still to watch over the time line, to save people when we can, but we’ll be smarter about it. More careful.”
A safer Montauk Project? Is that even possible? Could she, could I,
