My palms are slick with sweat, but I wipe them on the fabric of my dress, forcing myself to relax. I am not the same girl I was when I first traveled through the TM. I know this Facility inside and out. I have studied it, walked these hallways as a recruit, and trained in the gyms on the lower levels. I know mixed martial arts and how to kill someone thirty ways without a weapon. I refuse to be scared of what’s out in those hallways.
The footsteps are coming closer. I lean forward and press my ear to the door.
“I’ll bring the samples to your office,” a male voice says.
“What are the effects of the new formula?” I recognize the faint Eastern European accent. Dr. Faust.
“Inconclusive, but I think it will ultimately be rejected. It’s not helping them travel any easier.”
Formula. Traveling. I wonder if they’re talking about the polypenamaether. Is Dr. Faust in the process of inventing the serum?
I move closer to the door. I can only see a sliver of the hallway, but I make out Faust, with his slightly heavy frame, his broad shoulders and thinning brown hair, newly laced with white strands, even though I last saw him only a year ago.
“We’re running out of resources. We couldn’t get that much of a sample after the boy was shot. There are no second chances,” he snaps at his companion. “All you have to do is isolate the foreign agent in the blood. It’s not that hard.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
After the boy was shot. Could he be talking about Wes?
A year ago, I watched Wes’s blood drip to the floor of the TM chamber, so dark against the white tiles. From the beginning, Dr. Faust had been fascinated by Wes and the quick, efficient way he acted. He saw Wes as an example of what the Recruitment Initiative could become.
Was that day the birth of the time travel serum? Was it derived from the mixture already embedded in Wes’s blood?
It would mean that no one ever really invented poly-penamaether, but that it was simply brought to the past inadvertently, creating a continuous cycle of discovery. I tighten my grip on the doorknob, the cold metal biting into my skin. If it is true, then I’m glad Wes will never know. He wouldn’t want to be responsible for aiding the Project in any way, let alone creating the basis for what makes traveling through the TM possible.
Then the two men are gone, and I ease the door open again, stepping out into the hallway. It does not take me long to reach the stairs near the exit, and I sprint up them. They are dark and dingy, with no lights embedded in the floors or ceiling.
I rip open the door at the top. There’s a guard standing in front of the wide concrete doors that lead out into the woods of Camp Hero. He has his back to me, his hands wrapped around a rifle, and he is just starting to turn around.
I spring onto his back, locking my legs around his waist. He makes a grunting noise, and I grip his neck between my arms. His hair is an oily brown, pressed tight against my face. It smells unwashed, like musk and soot, and I struggle to take a breath. He drops his gun, but it makes no sound on the soft dirt floor. There are pieces of broken furniture scattered around the room, rotting wood and discarded nails and screws. The back wall is lined with metal doors. The one I came through is still ajar, and the thin light from the bottom of the stairs spills across the shadowed floor.
The man claws at my arms, his blunt fingernails digging into my skin. I wince as he draws blood, but I don’t let go. He is wearing the black uniform that all guards in the Facility wear, though this one is in the boxy, high-waisted style of World War II uniforms. I tighten my hold. I’m not trying to kill him—it only takes five seconds to knock someone out. I soon feel the man’s body go limp. As he falls, I drop my feet to the ground and then take his weight, staggering under his heavy build. I lay him down in the dirt, and then look up at the concrete doors. They are sealed shut, with only a tiny line down the middle that lets in a strip of sunlight.
I turn to the passed-out soldier and rifle through his pockets until I find what I am looking for. It is a rectangular piece of metal with random shapes cut out along the thin surface.
I feel along the right side of the wall until I find a tiny slit and quickly slide in the key. The doors part with a scrape, stone rubbing against stone, the whine of a rusted gear. I move to the center. As soon as there is a large enough opening, I step out and into Camp Hero.
The green army truck makes a rumbling noise as it drives down the packed-dirt road. I crouch in the back, half-hidden under an empty burlap sack.
I found the truck parked near the bunkers and mess hall, the white buildings disguised to look like civilian homes from the air. Now we are headed toward the heavily guarded entrance of the camp, not far from the Montauk Lighthouse.
“Just you today, Johnson?” one of the soldiers at the gate calls out as soon as we approach.
“Yup,” the driver answers.
The back of the truck is open, with rough canvas stretched over the rounded top. I pull the sack closer to my body. It smells like old
