The sky is now a light blue, with rays of sunlight just starting to break at the edge of the trees. Dr. Bentley will be here soon, waiting to see what my letter meant by explosions in the woods.
The Four-B entrance is in the southwest area of the park, and we reach it quickly. We only hide once, when the patrol passes along the road in front of us. Instead of the larger groups of alert soldiers I saw in 1944, this one has only a few men, smoking cigarettes and talking loudly as their guns swing against their backs. They pass by, never once looking into the woods where we’re crouching, still and silent.
The concrete bunker is in a small, empty clearing, hidden in the woods off one of the main roads. It is embedded in a man-made hill, two wings fanning out on either side of it. In my time, the concrete would appear sealed shut, but in 1945, there is a large metal door on the front, a padlock with a thick chain coiled around the handles.
We all move toward it quickly, though I’m the first to reach the lock. Althea makes a noise and steps forward, but Wes stops her. I pull a bobby pin from my hair, fit it into the small opening, and quickly twist until I hear the tumblers give, one by one. The lock pops free. I yank it off and Wes helps me untangle the heavy chains around it.
We pull open the metal doors that are set into the cement. The dusty room inside is being used as a storage unit for the army base; wooden crates are stacked against a side wall and a quadruple fifty-caliber machine gun is perched in the middle. It looks like a small tank, with wheels and a space at the top for the driver to sit.
“The door’s in the back,” Wes whispers.
We skirt the gun and move to the far wall. Althea and I both take out our metal keys at the same time, and this time I gesture her forward.
The light is weak in here, with only the blue gray of morning spilling in through the open door. Twenty-two runs her fingers along a section of the wall until she finds the tiny slit and slides in the key. As soon as she pulls it out again, a door opens in the concrete, the lines of it so smooth that no one would ever suspect it was there.
Wes pries it open with his fingers, and we go in, walking slowly down the long, dark flight of stairs in front of us. Twenty-two is first, I’m in the middle, and Wes follows.
As we descend, the musty smell from the bunker above us slowly disappears, overwhelmed by bleach and acid. I suck in my breath. There is a dim overhead light at the bottom of the stairs, just enough to make the small landing visible. We crowd together in front of a scarred metal door that looks like it hasn’t been opened in months. There is another slit by the side of it and Althea jams in her key again. A red light flashes above the door. I grab the handle and push it open to reveal a clean, white hallway ahead of us. It is so much easier to break into the Facility in the 1940s, before there were rooms that scanned your body, and DNA testing.
The three of us slip inside. Wes, still holding the gun, is on point. I follow behind him, hugging tight to the walls. We move slowly, peering around corners before we turn them, crouching in door frames when we hear footsteps up ahead. But this part of the Facility is quiet. The soldiers bunk in the opposite wing, and the TM chamber is in the very heart of the Facility. The scientists have their offices here, not far from the labs and the dormitories where they keep the newly kidnapped children.
We round a corner and I immediately recognize the hallway where Faust’s office is: the white walls, the bright lights overhead, the three metal doors.
“That’s it,” I whisper to Althea. “The door in the middle is Faust’s office.”
She nods. The corridor is empty, and she strides across it. Wes and I follow, pausing when she stops in front of the door.
“The gun.” She holds out her hand.
Wes doesn’t move, the weapon tight in his grip. It has a silencer, which means she brought it from the future. At the look in her eyes, I lean forward, ready to react if she tries something. Is she about to turn on us, now that we’re trapped down here?
She impatiently juts her hand forward. “If he’s in there, someone will have to detain him. You two know what you’re looking for. I don’t. I’ll handle Faust while you find the documents.”
Wes glances at me. I think of Althea’s face earlier, when Wes told her she could go back to her own time, and I nod. He slips the gun into her hand.
She twists the doorknob and pushes. We enter the room. Dr. Faust is sitting behind a wide desk, a journal open in front of him. He looks up, startled. “What—”
But he doesn’t have the chance to finish before Twenty-two raises the gun and shoots him in the chest.
Chapter 24
Blood blossoms across his white shirt like a rose fully opening for the first time. It would almost be beautiful, if I couldn’t see his pale
