“I’ll create a distraction in the main room that will occupy security long enough for them not to notice that the feed of an adjoining room has been cut. It has to last at least five minutes,” I answer. “Thirty-one will act as my backup in case something goes wrong.”
“What will you do?” Tim asks me.
“Huh?”
“How will you distract them?”
“There’s a congressman from Michigan who’s having an affair with his aide. Both his wife and the other woman will be there tonight. The wife likes champagne and apparently has a temper. A few whispers, and she’ll make the scene for us.”
“Really?” Tim makes a huffing noise. It is not quite laughter, but it’s close. Twenty-two looks at him sharply.
“According to her history, she likes to throw things,” I say, a little defensively. “It’s the best way to keep a large number of people distracted.”
“Fine,” Wes says. “I’m running point for the mission. Once we put in our I-units, we won’t be able to communicate as ourselves. From that point on, you will all become your aliases. Here.” He hands us each a small contact-lens case. Inside is an I-unit, the future’s version of a cell phone and personal computer, all in one, made to become a part of its wearer.
“You both know what an I-unit is, right?” Twenty-two asks us, unable to keep the condescension from her voice.
“Of course.” Tim is impervious to her tone, and I realize how seriously he is taking this; even though he looks like a bumbling Captain America, he knows that this mission is life or death. If we fail, the Secret Service will descend, and as soon as we run they’ll start shooting. We have no real identities in 2049 beyond the ones that have been created on our I-units. If the Secret Service doesn’t shoot us on sight, then we’ll be faced with treason charges and locked up, or possibly executed. We’re relying on success or on the Project coming to rescue us—and I don’t trust that they will.
The lights around us dim, then brighten, then dim again, and the room is almost dark now, with the streetlights outside the window glowing yellow against the glass. “Solar power.” Twenty-two opens the contact case and squints down at the see-through lenses. “You’d think they’d have perfected it before they made the whole country switch over.”
“It only flickers at night sometimes,” Tim says. “Besides, oil couldn’t last forever. Especially not after the waters rose.”
Climate change had started in my time, with a growing number of floods and hurricanes and tornadoes, until there was one major natural disaster a year, then five, then ten. By the 2020s it was bordering on apocalyptic, with whole towns washed away by floods, and thousands dying in the storms and the aftermath. In the beginning people were rebuilding the cities and towns, but when the waters rose permanently it became impossible. It took almost twenty years for the weather to stabilize, but by then the damage was done—the oceans had risen by several inches, and cities built near the coasts or on swamps, like Washington, DC, were underwater. The government banned carbon dioxide emissions and shifted to solar energy. And now we are standing in New Washington, DC, the reconstructed capital of the country, several miles inland.
I had seen the new city, gleaming with glass and metal, when I was brought here from Montauk and delivered to the hotel, but it still feels unreal to me, like a hologram projected out into the sky.
Twenty-two shrugs, dismissing Tim, dismissing the whole idea of global warming, and I wonder how many times she has seen it happen, how many ways the world has crumbled for her, before being pieced back together as she jumps through time again and again.
“You two should leave,” Wes says to them. “Twenty-two, you’re in the room next door; we’ll meet in the hall in ten minutes. Thirty-one, you need to report for duty in the kitchens.”
“Got it.” Tim looks over at me and smiles slightly. “Good luck.”
“You too,” I whisper, aware of Wes watching us both.
Twenty-two doesn’t say a word, but her brown eyes linger on Wes until the moment she closes the door behind her.
When they are gone I turn around and place the contact case on the bed.
“Lydia.” I can feel Wes standing right behind me, though I never heard him cross the room. I know that if I move at all we will be touching, and I stay rigid, my back slightly bent toward the bed.
“Don’t put them in yet,” he says.
“We don’t have time for this.”
“I need to explain.”
“I . . .”
As I hesitate, his hand reaches out and curls around my wrist. The front of his arm is pressed to the back of mine, and I feel the soft material of his black jacket against my bare skin. I stay perfectly still. For months I obsessed over that moment I’d seen between the future versions of us, wondering what it meant, why I would forgive him for pretending to
