Future Shock

13

00:32

I pick the unicorn up carefully, holding my breath. It’s made of silver paper, with not even a speck of dust on it. I slide my fingers across the folds of paper, like I did with the origami unicorn from earlier today.

I know one thing for certain: Adam made this.

“Elena?” he calls from the stairway. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah!” I shove the unicorn in my backpack before he can see it. I don’t know what it means yet, and I need more time to figure it out.

Adam and Zoe wait in the stairway. She stands close to him, like she might grab his arm at any second. I doubt she’d let him out of her sight, not with her hands shaking like that. And if they were together the entire time I was on this floor, there’s no way he could have placed the unicorn there.

Not this Adam, anyway…

“Find anything?” he asks.

“No.” If the future version of Adam put that unicorn there, he did so knowing I would search the third floor alone. He wanted me to find it—and only me.

We return to the lobby, where Chris and Trent are already waiting. “Like I said, nothing here,” Chris says. “Total waste of time.”

Adam sighs, adjusting his glasses. “We need a plan.”

Chris crosses his arms. “The plan is we go out there, find s**t to bring back to Aether, then we come back. Just the bare minimum so we can get paid, and nothing more.”

“We don’t know what’s out there. It could be dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Zoe asks, her eyes wide.

“What if it’s not just this building that’s been abandoned?” Adam asks. “There could be radiation or—”

Chris shakes his head. “Hell no. I’m not gonna spend the next twenty-four hours holed up in this building. And I need that money.”

“He’s right. We can’t stay in here,” I say. Someone must have been inside the building recently to leave the origami unicorn upstairs. “Maybe there’s another way out.”

Chris pulls on the front door handle, but it’s locked. “The doors are glass. If we find something to break them, we can pull off the boards.”

“Hang on.” Trent pulls some little metal sticks out of his backpack. “Lockpicks!”

That’s a weird thing for Aether to put in our backpacks. I narrow my eyes. “How did you know those were in there?”

“I got bored and went through my bag while we were searching the place. There’s all sorts of stuff inside—food, water, and these lockpicks. You probably got them too.”

I kneel down and unzip my backpack. Inside, I find granola bars, an apple, a sandwich, and a full water bottle. There’s also a wallet full of more cash than I’ve ever had at one time before, a blank notebook, a map of Los Angeles, and a compass, which I don’t know how to use.

While Trent starts working on the door, I check the remaining pockets on my backpack. No lockpicks, but one has a first aid kit, which I really hope we won’t need. I also find a handful of condoms. Guess they wanted to prepare us for everything.

Another pocket has a gun.

I freeze, staring at the black metal. I’ve never held a gun before. I can’t tell if it’s loaded, but I don’t see any bullets in my bag, so I assume it is. Is the safety on? I have no idea. Sure, my tattoos make me look tough and I’ve been in plenty of fights, but I’ve always tried to stay out of trouble as much as I could. I thought Aether knew that. Why would they pack a gun for me? Did they expect us to run into trouble?

I raise my eyes to study the others, who are all going through their own backpacks. Do they have weapons too?

Is the gun in my backpack to protect the group—or to protect me from the group?

I zip the backpack closed before anyone sees the gun. If the others have weapons, they aren’t announcing that to the group. And if they don’t, it’s probably better that no one knows about mine. I just hope it doesn’t go off in my backpack by accident or something.

Trent unlocks the front door with his lockpicks and pushes it open. “Wait!” Adam yells, but it’s too late.

A cool breeze rushes through the open door, along with a dash of hazy sunshine. I don’t realize how musty and old the air in the building is until I get that first taste of fresh air. I breathe it in, and when none of us falls over dead, I figure we’re safe.

We gather around the door, peering outside, afraid to take that first step. The sky is cloudy, with tiny drops of moisture in the air that hint of rain to come. The fence around the research facility has barbed wire and is covered in “No Trespassing” signs that weren’t there before. Beyond the fence I see buildings and signs instead of rocks and dirt. Aether’s facility is no longer in the middle of nowhere.

On the other side of the fence, a car drives past—at least I think it’s a car. It’s black but shaped like a sideways egg, sleek and shiny, with dark-tinted windows. It’s hard to tell what part is the front or the back, but it has four wheels, so I assume it’s a car. It zips past us and is gone.

“What was that?” Trent asks.

“Wow, cars have changed a lot in ten years,” Adam says.

That’s when it finally hits me. This is real. All the clues add up to one inevitable truth. “We’re in the future,” I whisper.