Future Threat

29

Now she’s made me wonder—what does my future self think of imbeds? Does she have one, or does she still use an old-school flexi?

It doesn’t matter. That’s not why I’m here.

But now that I’ve started wondering about my future life, I can’t stop.

02:58

We head southwest over rugged, dusty hills dotted with brush and thick trees, while the sun sets along the sparkling blue of the Pacific Ocean in the distance. The sky is crowded; we’re right in the middle of rush-hour traffic, though it’s much faster in the sky than on the ground.

Zahra still hasn’t answered my question about why she nearly got us both killed. I should probably leave it alone, but her refusal to answer makes me even more determined to find out. Especially if those guys try to come after us again. I need to know what we’re dealing with.

“What were you looking for in that guy’s head?” I ask. She doesn’t answer, so I try again. “Something related to your brother? Navid, right?”

She shoots me a fierce glance. “If you must know, that man back there killed my brother twenty-five years ago. I needed to find out how, so I can stop it when we get back.”

“Are you sure that guy killed him?”

“According to my future self, yeah. Navid had a bad gambling problem and owed the Russian mafia a ton of money. My parents wouldn’t help him out, because every time they gave him money, he just lost it again. When he couldn’t pay up, the Russian mafia had him killed. Everyone knew they killed my brother, but there wasn’t enough evidence to get a conviction and no one would rat them out. Which is why I had to hack into Anton’s memories to figure out the details of my brother’s death—so I can stop it from happening.”

“Why couldn’t your future self hack into this guy’s memories for you?”

Zahra shrugs. “To her, it happened a long time ago. She’s moved on, I guess. Got some fancy job with the FBI she doesn’t want to mess up. Guess it’s easier to have me do the dirty work and hope it changes the timeline.”

How strange to think that our future selves could be so different from us now and have completely different goals, but I suppose it makes sense. It’s inevitable we would change over the thirty years and have new priorities.

Would I even recognize my future self, if I ran into her? Or would she be a complete stranger to me? I can’t even imagine what she’s gone through these past thirty years, and from what I read, she sounds like a different person entirely. I’m so tempted to try to find her. Zahra talked to her future self…why couldn’t I?

I look up Future-Elena’s home address in my flexi’s contacts out of curiosity, or so I tell myself. The location pops up on a map, and before I know what I’m doing, I tell the car to make a stop. My clothes are all messed up. I can’t walk around with blood all over me and my shirt in tatters, right? I’ll just pop in, grab a change of clothes, and leave. That’s it. And if I happen to learn a little bit about my future life with Adam…well, what’s the harm in that?

“Where are we going?” Zahra asks, as the car changes direction.

“To the cemetery where Ken is buried to look for him and Jeremy, although we’re making a quick stop first. Do you know where the rest of your team went?”

“No clue. All I know is that they took off together in the same car.”

Together? Maybe Chris will find both of them. “Do you have any way of contacting them?”

“Yeah, but I’ve sent messages and neither of them have responded.”

“Neither of them?”

“Nope. Strange.” Her eyes stare at nothing, and the left one twitches. Doing something with her imbed, I assume.

We lapse into silence, and I watch the houses below us get bigger and bigger through the window. I think I know where we’re going. I’ve been there before.

When the car hovers over a mansion with topiaries out front—including a unicorn and a T. rex—I can no longer deny it: Adam and I are living in the same house he owned in the other timeline. But…why? Wouldn’t it bring back memories of that other, horrible future?

As the car circles down, I get a message in my flexi welcoming me home. It says the house’s security defenses have been disabled and we’re cleared to land. Security defenses? Is that really needed?

The car lands and the door opens, but I hesitate. As soon as I go in there, the memories of Trent and Zoe might overwhelm me again. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to find out my fate either.

“Who lives here?” Zahra asks. “It’s huge.”

“I do, it seems.”

“Nice place. I don’t blame you for checking it out. But once you go in there, there’s no going back.”

I swallow, but my throat is as dry as sand. “I have to know. Not everything, but…something.”

I’m not sure why this is so important to me, but it’s like I can’t do anything else until I see for myself that my future is real. Otherwise, I won’t be able to believe it. A part of me still thinks I’m supposed to be lying on the beach with a gunshot wound to the head, like those photos I saw in the other timeline. Maybe because I can never quite scrub those images from my relentless memory. But if I see that my future has changed, maybe I can convince myself that things will get better, and I’ll be able to move on from the other memories that continue to haunt me.

“Whatever,” Zahra says, lying down across the seat and closing her eyes. I guess the two of us aren’t going to be best buddies. God, I miss Zoe. She was quiet too, but she never made me want to slam my fist into her face. Her life was cut way too short, and I think if she hadn’t died, we might have become friends.

Zahra and me? Probably not.

I force myself to get out of the car and make my way to the front door, admiring the house’s grand arches and columns, and landscaping that is so perfect and green it doesn’t look real.