Future Threat

6

“Exactly. You can’t. No one can say no to baby koalas. We should grab breakfast at that diner on the corner with the cinnamon pancakes and then head over.”

His enthusiasm makes me smile, and when we head outside, I start to think it might be a good day after all.

But the black car is waiting for us.

It’s parked on the curb, right in front of my apartment. The passenger door opens. My hand grabs Adam’s, and the other one clenches into a fist. They came for us. I knew they would.

A man steps out of the car. He’s Indian, with hints of gray in his wavy black hair, and he wears a white lab coat. Dr. Rajesh Kapur, a scientist from Aether Corporation. One of the people who sent us to the future before.

He gives us each a nod. “Adam, Elena—we need you to come with us.”

“Why?” The word escapes my lips in a rush. I always knew they would never let us walk away from the project. It was too easy, too fast, too clean. Something like what we went through never completely goes away.

“What’s this about?” Adam asks.

“We’d like to speak to you about some potential complications,” Dr. Kapur says. He clasps his hands behind his back and appears calm, but his eyes survey the street at all times.

“What complications?” I ask. Does this have to do with my flashbacks and nightmares? Or something else entirely? A thousand possibilities run through my head, each worse than the last.

His gaze sweeps the area again. “Please, get in the car. This isn’t something we can discuss out here on the street.”

I shake my head. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Not until you tell me what’s going on, and why you’ve been following us all this time.”

His face is a mask, his voice even, betraying nothing. “We’ll explain everything once you reach the facility.”

“But—”

Adam squeezes my hand. “I think we should go with him and hear them out.”

My mouth drops open. How can he be so calm? He’s always trusted Aether more than I have, but I can’t be the only one with the creeping sensation down my spine that signals something is wrong. Why are they coming for us now after all this time? What’s changed?

“What about Chris?” I ask.

“Another car is picking him up,” Dr. Kapur says, as he opens the door to the backseat. “This won’t take more than a few hours. We’ll have you home before dinner.”

The last thing I want to do is get in that black car. I’ve spent the past six months trying to get away from Aether Corp, to live a normal life after their experiment, and to forget what they did to us—and now they’re drawing us back in again.

“It’ll be fine,” Adam says to me. I search his eyes but don’t see the same fear and hesitation currently twisting in my gut. Maybe I’m being paranoid. That was something the therapist warned me about too.

And what can we do but go with them? We need to find out what this is about. Once again, they’re giving us no real choice but to comply.

We get in the car.

Dr. Kapur sits in the front with a driver sporting a buzz cut. He refuses to say another word to us during the long drive to the Aether Corp facility where the time-travel experiment—Project Chronos—was conducted. Adam and I sit in the backseat in silence, and through the windows we watch Los Angeles fade away and the desert begin.

Over an hour later, we get off the freeway and approach the metal fence. Dread fills my stomach with battery acid as the security guard waves us through and the gate opens. The facility looms before us, corporate and cold, and it terrifies me despite its benign appearance. With its gray walls, tinted windows, and perfectly trimmed grass, you’d never guess what kind of experiments occur down in the basement.

As we pull up in front of the building, I have to resist the urge to throw open the car door and start running. This time, there’s no Lynne to meet us at the entrance. Instead, another woman waits outside the building in a white lab coat.

She holds her hand out to me when I step out of the car. “I’m Dr. Ronnie Campbell. A pleasure to meet you.”

Her handshake is firm but not too tight. She’s black, with tight curls and a nervous smile, maybe ten or fifteen years older than me and Adam. Probably just out of medical school, or whatever she did to earn the Dr. in front of her name.

“Can you tell us why we’re here?” Adam asks while he shakes her hand.

Her smile falters, and her eyes dart behind us to Dr. Kapur. “Everything will be explained soon. Follow me, please.”

She leads us into the building, and I have to force my legs to follow her inside. The lobby is exactly as I remember it: bamboo, shiny floors, big Aether logo, and a frizzy-haired receptionist behind the desk. With every step, my heart rate spikes even higher, and every instinct tells me to get the hell out of here. Beside me, Adam’s face is a tight mask, but he keeps walking. We stand together as the elevator rises, and I mentally brace for whatever is coming. It can’t be good, not if they rushed us here without an explanation.

During the ride here, I came up with a dozen scenarios for why they would call us back in and what they might want to talk about. I’m convinced they’ve figured out we were lying about future shock, or that they know about the cancer cure somehow and want it for themselves. Or maybe there’s some medical risk caused by the time machine, and they’re bringing us in as a precaution. But I think it’s more than that.

I always expect the worst.

We walk down the hall, and they stick us in the same freezing conference room as before. At least we’re not subjected to hours of medical tests this time. So far, anyway.