She did everything in her power to save me. Shouldn’t I do the same? I can stop all of this. Right here. Right now. I just have to move.
“Think of Remi.” Tanner is suddenly in front of me, gripping my arms. “Sweet baby Remi. She’s innocent, defenseless. Would you rob her of her chance at life?”
I take a shuddering breath, and rationality seeps back in. I can’t do that to Angela. I can’t even do that to myself. I’m not the master of the universe. I don’t get to decide who dies and who lives. Who exists and who vanishes without a trace.
That’s when I understand why my dad suggested that Tanner accompany me. It’s not because he’s a scientist. It’s to stop me from doing something I’ll regret forever.
“Where’s the employee?” His voice interrupts my thoughts. “The one who crashes into Olivia. Shouldn’t he be here by now?”
I look down one hallway. And then the other. He’s right. There’s no sign of anyone.
“Don’t worry, he’ll come,” I say with a confidence I don’t feel. “Mustached man, carrying a plant. He has to. This is the past. It already happened.”
The seconds tick by. Olivia skips farther down the hallway. And still, he doesn’t show up.
Tanner grabs a plant off the window ledge. “Do you think we’re supposed to hand him one of these as he passes?”
I peer down the hallway, and then I look back at Tanner. Down the hall, and then back at Tanner once more.
Tanner, who holds a plant with broad green leaves. Tanner, with his mustache flopping over his mouth like a caterpillar. He looks so much like a FuMA employee. If I didn’t know better, I would think he actually was one.
I freeze. My lungs turn into blocks of ice. Oh. Dear. Fates. “It was you,” I whisper. “It was you all along.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Huh?”
“Don’t you see? Nobody’s coming. It was always you. You were always the one who crashed into them. The mustache. The plant.”
“I don’t understand—”
“I don’t, either. But you’ve got to get out there before the past gets messed up.”
I shove him, and he careens around the corner. Not a moment too soon.
Olivia slams into him, knocking him to the ground. The pot flies out of his hand, smashes into the wall, and breaks into a million pieces.
The ceramic remains scatter across the floor. A trail of soil leads like bread crumbs to the broken plant stalk.
Just like the memory. Callie’s memory from the future. Before her future self killed me in the vision, she walked past a scene exactly like this one. Logan told me about it so many times that I can see it in my head. Just as it’s playing out in the present.
Seventeen-year-old Logan runs up to Olivia and helps her to her feet. “I’m so sorry, sir,” he says to Tanner. “Are you okay?”
Tanner’s mustache twitches. It looks like he’s vibrating with rage, but he’s actually freaking out. We never planned this. He doesn’t know what to do, what to say.
“I-I don’t have time to deal with this,” he finally sputters out. “I’m late for a meeting.”
“Don’t worry, sir,” Logan says, so polite, so in control, even as his Adam’s apple bobs. “We’re interns here. We’ll call a bot to clean it up.”
Callie comes up to Logan’s shoulder. Tanner stares at her. It’s one thing for him to talk to a younger Logan. But for him to see Callie, alive and well, when he’s seen her only in a coma, is clearly throwing him.
Please, Tanner, I plead. Don’t let them suspect anything is off.
Tanner blinks and seems to pull himself together. “Out-of-control kids,” he says under his breath. “Irresponsible child-minders. You’d think, with all of FuMA’s resources, they’d get someone more appropriate to watch the chairwoman’s kid.”
He strides down the hallway and disappears around the corner.
Callie turns to Logan. She doesn’t see me, and I face the window, where I can watch her reflection. The scared eyes, the trembling fingers. I want to gather her in my lap and hug her. The way she used to hug me, with my knees poking into her chest.
“That broken pot was in my memory,” she whispers. “It looked just like that. The trail of soil, the bright green leaves. My memory’s coming true.”
This is my shot. This is when I need to walk past them and mutter the jingle. They’re so absorbed in each other that their conscious minds will never notice.
But I can’t. The hand of Fate presses down on me, locking me into place. The same hand that tried to stop me from interfering with Zed’s memory. As much as we are bound by our future, we are also bound by our past. The loop of time fixes us into place.
Logan takes her hand. “Knowing the future doesn’t take away your free will. Only you can decide what you will do. We’ve come so far, Callie. Let’s finish this.”
I squeeze my eyes shut because there’s only one conclusion to this day. One finish to this chain of events. And neither of them is going to like it.
“I’m scared,” my sister says.
“Me, too,” Logan replies.
I mouth the same sentiment in my head. Me, three.
47
“What in Fate just happened?” Tanner asks a couple of minutes later. Logan, Callie, and Olivia have disappeared to fulfill their fate—at least, the one of their own making. We’re ensconced in a supply closet. My fingers won’t stop shaking.
“It’s like when I talked to my mom.” My voice trembles. My teeth clack. I might as well be standing at the epicenter of an earthquake. “I’m the one who convinced her not to go to Harmony. This entire time, she had a visit from my future self. We’re part of the past, Tanner.”
He inhales sharply. I’m falling apart, but this…this development is pulling him back together. Turning him into the person with whom he’s most comfortable. A scientist.
“This supports Preston’s theory,” he says thoughtfully. “There’s a debate among the scientists. Many of them believe that Callie proved the many-worlds theory of time travel, that her decision not to kill you shifted us onto a different, parallel path. But Mikey refused to accept this. He insisted that time isn’t linear—that instead, it is an infinite loop. Thus, it would be possible to travel to the past and talk to your younger self, without any paradox about how your two selves could exist at the same time.
“Preston suggested both theories could be true. Time is an infinite loop and there are many worlds.” He drums his fingers against his cheek. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Callie picked up our world and plopped us onto a different path. But now that we’re on that path, we’re in an endless, continuous loop.”
I press my fingers against my temples, struggling to wrap my head around it. “So we were always here. We were always part of history.”
He steps backward, and his elbow knocks into a tray of black data chips. I’d thought we were in a supply closet, but upon closer examination, I realize every last tray contains black chips. There must be thousands of black chips in here. Maybe even millions. We must’ve stumbled into some kind of memory bank. How many future memories were received and recorded before my sister messed up the system?
I shiver, and Tanner runs his hands along my arms. Even with the synthetic hair over his mouth, he is ridiculously attractive. Almost without thinking, I reach out and straighten his mustache. My fingers linger on his mouth, and I can feel his hot breath against my hand.
For a moment, we stand perfectly still. My heart pounds a bass line in my ears.
“Were you able to say the jingle to her?” he asks. Each word moves his mouth against my fingers. I like it. I want to keep my hand there, and if we were anywhere other than the past, maybe I would.