“What do you mean? What’s a Variant?”
“It means all this has already happened. You changed the past. You’ve created an alternate timeline.” His eyes met mine. “The world is the way it is in Base Life now because you came back here to see Tre.”
I shook my head slowly, almost involuntarily. “I don’t understand.”
His frame deflated even more. He swallowed, almost as if it pained him to speak. “Have you spoken to Flemming at all since you’ve been here?”
“You mean have I spoken to you?” I said, glaring.
“Yes. Have you spoken to me?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
I hesitated, not sure if I should tell him. Something told me I wouldn’t like where this was headed.
“I need to know,” Porter said. “Where we go from here hinges on the exact words you spoke to me. I need to know if I’m right about this.”
I chewed my bottom lip and folded my arms across my chest. I lifted my chin. “I said, ‘You’re a liar.’”
His eyes closed. He deflated further until he was hunched over, holding his face in his hands. Hopelessness hung from his sleeves.
This was bad. Something was very wrong. I reached out and touched his shoulder, more worried now than angry. “Porter?”
“Alex.” He lifted his eyes to mine, his hands on his knees. “That’s what Ivy said to me the day she left. This is the day Ivy escaped AIDA. Only it wasn’t Ivy who escaped all those years ago. It was you.”
A numbness rolled across my skin, leaving behind burning tracks. I shook my head again, not knowing how to respond.
“I didn’t realize it was even a possibility at the time,” Porter continued, standing up. “I didn’t even think about it until I got to know you in Base Life. Ivy wouldn’t have spoken to me like that, but you?” He let out a short, dry laugh. “It wasn’t until yesterday when you confronted me about seeing Nick again that everything clicked. I knew you wouldn’t be able to let it go, thinking your friend had betrayed you. I knew you’d want closure. And that made me wonder what might happen if you decided to travel back in time on your own to get it. When I refused to tell you about Levi, it simply pushed you over the edge.”
The straw that broke the camel’s back.
I stared at him, unable to speak. No air passed through my lungs.
“Everything is the way it is in your Base Life because of this moment,” Porter said. “After this, you escape with Levi and Tre. Gesh shuts down the program. He sets fire to these labs. I track you down a few days before you die. Then I reincarnate you and spend the next seventeen years watching you grow into a young woman all over again.” Porter placed both of Argus’ meaty hands on my shoulders, making me look at his ugly face. “Our lives are the way they are now because of this one choice you made. And it cannot be erased. You have to go back to your Base Life without doing a touchdown. Otherwise life as you know it will end.”
My body shuddered beneath his thick, sweaty palms. My knees threatened to give out as the weight of his words weighed on my shoulders. My heels sunk into the concrete.
“Don’t you see, Alex?” Porter’s eyes swam with pity. “Tre wasn’t the snitch. He didn’t tell Gesh you were traveling again. You did.”
CHAPTER 32
THE ULTIMATE PLAGUE
My knees buckled. Porter caught me under the arms and lowered me to the cold concrete floor. If I had been in my Base Life, I would’ve had the mother of all asthma attacks.
I sat like a stiffened corpse against the wall of the closet, paralyzed. Porter squatted before me in Argus’ behemoth body, his hands poised to catch me in case I fainted. But I was too angry to faint. In that moment, I hated myself so much, I wanted to feel every ounce of pain this realization caused. Every prick. Every cut.
Blue wasn’t the traitor.
I was.
“So all of this is my fault after all,” I said. The words grated on my throat. “You leaving your job. Having to give up everything and go into hiding so you could be my protector. Living all alone in that tiny apartment. I did that to you.”
Porter shook Argus’ huge round head. “Don’t think about it that way–”
“But I’m the reason Levi has to watch Ivy die in the next few weeks. I’m the reason Gesh is looking for me in Base Life. I’m the reason my family is in danger. All because of what? Because I was pissed off at you? How psychotically psychotic is that?”
“Don’t do this to yourself, Alex. There are many people to blame…”
“Tell me how to fix it,” I said, grabbing his fat, sausage-like wrists. “What can I do? What if I erased it anyway? What would be the worst that would happen?”
He furrowed his brow. “You can’t do that. Life would cease to exist as we know it. You would cease to exist.”
“Good,” I interrupted. “Maybe that’s the answer. I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to the entire world. Gesh isn’t the villain, I am. I’m the ultimate plague.”
Something softened in Argus’ face when I said the plague thing. He gave me the most sympathetic look and ran a warm, thick hand over my shaved head. “You are not a plague.”
His soft, comforting touch pulled tears right out of me. I wrapped my arms around his wrist and hugged his hand to my cheek. “Why don’t you hate me?”
“Hate you?” he said with a shake of his head. “How could I ever hate you?” He lifted my face to his. “You listen to me. I have my regrets. There are things I wish I’d never done. Things I wish I’d never said. But you, Alex, are the best decision I ever made. The best thing I’ve ever done. Do you hear me?” He wiped a tear from my cheek with his thumb. “And if anyone can fix all the damage we’ve done, you can. I bet my life on it.”
I sucked in a shuddering breath, searching his eyes. There was nothing but sincerity there. That proud, fatherly look he’d given me many times before. I hooked my arms around his thick neck, and he folded me into a bear hug. I held onto him until my breathing steadied.
“What do I do now?” I finally said, letting him go. I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my smock.
He brushed a tear from his cheek with the back of his hand. “You have to play out the rest of this timeline. You have to follow the Variant.”
“How do I know I’m doing it right?”
“You can’t mess it up. Everything you do will be right, because it’s already happened. We already know you did it right.”
My brain felt like it pulled a muscle trying to understand that logic.
“Try not to think about it,” he said. “It’ll just make you nervous. All we have to do is find Levi, and the two of you have to get Tre out of here before Gesh catches up to you.”
I froze. “Wait. Gesh is going to wake up?”
Porter nodded Argus’ head. “Remember I told you I remember hearing gunshots? Someone has to fire the gun. And it’s not going to be Flemming.”
FLIGHT
Porter’s hand swallowed mine as he led me down the hall, past Gesh’s office toward Blue’s recovery room. “Levi should have come back to look for you by now.”
We stopped outside the recovery room door and Porter knocked. After a few moments, the lock released and the door opened. Levi peered out, his eyes peeking out over the tops of his wire-rimmed glasses, his eyebrows pulled down in his signature frown. “Argus?” Porter pushed past Levi into the room, pulling me along with him. Levi closed the door. “What’s going on?”
“Levi,” Porter said in Argus’ gruff timbre. “Det er mig, Flemming. Jeg har nedstammer fra fremtiden.” It’s me, Flemming. I’ve descended from the future.