For a few weeks, life fell into a routine for Adeline. She rode with Ryan to school—until he told her he was fine (“really, I’m fine, seriously, quit hovering over me like I’m a hurt animal or something”).
Each morning, she went to work at Absolom Sciences and soaked it all in. She was fascinated by the Absolom machine.
She sat in on the seminars for the new scientists joining the company. There were a lot new terms, which she had to look up. And concepts that online definitions couldn’t convey in a few seconds. She didn’t understand it all, but like a mountain she was climbing, each step she took got her closer to seeing the whole picture.
Every day, the ground she had covered before built on itself, and the task ahead seemed smaller. Eventually, she developed a basic understanding of how Absolom operated and the history of how it had come into being. Unlike the others in the auditorium, she knew the behind-the-scenes details her father had shared with her, the history only the Absolom Six knew.
But Absolom wasn’t what she really wanted to learn about. It was the next version of the machine that would change the world. Absolom Two. On that subject, information was nonexistent. She searched the company intranet. It was never mentioned by anyone working at the company, and she never asked. She sensed that would be a mistake.
Absolom Two wasn’t the only mystery haunting her. Each day, she checked the BuddyLoc app and watched Hiro’s movements. Every morning, he drove out to Death Valley and stayed until early afternoon. Daniele was with him, or so Adeline assumed. She wasn’t at work. And the two times Adeline had ventured out to the desert to spy on him, she had seen Daniele there. It seemed that it was the four of them—the remaining Absolom founders—digging in the desert and refilling the holes.
But what were they looking for?
Almost every night, Hiro left the dig site and drove directly to the modest home in Las Vegas. Was he taking what they had found there? That seemed a reasonable assumption to Adeline.
And then there was the room in Constance’s home, with the photos from the past, of people and their locations, spread across the wall like a murder board.
Elliott’s home had a similar room, in the basement, where videos of the night of Charlie’s death played on repeat and photos of that evening hung on the wall.
Were the two connected?
What did it all mean?
Adeline sensed that there was a piece that would tie it all together. Her gut told her that Absolom Two was that piece. And that Daniele was the only person who would give her answers. Getting those answers would be tricky.
She was sitting in the library of Daniele’s home, contemplating what move to make, when the older woman stuck her head in. “I’m home.”
Adeline beckoned for her to enter.
Daniele eyed the finance books on the table. “You’re making progress.”
“I am.”
“Riveting, isn’t it?”
“Mind-numbingly boring.”
“True. And that’s why I appreciate you sticking with it.”
Adeline eyed the dirt and sand on Daniele’s clothes. She sensed this was her opening, the right time to ask the questions burning inside of her. She made a decision then: to lead with the truth.
“I saw you in Death Valley. Digging. I used the app to find Hiro, and I saw him there operating the excavator. I saw all of you there.”
“I know.”
“At first, I thought you might be looking for Dad’s bones.”
“He’s not even in our universe.”
“I remembered that shortly after I thought it. My guess is you’re working on Absolom Two.”
Daniele smiled. “No comment.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask.”
“Can we use Absolom Two and prevent Nora’s murder? Can we prevent Dad from ever being sent back?”
Daniele reached behind her and slid the pocket door closed. Her voice was hard and serious when she spoke. “No. The past cannot be changed. It must not be changed. For all of our sakes.”
“Why?”
“The past is the causal sequence of events that created our present.”
“Okay. Can you be more vague? What does that actually mean? Why can’t we just go back, stop Nora’s killer, and be done with it?”
“There are several problems with that.”
“Which are?”
“First of all, what you’re talking about is not possible with the current technology.”
“With Absolom One?”
“Correct.”
“But it is with Absolom Two.”
“No comment.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Take it however you like. What you should be focused on are the other problems.”
“What sort of problems?”
“The second problem is what I mentioned before: the present moment that you and I are experiencing now is the eventuality of a series of causal events. Those events, those thin slices of time, all stack on top of each other like building blocks with no end and no beginning. And if you modify one of the blocks we’re standing on right now, do you know what happens?”
“We all fall down?”
“In a sense. Our best guess is that breaking the causality of our reality will make it cease to exist at the moment causality is ruptured. It’s like a black hole. We know that once matter crosses the event horizon, it cannot escape the pull of the singularity’s gravity. For a long time, scientists have theorized about what happens to that matter, but we don’t know exactly. What we do know is that nothing that crosses an event horizon will ever come back.”
Daniele paused. “What you’re talking about—modifying the past—is like crossing a temporal event horizon. What lies beyond is a temporal black hole from which nothing will return. Or ever exist. You. Cannot. Change the past. Do you understand?”
Adeline didn’t respond. The words were like a sledgehammer smashing her hopes.
“In fact,” Daniele said, “it’s possible that breaking causality may be the reason we’re alone in the universe.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Think about it. If another sufficiently advanced species had evolved before us, they would have eventually developed an Absolom machine. And eventually, they would have developed a second version and used it on their past, disrupting the causality in their universe, hence ending that universe. Ergo, why it hasn’t yet happened in this universe and why we are alone—and the likely explanation for how our universe will end.”
Adeline’s head was spinning. Was Daniele just trying to overload her with technobabble so she would stop asking questions? It was sort of working. She inhaled, trying to focus.
“Do the others share this view? That the past can’t be changed?”
“It remains a subject of some debate among the four.”
“Who wants to change the past?”
“No comment.”
“Elliott? He wants to save Charlie, doesn’t he?”
“You know he does.”
“And Constance. She wants to change the past. What happened to her?”
“It’s her secret. It’s not what you think it is.”
“What’s Hiro’s secret? What’s in that house in Vegas?”
“Not what you think either.”
“You know what’s there?”
“I do.”
“Please,” Adeline said. “Tell me.”
“His secret is not mine to share.”
“Elliott wants Absolom Two to save his son. Constance is clearly obsessed with the past. And changing it. What’s Hiro hiding?”
“What’s happening here is complex, Adeline. Leave it to me. You’ve done enough. And you’ve endured a tragedy. The loss of a parent is an injury that takes time to heal. You’ve lost both of yours too soon.”
The last line set Adeline off. “I haven’t lost my father. Not yet. The fact that you would say that, frankly, infuriates me. It’s like you’ve written him off. Like you want him gone—for whatever plans you’re making.”
Adeline sucked in a breath and stared at Daniele. The woman was a statue. As if the barrage of insults hadn’t even registered.
So Adeline doubled down. “I thought he left Ryan and me to your custody so we could get him back together. Instead, you’ve buried me in finance books and cryptic non-answers.” Adeline cocked her head. “I think that’s what you would do if you really wanted him gone.”
Daniele smiled.
That enraged Adeline even more.
“You want answers?” Daniele asked, her voice quiet and firm.
“I think I deserve answers.”
“Here’s one. See if you can figure out what it means: if you can’t change the past without destroying the present, what does that tell you?”
Adeline, almost against her will, instantly saw what it meant. “That in order for our present reality to exist, the past must have happened as it did.”
The edges of Daniele’s lips curved up, the hint of a smile forming. “That’s correct.”
“So Nora has to die? And my dad has to be sentenced to Absolom?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s hopeless. I’ll never get Dad back. He’s two hundred million years in the past. And whatever happened back then has already happened. He was probably eaten by a dinosaur.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not in your nature.”
“What’s not?”
“Defeatism. People like you never give up, Adeline. They find a way. People like you made the world we live in. Now think hard. You’ve made one very important oversight.”
“Which is?”
“Think.”
Adeline saw it then: the one fact her rage had blinded her to. “Dad isn’t in our timeline.”
“Correct.”
“We can change the timeline he’s in all we want, and nothing will happen to us.”
“Correct.”
“That’s what you were talking about, wasn’t it? With Elliott, Constance, and Hiro? Sending something back to him.”
Daniele moved to the pocket door and slid it open. “I need to shower.”
“Hey, I’m talking to you.”
“No. You’re not. This conversation is over. Remember what I said: leave this to me, Adeline. It’s dangerous. And complicated. There are factors here you don’t appreciate.”
*
That night, Adeline was too tired to sleep. She tossed and turned in bed, and rage burned inside of her. She hated Daniele. And the world. And the Absolom founders, for not doing more to save her father.
Daniele had been right about one thing: Adeline wasn’t about to give up. Not in a million years.
She was going to fight.
She wanted answers.
She was going to get them. Even if it killed her.
Adeline opened the BuddyLoc app on her phone and searched for Hiro’s location, but it didn’t show up. He had disappeared. That was a first. What did it mean? Had he discovered the spyware? Or was his phone off or simply outside of cell reception?
One thing was certain: he wasn’t at the home in Las Vegas. That presented an opportunity, one Adeline wasn’t going to miss.
She threw off the photomosaic quilt of her family, rose from the bed, and got dressed. In her black V-neck T-shirt and faded blue jeans, she slipped out of her room and down the stairs. In the kitchen, she stood at the touch panel for the home automation system. The security system was armed. She typed the code to disable it and carefully left out the back door. She would be back before dawn and would arm it again, ensuring Daniele was none the wiser.
In the darkness of the night, she walked the few blocks to her home and retrieved her bike from the garage. She had left her phone in her bedroom at Daniele’s, but she retrieved her backpack with the burner phone and once again checked the BuddyLoc app. Hiro’s location still wasn’t registering.
On the bike, Adeline proceeded at slow speed through the streets of Absolom City, which were mostly deserted. On the highway to Las Vegas, she opened the bike up. It had a governor, but it still hummed in the night, the wind the only noise, hissing by her as she carved into the darkness.
She realized then that the feeling of movement was its own kind of progress. Moving from one place to another felt like an accomplishment. Was that hardwired into the human brain? A learned trait from thousands of years of tribes trekking across unknown land to find fields and forests with less competition?
Probably so.
On the horizon, the bright lights of Las Vegas loomed, an oasis in the night calling: we have answers, come to us, don’t let off the accelerator.
And she didn’t. Not until she reached the quiet neighborhood with the two- and three-car garages and stucco exteriors and red clay-tiled roofs.
Adeline parked the bike three doors down from Hiro’s house and hung her helmet on the handlebar. She checked the BuddyLoc app and still didn’t see Hiro’s phone on the map. She casually strode down the sidewalk, the streetlamps buzzing above her, glancing at Hiro’s house. It was dark inside, and the curtains were drawn. There was no car in the driveway.
In front of the home, Adeline bent over, studying the façade as she took a thin ziplock plastic bag from her pocket and reached down, into the grass, as if picking up dog poop her pet had dropped earlier during a walk. It was the best cover she could come up with on short notice (the bags had been in Daniele’s pantry).
There was no movement inside the home.
Adeline walked around to the side, looking, listening. It was utterly still.
In the home next door, someone was either playing a video game or watching a movie. The window flashed like a strobe light through the thin curtain. The lot lines were tight but wide enough for her to make her way to the back, where a pool lay in the middle of beige stone decking.
Adeline moved quickly to the door that led to the living room.
Locked.
The door to the breakfast nook overlooking the backyard was locked too.
At the closest window, she put her palms on the glass and pushed up. It didn’t budge.
She tried the next one. It was locked as well.
Adeline’s heart rattled in her chest. She was heaving now, the nerves and exertion overtaking her. She planted her feet and pushed up on the window again. Her palms slid across the glass, screeching. She dried them on her pants and pushed again. This time, she heard a pop, like plastic snapping. The window shot up, jamming her fingers into the small crack where the double-hung sashes met.
She was in.
She let the window down and quickly examined her fingers. The nail under her middle finger was already filling with blood, turning purple, almost black. It throbbed with pain, all the way into her hand. The other fingers hurt, but they were only red.
She lifted the window again and high-stepped into the home, her foot landing on marble tile.
What she saw shocked her.
Nothing.
The home was completely empty. No furniture. No paintings or pictures. The floor and walls and counters were bare. Like a house waiting to be sold.
Or a trap.
Adeline’s every instinct told her to turn and run.
But she if she did, she would be right back where she began that night: with no answers.
She listened a moment. There was no sound anywhere.
The kitchen off the breakfast nook opened onto a living room with no fireplace, only two receptacles on the wall: one for data, one for power.
Adeline walked down the hall, past an empty bedroom on the right. The front door loomed ahead. To her surprise, she saw a straight-run staircase descending on the left. From the street view, this looked like a typical ranch home. But it had a basement. The open rail staircase down to it was ominous, like the mouth of a monster waiting for her.
Another secret room. It was fitting. Each of the remaining Absolom Four seemed to have one.
She had seen Constance’s secret room. Spied in Daniele’s basement. Then broken into Elliott’s lair where he hid the pictures of his dead son. What was Hiro hiding down there?
Adeline considered going right out the front door.
That was the smart move. The safe move.
Yes.
This was stupid. Dangerous.
She walked toward the front door and gripped the handle. But she didn’t turn it.
Because Daniele was right about one thing: Adeline wasn’t the quitting type.
She spun and crept back down the hall and swerved into the stairway and descended the wooden steps, conscious not to make too much noise.
The basement was pitch black except for the dim light from above, the glow of the moon and the streetlights shining into the foyer and stair hall.
This space was empty too. The walls and floor were concrete. The floor joists hung above like the ribs of a beast that had swallowed her.
With each passing second, Adeline’s eyes adjusted. As she adapted to the darkness, she realized there was one source of light down here: a panel on the right-hand wall. Beside it was a locked door. A metal door. The kind you might see in a prison.
Adeline moved to the panel. It was similar to the one in Elliott’s home, except this one had no place for a key code for the lock. Only a fingerprint and retinal scanner.
But it was the blinking message that sent a chill through Adeline:
SECURITY ALERT: PERIMETER BREACH, NOOK, WINDOW 3.
Adeline turned to run.
The door beside the panel opened.
Against her will, she whipped her head around to look.
Hiro stepped out, eyes wide, mouth open.
Adeline leaped forward, ready to run.
Hiro was faster. He lunged and wrapped his arms around her, dragging both of them down to the concrete floor.