Adeline set the coffee mug down on the desk and searched her personal files for a picture of Nathan. She held her breath as she uploaded it to the Tesseract program.
On the screen, a message blinked with a single word:
Searching…
Thanks to the last mission with her father, and that conversation on the California Trail, she felt like she had found the missing piece in the grand scheme of things. She understood it all now, the strange force at work, the unseen hand of time.
But she was still missing a very important piece in her own life.
On the screen, that piece appeared in the form of dozens of photos—pictures of her and Nathan, together, performing Absolom rescues in the hours and minutes before earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and other disasters.
The photos told the story of a life together, one spent in service of people only they could save.
*
Three days later, Adeline was standing in a hotel ballroom in San Francisco, watching start-ups pitch investors. It was the same place where she had met Nathan for the first time.
He saw her before she found him. He walked up behind her and mumbled, faking a cough, “San Andreas Capital sucks.”
Adeline chuckled and turned to find Nathan smiling, a badge hanging from his neck that read 2525 Ventures. Its logo featured a large bus with the numbers written across it.
He shrugged. “See, the joke is that San Andreas Capital never loses money so—”
“I got the joke.” She pointed to his name tag. “2525 Ventures?”
“It’s the bus number from the movie Speed.”
“You are obsessed with that movie.”
“It’s a great movie. And it works: we make sure our portfolio companies never slow down and blow up.”
“How long did it take you to come up with that?”
He exhaled, letting his head fall back. “Days. Literally days. It was so difficult.”
“And how’s it going?”
He lowered his voice. “I’m sort of over it, to be honest. I’m starting to look for something else. How about you? I saw where you sold your company to the government. Or did that forever license deal or whatever.”
“I’ve started something new.”
“Oh, really?”
“And this time, I want you to be part of it.”
“What would we be working on?”
“It’s sort of like bus 2525. It’s about saving innocent people. And every second counts.”
He stared into her eyes, a smile forming on his lips. “I’m interested.”