Departure(56)
“Fascinating. You compromised, then?”
“You’ve had some experience with Yul and Sabrina by now?”
“A bit.”
“Then you know that compromise isn’t their style. Oliver and I had no choice. Yul and Sabrina controlled the science, which was the key to the plan. Our only option was to sit and wait. Yul designed the quantum bridge so that it could be reset, removing all traces of Flight 305 from our timeline and restoring it to yours. In 2014 it would be as though our experiment never happened, as if your plane had stayed on course and landed at Heathrow as planned. He intended to reset the bridge right after we had verified the vaccine’s efficacy here in 2147.
“Oliver and I couldn’t allow that to happen. Shortly after Flight 305 crossed the bridge into our time, we struck. We made our move here at Heathrow, attempting to take control of the quantum device on our end. The Titans were split. About twenty were loyal to us, and believed in trying to save both worlds. Yul and Sabrina’s group made up the other eighteen. Yul tried to reset the quantum bridge when he found out we were trying to take control.”
“That caused the turbulence, the crash.”
“Yes. After that, we had no idea where your plane was, or if it had even survived at all. We thought maybe it had broken up in midair or crashed in the Atlantic or possibly on land. But that wasn’t our biggest challenge at that point. We were fighting for our lives.”
“That’s what this has been about: the airships, the battles. It’s a Titan civil war.”
“Yes. In the battle here at Heathrow, half of the remaining Titans perished, including our Yul and Sabrina. The surviving members of their faction began frantically searching for your plane. It’s their only play.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Both factions have been doing their best to find and recover the passengers—to determine whether the vaccine is viable so we can bring the colonists home—but their faction has been looking for two passengers in particular: Yul and Sabrina.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Yul truly is brilliant. And somewhat untrusting, as perhaps you’ve seen.”
“I have.”
“He designed the quantum bridge so that only he could operate it, hoping to ensure his survival. The other faction escaped with the device, which was very unfortunate. They’ve taken it back to Titan City, at the center of the Gibraltar Dam. Our camps here at Heathrow were only temporary. Since the opening of Titan City, we’ve been working and living there. Their plan is to capture the Yul from your timeline, so he can operate the device, resetting the quantum bridge. They need Sabrina for a futile experiment.”
“Yul and Sabrina were with us, outside Titan Hall, at the battle.”
“Yes. The others took them. Along with a woman.”
My mind flashes to the scene in the burning green park, to Harper falling after the shot. “Harper Lane.”
“Yes. The biographer. So this is it, Nick. Right now Yul is in Titan City, working on the quantum bridge, trying to figure out his future self’s notes—seventy years of research, crammed into a few days. If he’s successful, and the bridge is reset, you and everyone from Flight 305 will disappear from this world and return to your timeline with no memory of the crash, as if none of this ever happened. In the coming days you’ll establish the Titan Foundation with Oliver Norton Shaw, and in fifty-seven years you’ll watch the entire rest of the planet die. That’s what the other faction wants. That’s what the Yul and Sabrina of my time wanted to do. And I believe their younger selves will agree to finish their work.”
Nicholas stands and moves away from me, giving me space. This is what he’s been working up to.
“Here’s the decision you have to make, Nick. If we capture the device and stop Yul from resetting the quantum bridge, you’ll be trapped here in 2147. You and the other passengers of Flight 305 will never go home. But the people you left, everyone in 2014, they’ll have a chance of surviving.” He holds my eyes. “What’s your call, Nick? Are you in?”
“If I say no?”
Nicholas shakes his head. “Then you walk out of here unharmed.”
What a call to make. My decision will determine the fate of my world and his. Nicholas needs me. He can’t take Titan City alone, and perhaps a few of the other passengers will follow me. The whole thing turns on what I say next.
Faces flash through my mind, the people I might never see again in 2014: my sixty-one-year-old mother, smiling up at me in her light-filled sewing room; my sister, holding her firstborn child, a daughter named Naomi; my three college roommates, drinking and laughing in the ski lodge we rent every year in Park City. I’ll never see any of them again. They’ll attend my funeral and move on with their lives. But their children will have a chance to grow up, and so will their children’s children. Then I see other faces: the passengers of Flight 305 I’ve come to know in the past week. But there’s really only one face for me in this group, one person I can’t get out of my mind.
I wonder, if we’re successful—if we can stop Yul from sending us back to 2014—what my life will be like here in 2147, in this desolate world, alone. Or maybe not alone. Either way, I’ll be starting over. In some sense, that’s what I wanted to do before Flight 305 took off six days ago, to try something new. Maybe this is fate, a blessing somehow. Maybe, through this bizarre set of circumstances, I’ve wound up in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Even if the right time is 2147.