Departure(71)

We settle back against the counter, once again in darkness and quiet, everyone saving up energy for the mad dash to freedom, to the promenade, which has to come soon, for our sake.

A soft, pulsing alarm rings out from Oliver’s oblong tablet. He draws it out, holds it up. Nicholas’s location beacon is sailing out of the hotel tower, down the Mediterranean side, toward the basin. Why? He should be on the other side.

His pack activates, steering him into the waterfall, but it’s too late. His velocity. There’s no way he’ll survive the fall. Fear fills Oliver’s face.

“Did he send the signal?” I ask. “Does he have it?”

“No. He sent no signal,” Oliver says, punching his thick fingers on the tablet.

The view switches to a video feed of the outside of the dam. A drone. That was smart.

There’s no sign of Nicholas.

Oliver works the tablet, backing the video feed up. A speck—a body—flies up from the dark pool at the bottom of the dam to high in the hotel and back inside. He pauses the feed, zooms it, moves forward. It’s still too dark, and he adjusts the settings, making it lighter. It’s grainy, but I can just make out the figure of Nicholas inside a hotel room on a high floor. The moonlight casts just enough light through the sliding glass door for me to see him searching the room. Maybe he found the quantum device and decided that jumping was the only way to destroy it.

An errant shot hits the shop’s floor, sending a spray of glass shards into the back of the counter.

Mike throws his rifle up on the counter and squeezes three rounds off.

Silence.

We all lean in, focusing on the video.

It creeps forward.

Nicholas pauses. He seems to be talking to someone. He pulls the sliding glass door open and scans the empty balcony. Confusion.

He turns his back to the passing drone and focuses on something in the room. His arms spread. Another figure, rushing out of the shadow.

Blond hair. A face I thought I might never see again.

The video creeps forward.

Harper slams into him, driving him the few feet to the rail, then over. Oliver works the feed, panning, zooming, following them down. They swerve into the waterfall, Nicholas holding her tight, working the control panel on the forearm of his suit. Harper reaches for his arms as they lace in and out of the waterfall. She’s fighting him. Stopping him. From what? My mind burns, trying to unravel it.

They hit the water at a deadly speed, disappearing into the black abyss.

My mouth goes dry. My heart pounds in my chest.

Oliver lets the panel fall to the floor. A shadow passes over his face, and then his features grow hard. He taps the panel angrily, calling up the remote detonator for the array of explosives we planted in the power station at the base of the dam. He activates them, putting the main array on a timer, set to five minutes, with a few peripheral charges set to sixty seconds.

The numbers fill the screen, ticking down.

My god.

“What the hell are you doing?” I yell at him.

“It’s over, Nick.” He slips the narrow panel back inside the sleeve of his suit and begins to pull on his glove, but I reach for him, grabbing for it.

He shoves me back, pushing me to the ground. Pain from my arm racks my body.

Oliver pulls Grayson up and drags him toward the door, speaking quickly, his voice low. “When the charges go off, we’ll run up to the next level, shoot out the far windows—they overlook the Atlantic. Jump and don’t look back.”

Grayson looks back to me, lying there at the base of the counter.

Through the pain, I try to piece the puzzle together.

Oliver couldn’t care less about the thousands of colonists—or any of the lives in Titan City—at this point. He’s focused only on Grayson. That’s what this was about for him. And his loyalty to Nicholas. Harper killed Nicholas. Why? It’s over, Nick. I rifle through what I know, what Nicholas said to me. His guilt. Oliver and I killed everyone we ever loved. Everybody else, for that matter. I’ve missed something. Oliver stole the immortality therapy for Grayson, the prodigal son he wanted to give one more chance, the confused boy in a thirty-one-year-old body who peers back at me now, his father’s arm around him, the father who never loved him in his time.

But why did Nicholas help Oliver steal the therapy? His words: I’d met someone, someone very near death. Like Oliver, I was terrified, unsure what life would be like after she passed. I had made my own proposal to save her, but it had been defeated as well. Oliver and I were desperate to save our loved ones . . ..

My mind runs through every moment with Nicholas. He knew me, coached me. Worked me. He needed the passengers for this assault. What did he come here for? To destroy the quantum bridge? They would do it at any cost—to keep the passengers here. What had he become? The power of seeing the world he created, the arrogance. And the sorrow of seeing it ruined by his hubris, killing the only thing he loved. The only person he loved.

Focus.

The question I need to ask is: Why Flight 305?

Nicholas’s words run through my mind again. We had an incredible opportunity: a flight where the key people involved in the Titan Foundation and our great mistake could be taken out of your timeline. But they told Yul and Sabrina to board that flight—they were never supposed to be on Flight 305. They weren’t on that flight in this timeline. Only Harper, Grayson, and me . . . For Oliver the objective was Grayson. A second chance to do something about his one true regret. For Nicholas . . . Harper. It has to be. The love of his life. And she stopped him, knew it was him somehow. That’s why he pumped me for information, for an account of every second I spent with her.