Lost in Time(104)

One down. Two to go.

“What now?” Hiro asked.

“Now we get Dad back.”





SEVENTY


Elliott pounded harder on the door, screaming.

Hiro stood at the computer terminal next to the Absolom prototype. “We should tell him.”

“It’s too risky,” Adeline said. “He could try to stop us. We tell him after. Help me get the body in the machine.”

When the black bag was inside Absolom, Adeline closed the door, and Hiro keyed in the departure sequence.

As the machine hummed and the bag disappeared, Elliott stopped pounding on the door. He was leaving. Adeline didn’t like that—he could be going to the police. But she couldn’t let him in. She couldn’t take the chance that he had a gun—and could stop her. The past had to happen as it had.

She would deal with him after it was over.

Adeline felt nervousness growing in her stomach. The next thirty minutes would determine everything: her future, her father’s future, and the fate of the universe itself.

No pressure.

She walked over to the metal table and put the large envelope of photos Tesseract had found back in her pocket and then slipped the recall ring on her wrist. She put the other ring in her pocket. She would need it soon.

Hiro stared at her. He was nervous too. This would be the first time a recall ring was ever used. What they were about to activate would reach across universes—time and space—back to Pangea, to a place where her father had either lived or died.

“Activate it, Hiro.”

He typed on the keyboard and turned to her. “Ping was successful. Ring is active.”

“Pull it through.”

The next few seconds were the longest of Adeline’s life. Would her father arrive as a mangled mess? In pieces? In a haze of particles and dust?

The Absolom machine hummed and flashed. In the middle of the chamber, her father appeared.

He looked like death.

He was skinny, his hair grungy, his face streaked with blood and dirt. But it was his eyes that shook Adeline. They were hard and hollowed out, like an animal. Someone who had been fighting for his life—and had the life driven out of him.

But he was alive.

When his eyes came into focus, and he saw Adeline through the machine’s glass door, his gaze softened. A smile formed.

Seeing her and the lab and the world he knew seemed to bring him back. Almost instantly, his eyes morphed back to the man Adeline had known in the two eras of her life: as a child, when she was Adeline; and as an adult, when she was Daniele.

She knew that he was seeing Daniele—his business partner and friend and the woman who had been so kind to his dying wife, and then the guardian who had taken in his children when he had been banished from this world. Adeline wanted to tell him who she really was. And if things went right, she would have that chance. If not, leaving that unsaid would be the greatest regret of her life. The next few minutes would determine whether that opportunity came.

To Hiro, Adeline said, “Have you rekeyed his recall ring?”

“Yes. It’s entangled with this universe now.”

Adeline opened the door. “Welcome back.”

Sam’s eyes welled with tears.

“How?” he asked, his voice breaking with emotion.

“We’ll get to that. But we need to do something else first.”

Sam nodded, and didn’t say any more.

Adeline closed the door, motioned to Hiro, and the machine hummed again.

The government would launch a full investigation into the power and Absolom usage tonight, but that was a problem for the future. Right now, Adeline had to ensure there was a future.

For the third time in her life, she watched Absolom send her father to the past.

Then, for the second time in her life, she stepped into the machine and felt it hum and vibrate and she joined him in the past.





SEVENTY-ONE


Adeline arrived in the foyer of Nora’s home.

Hiro’s targeting was good but not perfect. She was about two feet off the floor when she snapped into existence. She landed awkwardly, feet thudding on the floor as she reached out to brace herself on a wall with her hand.

“Hello?” Nora called from the kitchen.

She stepped out into the hall and stared at Adeline. “I told you not to come over.”

Nora’s gaze drifted to the front door. The locked door. “Wait. How did you get in here?”

Before Adeline could answer, the air next to her crackled and began to hiss.

She stepped aside and watched as her father appeared, also a few feet off the floor.

He landed with more grace, in a crouch.

Nora’s mouth fell open. Adeline could only imagine what was going through the woman’s mind. She had just seen this man leave her home—dressed in normal clothes, at a normal weight and well-groomed. Now he was wearing what Nora would instantly recognize as an Absolom departure ensemble, and he was slightly emaciated and completely dirty. He smelled terrible.

“What is this?” Nora asked.

“It’s Absolom Two,” Adeline said.

“I got that far. Why are you here?”

Adeline could see that Nora was scared now. It was the sight of her father that had done it. The fact that he had been sent via Absolom for some crime in the future. She could almost see Nora putting it together.