Lost in Time(105)

Nora took a step back, as if she was going to run. Her foot crunched on the broken glass on the floor.

Adeline glanced around. The package should arrive any second.

“Nora, it’s not what you think.”

The air between them in the hall crackled again. Adeline expected to see the black bag emerge.

Instead, Elliott appeared.

His foot slipped on the rug as he landed, crashing to the floor, but he scrambled to his feet, raising his right arm, a gun held out, trained on Adeline.

“Don’t move!”

Adeline’s heart hammered in her chest. This wasn’t part of the plan. She expected the universe around her to shatter, to dissolve like an oil painting exposed to heat: the view bubbling into blisters that peeled and flaked away. But reality held. For now. So far, this had already occurred.

Elliott didn’t look back at Nora. He took a step toward Adeline. “She’s here to kill you, Nora.”

Adeline’s father cocked his head. “Is that true, Dani?”

“No.”

“Activate your recall ring,” Elliott said. “Leave this time, right now.”

Adeline ignored his command. “How did you get here?”

“I broke down the lab door and tied Hiro up. He told me the lies you used on him.”

“They’re not lies, Elliott. I can prove it.”

As if on cue, a crackle emanated from the edge of the foyer, just inside the dining room.

The black bag snapped into existence and dropped to the floor with a thud.

Elliott’s eyes went wide.

“Open the bag,” Adeline said.

“What is it?”

Adeline turned to her father. “Unzip it.”

He stared at her and then at Elliott and finally Nora. He stepped toward the bag.

Elliott held out his other hand. “Stop, Sam. It’s probably a weapon.”

He was too late.

Adeline’s father reached down and unzipped the bag, revealing the body that looked exactly like Nora. He reeled back at the sight. Elliott froze, gun still held on Adeline.

“How?” Sam asked.

“A long time ago, I funded a company called Syntran. It grows organs for transplant. Along the way, they figured out how to grow human bodies from a DNA sample—even how to use telomere trimming and epigenetic manipulation to age the specimens. They grow the replica, age the organs so that they’re the right size, harvest them, then provide the remaining body to families for burial in cases where their loved one couldn’t be recovered.”

“The morgue,” Elliott whispered.

“Yes,” Adeline said. “That’s why I had Nora’s body exhumed—to verify that it had the Syntran serial number. To verify that a Syntran replica had been buried.”

Adeline pointed to the body on the floor. “This is the corpse the police will find. It will be buried. Not Nora.”

For a long moment, it was utterly quiet. “We made an assumption,” Adeline said. “We assumed that Nora was murdered tonight. That assumption was wrong. She wasn’t. She was replaced—and made to look like she was murdered so that we would complete Absolom Two. So the future would take place. There’s a far larger process at work here.”





SEVENTY-TWO


Nora looked from Adeline to the body on the floor. “Hold on. Did you just say murdered?”

Adeline nodded. “It’s a long story. The happy ending is that you’re not going to be murdered.”

Her gaze drifted over to Elliott, who was still holding the gun, staring down at Nora’s replica. Adeline wondered what he was thinking. What had his plan been? Had he imagined himself stopping Adeline from killing Nora, and then traveling back to the future until he could take the time to develop his own replica for Nora? It was the only real solution that Adeline could see. If that was Elliott’s plan, what then? Saving Charlie was his real objective. For him, Absolom Two had always been about the son he had lost.

“It’s not over, Elliott.”

“What do you mean?”

“The night Charlie died, in his apartment, you walked out into the living room and told me never to speak of that night until we met at Nora’s house—and that I would know when. And that when the time came, to tell you that everything was going to be all right.”

Elliott cocked his head. “I didn’t see you that night.”

As soon as he said it, comprehension dawned on him.

“Not yet,” Adeline said. “Not yet.”

Elliott let the gun fall to his side. A tear rolled down his face. “Not yet,” he whispered.

To Sam, he said, “It’s good to see you again.”

His old friend nodded.

Elliott turned back to Nora. “You too. It’s been longer for us than for you.”

“I want to hear about that.”

“You will,” Elliott said. He reached down to the recall ring on his wrist. “But I need to get back to the lab before I contaminate this crime scene with my DNA. And I need to apologize to Hiro.”

He pressed the button and the air crackled and he was gone.

“What happens now?” Nora asked.

“Now,” Adeline said, moving to the black body bag, “we recreate your murder.”