“Maybe you can,” Ryan says. He holds up his hands when I start to protest. “You can, uh . . . touch points in the past and go there, because they’re fixed. They happened. But since the future hasn’t happened yet, it could go one way or another. So maybe if you look at it that way, instead of looking for one specific thing that definitely will happen, if you look for just, uh . . . possibilities . . . maybe you can see the future that way.”
All the lights in the academy flicker. Our warning that lights-out is in five minutes. Ryan gets up and turns to go to his own room, then looks back at me. “Look, just try, okay? I know you like Dr. Franklin, but maybe don’t trust him. Not with this.”
Ryan leaves, closing the door behind him, and I’m alone with my questions and fear. I’m still standing there when, five minutes later, the lights go off entirely.
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I sit in the middle of my bed in the dark room, willing my powers to come to me. The timestream rises up, surrounding me, reminding me it’s always there, whether I control it or not. The strings of time flow gently, extending out like a net floating on the surface of the ocean, and I am trapped in the center.
Before, I’d described the threads as forming a tapestry, but that’s wrong. A tapestry implies organization, a clear picture. There is a pattern—that much I can see—but it’s not discernible at all. There are loose threads and knots and holes, and it should look like a mess, but instead, it looks beautiful.
I look first, as always, to the red thread swirling over the void of 1692. Sofía’s still there. Still alive. Trapped, but not dead.
I turn, looking at the frayed, loose strings that float past the woven timestream. And I realize, I can see the future. Or . . . many different futures. I have to sift through the threads, find the ones that pull around behind me, almost out of sight. These threads are finer, like hair or a spider’s web, barely visible. No wonder I’d never really noticed them before. Touching them leads to a sort of empty feeling, and I know instinctively that I won’t be able to travel to any of these futures. Grabbing a string that leads to the past pulls me into history; merely touching it evokes the memory in my mind. But I have to wind the slender filaments of the future around my hand so tightly that I can feel my pulse in my palm in order to see just a brief scene play in my mind, and even that fades like smoke the moment my concentration wavers.
I carefully pick out the threads involving the Berk and me, right here, right now. It’s like trying to select a single strand of sugar in cotton candy, but eventually I am able to lay out a dozen or so futures floating just above the palm of my hand. They’re all short, slender filaments that I can barely see, but I wrap them around my palm. The further out in time they go, the less clearly I can see, but I at least get an impression of the future, and in every scenario, when I help Ryan, we succeed. When I don’t, the government—or someone else—gets the USB drive and sees the videos of us using our powers.
The future gets bleaker from there.
Testing in labs. Being used as research, as a tool, as a weapon. Genetic manipulation. Shock therapy. Psychological exams. Drugs that dull the senses. Drugs that heighten them. Drugs that kill.
And behind it all, this moment. Here. Now.
All I have to do is take the drive home with me and throw it away there. No one expects it. And if I do it, then the government officials won’t see our powers. They’ll never know the truth. We’ll all be safe.
And so will the world. The bleak dystopia in which I’m a weapon or a tool—anything but a human—disappears.
The choice is simple. I have to help Ryan. I know that for sure now.
My fingers go slack, and the futures spread out on the surface of the timestream like ripples on water. Because I’ve just realized something else. Not something that I saw in any of the futures, but something I didn’t see in any of them.
Sofía.
She’s not in any of my futures. Not a single one.
CHAPTER 17
Dr. Franklin and the officials have a long meeting the next day, so our morning session is cancelled. I can only imagine what’s going on in the Doc’s office—he’s probably getting reamed not just for the missing USB drive but also for the corrupt files. As much as I hate the idea of the Doctor getting in trouble for something that Ryan did, I know I have to help. If the Doc could have seen the future, he never would have let the officials come close to the files.
I’d like to think that, anyway.
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