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Jones' machine thunders to life. Its light crashes over Cassie, cuts through her; and her skull rattles from the racket. The noise builds toward a deafening din—the light intensifies, too, and she loses sight of Cole—until the machine draws a breath and yanks Cassie out of time. Abruptly, the universe plunges into silence. She arrives in 2043, hands slick with her own blood, and when Jones calls her name, it's utterly without sound.
Cassie struggles to calm her reeling mind, starting with the difficulty with her hearing: she has the machine's clatter to blame. A temporary effect. Soon, a high-pitched ringing will pierce the silence, and her hearing will right itself.
Jones rushes to her. She talks and talks, but the words never reach Cassie's ears. Consciousness begins to slip away, like water through her fingers. She listens for the ringing, desperate for any sound; but what comes—as the light leaves the room, as Jones brushes Cassie's hair out of her eyes—is a single, haunting note from a pair of violins.
Cassie wanders, drawn toward the violins' call as the cello and viola join them. Somewhere, far beyond her reach, she thinks she hears Cole's voice. Finding her feet, she takes a step, and the universe blooms around her. She lingers for a heartbeat among the stars before taking a second step.
She feels warmth and the hum of a room brimming with excitement. She spins, searching for a familiar face in the crowd and finds her own reflected in an enormous, gold-polished vase. Behind her, she glimpses the reflection of the quartet. "Cassie?" She lets Cole take her hand, their fingers entwining, and follows him through the crowd.
The music swells, and the world collapses; Cassie's heart pounds, and she's running. She hears the footsteps of her pursuers, too close, and her stomach aches where the bullet bit through it. She can see Cole—and someone else, someone obscured by shadows—and she presses harder. Cassie reaches him, her hand outstretched toward his, and there's a CRACK! of electricity.
She splinters, landing face first in the sand. She scrambles onto her knees, choking on sand, and two pairs of hands pull her up. "Breathe," says Cole, bent to meet her eyes. "You're okay."
Cassie nods, forcing herself to take slow, steady breaths. One of her hands has found Cole's, but the other still clutches the forearms of the other person who helped her. Lifting her eyes from her white-knuckled grasp on his sleeve, Cassie finds Ramse, staring at something behind her.
"Look," Ramse says, and together, Cassie and Cole turn and find themselves face-to-face with the Sphinx. Captivated by the statue, they stand there beneath its shadow longer than they can afford.
"We need to move," Cole says, leading Cassie and Ramse away.
The world dims, sight and sound fading to nothing. Exhausted, Cassie lets her mind drift in the dark.
* * *
Waking feels like clawing out of her grave. Above and around her, Cassie hears the sounds of life, but they seem a universe away. When at last she forces her eyes to open, she finds Jones half-asleep in a nearby chair. Cassie swallows—her mouth and throat feel like sandpaper—and struggles to form words. Her feeble efforts draw Jones' attention, and the older woman sighs with relief.
Cassie pushes up on her elbows, searching the room. The IVs in her arm catch, and she hisses from the pain as she settles back. "You must rest," Jones says, gentle yet firm. "Your body has been through significant trauma. Allow yourself time to heal."
Time. The word brings a bitter taste to Cassie's tongue. How much time has her injury cost her—cost the world she's trying to save? "How much—" Her voice sounds off, weak from disuse. "How long have I been here?"
Jones sinks into her chair. "The surgery took thirteen hours. You've been in this room four days since then."
Four days—five, in all practicality—lost already. It shouldn't terrify her, not with access to the time machine, but in 2015, Cassie couldn't afford to waste even an hour. Fighting the Army of the 12 Monkeys—with the seconds slipping away—has left Cassie battle ready, and she's about to ask Jones what comes next when a sharp knock interrupts their conversation.
The door opens, and as a soldier slips inside, Cassie glimpses another man guarding the door. The soldier's eyes catch Cassie's; for a beat, his footsteps falter. He corrects himself, returning his attention to Jones, and bends to whispers something to her.
Jones' jaw twitches, a flicker of irritation, and she murmurs something back. The soldier—Whitley, Cassie thinks Jones call him—nods, then leaves without a second glance at Cassie. Jones sighs, and offering an apologetic smile, she says, "We've had a… complicated week."
Cassie absorbs this, just as she observed that the man in the hall wore no uniform. Her mind, still finding its way out of the fog, works to fit pieces of knowledge together. It's the virologist's parlor trick: reorganizing scraps of broken information to solve the puzzle. She remembers the sparse details of his life Cole has shared with her. Tries to piece together the room she arrived in, the people in the background.
The compound should have two group: scientists and soldiers. Cole and Ramse were the only outliers. But from her fractured memories, Cassie recalls ten or so men dressed like Cole; and then—then there were the others. Hooded figures with pale skin—blue? was it blue?
"There were twelve of them," realizes Cassie.
Jones frowns, her forehead creased with worry. "Yes," she replies. "One answer, a dozen questions more."
"Where are they?" asks Cassie, half-afraid they might linger in the shadows, and half-afraid what their absence might mean.
"Gone. We don't know where—or when." Jones shifts, leaning toward her. "Cassie, I know you must be exhausted, and likely in a great deal of pain, so this may be difficult to answer. But how do you feel? Are you experiencing anything you wouldn't expect a gunshot victim to feel?"
Cassie considers the visions she met with while unconscious, but she dismisses them as her mind's efforts to process the trauma and her grief. "So far, no. Why?"
"Remember when Mr. Cole travelled to Haiti in 2014?" At Cassie's hesitant nod, she continues. "A number of solar flares occurred in 2014. Their effect complicated that trip."
"He never told me."
Jones smiles. "He didn't want to worry you."
"Is that what you're worried about? Solar flares?"
"Not quite," says Jones. "After you were stabilized, one of my scientists informed me that a phenomenon known as a coronal mass ejection occurred concurrently with your arrival. In short, the sun released a massive cloud of particles, and we're uncertain what effect that might have on a time traveller—particularly one travelling forward."
"You saved Cole's life, remember? Time travel was killing him. Will that happen to me?"
Jones shakes her head. "Cole travelled many times. At first, the effects were minimal, and had he stopped after his first mission, they would have dissipated altogether. As far as we can tell, your body has acclimated well to time travel. Any effects will wear off soon."
"Until I go into that machine again, right? When can I travel?"
Jones looks away, ill-at-ease. "Cassie, I'm sorry: You can't. The Twelve stole the last of the serum, and your body has begun to break down the injection Mr. Cole gave you."
"But you'll make more. You can make more?" The machine monitoring Cassie's heartbeat begins beeping irritably. Desperate to steady the tremble in her hands, she clutches her blankets in her fists.
When Cassie met Jones in 2015, she hadn't been anything like the woman Cole described. Her iron will and fanatical determination hadn't been cultivated yet. But this woman beside her isn't that Jones either. This Jones isn't determined. She's resigned. "We possess neither the equipment nor the ingredients to create more."
"So—what, now we just quit, after everything you put Cole and me through? We just let seven billion people die? We accept that it's impossible to change history?"
"Dr. Railly," Jones says, rising from her chair, at last sounding more like the Jones that Cassie envisioned. "We have reached the last word in the last sentence of our intel on the past and the plague. We have no leads, nowhere to turn, and no means of reaching back into the past."
Cassie closes her eyes, suddenly missing the solitude of unconsciousness. Seven billion, she thinks; for a moment, she feels every ounce of the rot and the loss of those seven billion. "What about—" Her mouth closes up around his name, refuses to let it past, to let her fear into the room. She draws a sharp breath and forces that fear free: "What about Cole?"
There's so much sorrow in Jones' features, in the crow's feet around her eyes, in the acute sag of her shoulders. She cares for Cole, too, Cassie realizes. "Perhaps Mr. Cole will succeed: we'll fade away, and you'll live a happier life, but… We have no record—no hint—of him after November of 2015. We can't trace him. We must face the possibility that he's dead."
The weight of those seven billion lives had felt like an anchor, stranding Cassie in a sea of grief. But this, this is that anchor tearing through her heart, sinking her to the ocean floor. "We can't give up," Cassie protests. She hears her words as if far away from them. She respects Jones—for saving Cole's life and then her own, she owes her a debt—but in this moment, Cassie also hates her.
Jones turns her attention to the machines and Cassie's vitals. "Please rest. When you're stronger, perhaps you'll share with us what happened… and there's much you need to learn about 2043."
"Wait," Cassie pleads, but Jones is already walking away.
At the door, Jones turns back. "You're wrong about one thing: We have changed the past. Mr. Cole saved your life." Dimming the lights, Jones slips from the room.
* * *
On the subject of West 7, Cole told Cassie little. But his words were sharp and tinged with shame; and seeing his ravenous appreciation for 2015, she filled in the blanks.
Of course, when Cole last left 2043, the compound hadn't been infiltrated by the West 7. Cassie can only guess how much time passed between his departure and her arrival. One answers, a dozen questions more.
As Cassie begins her sluggish recovery, she learns that she has two guards at all times: one of Jones' soldiers, for her safety, and one of West 7's soldiers, to pacify their leader.
What was his name? Deacon?
She's seen him only once, an hour or so after she convinced Whitley to let her to keep the door open. Passing by, Deacon paused, inspecting her for a moment, but he didn't order his soldier to close the door.
From eavesdropping, Cassie gathers that an uneasy cease-fire settled over the compound after the Twelve left, a peace that hangs precariously on the razor's edge. She doesn't know how Deacon and Jones reached this delicate balance. But it's unmistakable that the only thing unifying these two groups, besides their mutual hatred for one another, is their shared need for the safety of the compound.
While on duty, her guards rarely speak to each other—and only a few of Jones' soldiers speak to Cassie—but she learns plenty from those infrequent conversations. And as the finer details of this world sharpen, Cassie realizes that she understands Cole more and more.
The West 7 hate her, perhaps even more than they hate Jones and her people, and if she's honest, she doesn't blame them. Like the scientists and soldiers attached to Project Splinter, Cassie hasn't had to fight to survive the last two decades, but those people at least lived through the hell of the apocalypse. She skipped twenty-six years of starvation and fear.
Their ways are brutal—she's learning that more and more, too—and a few months ago, she couldn't have understood how Cole could join up. But even now, less than a week after waking, she senses that a different Cassie has emerged from all of this.
Soon, Cassie has enough strength to leave the make-shift hospital room. She busies herself with Jones' notes and newspaper clippings. Jones might've given up, but Cassie can't. She won't let go of those seven billion—of those seven billion and one.
She begins constructing a timeline, cover the long conference room table from end-to-end. Hour upon hour disappears as she reads—and re-reads—every scrap of paper Project Splinter has. She interviews all of Jones' scientists, piecing together Cole's unique timeline.
One of the scientists, Adler, helps her. He has little else to do now, he tells her, and Cassie welcomes a second pair of eyes. She doesn't tell him that she's searching for Cole as much as she's searching for a way to stop the plague. Like Jones, all of the Project Splinter scientists assume Cole must have died.
One evening, after nine unrewarding hours of work, Cassie bites back a growl of frustration, tossing the pile of newspapers articles she's been reading onto the conference table. "Come on, Cole," she says, "Let us know you're alive."
Adler pauses, setting his own aside. "You should know, Dr. Railly, that meeting you changed him."
"What?" Cassie busies herself reorganizing her stack of newspapers. She works best when she thinks of Cole as a means to an end, the key to the puzzle, rather than someone she might not want to live without.
"From that first trip, I'd say. He even went back to the CDC a few weeks later. Buried your body." Adler touches her hand, and Cassie realizes he's the first to reach out to her like this since her first conversation with Jones. "We'll keeping looking. But I wanted you to know that if he died, he died a good man, and he had you to thank for it."
Cassie swallows. When she met Cole, she saw as much terror in his eyes as she felt. She doesn't know when she began to care for him so profoundly, only that she wept in Aaron's arms for Cole when she thought he was dead. Now, it hits her how much she misses him.
She wants to ask Adler to tell her more, to share with her the little pieces of Cole's life she's never seen. Instead, she turns back to her work, and they don't speak again until Adler tells her good night.
* * *
Some days, Cassie pushes herself too far, despite Jones' warnings, and her injury pushes back. Dots of color pepper her vision, and she sways, grabbing whatever she can to steady herself as the visions come: an onslaught images without sound. Cassie can't remember most of them. Her only certainty is Cole.
She doesn't know what's most cruel: that she's haunted by all these false memories or that she can remember so few.
In one, she dances with Cole—not to the quartet of her first visions or their first dance, but some slow, classic rock—and she's laughing as they spin. "We'll just be us for a while," he says into her ear.
In another, Cassie plunges into icy water. She screams as she surfaces, as if cut by a thousand knives. She fights to keep her head above the water, searching for Cole.
* * *
Another week passes, and then another, as Cassie sifts through Project Splinter's records. One morning, she finds a disused office piled-high with personnel files. She knows she won't find the answer to the apocalypse in forgotten paperwork, but she spends three days reading every file anyway.
A month or so after she arrives, Cassie moves to her own quarters when a skirmish with a rival scav gang sends four of the West 7 to the infirmary. Deacon seems to have decided that she's not a threat. She might not be safe outside the compound, and she couldn't fight her way through all two hundred of his people if she wanted to try. He removes his guards, and without the West 7 lingering around her at all times, Jones removes her own soldiers.
Cassie can't help feeling isolated—she's the time traveller, she belongs to no one. At night, she listens to the West 7's conversations. Whatever else they are, they're also a community, and they make her feel the loss of her own contemporaries all the more.
Unable to sleep, she often lets her mind wander to her visions; and some nights, as the West 7 settle down, these fictitious memories lull her to sleep. Other times, thinking of Cole only causes her to worry—about him, about the plague, about the fragile peace between Project Splinter and West 7.
One night, one of those unending nights when she's beset by worry, a West 7 soldier slips into her quarters. Had she been asleep, she wouldn't have heard him.
She steadies her breathing. With her back to him, Cassie has only her hearing to rely on. After a few minutes, he comes around to the other side of the bedroll, perhaps to get a better look at her. She closes her eyes. She can feel his eyes on her, his hatred rolling off of him, and she fights back a shiver.
He shuffles, bending down to reach for her. She opens her eyes and kicks his legs out from under him. She hears the unmistakable sound of metal hitting the ground. The knife falls into a thin beam of light coming in from the hallway.
Cassie lunges for the knife, but the man has recovered. He grabs her by the neck, slamming her against the wall. "You're going to die," he tells her. "Don't fight it. You're supposed to be dead already, remember?"
"No," Cassie gasps. He squeezes harder, and she scrambles against the wall, her body fighting to save itself. To flee. Her hands search for the knife, desperate.
"You don't belong here. You didn't survive twenty-six years of hell. You're weak."
Finally, Cassie's fingers brush against the hilt of the knife. Fighting against her instincts, she sags against the wall, and lets the man push her to the ground.
She slams the knife into his throat, and the man stumbles backward, crashing into the hallway. Cassie stares at her hands—bloodied by the spray from her attacker's neck—untils she hears approaching footsteps. She crawls into the hall, retrieving the knife from the man's throat, and makes a hasty retreat into her room.
She raises the knife just as Deacon reaches the doorway. He hesitates, waiting for her to make her next move, and Cassie sags to the ground. The knife clatters to the floor, and she scoots away from it until her back hits the wall opposite the door.
Stepping over Cassie's attacker, Deacon crouches down, plucks the knife off the floor, and wipes its blade clean with the dead soldier's shirt. Then he crosses the room and kneels across from her. He brushes Cassie's hair away from her collar and tilts her chin up, examining the bruises forming on her neck.
Finally, he glances over his shoulder at her attacker. "Well, he wasn't my best man, but he wasn't my worst either," he says with a barely subdued grin, and Cassie realizes he's impressed.
"I didn't want to kill him," she protests; she flushes, unsure of herself. "He wasn't expecting much of a fight, I guess."
Deacon shakes his head. "I taught him better than that: you don't make assumptions." His drops his hand and stands, putting a few feet between them. "This man got what he deserved. Not bad for a first kill, by the way."
"I'm not proud of this," Cassie counters.
He laughs. "Killing isn't about pride—"
"The killing you do is almost exclusively about pride—"
"You're beginning to see what it's like to live here. We have to fight for every scrap." He hands her the knife. "Welcome to the future, Dr. Railly. Come on, I'll have someone move him."
Deacon offers her a hand, and she takes it, smearing his soldier's blood on his palm.
* * *
After that, Deacon somehow becomes Cassie's guide to 2043. She resists at first, too stubborn to acknowledge that the future has changed her. But like so many others, she reluctantly admits that Deacon's lessons aren't all without value.
It begins with her physical therapy, of all things. Even after she kills the West 7 man, Jones' soldiers treat Cassie as if she's fragile. When Whitley teaches her to fight, he holds back, and her recovery begins to stagnate.
One night, swayed by the temptation to test the boundaries of her newfound freedoms, she sneaks into the training room West 7 has put together. When Deacon catches her, he teaches her a sturdier stance, instead of kicking her out. Soon, their sparring becomes a nightly routine.
Cassie harbors no delusions that Deacon helps her out of the goodness of his heart. In return, he doesn't act like she's too stupid to see through him. His questions—about Cole, about the machine, about her—are direct, his motivations unmasked. She answers only the ones she wants to, and she knows it's more information than he gets from Jones and her people.
Meanwhile, she grows stronger, faster—deadlier, even—and the training becomes the only thing that lets her forget about Cole and the plague, if only for a little while.
She's been in 2043 just over four months when Jones confronts her about the time she's spending with Deacon. "You knew what they were when you arrived here. I could see it. Cole must have told you about his time with them."
"Some of it."
"Then you must realize how dangerous Deacon is. How many lives he's taken."
Cassie studies Jones. They haven't spoken much these last few months. She doesn't even know what the other woman does with her time now. Her only comfort as she travelled to 2043 was the promise of a familiar face, but Jones remains as much a stranger to Cassie as she was that day in 2015 when they met.
"I don't know the exact number of deaths he's responsible for, but I also don't know how many you're responsible for either. What was the number from Spearhead? And how many died before you found Cole?" Jones flinches, as if struck. "I know he's dangerous. But I need him."
* * *
Sometime after her one hundredth day in 2043, Cassie accepts Project Splinter's intel has been exhausted. Whatever clues the future might hold about the past, she won't find them in the compound.
Convincing Jones that it's worth the risk for Cassie to begin searching outside the compound takes another two weeks. In the end, Cassie agrees to wear a surgical mask at all times, and Deacon agrees to act as her tour guide.
Seeing the world she knew reduced to so little—to rubble and ash and entire subdivisions deserted—unsettles her. Knowing that life outside the compound resembles a nightmare doesn't prepare her for seeing it.
She lets Deacon lead her to the West 7's last campsite. He tells her that she needs to see how his people have lived while Cole and Ramse hid in the compound, but Deacon also knows that she needs to stand somewhere Cole lived, however unwilling he might be to admit that.
On the way to their next destination, Deacon shows her other places he's called home, including a dilapidated building he lived in with three other men, all of whom eventually succumbed to the plague.
Then it's Cassie's turn. Her grandparents' storefront is a tempting location, but it's far beyond West 7's territory, and it's unlikely to have the answers she's looking for. Instead, she's settled on the CDC. "Sure you want to do this, Dr. Railly?" asks Deacon as they approach the doors. "Didn't Jones say there's nothing left here?"
She had, but Cassie hasn't gotten this place out of her head since she decided to leave the compound. "I have to see it for myself," she answers, although she can't say whether she's driven by intuition or by the morbid need to stand in the building where she dies.
Inside, she finds that Jones is right. Little of value remains. Every vial stored in the CDC seems to have been stolen—people desperate to try anything for a cure. Water damage has destroyed what little equipment the facility still has, and she doubts paperwork has survived the years any better.
"We'll need to travel outside of West 7's territory," Cassie tells Deacon. "Maybe see if Jones overlooked something at Spearhead when she left." They're standing outside, watching a pillar of smoke rise in the distance. The Daughters camp there sometimes, Deacon told her, but he didn't elaborate on who they might be.
Something in her peripheral vision catches her attention. Cassie turns, noticing the overgrown lawn. A few feet from where the concrete begins to break up, she sees the signs of a grave, and she remembers what Adler said about Cole burying her body.
Every instinct Cassie has tells her to turn and walk away; instead, she takes a step toward it. Then another. She's witnessed the power of a paradox, the devastation it can cause, but she's drawn toward her grave.
Another step, and it's like running headlong into a wall. She falls back a half-step, reeling from the pain. A piercing ache forms at the base of her neck and works its way up and around her skull. Blood begins to trickle from her nose. She sways—someone calls her name—and the world goes black.
A train barrels through the countryside. She's aboard a cargo car, its door flung open. The train takes a sharp corner, and she nearly falls out. "Cassie," someone shouts, pulling her back. She recognizes that voice: Ramse. "There," he says, pointing over her shoulder to a wheatfield. "We have to jump.""Where's Cole?" Cassie shouts back.
"He'll find us," Ramse promises. "Now, jump!"
Cassie jumps, but a wind blows the wheatfield away. She closes her eyes.
When she opens them, she's in her bed. No, not her bed. Their bed. Curled up close to Cole, Cassie listens to his heartbeat. He traces little circles on her bare shoulder, presses kisses into her hair. "I need to tell you something," she whispers.
The lights begin to flicker. "He's here," says Cole. They rise, dressing in silence. Outside their room, Cassie finds a staircase leading to a ground floor. "Wait," Cole calls after her, "what did you need to tell me?"
When she turns back to him, he's gone. She stands in the middle of a street. It's quiet, but she sees lights on in some of the windows, and although she has no idea where she is, she knows when she is: It's 2017, and the plague has begun to sweep across the United States.
There's shouting, then a door swings open, and…
Deacon runs out of it, flying past Cassie like he hasn't seen her.
She turns to watch him, and finds Cole waiting for her. The world has shifted again, but this… this she doesn't know. "Is this—"
"2077," Cole answers.
* * *
This time, Cassie wakes with a little more ease. Though her migraine has subsided, her body aches. In the doorway, Jones and a pair of her scientists talk in hushed tones. Over their shoulders, she glimpses Deacon. He nods at her, which draws the attention of Jones and her scientists. The three of them hurry to her bedside, a barrage of questions at the ready, but Jones says, "I'd like to speak with Dr. Railly alone. Run the calculations."
Cassie sits up, watching the scientists go. "What happened?" she asks.
"Why don't you tell me?" Jones counters, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Starting with when this started."
Cassie has to give her this, at least: she's difficult to fool. "As long as I've been here," she admits. "While I was under for surgery, I had these… dreams. I can't explain them. They feel more like memories. I've had them here and there since, when I've overextended myself. Nothing like today."
"I wish you'd told me," says Jones. "You must have assumed the trauma of your injury caused this, but I think you see now that isn't the case."
"Walking too close to my body couldn't have triggered it, if the injury was to blame," Cassie agrees. "Was it the phenomenon you mentioned, the coronal mass… whatever?"
"We believe so. It seems that your consciousness keeps… fast forwarding, for lack of a more precise term, to memories you have yet to experience."
Cassie's heart leaps. She should be frightened—she imagines her condition can only worsen from here—but hope is intoxicating. She'll see Cole again. They'll keep fighting the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. "How do we fix it?"
"Unfortunately, we can think of only one solution: You must go back to 2015, if only temporarily. Returning to your time should reset your consciousness."
Jones stands, wringing her hands. Only now does she realize that Jones has a secret, that she's kept this secret since Cassie arrived in 2043. "Katarina?"
"After Ramse splintered to 1987, I took preventative measures. I hid one of the vials of my injection. When the Twelve took the remaining vials, I told them the one I took was destroyed in the struggle with Ramse."
This betrayal stings less than Aaron's, but Cassie recoils nonetheless. "Why would you lie to me?"
"Oh, Cassie," Jones says, "you know the answer to that question. You're a doctor: would you let a patient in your condition use the machine?"
"Four months. I would let a patient this far into recovery use the machine."
Jones raises an eyebrow, doubtful. "Consider the hours you've spent searching for our way back into this fight. We couldn't guess where or when to send you."
"If I hadn't collapsed, would you have ever told me?"
"If you found any trace of Mr. Cole or had an idea how to stop the plague, yes. It's one injection, Cassie. I couldn't risk you or this injection."
"So what's the plan now?" Cassie asks. "Like you said, I haven't found an answer. Where will you send me?"
"If we want to rescue Cole, we need to find him as close to where you left him as we can. We want to send you to November 11, eight hours before you infiltrated Raritan. You'll remain hidden until after Cole sends your past self here."
As far as plans go, it's their best hope, but it seems half-formed, and Cassie wonders where she'll hide from the Army of the Twelve Monkeys for eight hours. "But what happens after that? I can come back here, but Cole can't."
"Many difficult choices lie ahead of us," Jones says. She doesn't meet Cassie's eye.
* * *
Jones insists that Cassie rest before her journey to 2015. With so much hinging on her return, she needs all her strength; meanwhile, Jones and the rest of the Project Splinter team will check and re-check their numbers. Cassie needs to land somewhere that won't draw their enemy's eye, but without money or transportation, she can't be too far from Raritan.
Jones is right: She aches with exhaustion, worn threadbare, and she needs a few hours' sleep before the machine drops her in the heart of enemy territory. But Cassie has never slept well before travelling, and travelling through time only compounds the problem.
After an hour, she admits defeat and abandons the bed. She walks the halls of the compound, wondering whether she'll see this place—this time—again. Are her visions a certainty? If Cassie and Cole can prevent the plague, none of it will happen.
She finds herself in the little training room, her feet having followed the familiar route. Deacon leans against a wall, watching two of his men spar. When he sees her, he signals for his second-in-command to take over. They don't step into the gym—it only feels right in the middle of the night—but they linger at the door. "You're going," he says. A question he knows the answer to.
"I have to."
Deacon nods. "I thought so."
Cassie studies him. Despite all his questions about Project Splinter and what Jones thinks she'll accomplish, it occurs to her that he's never said what he thinks about it. Deacon seems like an open book—all black-and-white, no traces of gray—but he's more complex than that. She doesn't know if she trusts him, but she's shocked to realize she understands him.
"You know, you haven't said whether you think this could work… or if you'd want it to." Deacon raises an eyebrow, and the corners of his mouth twitch upward, but he doesn't respond. "Tell me," Cassie insists.
"I did tell you. That night you killed one of my men. We do what we have to so we can survive. You'll climb into that machine, and I'll run the West 7; and if you stop the plague, I won't remember this."
Cassie wonders what kind of man that Deacon would be, but she doesn't pose the question. She doesn't think it matters much to him.
* * *
As she helps Cassie onto the machine, Jones presses a piece of paper into her palm. "Ingredients… and the names of three scientists who can create the serum," she explains. "And if you do find Mr. Cole… "
"Yes?"
Jones smiles, her hand still holding Cassie's. "Thank him for me… for us. I never got to tell him."
* * *
Cassie waits by the access tunnels. Night has fallen, casting shadows so dark and deep, she struggles to not see monsters in them. Shivering, she glances down at her watch, watching the seconds tick slowly by.
Returning to 2015 hasn't been as easy as Cassie hoped. Her mind has righted itself, just as Jones predicted; but after only four months in 2043, the world of 2015 seems so loud and full. Somehow, it feels less like her home.
The spray of gunfire startles her, despite expecting it. She moves closer to the tunnels, listening for the echo of footsteps. Sirens sound in the distance.
Finally, she hears it: two pairs of feet stumbling down the tunnels. When Cole emerges, he's dragging Ramse with him. Seeing her, they stop in their tracks. Cole eases Ramse to the ground. "Cassie?"
"Cole," she breathes, all but running into his arms. Wrapping her arms around his neck, Cassie closes her eyes and breathes a sigh of relief.
He pulls back, just enough to search her eyes. "You're okay?"
"Four months," is all she says, for now. There'll be time enough to tell him more later. Grinning, he pulls her back into his arms. Over Cole's shoulder, Cassie's eyes meet Ramse's. She thinks about the memories with him that her mind flashed forward to—his hands pulling her up out of the sand; stealing herself to leap out of a train with him—and makes a decision. "Come on, let's find somewhere safe so I can help him."
Cassie and Cole pull Ramse to his feet, slinging his arms over their shoulders, and together, the three of them disappear into the night.