At home, Adeline showed her to the guest bedroom, which her counterpart eyed wearily before turning to her.

  “I want answers.”

  “You should sit down, Adeline.”

  “I don’t want to sit down.”

  Adeline placed a hand on her counterpart’s shoulder, guided her to the bed, and sat beside her.

  “What I’m about to say is going to be hard to hear.”

  “What is?”

  “It’s going to hurt, but I promise you, it’s going to get better. You just have to give it some time.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. Adeline saw the hurt she had once felt in her younger self. And she knew that fear was giving way to rage.

  “Everyone keeps telling me everything is going to get better. But things just keep getting worse.”

  “They always do,” Daniele said. “Before they get better.”

  *

  In her home office, Adeline entered her father’s weight in the Absolom destination algorithm and stared at the predicted arrival date.

  The Late Triassic.

  It was very nearly the worst possible outcome. Just the thought of him trying to survive there made her nervous.

  To distract herself, she spent the rest of the night researching the epoch. There were pictures of dinosaurs and large reptiles—which were at the top of the food chain at that time. There were jungles and volcanic explosions burying those jungles in lava and simulations of the giant continent of Pangea separating and the world never being whole again. In a way, it was a strange symbol of her life. Two halves breaking apart. Now she was trying to bring them back together. Upstairs, her younger self was trying to pull away. And like the Triassic, she knew how it ended.

  *

  Adeline woke to an app notification on her phone. Tesseract had found more matches.

  She bounded out of the bedroom and down the stairs. In the basement, she closed the door to the server room and logged in to the terminal.

  She wasn’t prepared for what she saw. Dozens of matches. She didn’t understand it. It was wrong somehow. It had to be.

  But it was all right there. In black-and-white photos. And color photos. And videos. A tapestry that laid a mystery written across time.

  Adeline felt as if she was looking at a photomosaic, one that formed a bigger picture. An answer. But it was still missing a piece.

  What was happening here was stranger than she ever imagined. And much larger than one woman’s murder.

  SIXTY-SIX

  B‌ efore she left the next morning, Adeline cracked the door to the guest room and peered in at her younger self. The girl had slept in her clothes, with only a quilt drawn over her. Adeline recognized the quilt. It was one of the three photomosaics her mother had made. Her mother and Adeline had made.

  *

  In the Absolom holding cell, Adeline showed her father his predicted arrival date. He barely reacted, as if she had told him the weather tomorrow.

  “Get your head in the game, Sam. This is a survival exercise now. Don’t just blindly march through this. You need to be studying survival techniques while you’re waiting for departure—and those strategies will vary based on the destination environment.”

  It was so strange for her, almost being the parent now. Adeline couldn’t help wondering if that was the way of life: things coming full circle. They certainly were for her.

  *

  At home, Adeline found her counterpart in the bedroom writing in a notebook. She knew what she was writing. And that her younger self was hurting more than she ever had in her whole life at that moment. She knew what she needed: a firm hand to guide her.

  “Don’t you knock?”

  “I did knock,” Adeline said.

  “But apparently you didn’t wait to barge in here.”

  She nodded to the notebook. “Working on something?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “On the contrary. What you’re working on is my only business now.”

  Adeline took a step closer and spoke again, her voice steady and calm.

  “You’re making a list of the people who might have killed Nora and framed your father.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “True. Nor do I want to. I’m going to help you, Adeline. We’re going to figure it out. Together. And we’re going to get him back.”

  Adeline turned and strode out, pausing at the doorway. “But right now, we’re going to have dinner. And we’re going to be civil.”

  *

  When Adeline’s counterpart left to visit Sam, she texted Elliott, Hiro, and Constance, requesting that they come over.

  They met in her basement.

  “Let’s start with who killed Nora,” Elliott said. He seemed to be in a perpetual state of being either hungover or slightly inebriated.

  “We don’t have time for that right now,” Adeline said.

  Elliott stared at her. “I’d say there’s always time to figure out who killed your friend and colleague.”

  “We need to focus all of our energy on saving the one friend we can. His name is Sam Anderson, and very shortly, he will be sent back to the Triassic. The only question that matters is how do we get him back?”

  Constance squinted. “Well, frankly, forgive me if I’m missing something, but what will we do when we get him back? I mean, he’ll be a wanted fugitive.”

  Adeline had never told the group about Absolom Island. She wasn’t about to now. If one of them was the killer, it might be the only place in the world she and her father could escape to.

  “I’ll take care of what happens after. How do we get him back?”

  “To put it bluntly,” Elliott said, “we can’t.”

  “A-2,” Hiro said.

  “What does that mean?” Constance asked.

  Elliott shifted his head from side to side. “If we transmit him with Absolom Two, we can tag him with entangled particles and use a recall ring—but that’s all theoretical. And A-2 has never been used on humans. And we don’t even have the date and location targeting worked out. Our payloads are all over the map—and timeline.”

  “But,” Adeline said, “with A-2, you would know what universe he’s in.”

  “Yes,” Elliott said. “We would.”

  “What is a recall ring?” Constance asked.

  “It’s a prototype we’ve been developing,” Hiro said. “A device that could make the promise of Absolom shipping a reality. You tag a recall ring with entangled particles at an originating Absolom Two machine. Then that machine can use the entangled particles to find the ring—and the mass it’s attached to—in space and time, across the multiverse, and bring it home. You would still have to use drones or human drivers for last-mile delivery, but you could ship something to any Absolom port in the world.”

  “Or,” Adeline said, “pull something from the Triassic to the present.”

  Elliott exhaled. “In theory. But it’s a long shot—and we won’t be able to send a recall ring with Sam. They’ll search him before departure. It’s far too large.”

  “Let’s solve the Absolom Two issue first,” Adeline said. “How?”

  Hiro shrugged. “Easy. We tell the government that Absolom needs maintenance. We swap out the control modules with the A-2 modules. No one will know.”

  *

  Adeline was sitting at the kitchen island when her younger counterpart returned from her visit with her father. She remembered what had been said, how suspicious she had been of Daniele back then.

  “How was the visit?”

  “Informative.”

  Adeline cocked her head. “Do you know the biggest mistake people make?”

  “Asking rhetorical questions?”

  She smiled. “Making up their minds before they have all the facts. I hope you won’t make that mistake, Adeline.”

  As her younger self walked up to her room, Adeline realized why she had done what she did all those years ago. She needed her counterpart to investigate Constance, Hiro, and Elliott to get close to them. Elliott would come to trust her, and for that reason, he would text her when Absolom Two was ready, urging her to keep Daniele away. She would take control of the machine at that moment and send her younger self to the past, to 2008, to start the cycle.

  But what would she do after? Would she go back to that night at Nora’s house and kill her? The past had to occur as it had. Or else the universe would break. Someone had to go back and do it. Adeline’s greatest fear of all was that she was that person.

  *

  The next morning, Adeline visited the print shop inside the Absolom Sciences headquarters.

  In the corner, a large-format printer was rolling off a banner for a retirement party for someone named Steven.

  The plotter/cutter beside it was slicing up a roll of vinyl for truck decals.

  The print shop manager, a man named Roger, who was in his sixties, was sitting on a stool at a raised table with a rubberized top, using an X-ACTO knife to touch up a directional sign that read Café.

  At the sight of Adeline, he hopped off the stool and took his thick glasses off, letting them dangle from a cord.

  “Miss Danneros. Wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Hi, Roger.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m wondering if you’re able to print something on a small plastic surface.”

  “Sure. Well, how small?”

  “Say the size of a driver’s license?”

  “Oh yeah. That’s no problem. Do you have a file?”

  “I was wondering if you could show me how to do it. It’s for a personal project.”

  He shrugged. “Of course.”

  “And I know this might sound a little crazy, but I need an ink that washes off in water.”

  “Believe me, we’ve seen crazier. I don’t have any of the disappearing ink right now, but I can order it. We’ve used it before.”

  He must have read Adeline’s surprise. “Some guys down in IT wanted some a few years ago. For an April Fool’s prank, I think.” Roger smiled. “Planning something similar?”

  “This is no prank. I guess you could say it’s for a birthday party.”

  *

  A week later, Adeline was placing the ID under the printer. She reviewed the layout of the Absolom Sciences intern badge, clicked print, and watched as the California driver’s license for Daniele Danneros was covered in the disappearing ink.

  As she watched the present cover the past—and future—she couldn’t help but wonder about the nature of time itself, and causality, and specifically where the driver’s license had come from in the first place. She could ask the same question about the diamond earrings that would also travel to the past with her younger counterpart. The license and the earrings were like the universe itself: its past before it existed was a mystery. When and how had the two items been created? What form had they existed in before they came into the universe? In that answer was the true nature of time, and it was stranger than Adeline had ever imagined as a child.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  Adeline put all of her efforts into preparing for the future. Her years of work on Absolom Island were coming to fruition. The roads were done. The automated bungalows and offices and facilities were ready. Yet, aside from the construction company staff, it stood empty, waiting for the moment when it was needed.

  Adeline spent as much time as she could visiting her father, drilling him on survival techniques.

  His own island loomed in the past. Pangea. There would be no automated paradise waiting for him there.

  She watched the bitterness and suspicion grow inside her younger self.

  Elliott and Hiro worked day and night on testing Absolom Two, ensuring it was safe for her father. It was hard to think either one of them had killed Nora and framed her father, given the effort they were seemingly putting into making it possible to bring him back.

  That’s what bothered Adeline the most: in the puzzle that was her life, the pieces didn’t quite fit.

  A text lit up her phone. It was from the CEO of Syntran, again requesting a meeting. She apparently had ignored the email autoresponder. Adeline had to respect her persistence. She sent a message back telling her to proceed with whatever she thought best for the company. Adeline had bigger issues at the moment.

  *

  Hiro managed to update the Absolom machine two days before Sam departed.

  When Adeline had asked Elliott how sure he was that it would work—that Absolom Two would indeed deliver Sam alive, and in one piece, to the Triassic, the older scientist had simply shrugged. “Pretty sure.”

  “Pretty sure?”

  “Look, it worked for the mice we tested it on.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The mice fossils we recovered indicate that they were alive at the time of arrival.”

  That didn’t make Adeline feel much better, but there was nothing she could do about it. Time and life had taught her one thing: you do all you can, and at some point, it’s either enough or it’s not. The tides of a life and your efforts either carry you in. Or sink you.

  *

  Adeline barely slept the night before her father’s departure. She had lived it once, and she had never truly gotten over seeing him disappear in that box.

  But she knew she had to watch it one last time.

  As she stood in the viewing booth, waiting for the glass to change from black to transparent, she reflected that time had another magical quality: steeling the soul. She looked down at her younger self, in the row in front of her, knowing a wave of agony was about to hit her.

  Adeline knew that she herself could tolerate seeing her father ripped out of the universe. That was the advantage of time. It conditioned the heart to the worst assaults. Or maybe it was natural to feel less as one grew older. Maybe a mind could develop scar tissue too. Emotional scar tissue. Adeline had her share.

  The glass turned transparent, revealing the Absolom machine in the center of the room.

  Her father was lying on the floor, wearing the thick white departure ensemble.

  He pushed up and glanced around at the machine, seeming surprised, then through the glass door, up to the viewing booth.

  His eyes met his daughter’s stare, and Adeline remembered exactly how that felt—as if a hot poker had been run through her.

  She watched her counterpart break then. She stood, practically jumped to the glass window, and slammed her fist into it. A gong sound echoed through the room, loud and borderline disorienting, as if the waves were rattling Adeline’s brain.

  Adeline remembered the pain from that blow, remembered ignoring it as she pounded the glass. The scream that accompanied the beating was even worse, the word “Dad!” drawn out like a battle cry.

  She rose, stepped outside the two rows of chairs, and put her hands on her younger counterpart’s shoulders. Gently, she guided her back to her seat and stood watching as her father got to his feet and tried to smile. His lips were shaking, preventing a smile from forming. He managed to draw it across his lips on the second attempt.

  The machine vibrated.

  Adeline’s counterpart reached over and put an arm around her brother.

  One memory that had always stuck with Adeline was the moment the first Absolom prisoner had disappeared in the box. In that split second, she had seen total fear in the man’s eyes.

  She didn’t see that in her father. He was scared, but in his eyes, she saw resolve. She saw hope. She saw a man who believed he had a future. A man who was alone but believed that he wouldn’t always be alone.

  What she realized in that moment was the difference between the two men in the box. The first Absolom prisoner had no hope. Her father did. Hope was his anchor to this world.

  In that instant, Adeline saw how powerful hope was. It was the true lever of Absolom. It was how the machine had transformed the world. Because it took the last shred of hope from even the most hopeless.

  She blinked, and her father was gone.

  She was still standing there, and like the man in the box, she held on to hope. She would get him back. Soon.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  Adeline knew that everyone lied to themselves at some point in their lives. It was part of preserving one’s ego. Maybe it was more than that, but the task for Adeline was somewhat different. She actually had to lie to her younger self. If she didn’t, the past wouldn’t occur as it had. The universe would cease to exist.

  So she did.

  Adeline watched as her younger counterpart spun her wheels, searching Constance’s home for clues about whether she was the killer. Then Elliott’s residence. And finally, the empty home Hiro owned in Las Vegas, with the tunnel that led to the high-roller room beneath the strip.

  All the while, that nineteen-year-old girl Adeline had once been grew more suspicious of the woman she knew as Daniele Danneros—the woman she would become.

  Adeline prepped the two items her younger self would need. The first was the California driver’s license. It was buried beneath the Absolom Sciences intern ID, in plain sight, but unrecognizable, just like Adeline herself, thanks to the cosmetic surgery.

  The other was the diamond earrings Nathan had given her. They were a link to a life she had left behind. They would be her younger counterpart’s only hope of survival in the world after Absolom.

  *

  During that period, when her younger self was searching for answers she would never find, Adeline had challenges of her own. The biggest was how to transmit the recall ring to her father in the past.

  There were two problems.

  The first was size.

  By government agreement, Absolom Sciences could transmit up to twenty-five grams without approval. The recall ring was significantly more massive than that.

  In Adeline’s basement, she, Elliott, Hiro, and Constance discussed whether they could make it smaller. Hiro insisted that they couldn’t. But they could separate it into pieces.

  Adeline remembered this moment from nineteen years ago. She walked to the stairwell, saw her younger self standing there listening, and stared until the young woman retreated up the stairs.