Find Me Where the Water Ends (So Close to You) (14 page)

Chapter 16

I
stare
up at the large, circular structure. Modern TMs have clouded glass on top, with slick silver on the bottom, but this one is made of interlocking pieces of scrap metal, like an oversize steam pipe. Long wires connect it to a computer mainframe that sits on a broad desk.

I walk closer to the machine, my footsteps loud against the concrete floor.

“Early on we made contact with one of the Project’s engineers, and brought him into the resistance. It took a few years, but he and I were able to use Tesla’s alternating current theory to create this. We made sure to build it in an area with a lot of magnetic energy.”

I move until I’m standing next to the TM. The top reaches all the way to the high cement ceiling, disappearing into it like a tube. “Does it work?”

“Fairly well.”

The room isn’t large, and the TM dominates its space. Overhead a metal catwalk curves between two walls. LJ moves to sit down at the desk. “This is why we live so simply. All our resources go into this.”

I run my hand down the metal side, my fingers catching on the exposed bolts. With a TM, I do not need the Project to help me rescue Tim and Wes. I can go back to the start of the mission myself and change our future. I can save all of us, without having to embrace the destiny that Walker laid out for me. Hope is like a vine growing inside of me, spreading through my stomach, my chest, my heart.

“You’ve sent people back already?” I work to keep the eagerness out of my voice. Nikki said they saw my picture on the news and knew they needed to bring me in, but there must be more to it. LJ would not be watching me so closely if he didn’t want something.

“I was the first to travel,” he says. “I went to nineteen eighty-nine.”

He is silent while I piece it together. “That’s how you sent us those messages. They weren’t from the future. You had just timed it perfectly to be in nineteen eighty-nine when we were connecting the dots.”

He picks up a pen from the desk, tapping it on the wooden surface. It is a careless action, but I see the tension in his lined forehead, the rigid set of his shoulders. “I was also the one who gave your grandfather the disk with the list of recruits.”

I turn until my back is to the TM. “Why didn’t you just tell us the truth? Why the message boards and the floppy disk? You know how scared we were when we found our names on that list.”

“I couldn’t. Things had to happen exactly as I remembered them happening. Otherwise the butterfly effect could have ruined everything.”

“The butterfly effect.” I slump back against the metal, sliding down until I’m sitting on the ground. “I am so sick of those words.”

It feels odd to be leaning so casually against a TM. In the Facility it is treated like a god, something to fear and worship, despite knowing it will ultimately destroy us.

“But the butterfly effect is true. I know, better than anyone.” He sighs, and suddenly he seems years older, his chin dipping into his jowls, his eyelids heavy and red. “I tried to save Maria. It didn’t work.”

Maria. The pretty dark-haired girl we tried to rescue from a club after LJ saw her name on the list. “I’m sorry.”

He looks away, concentrating on the desk in front of him. “I’ve been through time a lot now. You know how hard it is on your body. I don’t know how the recruits can last for so many years.”

I think of Wes’s hand shaking against the white linens of the dinner table, Twenty-two’s body facedown in the dirt. “I don’t think many of them do.”

“That’s why we have to stop them for good, Lydia.” He gets up from his chair and walks closer to me. I have to tilt my head back against the TM to look into his face. “And we need your help.”

“What can I do?”

“Go back to the beginning. Stop the Montauk Project from ever existing in the first place.”

I sit in the small bedroom, staring at a poster of a shirtless singer I don’t recognize, one of those baby-faced teens who never seem to go out of style no matter the decade. Angela is sheltered down here—LJ says he keeps them off the grid as much as possible, no I-units, no government-run internet, only an old television—but she is still a teenage girl. Sitting on her narrow bed, staring at her dresser crammed with knickknacks, her books stacked on the floor, I am jealous of her space, of the tiny corner of the world that belongs only to her. It was something I took for granted when I had it, and miss it now that I don’t.

“I brought you these.” Tag is standing in the doorway holding up a pink cotton dress and a pair of scuffed leather oxfords. They will be perfect for 1943, the year the Project started, the year the TM was first built.

“Thanks,” I whisper.

Tag steps forward, handing me the clothes. I take them from him, dropping the shoes onto the floor with a dull thud. I do not look up.

“LJ tells me you’re not sure what to do.”

“I know there are benefits to stopping the Project. But there are also negatives. So much about the world could change. More than we can even imagine.”

He moves to sit next to me on the bed and I feel the soft mattress tilt under his weight. “But you would finally be free.”

“And stuck in the forties. Alone. Mary and Lucas and the Bentleys would have no idea who I was, and Wes—”

I cannot bring myself to finish the thought. Tag is watching the thin line of my lips, the way my shoulders fall.

“What happened to Wes?” he asks softly.

I shake my head but don’t answer, and I hear him sigh.

“Did LJ tell you why he wants you to go back?”

“He said they’ve been waiting for the chance to find the right person to attempt it.”

“He also knows that you understand how much the Project can steal from a person.” He leans forward, clasping his hands together at his knees. It is a mimic of my pose and I wonder if it’s deliberate, if he thinks he can win me over through body language.

“We named our son Chris for LJ and Nikki’s older brother. He was taken by the Project too.”

“I remember.”

“Did LJ tell you that he contacted him?”

“No.” I turn to look at his profile. “How did he do it?”

“He hacked into the Montauk Project’s mainframe, and somehow located the files on where a group of recruits had been sent. He eventually figured out some mission Chris was on and met him there. LJ said Chris was like a zombie, and barely recognized him. But he kept at it until Chris finally cracked. That was around two thousand twelve.”

In the hardware store, that same year, LJ told me he was close to contacting a recruit. He must have meant Chris. “What happened?”

“As soon as LJ broke through to him, the Project figured out what was going on, and Chris just disappeared. He was supposed to meet LJ in New York, and he never showed. We couldn’t find a trace of him after that.”

“They killed him.”

Tag shrugs. “Maybe. Probably. By that point LJ had told Nikki and me what was going on, and we were all living down here in hiding. Since then, he’s been able to rescue a few more recruits and get them out . . .”

His voice hangs there, and I finish the thought. “But it’s not enough to make up for what happened to Chris.”

“No. It’s not.”

I stand up from the bed and pace to the opposite side of the room. There are water stains on the wall, dark lines that drip from the ceiling to the floor. “I know all this, Tag. I know what they do. I know how horrible they can be.”

“Then why don’t you want to stop them?”

“Because . . . because I left Wes on the side of the road with the FBI surrounding him. I swore that I would go back to the beginning of the mission and fix it. With access to a TM I could do that.”

Tag stands too and when I pace back toward him he grabs my shoulders, holding me in place. “Lydia, this
is
the best way to save him. I knew Wes for a long time. When we were living on the streets together, before the Project snatched him away, we were happy. It was tough, yeah, but we had each other, we had a gang we ran with. Wes was smart and he was handsome and everyone knew he would get out of that life eventually. After I saw him again when you both came to the eighties, he was like a shell of what he used to be. Shaking all the time like his body was falling apart. Constantly staring over his shoulder. Cold. The Project did that to him. The only time I even saw a spark of the old Wes was when he was with you.”

I try to pull away but he tightens his grip, locking me in place. It’s not anything I didn’t know, but hearing Tag’s words feels like I’m living that car crash all over again, thrust up in the air with no way to anchor myself, the sharp metal ripping into my skin.

“Even if you can go back and save Wes, then what happens? You keep working as slaves for the Project until you both die, maybe on a mission, or maybe from the TM breaking you down? That’s the life you want for yourself, for Wes?”

“No,” I whisper. “No. I want us to be free.”

“Then set him free, Lydia. Set him free and let him go.”

After Tag leaves, I sit on the bed, holding the pink dress in my hands. Seeing the future me and meeting LJ again has all led to this moment—I finally have to decide how my future will be tied to the Montauk Project.

If I destroy the Project, Wes and I would never meet. My family and friends might know a different Lydia, but it wouldn’t be me. Any good the Project has done will never have happened, and the time line will be a mystery, with no one left to stand guard or protect the world from future mistakes.

But the Project has stolen so many lives, including mine. They control and manipulate the time line, and no one even knows that it’s happening. It’s the kind of power that is too great, especially when it falls into the hands of someone like Colonel Walker.

If I end the Montauk Project, Wes and Tim and my grandfather could have a chance at a normal life. I wouldn’t be in it, but is that the sacrifice I have to make?

I walked away from the destiny that future me presented. I can’t go back now. If I don’t stop the Project, then it will control me for the rest of my life, either as its leader, or as a fugitive, forever looking over my shoulder. I don’t want to run away anymore, or put my head down and live the life of a recruit, moving blindly forward, only surviving by hiding my true self from everyone around me.

I have to stop the Project. It’s the only choice left.

The door opens again. This time it is LJ, and he’s carrying a heavy folder. “The plan,” he says, waving it in front of me. “You can look through it on your own, though the gist of it is simple. We send you to the spring of nineteen forty-three, and you infiltrate the new Facility. The heads of the Project are looking for personnel in the early forties. It’s a secret, of course. They plant fake advertisements in major newspapers and conduct an intensive screening process until they find candidates who match their criteria. They like people who don’t have strong family ties, who will make analytical choices instead of emotional ones. It takes months for the Project to weed out people, but we know you’ll be able to pass their tests. You can apply for an assistant position. It’ll give you close access to the head scientist, Dr. Faust. Then you’ll have to kill him before he discovers how to employ Tesla’s research to create the first TM. You’ll also have to destroy his notes and research, but that shouldn’t be too hard; apparently he’s always been suspicious, and only has the originals. There’s a picture of him in there.”

“I know who he is. I’ve met him before.” Faust’s face, his thin brown hair, flashes through my head. He becomes responsible for so much destruction, but can I really murder him in cold blood?

“The folder also has backup plans in case you end up in the wrong time.”

“The wrong time? What does that mean?”

He lifts one shoulder. “I’ve never been able to get the same accuracy out of the TM that the Project does. It’s better than it used to be. When I first went through, I was two years earlier than what I’d intended. But don’t worry. We’ve thought of every scenario and offer solutions in here. Do you want to see?”

He holds the folder out.

I take it from his grasp. It is a thick file, and I open it to see a blueprint of the Facility on top. Underneath is a blurry photo of Faust, standing in the woods of Camp Hero. Below are pages and pages of notes. LJ must have gone through time over and over to pull together all this information.

“A lot of it will be old hat to you,” he says. “But I hope some of it will be helpful.”

“No, this is great. Thorough.”

He lets out a slow breath. “So you want to help us?”

“Yes.” I shut it again, weighing the thick folder in my hands. “The Project has to be stopped.”

A few minutes later I walk into the TM chamber wearing the pink dress, the folder tucked under the cotton fabric, taped against my back to keep it in place. LJ is already seated at the desk, Tag and Nikki standing next to him.

Their son, Chris, is across the room, standing next to a large wheel that’s attached to a generator. At LJ’s signal he pulls at the round metal, his biceps tightening under the strain. A humming, grinding noise fills the room, echoing off the high ceilings and empty spaces.

LJ taps a few buttons on his keyboard while Chris spins and spins the wheel of the generator. The base of the TM starts to flicker. He is powering it slowly, and the large machine responds, thin light traveling up the sides and streaming out of the cracks in the sheets of metal. In a few seconds it is lit up from within, as if it is glowing, as if it is alive on its own.

“Where will it send me?” I ask LJ. Without another TM to catch my body as I hurtle through space and time, I will emerge from the wormhole as soon as I meet a solid surface.

“I’ve programmed you for the woods in Camp Hero. Montauk will use the natural magnetic forces there to pull your body to it. You should land harmlessly in the woods, right where Dr. Faust will eventually create his time machine.”

The generator hums, and now the TM has added to the sound, a low, constant buzz that vibrates through my body, my bones. I have heard that noise so many times, and it’s hard not to shudder as it calls out for me.