“Please, tell me what this is all about?” I pleaded, shaking despite my efforts to remain in control. My body was reacting with a panicked unease to the flood of revelations.
Our resident Specialist sighed deeply, a flicker of defeat in his eyes. “I’ll do you one better and show you.”
“Show me?” I asked, confusion knitting my brows together.
“Have you ever heard of a blue portal?” he asked, and his eyes betrayed a hint of anxiety.
I searched my memory. I remembered James mentioning it during our first class, and how the seven-year-olds had laughed at the very idea. “It’s designed only for Specialists, right? To visit the past?”
Stephen nodded. “Yes, in theory, that’s its sole purpose.”
A nervous flutter began in my stomach. “In theory?”
James remained eerily silent; his eyes locked on his mentor.
“About three years ago, I discovered a glitch in the navigational tool,” Stephen continued, his voice steady but laced with something akin to guilt. “And I used it…to visit the future.”
My jaw dropped in shock.What?
James shifted uncomfortably in his chair, avoiding my gaze.
“What did you see?”
There was something in the stillness around him I couldn’t quite name—hope? Fear? “I’ll show you, if you’re willing to follow me through it.”
I nodded without hesitation, the curiosity and dread gnawing at me too strong to resist. Rising to my feet, I glanced at James, then Caden, who silently stood as well.
With a deliberate motion, our Specialist extended his hand, manifested his silver haze, and with a single flick of his wrist, a portal shimmered into existence. It swirled before us, a mesmerizing vortex of brilliant cerulean blue, pulsing with an ethereal light.
The colors danced within its depths, like the surface of a tranquil ocean under a clear sky, reflecting every imaginable shade of blue.
I stood frozen for a moment, mesmerized by the portal’s beauty, but my thoughts raced with questions. What could Stephen have seen that was so important, so dire, he felt resorting to abduction and torture was justified?
I glanced at James, and I studied the way tension clung to him like a second skin—the rigid line of his spine, the way his hands curled into fists at his sides, the storm gathered in his eyes which refused to meet mine. There was guilt there, unmistakable and unspoken, and beneath it, something quieter—something like sorrow.
He had been part of this—whatever it was, whatever awful truth had begun to surface—and this knowledge sank into me like a slow, cold tide, numbing everything it touched. His silence wasn’t denial. It was admission. It was betrayal.
But even as I stood there, poised on the edge of hurt and revelation, I knew I would hear him out. More than anything, I wanted him to speak—and when he did, I wanted his words to carry enough weight, enough truth, to shift the balance back toward anything I could live with. I wanted him to give me a reason to forgive him. I wanted to beableto forgive him.
Without a word, we stepped forward, one by one, crossing the threshold into the shimmering blue. The portal’s energy hummed around us, soft yet powerful. As I passed through, the air shifted, a strange sensation of weightlessness taking hold, like being suspended between two worlds.
The light enveloped us, bright but not blinding, and for a split second, it seemed as though time itself had paused—caught in the space between moments. My heart raced, the unknown stretching out ahead of us, but there was no turning back.
We were already on the other side.
FOURTEEN
EMMA
A hundred years into the future.
One moment, the portal’s energy curled around me—cool, electric, like a breath held too long—and the next, I was weightless, untethered, crossing into another world. The shift was smooth, but it left the strange sensation that time had exhaled and forgotten to inhale again.
As I took in my new surroundings, a wave of emotion slammed into me—visceral and hard, as if grief itself had been lying in wait. My breath hitched, caught somewhere between disbelief and devastation.
We stood at the edge of fuckingruin.
The remnants of a forgotten city sprawled before us—shattered buildings slouched against one another like broken ribs, metal and glass scattered like the splinters of a civilization which had once stood tall and defiant. Warm wind whispered through the wreckage, carrying a silence that felt more like an accusation than an absence.
