A voice in my head says it’s not paranoia if someone’s really out to get you. Someone’s out to get me. I wish I knew who I’d pissed off enough to deserve this. Also, the white room makes the spectre of my next death feel very imminent. We need to get out of here in record time. I don’t want my blood splattered on these walls.
We get to the door to the office—a giant slab of frosted glass—and Jasper puts his hand to the keypad on the wall. He says “Paleolithic” in a formal tone, then throws a look over his shoulder at me that tells me exactly how much bullshit he’s playing with right now.
“Very funny,” I say. My stomach is in knots.
He wrinkles his nose as he laughs. “We’re not as fancy as you are.” He punches in a complicated string of numbers—way longer than the code it takes to unlock my phone—and the light on the panel flashes three times before it goes green.
“How do you remember all that?” I ask.
“It’s my birthday, then my dad’s birthday, then the same numbers again but reversed.”
“Which is coincidentally the code to get into Walter Wolfe’s office?”
“It is if you’re the one who programs the alarm system.”
I glance over my shoulder. A camera watches us in the hallway. I’m so nervous I’m shaking.
“What exactly do you do here?” I ask as I follow Jasper into the lavishly appointed office. I guess if you work in a fortified fishbowl, you want all of it to look good from every angle.
“Officially, I’m networks and data security.” He pulls back the chair from the chrome and glass desk and slides into it with ease, like he’s done it before.
“Unofficially?” And how does a med student become the IT guy?
He glances up at me, lips pressed together. “I don’t want to fight right now. I need to work. Watch the elevator,” he says, face illuminated by the screen. “If it goes above floor five, tell me.”
Great. After everything, I’ve become the “watch the elevator” guy.
“I can handle my own,” I say.
“I’m sure you can,” he says, but all his attention is on the computer. I grit my teeth because he’s right that now is not the time to pick an argument, but I want to so badly. I hate being relegated to backup. It’s all I’ve been good for my entire life. Failed superhero. Office drone. Now minion to the henchman.
I’m so busy sulking, I don’t notice right away when the numbered panel over the elevator flashes, showing the car moving from the first to second floor.
“Jasper,” I say.
“Yeah?” He doesn’t look up from the screen.
But the elevator stops on two, stays there for a few seconds, then goes back to the lobby. I let out a slow breath. My hands move restlessly at my sides, prickling with anxiety. I struggle for a second to find something to say.
“The machine probably isn’t in this building, is it?”
He glances up briefly. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s like the Ziro Machine. We started building components at the lab but pretty quickly we realized if things went badly during assembly, we could crater the whole building in a millisecond. If a building that converts energy can do that, one that can reconfigure time could probably also blip us all out of existence if something breaks.”
His attention is back on the monitor, but Jasper says, “Wolfe’s got facilities all over town. If it turns out this really is a time machine, it would take a while to check all of them.”
“How many do you think we can check between my tragic and unforeseen deaths?” I ask, going for humour, but the way Jasper’s brow furrows together says I don’t succeed.
“You can’t think like that.” He clicks the mouse a few times. I’m not sure how else I’m supposed to think. I’m on a clock no one can see.
A flicker catches my attention, and I glance at the elevator panel. Shit. Floor six.
“Jasper,” I say.
His expression brightens as he looks at the screen. “Oh, found it!”
Seven. Eight.
