“Okay, yeah, so it’s a little strange.” Shep leaned on the railing. “But here’s what I think. Imagine some alien creature appeared out of nowhere, right? And it could speak your language and seemed to know more than you could ever think of knowing. It’s talking about all kinds of things you can’t understand. So what do you do if that happens? I mean, if you’re like, from the future or whatever, right? If you go back in time to encounter a more primitive version of your race, and you want to give them the knowledge they need to succeed, then you’ve got to do it in a way they’ll understand. Like… you can’t take a little kid and say, ‘Well, Johnny, you’re five now and you know what numbers are, so it’s time you learned how to solve a fucking matrix.’ It doesn’t work that way. So what you have to do is lay the groundwork out in other, simpler ways so your primitive ancestors canlearnfrom it, right?”
“Oh my god.” Evie gasped. “That makes sense. Like… it makes scary sense.”
Harlow did his best not to laugh. Until now, he hadn’t realized how hyper-focused on work Evie’s life had been—it was nice to see her goof off for once. While Harlow didn’t agree with how she’d gone about leaving Hollywood, he knew that the distance was good for her.
“And,and,” Shep continued, more impassioned than before. “Okay, so… if you have mastery over time, right?”
Evie seemed completely enthralled. They remained stationary, the conversation too engrossing to be distracted from. “Yeah?”
“Ifyou have mastery over time, then you’re not going to look at time the same way anymore. Not at all. To us, there’s the past, which we can’t change, and which we start to forget, and then there’s the future that’s sort of unpredictable, but that we work toward making the best we can by our actions in the present, right?”
“Right.”
“So,if you have mastery over time, all that goes out the window. What if the advanced civilizations in the future are going back in time and planting things not for the people who were living in that time, but for the people who’d live later in history? The brilliant minds, the analysts, the archaeologists, the explorers, the scientists… what if they’re planting things in the far past so that when we have the proper resources, we can figure out the secrets and the information they planted there to target us hundreds or thousands of years later? Like, by decoding it ourselves, welearnhow it works instead of beingtoldhow it works, right? Like when you do an experiment in chem class and mix the chemicals yourself instead of read about it in a book. Which way is easier for you to learn? Which way sticks better in your brain? If you do something for yourself, then you’re always going to remember it, right?”
Evie’s eyes widened. “So all that ancient stuff is…”
“It’s actually from the future,” Shep declared. He lifted his chin, pleased with himself. “And one day, whenever the targeted time comes that our future alien selves are trying to teach, we’ll figure out what it is, and how to use it, and it’s going to help us grow our society in ways we could never imagine so that the future turns out waaaay better than whatever it was when our alien selves reached back through time.”
“My mind,” Evie whispered. “Boosh!Blown.”
“Are we done loitering?” Harlow asked, an eyebrow raised, one corner of his mouth curved upward in a grin. “You guys can talk all about how the pyramids are actually power generators for time machines when we’re inside the apartment.”
“No, they’re not power generators. But the batteries inside of them? The preservation techniques?” Shep cleared his throat. “Anyway—”
“Wait.” Simon waved his hand. “Be quiet for a second. Do you hear…?”
The group fell silent. Harlow lifted his chin, on alert. From the top floor, distant but indisputable, came a noise. Banging. Fists on wood. A door rattling in its jamb.
A human male voice.
The words it spoke were obscured by distance, but the message in the tone was obvious—dangerous aggression.
Harlow’s muscles tightened. His reflexes sharpened. The world took on the same, overly focused glint it did whenever he faced a potential threat.
If someone had figured out where Evie was, if someone was trying to break into the apartment…
“Oh, god,” Simon whispered, his voice barely making it the four steps down to Harlow’s ears. It seemed he’d come to a similar conclusion, but the outcome of his observation had a different focus. “Jayne.”
Jayne. Alone and left to care for Parker, he was defenseless—trapped in the apartment while someone attempted to knock the door down.
He was in trouble.
And so was Simon.
Before Harlow could act, Simon bolted up the stairs, almost tripping over his own feet in his haste. His palms hit the step ahead of him, but instead of accepting that he’d fallen, he used his misstep to propel himself upward, scrambling to cover as much ground as quickly as he could. Had Harlow not been bound by his duty to his daughter, he would have taken off just as fast.
No matter what was happening upstairs, whether it was coincidence or genuine trouble, Harlow couldn’t let Simon go on his own. He couldn’t risk him in the same way that he couldn’t risk Evie. It wasn’t a matter of principle, because in all things, Evie’s security came first—it was a matter of the heart. Watching Simon race up the stairs, so terrified that he tripped over himself, broke Harlow. His pulse skyrocketed.
Simon needed his protection.
He needed to keep Simonsafe.
But Evie?
Harlow clenched his jaw. “Evie, stay here. Stay with Shep. Under no circumstances are you to investigate what’s happening until I come to collect you. Is that understood?”
“What’s going on?” Evie asked. Shep, meanwhile, had shrunk back against the railing, his face pale.
“Stay here,” Harlow said. “I’ll find out.”
