What had she dreamed of now? “Tell me.”
“I saw you and Sam together.”
“I don’t understand.” That sounded more like the past than the future. But why would Sadie tell her that?
“Sam was pretty much how we saw him last.”
Her twin had been seventeen. Gangly, too thin for his height. Just like her, back then. Nothing weird yet.
“But you were as you are now,” Sadie said.
What?
Kaitlin could feel a frown forming on her face. How the hell could that be? Sam was dead. Though she supposed if Sadie did dream of the two of them, then likely Sam would have looked the same. It didn’t mean anything. In which case, why had Sadie even mentioned it?
“You think you’re seeing the future? But how? How could that possibly happen?” But even as she said the words, her mind was racing. “Unless I steal Kane’s time machine, somehow get it to start, work out how it functions, travel back in time to before Sam died, and bring him here. And then hey—guess what—we both get blown up in the cataclysm. Sounds like a plan.”
But they didn’t have to return to this time and the cataclysm. They could go into the past. She’d always fancied the wild west. She could be a cowgirl—though she’d never actually been on a horse.
“Have you been thinking about that?” Ethan asked.
“Of course not. I’m not the one having weird freaking dreams.” Except she’d been daydreaming about that very thing. “You really think you could be seeing the future?”
Sadie got up, shoved her hands into her pockets, paced the length of the room, came back, and gave a huge, frustrated sigh. “I don’t know whether all my dreams come to pass,” she said. “We don’t know enough about time travel to make anything but guesses. I wish you’d gotten more information from Melody when you were with her.”
“Duh. Well, I might have, if I’d actually known she was from the future. But I didn’t because guess what? That didn’t even occur to me. It wasn’t like she was going around with a sign on her forehead saying: ‘I’m from the goddamn future, ask me anything you like.’” Ethan bit back a smile. She was glad one of them was having a good time. She turned back to Sadie. “I don’t know why you couldn’t have had a dream about it. Told usMelody and Quinn were going to vanish to God knows where. Or rather when. You need to sleep more.”
This time Sadie smiled. “I know. I’m just so frustrated. We know so much more now and still, it’s not nearly enough.”
“Which is all the more reason why getting hold of these guys who tried to grab me is a really good idea.”
“Yes. They could tell us a lot. But would they? Anyway, my point is, I don’t know what I’m seeing. Maybe one possible future out of thousands of possibilities.”
“Sam’s dead,” Kaitlin growled. “And even if I could time travel, I can’t go back. It would change too much. All this—” She waved a hand to indicate Sadie and Ethan and the world in general. “—would not happen. Us escaping, finding Kane, Jake and Christa. Everything would likely change. We have to stop the cataclysm, whatever it is. If the past changes, we might not even know it exists.”
Sadie shrugged. “If the past changes—it might not.”
Time travel was enough to make her head explode. Kaitlin gave herself a little shake. “It’s irrelevant anyway. Right now, we have no clue how the machine works and therefore no way to go back.” And even if they did, Sam wouldn’t want her to save his life at the cost of the rest of the world.
Stop thinking about it.
“Okay. But I had to tell you,” Sadie said. “We’ll leave you alone, now. We’re going to talk to Josie. See if she wants to see the files about her case.”
“I think she will. She’s much stronger than she was.”
“I know. Staying with you did her a lot of good. Thank you.”
Kaitlin watched as they walked away, until the door clicked shut behind them. Despite the fire, she shivered again. A colored throw lay over the back of the sofa, and she wrapped it around herself, then forced her attention to the laptop. Leaning forward slowly, she reached out and tapped the keys.
The screen opened to a selection of folders. She clicked on the first:Test Parameters.
To determine the viability of extracting the human brain from a telepathic test subject and controlling the functionality through computer links.
Aim: to improve controllability and remove human limitations.
What they really meant was they wanted to eliminate any problems which could arise from using a human who might have a conscience, might refuse some of the requests. Might have gone into minds they weren’t supposed to enter, uncovered secrets they weren’t supposed to know.
She flicked to the next folder:Subject Selection.
