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  How badly is he hurt? I don’t ask it aloud, because there are too many details about Johnny that I don’t want to go into here, with strangers nearby. It’s not that I don’t trust them, particularly if Jack trusts them, but I’ve been wrong before.

  “He’s here then?” I ask.

  Sebastian nods.

  “Then I need to see him,” I say.

  “He’s pretty beaten up right now,” Sebastian says, but I know it can’t be that bad. If anyone knows how to keep themselves in one piece, it’s Johnny, after all. “He keeps insisting that we should let him treat himself, rather than leaving it to t cavi buhe experts.”

  “Then you should probably have listened to him,” I say. “Now, quickly, we need to see him if we’re going to have a chance of doing something about all this.”

  Sebastian looks to Jack and then nods. “Okay, he’s down in the cave with the others. We’ll go see them now if you want.”

  “I do,” I say, starting to follow him. I just hope that I’m right, and Johnny can do everything I remember. Maybe this time we can save more of the world.

  TWELVE

  Sebastian leads us to another elevator. The doors close in front of us silently, and again, there’s the sensation of movement. It occurs to me that this Location has more power left than most of the towns I’ve seen. By now, I’m starting to lose track of where we are in the rock that we saw from outside. When the doors swing open, it’s cold. Cold enough that I’m grateful for the warm coats that are on a rack by the elevator doors.

  The reason for that cold is obvious from the moment I set foot in there. Somehow, impossibly, the interior of the space we’re in is coated in ice. It shines as light from above cascades down on it, reflecting and refracting, spinning different colors with every new facet of itself. There are planes and crags of it around the walls, with parts of it worked smooth, while others are ragged and shifting.

  “How is there ice in a desert?” I ask.

  “This ice is old,” Sebastian explains. He moves around the walls, almost touching it, but not quite. He does go to a computer station, tapping in a few things. “We’re not sure how it would have formed, perhaps it’s a hangover from the last ice age, but once it did, the lower temperature in this cavern would have helped sustain it. Now, it’s so thick and so old that it would take decades to melt, even if we weren’t careful with the temperature. It was like working with rock, when we dug this out.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I say. It is. It’s almost like being surroun favi baceded by diamonds. Better, because diamonds are just cold and dead, while the water that’s at the heart of the ice is what life needs.

  “Beautiful, but also useful,” Sebastian explains, while I follow along with Jack and Dr. Florence bringing up the rear. “Ordinarily, we use it to keep the temperatures in here low enough to use supercomputers in our work, but recently, it proved to be a very effective defense against the fire storm.”

  “But that…” I try to think. “I know you were putting in heat shielding after Jack and I warned you about what might be coming, but for a place like this, you would have already have to have known.”

  Sebastian shakes his head. “We just made use of the resources that were already available to us. Trust me, we were lucky to be able to do this much. The only people who were able to prepare for the apocalypse were those who had a hand in creating it. Weren’t they, Dr. Florence? Or did you think I wouldn’t look up who my son was bringing in?”

  He looks over at the scientist, and it’s obvious that Sebastian has at least some idea of who the man is. Dr. Florence puts up his hands like he thinks Sebastian might pull out a gun and shoot him. The scientist seems to be so scared of everything right now. But then, he’s had a lot to be scared of. And if it turns out that he knew, he will have again.

  “Please, I didn’t know. I swear. If I’d known what Hammond was doing, and how it would hurt so many people, I would never have gone along with it. I would have told someone. I would have tried to stop him.”

  Somehow, I doubt that Dr. Florence would have had the guts for that. Though he did say no to Hammond enough for his thugs to want to kill him. Maybe I’ve misjudged him. Maybe I just don’t know enough to judge him. After all, how much of him have I really seen in the past few hours?

  “I don’t think anyone knew,” Dr. Florence says. “Just his staff and maybe a few of his closest advisors.”

  Like his chief researcher? I don’t say that though. It would only make things more difficult. I don’t know what to make of Dr. Florence. I don’t know whether to trust him or not. Still, he might be useful when it comes to undoing some of what Wilson Hammond is trying to achieve. Even if it turns out that we can’t trust him, we might still be able to get some information from him on exactly what they were doing at that lab where we found him.

  “You must have guessed something,” Jack says to Sebastian. He seems almost as suspicious of his father as I am of Dr. Florence. But then, they’ve always had a strange relationship. One where they both clearly care about one another, but the needs of the mission come first. “You were preparing for years. These Locations didn’t come from nowhere, and the way they’re heat shielded…”

  “You know that we’ve been monitoring things for decades,” Sebastian says. He doesn’t sound too upset to be questioned like that. Maybe he’s expecting it. “Space, signals, anything we could find that would give us a better grasp on some of the stranger things around us. It doesn’t mean that we got things right. Remember that there was a time when we thought Celes here came from space.”

  Rather than the far future. Because frankly, which of those was more plausible? Well, neither of them, really.

  “We thought that because the signals we found coming from Celes seemed to have a celestial connection,” Sebastian goes on. I can almost hear the excitement of a scientist there. Sebastian’s father has shown that he’s interested in helping people first, but finding out new things is definitely a close second for him, even when it makes things more complicated for us.

  “So how did you go from that to a place like this?” I ask.

  “The possibility of a fire storm or an asteroid strike was always there. Science suggests that the asteroid strike that destroyed the dinosaurs was not going to be an isolated event, for example. There was always the possibility of more impacts. We wanted to be prepared, and with our monitoring, we started to pick up on the heating up of the Earth. Follow me, all of you.”

  Sebastian leads the way through the main cave, into a room that looks like it might be living quarters. It looks almost like a whole hotel or apartment complex underground. It’s a little warmer in here, though still much cooler than it would be out in the desert sun. There’s a large dining area, which we walk through to get to a kind of lobby area, where a television is currently displaying images that look like they’re taken from a satellite feed.

  “There are still satellites?” I ask. “I thought the apocalypse destroyed them. At least, we seemed to lose all communications.”

  “And we’ve been working to get them back,” Sebastian explains. “We actually launched our own satellite to do it. It wasn’t easy. We didn’t have the room for a rocket launch, so we had to work with balloons and then small scale rockets from altitude. It’s just one of the things we’ve done to ensure that this Location continues to remain secure in the coming days.”

  “It sounds like you have everything you need for your own little country,” I joke.

  Sebastian looks a little more serious.

  “You aren’t actually thinking of being a country?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “No, but nor do we intend to be k iny">

  “It sounds like you have everything worked out,” Jack says.

  “Not everything, but we’re doing our best. Someone has to preserve things.”

  Dr. Florence chooses that moment to speak up. “It’s good that you are. With the level of destruction there has been, things could go backwards so quic
kly if no one works to preserve what humanity has learned. One generation not learning is all it would take for the world to regress to the Stone Age.”

  I think about the society we have in the future, where we’ve had to work so hard to preserve knowledge and advance it. Those thoughts bring me back to Johnny and Grayson. We’re down here for a reason, after all.

  “Where’s Johnny?” I ask. “And what about Grayson? Is he here?”

  I hear a laugh from the other side of the room. I turn, unable to keep the happiness out of my expression as I see Grayson there. He looks perfect, unruffled even by the apocalypse, his muscular good looks and short dark hair going together to create a perfect image of the high school jock. Except that Grayson is so much more than that. He used to be so much more than that to me, before Jack.

  Grayson actually catches me off guard, picking me up and twirling me in the air, before doing something even more unexpected. He kisses me. Right in front of Jack.

  “I’m so glad you survived,” Grayson says. “I thought you might be…”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Things got a little complicated, but we made it okay.”

  “Was Johnny with you?” Jack asks, and there’s something stern, almost angry, in his voice. It’s easy to see why. Grayson is standing there with his arms around me, having just kissed me. A lot of guys would have punched him for doing something like that.

  Apparently though, Jack’s memories of the future run to remembering that there, at least, the three of us are all good friends. He moves forward to put an arm around Grayson’s shoulders.

  “You might have your arms around my girl, but it’s good to see you made it, buddy.”

  Grayson shakes his head. “Your girl? Buddy?”

  It occurs to me that Grayson hasn’t had all the details that Jack and I know about the future yet. He certainly hasn’t remembered them for himself. He might never remember them. After all, he didn’t come back because of his ability to resist the effects of the Fading machine on memories. He came back after me and Jack. Right now, he might know that we’re from the future thanks to seeing some of my memories playing out on the Faders’ screens, and he might know all about the apocalypse thanks to the same incident, but he doesn’t have the same details Jack and I have.

  “Never mind,” Jack says. “I’ll explain later.”

  “Right now,” I say, “the main thing is that we find Johnny. Is he here, Grayson?”

  Grayson looks a little nervous. That isn’t like him. “He’s here.”

  “We need to go to him then,” I say. “He’s going to be vital in helping us treat people when it comes to these plagues. Without him…”

  “Just… don’t pin your hopes on him,” Grayson says. He shakes his head.

  “Why?” I ask. “What happened? Sebastian told me about the helicopter ride, but it can’t have been that bad can it? Johnny can heal almost anything if he has the tools. Take me to see him.”

  Grayson swallows. “I’ll take you,” he says, reaching out to put a hand in mine almost like we’re still boyfriend and girlfriend. I’m not sure how I feel about that. “But you have to promise that you won’t freak out at what you see. Things didn’t go… entirely according to plan.”

  THIRTEEN

  Jack

  Grayson leads Celes away, leaving me with Dr. Florence and my father. I’d rather go with them, especially after what has just happened with Grayson. My father, though, has other ideas. He puts a hand on my shoulder, holding me back.

  nt s="

  “Jack, Grayson can show Celes Johnny, but for now, we need to debrief. Not all of our Faders made it here.”

  I look around. It’s obvious that there aren’t as many Faders in this Location as there should be. The Australian contingent have already told me how many of their people have died. “How bad is it?” I ask.

  My father shakes his head. “As far as I can tell, we lost more than half our Faders, including your uncle.”

  My uncle. His brother in law. My last tie to my mother. I don’t know what to say, because this must be hurting Dad as much as me.

  I try for professionalism. “What about Lionel and his team?”

  “Lionel is missing.” A pause. My father knows how close I was to the Faders’ trainer. “Half his team made it here, though.”

  “Only half?” I say.

  Dad nods. “That’s the part that worries me. Our best team, and even with them, only half made it here. Things… they got pretty brutal in the last couple of days, with the fire storm and everything that happened afterwards

  I look over to where Dr. Florence is standing, watching the big screen intently.

  “That’s just what Dr. Florence here said,” I say.

  Dad looks over at him too. “Who is he?”

  “One of Wilson Hammond’s researchers,” I explain. “At least until we got him out of that lab. It looked like Hammond wasn’t very happy with him anymore. Florence was working in Hammond’s lab, doing experiments on people with brain injuries. Apparently, the fire storm caused a reaction to the drugs they were using. They started to absorb solar energy.”

  “Interesting,” Dad says. I can see him running through the problem. “For years, I’ve been wondering about your mother, Jack, and when Celes came along, that explained a lot. It still didn’t quite explain everything though.”

  “Except that Celes and Mom got to be the way they were because they were from the future,” I point out. “People had simply evolved to that point.”

  Dad nods. I know this is hard for him. Not just talking about Mom, but being wrong. “It never occurred to me that you could be from another time. I thought your m shous hard fother and Celes were extraterrestrial. It made sense.”

  Images of kissing Celes flash through me. The feel of her lips against mine. The way she responds to me. “Trust me, Dad, she’s all human.”

  “I’ve noticed the connection between you,” Dad says. “How close were the two of you before you came back here?”

  “Very close,” I say. “I was her right hand man, along with Grayson and John.”

  “It’s more than that though, isn’t it?”

  I pause, and then nod, thinking about all the times Celes and I shared together before we came back here. “Yes, it’s more than that.”

  “What exactly did you do in the future before you came back?” Dad asks. He smiles. “I’d like to know more about what my son gets up to besides Fading.”

  His son. We don’t talk about the complexity of the situation. That I’m his son and not his son, all at once. “It’s hard to explain,” I say instead. “We’re older in the future. We’d been working together a while before we came back. Celes… she was the President. I was her head of security.”

  “And more than that at the same time,” Dad says. “It sounds like a complex arrangement.”

  “It was,” I say with a sigh. “For years, we were in a relationship but she wouldn’t take it seriously. She wouldn’t even think about marrying me. And Grayson… he was an advisor, and he’s had pretty serious feelings about her too.”

  “You’re right,” Dad says. “It’s complicated. But complicated doesn’t mean the same thing as impossible. We should know that if anyone does.” He reaches out to put a hand on my shoulder. “Now, I think we need to get our mind back on business. We need to talk to Dr. Florence over there and find out what he knows. Because I’m pretty sure that he has a lot more to tell us than he’s volunteered so far.”

  *****

  Celes

  Grayson takes me out of the room, heading to see Johnny down a hallway, before taking my arm and pulling me into a smaller side room.

  “What…” I begin, but I don’t have the time to finish the question because in that moment Grayson silences me with a kiss that makes the one he gave me back in the lounge look tame by comparison. With the passion of his mouth on mine, I can’t help responding, my hands running over his chest as Grayson kisses me.

  “Celes, I thought you
wouldn’t make it,” Grayson says at last, his arms still around me. “I was so worried. I wanted to go back. I wanted to search for you, but I didn’t even know where to begin until they got the satellite back up. When they started to pick up your signal, it was like seeing a ghost. No, not a ghost; an angel. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful than that moment.”

  I hold onto him just as tightly. “I’m glad you’re safe too. I missed you so much. I just couldn’t… Jack and I have been hidden away from everyone. I didn’t know half of what was happening. There wasn’t any news. I started to worry that something had happened to you.”

  “At least you weren’t alone,” Grayson says. He kisses me again, softly this time. “I hate admitting it, but I’m glad Jack was with you to keep you safe.”

  “I can burn people to a crisp,” I point out. “I’m pretty sure I was safe.”

  “Did the fact that I can heal almost anything stop you worrying?” Grayson asks. I shake my head. “Well, there you are then.”

  I reach up to touch his face. I can remember every inch of his skin from when we used to date. I can remember every kiss we had, and the scent of Grayson so close to me. It’s a strong, masculine scent that goes well with the feeling of his arms wrapped around me.

  “I know we aren’t together,” Grayson says. “I know how much you love Jack, but after everything that has happened, I can’t just ignore what I feel. When I thought you might be gone… I need you, Celes. I loved you in the future, and I love you now. I’ve always loved you.”

  “Grayson…” I don’t know what to say next. My body doesn’t help me, because it responds to Grayson only too readily, but the same is true of Jack. I’m caught between the two of them, and it seems like even when I want to make a decision, circumstances won’t let me.

  Grayson touches his fingers lightly to my lips. “You don’t have to make any decisions now, Celes.”