“Okay, okay,” Lynne says with a sigh. “I can let you in the building, in case they’ve blocked Adam’s access, but that’s it. And you’ll have to go very early in the morning to make sure the building will be empty. No one can see me helping you.”

That would only give us a few hours before the aperture back to the present opens—but we’ll make it work. We have to.

“Thanks, Lynne,” Adam says. “What else can you tell us about the lab?”

She takes a moment to compose herself, taking a long breath. “The door can only be opened with a numeric code and a fingerprint—even from the inside—and there’s always a guard stationed behind the door.”

Chris runs a hand over his head. “I could try to take the keypad apart or something, but it might be too advanced…Or what about explosives? We could blast our way in.”

I blink at Chris. “You want to blow a hole in the wall?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Um, because it will bring every cop in the area to investigate, not to mention the guards in the lobby?”

Lynne shakes her head. “No, that wouldn’t work anyway. The doors and walls are reinforced.”

“You got any other ideas?” Chris asks.

“I do,” Adam says. “But we’ll need to go shopping first.”

14:36

14:36

We develop a plan to break into Aether Corporation and make a shopping list of everything we’ll need for the perfect heist. I have no clue if we’ll be able to pull it off, but for once we’re actively trying to change the future and I’m anxious to get started.

We say good-bye to Lynne—she’ll meet us at Aether later to avoid suspicion—and take the car to the nearby Aid-Mart, a huge drugstore like the one Trent stole from earlier in the day. It’s mostly empty at this hour, and we split up to quickly get everything on the list. Zoe and I head to the toy section to pick up some kneepads for her upcoming crawl through the air ducts. She’s the only one of us small enough to fit inside.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she says.

We pass under some way-too-realistic-looking pterodactyl toys that fly up and down the aisle on their own, letting out random shrieks. I’m a tiny bit worried they might actually attack us, but we make it by unharmed.

“What do you mean?” I ask. She didn’t seem nervous about the plan earlier when we were going over it. Maybe she feels more comfortable talking about it now that the guys are gone.