On the other side of the fence, a car drives past—at least I think it’s a car. It’s black but shaped like a sideways egg, sleek and shiny, with dark-tinted windows. It’s hard to tell what part is the front or the back, but it has four wheels, so I assume it’s a car. It zips past us and is gone.

“What was that?” Trent asks.

“Wow, cars have changed a lot in ten years,” Adam says.

That’s when it finally hits me. This is real. All the clues add up to one inevitable truth. “We’re in the future,” I whisper.

“Hell yeah!” Chris shouts, pumping his fist. “The future, baby!”

“I can’t believe it,” Zoe whispers, wrapping her arms around herself.

The future. It’s so big, so unknown, so amazing…yet oddly familiar too. I want to see more. And now that we know for certain where we are, we can do what we came for—find technology for Aether. “We should look around. Find some stores or something.”

“Finally, someone’s talking some sense around here,” Chris says. He strides toward the fence, and Trent and Zoe follow him. I start to go too, until I see Adam hanging back, his hands shoved in his pockets.

“Come on,” I say. “There’s nothing we can do here.”

“I know. I just can’t shake the feeling that we missed something.” He looks up at the building and I follow his gaze. Every window is dark and empty.

For a brief second I consider telling him about the origami unicorn, but I remember how he brushed off my concerns earlier. The conversation between Dr. Kapur and Dr. Walters plays back in my head. They were worried about something happening “again”—did they know the facility would be abandoned when we arrived? Considering the fully stocked backpacks, I believe it.

We catch up with the others at the fence, where Chris cuts a hole large enough for him to get through with a pair of pliers he must have found in his bag. Trent is already on the other side—he climbed over the barbed wire in the time it took us to walk over.

“What?” Trent asks, when he catches me eyeing him. “It’s easy!”

Lockpicks and climbing over barbed wire…I’m getting an idea what his talent might be.

When Chris is finished, we each duck our heads and step through the jagged metal. What was once empty land is now a wide road lined with other offices and industrial buildings. Adam pulls out his map and compass and studies them, but I doubt a map from ten years ago will be much help if this area has changed so much. The others look back and forth along the road, but there’s nothing to tell us which way to go.