“We don’t have a choice,” I said, already pacing back and forth as I willed myself to think fast. “We obviously can’t go back. There is probably no back to go to. The electricity was about to go out and the mountain was seconds from folding in on itself.” I shoved my hands into my hair and pulled it in frustration as I whirled on Regan. “What were we thinking?” I said.

“Okay, you just lost me,” she said.

“The letter,” I said. “The stupid stupid STUPID Cocoon. Why in the world didn’t we put, ‘Oh, and by the way, the mountain is going to fall down on your heads’?”

“If we’d told ourselves that the mountain was going to get attacked, do you think we would have stayed inside of it?” she asked, and the tirade I was about to go on about how irresponsible our future selves were dried up in my throat.

“No,” I said, “we wouldn’t have. We would have tried to evacuate everyone.”

“And we wouldn’t have been in the Glitch room with a preprogrammed computer,” Regan said.

“Our future selves wanted to make sure that we’d end up here,” I said, looking around the dark campus.

“Right,” Regan said.

“Well, couldn’t they have at least figured out how to give us a bit more time?” I fumed, not ready to let my anger go just yet.

“One hour must be enough,” Regan said. “It has to be.”

“There is just no way,” I said, unable to help myself. “Are we looking for a person carrying explosives? Or lots of people? Or even people? Maybe robots are going to come zooming over the wall at any moment. We don’t know anything about this. There isn’t research to work off, nothing to reference. No wonder Salzburg thought this was a bad idea,” I said.

“If he thought it was such a bad idea, why did he come back into the Glitch room?” Regan asked, her forehead creased.

“Probably because there was no way out of the mountain,” I said. “With the way things were falling down around our ears, I wouldn’t be surprised if the tunnels all collapsed.” I paced away from Regan and then paced back, unable to stand still. Regan, meanwhile, stood like a statue, her face twisted into an odd expression I’d never seen before. I stopped my pacing to peer at her. “Why do you look like your brain hurts?” I said.

“Nothing,” Regan said, waving a hand. “What we need to focus on now is our mission.”