Her skin is no more burned than the others, her wounds no more festering, and yet our heart melts at the sight of her. Her dark hair is shot through with gold, springing into ringlets by her ears, the way mine used to as a kid. The eyes staring deeply into mine are fully lashed, bark brown, and glinting with a too-familiar expression.

Our breath hitches, and our kneecaps evaporate, flinging us forward into the glass. “You’re not supposed to be here,” the older Alice says, her voice pitching wildly. “You’re supposed to be in the middle bay. I arranged it myself.”

The little girl can’t hear, of course. Her mouth keeps moving, shaping the same syllable over and over again.

“Get out.” Older Alice claws at our head. The skin at our temple smarts as one of our fingernails scratches a deep groove. “Go back to your own time.”

My consciousness rattles around, and I fall, even though I have no physical body, half in and half out of this time. She’s unzipping me, detaching her consciousness from mine. Boomeranging me back to the present.

Not yet! I’m not ready! I have so many questions. Not enough answers.

Frantically, I latch onto her physical body, her five senses, trying to ground myself in this time. The acidic taste of fear in our mouth. The granular pebbles pressing through the soles of our shoes. The distant whir of a hoverboard traveling through the tunnels. And the mouth of the pretty little girl, opening, closing, shouting, screaming.

ZIIIIIP.

With a final, desperate yank, she separates her consciousness from mine, and the scene around me vanishes.

As I’m hurled through a blank, empty void, I finally figure out the word the girl was saying. So obvious and yet so unexpected. So natural and yet so earth-shattering.

Mom.

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

I’m in the locker corridor. In my body, which I can feel and move. I stumble backward until my heels bump into the plaster wall. I slide down until my butt hits the linoleum tile. I shove the hair out of my face, as though that will help me understand. What just happened?

8:01.

The digital clock at the end of the hallway blinks at me. Eleven minutes past final bell. Four more minutes until the security cameras turn back on. However long I spent in the future, very little time has elapsed in the present.

Did I really travel forward ten years? Did I witness all those dying, sunburned victims? Did I actually see my future daughter?

I gasp at the air, my breathing hard and labored as though I’ve traveled a great distance. Which, in a way, I have.

Flaming monkeys. In the future, I have a daughter. And she’s dying.