“I told you, I don’t date,” I say, even though I’m struggling to remember why. “Zeke and I are just friends.”

I’m aware that I just had a very similar conversation, with a very different boy, not two hours earlier. It’s…unsettling, to say the least.

This outing to Charlie’s cabin is exactly what I wanted. What I’ve been hoping and planning for this entire day: a way to access my target. And yet, I hesitate.

There are so many reasons to back away from Bandit’s invitation. My own personal security. The fact that I feel entirely too much for Bandit. Even now, the Voice’s words echo through my head. Don’t fall for this boy. It’ll only make what you have to do later harder. She may want me to save the world, but she wouldn’t want me to get closer to Bandit in the process. She’d suggest that I follow him instead. Find out where Charlie lives and return at a later time.

And then, there’s the pesky detail that I’ll have to kill a person. I’m not ready! Not now; not today. It would be so much easier, so much safer, to put off this task for another day.

There’s only one reason to proceed: because I refuse to abandon the future for another second.

I feel like I’m on a precipice. One decision would take me back to the Alice I’ve always known, the one who opts for the sheltered path, who follows without question the advice of someone older and wiser. The other decision would make me topple down unfamiliar terrain. It would forge a course to a new Alice, one whom I don’t know but whom I’ve glimpsed in sharp, vivid flashes in the last few days.

To tell the truth, I started making this decision the moment I rang Bandit’s doorbell. And now his fingers are brushing the skin below my sleeve. Now he’s giving me his trademark smirk, the one that no longer looks arrogant to me, only confident.

I’m more certain than ever that my older self and I are not the same person. We don’t have the same agenda. We may not want the same thing.

Which means I get to choose. Me. The present Alice. I get to decide how best to accomplish my mission.

“Let’s do it,” I say. “Let’s go to Charlie’s.”

But what I really mean is: Let’s embrace the present to save the future. Let’s journey deep into the woods, to the cabin of the man I’m supposed to kill.

Chapter 26

Chapter 26