Find Me Where the Water Ends (So Close to You)

by Rachel Carter

  The colonel takes a drag of his cigarette. “Recruits come and go.”

  “Is that why you didn’t try to get us out after we completed our mission? Is that why you left us in the woods, being hunted like animals?” I sound like I’m being strangled, and I swallow hard.

  “We knew you would make it to New York. It’s what was originally supposed to happen,” the future me says, her voice softer than it was before.

  “Why didn’t you tell us that when we were prepping for the mission? Why did you just let us wait in the woods for days?”

  “We only knew for sure that you and Eleven would live, at least in that version of the time line. We couldn’t tell your whole team about the outcome, not when half of them were destined to die. And besides, there were too many eyes on the woods. There was no way to do a safe extraction.” Colonel Walker puts out his cigarette on the table, grinding the red tip into the metal until it is just ash. “But you made it out in the end. That’s what really matters.”

  I lay my hands on the desk, feeling the cold sink into my fingers, and I ask the question that has been plaguing me for days. “Why does it matter that I was the one who lived?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” He tilts his head toward Agent Bentley. “She might be an agent now, but in a few years her title changes to Director Bentley.”

  I look at her—at myself—in horror. “Director?”

  “In about twenty years, you’ll be running things,” the colonel says.

  I was always different from the others. General Walker must have been lying when he said my destiny was to kill Sardosky. Or maybe that was part of it, but not the whole story. This is what they saw as my destiny—running an organization that stole everything from me. Becoming something I hate.

  “No.” I shake my head violently back and forth. “It isn’t true. I don’t believe it.”

  “It’ll happen, whether you believe in it now or not,” Agent Bentley says. Walker smiles at her, but she does not acknowledge him.

  “If you’re so powerful, then let me go back. Let me save them.”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “How could I have become like you?” I whisper the words. “Someone who would leave them out there to die? What about Thirty-one? Eleven?”

  I stare at the older version of myself, willing her to say something, to fight for Wes. I need her to show me that I still exist inside of her, that I haven’t become exactly like Colonel Walker. But she just sits there, her hands folded neatly on the table in front of her.

  Through it all, even during my training, even when I felt so lost inside the Facility, I never stopped trying to save the people I love. If she won’t even speak up for Wes, then I know that I am gone, that the Project has won.

  I hunch over the desk, needing to hide my face from them. Tears fall onto the scarred metal, small drops that slowly start to form a pool.

  “What are you doing?” I hear a scrape as the colonel pushes back his chair. “Show some respect in front of your officers.”

  He is standing over me, hovering, but I still don’t look up.

  “Put your arm down, Colonel.” Agent Bentley’s voice is quietly commanding. “Remember that when you hit her, you’re hitting me.”

  I lift my head to see him standing over me, his hand raised in the air, his face turning red. It is the first time an officer from the Project would have physically struck me. There’s something personal about hitting someone in anger that doesn’t quite match my experience with the Montauk Project, and I wonder if Colonel Walker is taking some frustration with Agent Bentley out on me.

  He slowly lowers his arm, though he doesn’t stop glaring at me. “I apologize, Bentley. But remember that you’re not in charge yet. Not in this time period.”

  She stands without looking at him. “We’ll continue the debrief when you’re ready to cooperate, Seventeen.”

  Hearing her say my number instead of my name is a physical blow. I suck in air, but I cannot catch my breath. She has stolen everything.

  I lie back on the hard mattress, staring up at the mirrored ceiling. My face looks back, tired and pale and small. I am dressed in the all-black uniform of the recruits, after showering in the small bathroom off the side of this room. I’m clean for the first time in days, but I still feel as dirty as I did before, like I’m forever covered in dirt and grime—in blood.

  I turn over onto my side and face another white wall. This room is a small square box designed to feel like a prison cell. I don’t know how long they’ll keep me here, but I know that it’s only a matter of time before I’m sent out into the field again, forced to do mission after mission until I end up as cold and empty as her.

  I won’t accept this future. I cannot become something I hate, willing to put the Montauk Project in front of the lives of my friends and family. What will happen to my grandfather? To Tim and Wes?

  But how will I get out of this place? I need to go back to the beginning. I have to find some way to make it right.

  The bright lights overhead suddenly disappear. I sit up on the bed, fuzzy spots moving in front of my eyes. The Center never gets dark. Not unless something is wrong.

  They flicker once, then come back on again, burning white. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, and then I see myself—Agent Bentley—standing in the middle of the room.

  “What are you—?”

  She puts her hand up. “I’ve cut the camera feed to this room, but we don’t have much time. You need to listen to me.”

  I scramble up from the bed, my boots falling heavily on the slick tile floor. I want to trust that she’s here to help me, but I cannot get her vacant expression out of my head. Was it all just an act? Is this the act now?

  “What do you want?”

  “I know you, Lydia.” She takes a step forward, her hand still stretched between us. “I am you. You’re curious about me, and you know that you could never have changed as much as the woman in that meeting had.”

  I stare at her for a beat before I nod. She smiles slightly and it transforms her face, making her look softer, more human. More like me.

  I cross my arms over my chest as I wait for her to speak. I’m willing to listen to what she has to say, but I’m guarded, wary. Still, I feel relief start to unfurl inside of me. Coming to this room is something I would have done, which means Director Bentley couldn’t have changed that much.

  “When I did this mission, We—” She blinks rapidly and looks down at the ground. I wonder why she can’t bring herself to say Wes’s name. “Eleven and I were the only ones who made it. We came to New York to try and find out who was behind the radio advertisement. The Project found us in Times Square and had a recruit deliver us to the Facility. They wouldn’t let us go back in time to try and save Thirty-one and Twenty-two, but I eventually accepted their decision, because . . .”

  “Because you had Wes,” I say.

  She nods. She seems like a different person now, her face more expressive, her hands moving as she speaks.

  “We stayed with the Project. We couldn’t find a way out. And then General Walker told me that my destiny was to run everything one day. It’s true that I was supposed to be on the Sardosky mission, so in a way it was a fate, but it wasn’t why I was recruited. My true destiny was to eventually become the director. That’s why they picked me. That’s why they didn’t push me as hard as the other recruits.”

  I shake my head, but she keeps going. “At first I fought against it, too, but Eleven helped me see how it could be a good thing. I could create change. I could make the Project a better place.”

  I take a step backward until my knees hit the edge of the bed. Wes helped her see that? “But nothing has changed. You heard Colonel Walker in that meeting. He didn’t care if any of the recruits but me made it out alive.”

  “Change doesn’t happen all at once. There are still men like Walker, who learned from his father how to run this organization without mercy. He might be in charge in twenty forty-nine, but in
twenty seventy-seven, I’ll run everything. Right now the Project has vague ideas about controlling the time line, with no real organization or communication across different eras. Sometimes they do good, but more often they are changing history so frequently that no one remembers what the original time line was in the first place. And the recruits are dying young.” Her hands fall, and she suddenly seems smaller, frailer. She drags her fingers across her face before she speaks again. “In the future, you and I fix all that, starting by disbanding the Recruitment Initiative and sending fewer recruits through time. There are no more children taken from the streets or from their families. The recruits are all volunteers, and are trained with safer TMs. The days of the Montauk Project’s reign of terror are over. Our job is still to watch over the time line, to save people when we can, but we’ll be smarter about it. More careful.”

  A safer Montauk Project? Is that even possible? Could she, could I, really make a difference? I can tell this future Lydia believes what she’s saying. But— “That’s years from now. How many people have to die in the meantime? What happens to Wes and Tim? To Twenty-two?”

  She looks away. “You have to think of the bigger picture.”

  I sit down on the bed, the mattress like stone beneath me. “Wes dies, doesn’t he?”

  She doesn’t respond.

  “Tell me. Please.”

  When she speaks her voice is as blank as it was in the meeting. “Eleven makes it a few more years before his body gives out. But that was in my time line. Things could be different now.”

  “You mean he could already be dead.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let me go back and save him.” My voice is higher, pleading. “Don’t let Wes and Tim die like this.”

  “I can’t.” She still won’t look at me. “This is happening during Walker’s command, so it’s his choice. If I fight too hard for you, then they’ll think I’m attached, and I won’t be able to do any good in the future. It’s important that Walker believes I’m like them.”

  “Then why are you even here talking to me? What’s the point?”

  She comes forward until she’s right in front of me, and then she kneels, her beige dress molding to her body as it stretches across her legs. Our faces are only inches apart.

  “I want to give you what I didn’t have, Lydia. I want to give you a choice.”

  Chapter 14

  Agent Bentley sits back on her heels, watching me. I want to turn away, but I force myself to meet her eyes. “Is this like the choice General Walker gave me in that cell months ago? My grandfather’s life in exchange for my cooperation? Because I’m not interested in another deal like that.”

  “No.” She frowns, and I wonder if she’s angry that I don’t immediately trust her. “I’m giving you a real choice.”

  “How?”

  She sighs and pushes to her feet in one fluid movement. “I know you’re skeptical, but we don’t have much time, so I’ll lay out your options. You can stay here and give in to the destiny the Project has planned for us, or you can leave. It’s Friday afternoon, which means you still have time to find out if the Bentley’s Hardware advertisement meant anything.”

  I sit up a little straighter. “You’re saying the Project didn’t send the message?”

  She shakes her head. “I never found out who did send it, though I have my guesses.”

  “Who?”

  But she doesn’t answer. “It might seem simple to you—if you leave, you have a chance to escape the Project and maybe even save Wes. If you stay, then you’ll become like me. But this life isn’t all bad, Lydia. I’m not unhappy.”

  “You’ve lost everything and everyone you love. How can you even be a little happy?”

  “Not everyone. Grandpa survived.”

  “What?” I stand up and reach out, curling my fingers around her wrist. “Grandpa makes it? Is he still alive?”

  She smiles slightly and rests her hand on my fingers. At her touch I pull away. “It would be impossible for him to still be alive in this time period. But I made sure he was safe. As soon as I had enough authority, I sent someone back in time to have him released, in the nineteen eighties. He lived a normal life.”

  “Grandpa,” I whisper. “He’s all I’ve been fighting for.”

  “I know.”

  She steps toward me, but I step back again until I’m pressed to the side of the bed. “If you choose this life, you won’t be helpless anymore,” she says. “You’ll create a better system, where time is treated as sacred, and the butterfly effect is risked only in extreme circumstances.”

  I think of her face in that meeting, emotionless and stark. It may not have been real, she may have been acting, but isn’t that just another form of helplessness, hiding her true self from everyone around her?

  “Why?” I ask. “Why are you giving me a choice at all, if you think this destiny is the best option?”

  I watch her shoulders grow stiff under the thin silk of her dress. “Eleven . . .” She takes a long, slow breath. “Wes and I had a few good years together, even in hiding. You remember that moment you saw in the hallway. Those memories have kept me going, even though he’s gone now. But he was supposed to come back with you, and I know Colonel Walker will never allow us to rescue Wes. And that means that Wes and you won’t have the life that he and I had together. You won’t have any of those memories.” She lifts her hand and touches my shoulder. In her heels she is taller than me, and I have to look up to meet her eyes. “I’m not saying which life you should choose. And I’m not doing this because of Wes, not really. I don’t even know what will happen to me if you choose to leave here. Maybe I’ll disappear when the time line changes. Or I might still be alive, but the world I know won’t exist anymore. But I can live with that. I made the most of a life that was handed to me because I never had any other options. I want you to decide your own fate.”

  I bite my lip but don’t respond.

  She squeezes my arm lightly. “I know you see the Project as evil, but just a few days ago you were a part of preventing an all-out nuclear war. That’s noble, regardless of how it happened. And there’s more good that can be done. Remember that.”

  She steps back, dropping her hand. I can still feel her fingers pressed into my skin. “If you’re going to leave, then go out through the elevators where you entered. I’ve made sure that you have clearance to leave for the next half hour, so decide quickly.”

  She starts walking toward the door. I lean forward before she can reach it. “Don’t you already know what I’m going to do?”

  She stops, turns. “Maybe.” When she smiles it makes her cheeks fuller, the lines around her eyes softer. “But the point is that it’s your decision. I trust you, Lydia.”

  The door makes almost no sound as it opens and shuts.

  I move toward the door, then back to the bed, thinking of everything the future me just said. I want to walk, to run from this room, but something makes me hesitate.

  I have been living with the unknown for months—worrying about my grandfather and wondering what my future might hold. There is a strange comfort in seeing how your life plays out, even if it’s not what you dreamed of.

  In my mind, the Montauk Project represents evil. Logically, I know it is more complicated than that. But they stole my life from me. By choosing this future, I could prevent them from doing that to someone else.

  But the cost will be Wes, and any hope I have left of breaking free from the Project.

  This future me said that my grandfather will be safe. Everything I’ve done has been for him. But how far am I willing to go? There must be some way to ensure that we can both have the future we want.

  How can I make this decision? How can I not?

  I turn and take a step toward the door. And then another one. And another. Before I know what is happening, I am in the hallway, the mirrors glittering all around me, light and my own image reflected over and over.

  The future me may have accepted the
Project’s destiny, but I can’t bring myself to do the same. I do not want to live a life that’s already laid out in front of me. If I go to the address on Eleventh Avenue, then I know I will have tried everything. I will not have accepted a preordained path where Wes is meant to die, where Tim will never have another chance, where I am meant to be in charge of the Montauk Project.

  And now I know the ad wasn’t planted by the Project, which means someone else is trying to contact me. I have no idea who it could be, but maybe they can help me save Wes.

  I do not pass anyone as I move through the hallways, go down the elevator, and walk out into the lobby. The blond-haired girl looks up at me with her vacant expression, but she doesn’t say a word, and I silently thank the older Lydia for giving me clearance. As soon as I’m out of the building, I start walking south, counting as the street numbers slowly descend.

  It takes me over an hour to walk the sixty blocks to 167 Eleventh Avenue. Every once in a while I think I feel someone watching me, but I keep my face turned down. It helps that I’m wearing all black, that I’m no longer caked in dirt and blood.

  The address brings me to the edge of the city where the Westside Highway runs parallel with the Hudson. The new wall is in between them, blocking the river and the view of New Jersey. In my time, the strip of land by the waterfront held buildings, harbors with boats docked in the Hudson, and sometimes a park or a bike path. Now it is all gone, the thick wall almost reaching the edge of the highway.

  In Times Square I was in a cave of buildings, unable to see the water’s edge. In the Center, we were high enough that the city below appeared spread out and open. But now, with the wall towering over me, the concrete already faded and rough, I feel like a rat in a maze, bumping against the sides as I try to find my way out.

  I stare at the descending numbers on the buildings and realize that 167 would be across the street, between the highway and the wall. But there are no buildings now, only a thin length of sidewalk.