Пинтип Данн - Remember Yesterday

I let out an explosive breath. “Fates, no. That’s MK Rivers, the chairwoman’s assistant.”

“Yikes. Okay, moving on.” He zeroes in on a guy with leopard spots dyed into his tawny skin. A potential rule breaker. “Him?”

I flash forward into his future and see him walk right past a girl sprawled on the floor, her belongings scattered everywhere. “Nah. Too cool to help others.”

We consider and reject three more candidates, and then I see her. A woman with perfectly outlined lips and hair as bright as a cardinal’s tail. She wears a ring on her finger and beams as though she’s single-handedly responsible for feeding the entire cafeteria.

I flash forward and hear her gushing to a friend about her boyfriend waking her up with a daybreak proposal.

“Perfect. She just got engaged this morning with a data-chip ring. If anyone’s going to support geeky young love, it’s her.”

“Okay,” Ryder says, trusting me implicitly. “To our places.”

I take a deep breath. Please, Fates, let me have picked the right one. Olivia’s future depends on the kindness of this cardinal-haired woman.

Five minutes later, I’m in the loading deck of elevator capsule nineteen. The handle of the picnic basket is slippery under my palms, and my heart marks nanoseconds of time. Two-dozen capsules line the cafeteria lobby, but the cardinal-haired woman will choose this one. I can just see it—literally.

Ryder is in the lobby, hiding behind a plant statue with gold and silver leaves and a twisted copper stalk. He was able to hack into the electronic screen and display an X on top of capsule nineteen, indicating that it is out of order. When the red-haired woman approaches, he’ll turn off the X , only to switch it back on after she enters the loading deck, thus ensuring our privacy.

The plan is foolproof…in theory. But because it involves too many independent decisions, even my precognition can’t tell us how it will play out.

“I hate that I’m not in there with you,” Ryder says into my earpiece.

“We have no choice.” My voice echoes in the tight chamber of the loading deck. “You need to make sure no one else enters this capsule.”

“I know. Doesn’t mean I like it—” He cuts off abruptly. “She’s coming, Jessa. Get ready.”

I take a deep breath, reach into the picnic basket, and remove a hand. One of Mikey’s prosthetics, with long, elegant fingers, cut off below the wrist.

“Five steps, Jessa… Three, two…”

I run the prosthetic hand over the sensor, again and again, as if I’m trying to scan an ID embedded in the wrist.

The door clicks open.

“I don’t get it,” I mutter, loudly enough to be overheard. “It worked before. Why isn’t it working now?”

I hear a gasp and spin around, hiding the prosthetic hand behind my back. My face is hot, my movements jerky. Good. At least I don’t have to fake my anxiety.

The red-haired woman gapes at me. “What is that? Don’t tell me… Oh Fates, are you trying to swipe the sensor with a severed hand?”

Up close, I can see why her lipstick is so perfect. The color’s been tattooed on.

“Oh, no, this isn’t a real hand.” I hold the prosthetic out to her. She touches it gingerly, and her shoulders visibly drop.

“My boyfriend’s a scientist here,” I say, my voice warm and confiding. “One of the interns, in the prosthetics department. My birthday was last week, and he gave me this as a present. Can you imagine?” I laugh girlishly, even though I’m not girlish. I rarely laugh. And I never confide in strangers. Fates, I don’t even talk to strangers. “He put a duplicate of his data chip in the wrist, thinking it would be romantic, and he couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more excited to get a fake hand.”

She smiles, as I knew—hoped, prayed—she would. “My boyfriend—I mean, my fiancé—is the exact same way. He just proposed this morning.” She holds up her hand with the ring. The square black-colored chip, with metal prongs lining four sides, gleams in the light. “Most girls get diamonds or rubies. I get a data chip.”

“This is so much better,” I say. “Anybody can give a silly old stone. He’s asking you to share in his data stream. In the true blood that courses through his life.” I pluck the lines straight out of the future conversation she has with her friend, detailing the proposal.

Her smile widens. “That’s exactly what he said. The rest of my friends don’t get it. They think he’s too cheap to spring for a real gem, but I think it’s sweet. Besides, we’re saving our credits to buy a house, and I like that he’s thinking about our future.”

“I think that’s beautiful,” I gush. “And your ring is so unique. No one will have one like it.”

“Thank you so much.” She looks at the severed limb. “So, um, why are you trying to scan a prosthetic hand?”

I exhale. This is it. The moment where she falls for my ruse—or calls security on me. “Our meetiversary is today, and I wanted to surprise him.” I move my shoulders. “I was able to scan the wrist to get up to the cafeteria. I don’t know why it doesn’t work now. I never should’ve stopped for the chocolate-covered strawberries.” I look at her pleadingly. “You won’t tell, will you? I know it was wrong to use the data chip, but I wanted this date to be perfect.”

She twists the ring on her finger. Is she buying my story? Oh Fates, what if she works for Chairwoman Dresden? Any moment now, I could find myself in electro-cuffs…

“I won’t tell,” she finally says, and the air whooshes out of my body. “But you have to promise you won’t try this again. It’s sweet of you to surprise your boyfriend—but our security protocols are here for a reason.”

I nod and flip open the cover of my picnic basket. Plump strawberries covered with silky dark chocolate gleam up at us, along with wrapped sandwiches and a glass bottle of milk. “We met at lunch a year ago, and I’ve recreated the entire meal—peanut butter and guava jelly, chocolate milk, and strawberries. Standard school fare. Not gourmet by any means, but I thought it would be cute. I guess it will just have to be cute at dinner.”

She twists the ring again. The air feels full, saturated with my anticipation.

“Oh, what the Limbo?” She blows the cardinal hair out of her eyes. “I suppose there’s no harm, and you two should eat your meetiversary meal. Peanut butter and guava sandwiches, huh? That’s so sweet it makes my enamel ache. What floor is he on?”

“He’s working on a subterranean floor today. B-23.” Inside my shoes, my toes contract. The lower the floor, the more restricted. Please don’t ask what an intern is doing so far beneath the surface.

But she doesn’t even blink. She swipes her wrist over the sensor and keys in the right floor. “Go. Have fun. Give him a big kiss for me.”

“I will. Thank you.”

My legs shaky, I climb into the capsule and strap myself in. The doors slide closed, and a huge grin spreads across my face. I can’t believe it. The plan worked!

“I’m in,” I murmur to Ryder. Before he can respond, the capsule is propelled through a series of tunnels. I can tell the moment we’re underground because my earpiece cuts out. It’s part of the security of the subterranean levels—no communication via the normal channels. Like it or not, I’m on my own.

The capsule lurches to a stop, and the doors open. I can’t see anything at first but black stars and bright lights, and then my vision clears.

I step into a corridor with pale-green tiles and a darker green stripe bisecting the walls.

Just like in my vision.

The moment I step into the hallway, something clicks. The vision rushes over me, layered on top of my reality, and I’m flooded with a feeling of rightness. A magnetic force pulls me forward, sucking me into this path. I must run this maze. Not because the vision tells me, not because it’s in my genes. But because sometime in the future, I already did.