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  He put up his hands. “Hey, I'm just speaking the truth.”

  Frustration from a nearly-foiled plot and memories of Trent's perfidious kisses made her boil over. “Yeah, well, if you really want to compliment a girl, instead of making nasty remarks, try a Hallmark card!” She turned and marched down the hall, only relaxing when she turned a corner. Yanking her skirt up a few inches, she ran as fast as her three inch heels would take her—in case Trent was planning to spy on her.

  Several hallways later, she arrived at Olga's residence. She quickly knocked and tried the door. It was open. “Olga?” she whispered through breaks in her gasping.

  “Come in, come in, who is it?”

  Seffy eeled in the door and closed it quietly, forcing her pulse to slow. “It's me. I need to ask you something.”

  Olga looked up from where she was knitting in an overstuffed wingback chair. She held up a multi-colored scarf. “It's getting cold early this year.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.” Seffy smooth an errant lock of hair.

  “Well, young lady, you must be fully recovered to be rushing around the compound in shoes like that.” She raised her brows. “Why are you rushing around the compound in shoes like that?”

  “Trent. He tries to follow me around, so I had to ditch him.”

  “I'm not surprised he follows you around if you've taken to wearing that kind of outfit.”

  “My tracksuit was dirty,” she said with a limpid gaze. “Anyway, I need some information. Do you know where Eugene Dexter's residence is?”

  Olga burst out laughing, her sparkling eyes peering over the rims of her half-moon glasses. “The poor boy won't know what hit him if you show up looking like an office trollop.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Then again, he's brilliant, so he'll probably figure you're after something.”

  “I am after something. Information. No one will talk to me.”

  Olga got up and wrote some directions on a piece of paper. “Just keep me out of anything that goes wrong.” She smiled and held out the paper.

  “Thanks, Olga. And it's because of you that I can walk in a straight line, so you won't be implicated when something goes wrong—because it always does around here.” Seffy waved goodbye, then eased back out into the empty hallway after checking for any sign of Trent. She studied the instructions on the paper and headed in that direction.

  Not surprisingly, Eugene's room wasn't too far from the computer lab. She tried his door. It was open. Does anyone lock their doors in this place? Maybe it didn't matter. Hers was often locked when she hadn't locked it, and unlocked when she had.

  Fairly certain he would be in the lab every moment he wasn't actually sleeping, Seffy slipped inside his room and turned on the light. Her mouth twitched when she saw the state of his décor. He must've used Popular Mechanics for decorating ideas like some people used an IKEA catalog. Old computers, piles of floppy disks, thick computer manuals, 3-D model structures, and dirty clothes littered the space.

  She went to his desk and looked at the books scattered across the surface. One caught her eye. Time Travel. Seffy picked it up and flipped through it. Strange mystic drawings adorned the pages along with apparently simple explanations. Words like tangential, artifact, and receiver made little sense to her. She returned the book to the desk. What she really needed was a Time Travel For Dummies guide.

  Shoving aside some books, she saw a series of drawings shaped like spokes of a wheel. Sure enough, her name was written in the middle. Gareth, Lani, Addison, Jared, Trent, Eva and Cynthia were all listed to spokes radiating out from the hub. She noticed there was even a spoke for poor Clay.

  Her conscience gave an uncomfortable stab. Clay who had—unbeknownst to anyone—been bitten by a zombie. From there he'd become her target during a drunken, amorous fumble. When he turned bitey, Gareth had killed him. Since she failed to follow him down the shambolic path of death and reanimation, suddenly everyone—including the bad guys—wanted to know why. And despite becoming a test monkey for the Fugere Frankensteins, they still didn't know why.

  Seffy picked up the drawing and brought it closer to her face. There was a lighter spoke in pencil with an undecipherable word lightly written next to it. Everything else was written in ink.

  Who was it representing? And why was it only penciled in? Was there another victim of the zombie horde she didn't know about? Maybe the little girl in the polka dot dress who, according to her either realish nightmare or nightmarish reality, lured her onto a hopefully-pretend alien spaceship. She lowered the drawing, still shaken by the memories. Good times.

  The door knob rattled. Seffy gasped and looked wildly around her. No place to hide. She jumped onto the desk, shoving the drawing behind her. Crossing her legs and unbuttoning another button on her blouse, she sat up straight like a precocious secretary, determined to woo the nerd in his hovel.

  Seffy watched Eugene's eyes grow huge behind his glasses as he entered.

  “Miss Carter!”

  She slid from the desk and smoothed down her skirt. “Eugene, I can explain.”

  The computer scientist began to hyperventilate. Then choke. Alarmed, Seffy rushed over and patted the back of his white lab coat. Dang, she must have some serious mojo going to get him so verklempt. Finally, he regained control and straightened.

  “Again, I say Miss Carter!”

  She clasped her hands behind her back, giving just a little arch to her spine. “It's just Seffy.”

  “Well, Seffy, I can only imagine that you've sneaked into my room for one reason and, despite the way you're dressed, I doubt it's for a romantic interlude.”

  She glanced down at her borderline trashy outfit. “What, this? I was just trying to cheer myself up a bit. Being kept out of the loop while secrets are swirling around my poor head gets very depressing.” Seffy sidled up to him and smiled in what she hoped was a bewitching way.

  Eugene covered the lower half of his face with his hand and backed up a step. “I can assure you that any lack of information is for your own protection.”

  “Oh, I am so tired of hearing that! I don't want to be protected! It doesn't help anyway.”

  Eugene edged past her and looked at his desk. He stared at the spoke drawing for several seconds, then turned back to her. The expression he sent her gave her a little shudder. Apparently computer nerds could go from affable to evil in a nanosecond. “This is a very serious matter, Miss Carter. I'm afraid I'm going to have to report you to the authorities.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “Fenn, of course.”

  “So do it! I don't care!” She stopped herself from revealing it was because of Fenn she was being sent back to the future.

  “I'm going to have to ask you to leave.”

  She strode up to him, her ankles wobbling in the heels. “No, Mr. Dexter. I am not leaving until I get some answers. Since you were the one who most likely bought me here by your freak science, I've been trapped, tortured, infected, shot at, experimented on, and rejected by my dearest friends all because of you! And since you're obviously impervious to my sex appeal—”

  “It's not that I'm immune to your, er, appeal, it's just that I'm allergic to your perfume. It makes me break out.”

  Seffy stared at him, incoherent for a moment. “I don't wear perfume! At least not in this janky dump. Admit it, your afraid of my germs!”

  His mouth opened, then closed as his face turned brick red.

  His prevarication made her tremble with anger. “Well...if you don't start talking, I'll hock on you and infect you with my zombie cooties!”

  Made dizzy by her outburst, Seffy staggered backward, fell into a chair, and began to cry. Once the tears started she couldn't stop. She sobbed and shook until she couldn't breathe. Why won't anyone talk to me? How is it I'm even in this time and place? Through her watery view she saw Eugene go into the bathroom and return with a box of tissues. He handed them to her, keeping a safe distance. Seffy snatched them from his hand a
nd mopped her eyes and nose. Then she tossed the crumpled tissues at him.

  Eugene squealed and pinwheeled backward in horror, tripping over a box of manuals and landing on his butt on the floor. “Fine, I'll talk. Just keep your infection to yourself!”

  “I'm not infected!” Seffy retorted. “Ask the compound doctors!”

  Scrambling to his feet, Eugene started at her. “They're the ones who told me you were.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. Was everyone around here a liar? She'd been told her blood was clean. Well, not tainted with zombie juice anyway. That was something, right?

  Setting the dark thought aside for the moment, Seffy continued wiping her streaming eyes. Her tears began to dry after she realized Eugene was easing away from her apparently contagious self. Her looks must be gone if she could only motivate via fear tactics and not her hips. God, I want to be back in L.A.

  He motioned to an easel on one side of the room. It held a giant pad of paper covered in scribbles, calculations and diagrams. Stepping over science detritus, he flipped the page to an empty one and grabbed a pen. “Perhaps if I illustrate—”

  “They haven't invented dry erase boards yet?” Seffy said, sniffling. At Eugene's blank look, she shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “Okay, I'll try to keep this simple.”

  “Please, because I'm obviously an idiot!” Seffy began to cry again. Maybe I am stupid. I'm trying to figure things out. Maybe I should just wait passively while others make all the decisions.

  “Miss Carter, I really can't work under this kind of pressure. Now, if you'll just calm down, I'll continue.”

  Her response was to blow her nose hard into a tissue.

  A closed cardboard box wiggled against the desk, diverting her attention for a moment. Suddenly, a cat's head emerged and meowed. Seffy let out a cry of surprise. “A cat!” Had she ever seen an animal at the compound? She couldn't remember if she had.

  Still sniffling, Seffy reached out her hand as the cat slithered from the box and approached her. “Here kitty kitty.” She looked up at Eugene. “I didn't know you had a cat.”

  “Uh, he's kind of a compound animal.”

  She stroked its soft fur, already feeling calmer. “What's its name?”

  “Schrodinger.”

  “What? That's ridiculous! It should be Fluffy, or...oh, I know, Carmello.” Uttering nonsensical baby-talk made the cat purr in response. “Who would would come up with such a stupid name like Schroeder, anyway?”

  “It's not Schroeder, and I named it—”

  “Carmello, here kitty kitty. You like that so much better, don't you?”

  Eugene cleared his throat. “Really, Miss Carter, I thought you wanted information.”

  She looked up as she settled the cat onto her lap. “I do.”

  “Then perhaps you could turn your attention away from the feline to my diagram.” He drew a straight line with a squiggly one intersecting it.

  “Uh, I've already seen this.” The cat arched its head up for more petting. Seffy obliged.

  Eugene ignored her and made points on the line. “This is the stable universe. This wavy line is the tangent. Now, depending on which theory of time one ascribes to, this tangent is either stable or not-so-stable.”

  “Get to the hub part.”

  He flicked something from his coat. “You are the hub because everything channels through you, or I should say, everyone.”

  Her heart pounded out an odd rhythm. “Why?”

  “We think it's because you share strong bonds with them.”

  “Aside from my friends, I'd never met the others before ending up in the desert.” As far as I know, anyway.

  “Then it probably means we haven't yet figured out the connection, because there certainly is one.”

  She took a deep breath. “So why do I have to try and go back to 2006?”

  “Well, I ascribe to the stable theory and I think it makes sense that if you go and are able to return, it will work for everyone to go back. But it has to be you first because you're the channel.”

  “Or the marble.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I'm just trying to keep my metaphors straight. I'm also the marble going through the wormhole, right?”

  “I suppose,” he said slowly. “Although that is not a descriptor I would've chosen.”

  “Actually, if we're going to do the metaphor thing, I don't think I want to see myself as hard and round and cold. I like channel better because it's close to Chanel, which is one of my favorite perfumes.” Diagram that, geek. She cooed to the cat, who meowed happily at her attention.

  “Erm, either way, you're central to the time traveling.”

  “So if I go and come back, then we can all go back together?”

  “We think so.”

  “But what about the 'one comes, another goes', tit for tat travelers and all that?”

  “That's one opinion and shows where theory breaks down into just a set of ideas.”

  “So,” she asked, watching his expression closely, “am I supposed to bring anything back with me?”

  “Why would you? This will be a fairly quick turn around. Just an experiment.”

  So he apparently didn't know of Fiona's grand plan. “And what if you're wrong and the tangent thing isn't stable?”

  “Then we all die.”

  “The compound people?”

  “The whole universe.”

  “Which one?”

  “Both.”

  “Huh?”

  “This reality and, in theory, any alternate one.”

  Seffy looked at the cat where it now lay pressed up against her tummy, its claws kneading her skirt. “That's ridiculous. I don't think any of you know what the heck you're talking about.”

  “Trust me, all this would be conjecture if you hadn't shown up in the desert nearly three months ago.” He looked down at the pen in his hand. “I think you can see why we wanted to protect you from this information.”

  She snorted. “You mean the part where if I blow it, I'm responsible for the destruction of not one, but two universes?”

  He tucked the pen in his pocket and straightened his white coat. “I've said too much already, and I need to get back to the lab.”

  “Why would time-travel destroy any universe? It didn't blow up when we got here.”

  “It's the going back that causes the instability.”

  She could tell he didn't care about her feelings on the matter by the blank look behind his glasses. “You know what I think? I think you're trying to scare me into doing this little experiment. Because if traveling through time risked the whole friggin' universe, you'd never have me do the experiment anyway. That's just dumb.”

  Once again his face reddened. Not so stupid after all, hey, Eugene?

  The head scientist puffed out his chest in righteous indignation. “Sending you back is an attempt to ultimately regain stability. At this very moment, your presence is upsetting the space-time continuum and putting us all at risk. May I remind you of the color of the sun and sky? That is only one of many symptoms of the growing instability surrounding us all. Do not doubt the gravity of the situation, Miss Carter.”

  Seffy pawed her hand through her hair before she remembered it was pinned up. Strands floated down around her face. Damn. What if what he said was true? Who could she believe any more? What could she believe? She closed her eyes, allowing the darkness to take her over for a moment. Then she opened her eyes and looked at Eugene. “What if I didn't exist?”

  He blinked in confusion. “Obliviously you do exist.”

  “Okay, what if I stop existing?”

  His eyes widened myopically behind his lenses. “You should know better than to talk like that, Miss Carter.”

  “Spare me the moral lectures and answer the question.”

  “The fact is, you do exist and if you ceased, it only follows that everything else could collapse.”

  She blew out a sigh, gently decanting the cat onto t
he floor. “What kind of place is this where I can't even off myself without screwing things up?”

  Eugene seemed to be sweating. “Please don't do anything drastic.”

  “Why, so you can save your own butt?”

  “Because suicide is never the answer, Miss Carter.”

  She stood up and bade the kitty goodbye. “I'm sorry to have intruded, Eugene. Don't worry about me. You just make sure you get your science right.”

  Seffy hobbled back toward her room, noticing her skirt was now covered in cat hair. After several minutes, she pulled off her heels and walked barefoot. Three months in pilates shoes and a pair of Campus Adidas she'd found in a box had made her feet accustomed to being flat. She used to wear strappy little heels all the time without any problem. It was just one more thing the compound had taken from her—sweet arches.

  Arriving in her hallway, she began to sniffle again. When she wiped her face, her hand came away black. God, this place can't even come up with waterproof mascara. I hate it, hate it, hate it! Seffy began to sob, which made her angrier. She hit the ugly walls with her shoes over and over and pounded on the painted cement block with her free fist.

  “Looks like your hot date didn't work out, huh?”

  Seffy spun around and saw Trent grinning at her. With the last of her strength, she hurled her shoes at him. She hoped they left a mark.

  Chapter Four

  Seffy stared at her spaghetti. It looked like blood and guts. She put her fork down, unable to eat.

  “You've made your point, Sef. You're thinner than me, okay?”

  She raised tired eyes to Addison. “What?”

  “I'm saying you've been staring at your dinner for twenty minutes. Why don't you just eat it?”

  “I guess I'm not hungry.”

  Addison regarded her with searching green eyes. “You need to eat something. You're starting to look like a heroin addict.”

  “I'm not the one who's the addict around—”

  “She's right, Seffy,” Trent said quickly. “You're skin and bones.”

  Seffy looked up at him and frowned. “Why are you here? You never eat with us in the cafeteria.”