The longer I sat there, the more my stress increased, my chest rising and falling like I was running. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea if Han arrested me.

At least I'd be safe away from Parkland, and the machine, and anything that I would have to flee from. Behind bars, I wouldn't have to worry about any of it.

I paced in loops.

I wasn't used to running.

Though having Han understand me would have been nice, I needed to get out of here. I knew what I was capable of with my ability. I knew exactly what someone else could do with it, and the safest plan now was to disappear.

No more ammunition. No giving Parkland any other reasons to hate me.

A thud by the door interrupted my thoughts. Assuming it was one, or both, cops returning, I circled to my seat. Another bump, and I stiffened. It felt wrong to open the door of my own investigation room, but I peered out at the empty hallway, anyway.

Until I looked down and found Rory's robot sitting there. My stomach somersaulted.

She chirped at me, rolled inside, and knocked into my shin like a cat head-butting for affection. I kneeled as her arm extended, an automatic motion every time the sensors found someone. I snorted and bumped my fist against it.

With another, more insistent beep, the robot began to move.

I poked my head out of the room. At the other end of the hallway, Han and her cop partner spoke in hushed tones. If they turned even an inch, they'd see me.

The robot, who I'd called Silver, rolled near the baseboard, tracing a straight path that was a mere breath away from Han and her partner. I kept pace with her until we'd passed the two sets of doors before the floor opened up to a row of desks, each carrying more than one monitor.

At the corner, Silver stopped. To my right, the baseboard dropped away to the desks. Officers crowded the rows. On the other side, the exit door, marked by a glass entrance door which marked my freedom.

Han's partner turned. I pressed my body against the wall, pinpricks firing in my lower back. Sure, I could leave anytime, technically, but I was one edited clip away from getting handcuffed, and if they saw me I didn't doubt they'd express disapproval. And if the robot was here, it meant so was Rory.

I took in a breath, checked to make sure he couldn't see me, and inched out into the clearing. My fingers tightened around Han's phone.

I have a theory.

Typing out a sequence of numbers, I called into the ether. The connection crackled like a live wire. My lips pinched.

"Hello, Parkland," I whispered, because nobody else was going to answer Accha's phone from seven years in the future. Not when it was dead. "Hope you enjoyed that show."

He said nothing. He didn't have to. The lack of alarms was indicative. He was telling me he had me. The computer screens flickered around me in unison, and a buzz loud enough to fill my veins echoed.

I doubted anyone else heard it.

I'd become attuned, over time, to the noise.

To the minute letters across every screen that burned in with words. Better luck next time. See how easy you're making this? I'll be so kind and call this off if you stop. All flashes on the monitors like dozens of eyes. Watching me. Commandeering.

He could have me in handcuffs. He wasn't being coy.

Still, I ran. Faster than ever before.

The robot sped forward. I rushed to keep pace with her, so she didn't crash into the door, and as soon as my fingers brushed the handle, all of the air in my lungs collapsed inward.

I pulled my hands into fists and silently pumped them.

Faster than before, Silver zoomed along the sidewalk, making what could only be qualified as an excited sequence of beeps. Her wheels thunked over stones and cleared the even pavement with sheer speed. I would have picked her up if I had any idea where she was taking me.

We raced like comets, bounding across the streets until, in the distance, Jessamine's car crested over the hill. Two of its doors opened in unison, one for me and the other for the robot.

Accha leaned over the wheel with her arms draped over the passenger seat. I wanted to crumble into a puddle of ash on the ground at the intensity of her gaze. In front of me, Rory leaned out of the backseat, grabbed Silver, and shot me the most Ridge-like grin yet.

"Hi." I slowed in time to avoid crashing into the door and climbed in.

She was faster than me, practically tackling me into a tight hug. I heard the door cinch closed as I shut my eyes and grasped her waist. Her body met mine. Her chin nestled on top of my hair. She was all I cared about, all that I could feel. For a second, we were the only two people in the world.

"What did you do?" Her voice sounded more like a rumble with the way my head was tilted.

"Why are you assuming I caused this?"

"It's true more often than not." She kissed my forehead. "Put on your seatbelt. We're getting out of here."

When she drew back, Rory bobbed her head in my rearview mirror. "That's not an exaggeration. I've never seen her drive like this in my life. I don't know how we didn't get pulled over."

As per usual, Accha ignored her. I figured that was why she'd been banished to the back seat. Accha cut the wheel to whirl the car around and sped off.

I glanced at the backseat. Silver's temperature-regulating fans hummed from her place on Rory's lap. Next to her, CD cases flopped open. The buckle fastened her down to the point that the fabric of her sweater wrinkled.

"Hey, she's not majoring in physics for nothing," I said.

"Clearly." Rory held up a controller. "I got it to work, sort of."

"I think you hold the record, then." I kept my tone joking, but unease shot through me like my veins had chilled with ice.

Rory smiled. She asked what the cops wanted, and Accha sighed like she'd been hoping someone would ask. I explained as best as I could, but Rory only understood about half of it.

Her brows lowered. "Michaela hasn't talked to me all day long. I know that she got questioned, but I tried reaching out and nothing."

Michaela. She said it so soft, like it wasn't anything.

I swallowed, not knowing what to say. Most of the drive passed quietly, with the road getting distant as though contained behind the curtain of a viewing cabinet. In reverse, the scenery changed back to what it was before.

"Did you manage to get in contact with Faith?" I asked Accha once we were on campus.

From the backseat, Rory patted my shoulder and departed. The robot seemed to weigh her down as she walked away. Gravel crunched on the stairs.

"I did."

"And?"

Accha went to put the car in reverse but hesitated, as though wondering whether I was getting out here or coming along to Jessamine's place. "It's not a good idea."

"Well, no." I wanted to do it myself, wanted to figure it out the way I should have the first time, and I wanted it to mean something. No amount of help would actually solve this. It was my fault I'd gotten here. Asking Faith felt like admitting that I couldn't do it, that I would never have been able to make such a complex machine on my own. It was the truth, after all. Without Accha, without Tanner, the idea, the concept, and even the dryer machine wouldn't have been possible. "But why?"

"Um." Accha bit her lip. "You know... when I figure out that you're cheating, I send an email to your dean, Dr. Pitre."

"Yeah."

"She's Faith." She spoke it so softly that it almost didn't register.

Oh. That was a problem. I couldn't ask the director for help if she was about to find out what I'd done. In some awful, warped way, this timeline was laughing at me. For trying to fix things. Some butterfly effect that was, where even though I was barely following my footsteps from the first time, that it all still ended like this.

"You're sure?" I didn't doubt that she was, but some reasonable doubt would be nice.

Accha nodded. "She gave me her real name when I told her who I was. I don't think it's a bluff."

With a groan, I sat back in my seat. My knees brushed the clutch. Overexposed white roved over the pathways as splotches covered the edges of my vision. My hands were starting to move about with nowhere to rest that felt right; they flitted from the upholstery to my knees and back again.

"Right." But it came out all tight and low, like I had to struggle with the word.

"This doesn't change anything," she said.

"I know. I'm not... going to let it change anything about what I do. It means that I'll have to find another way through this, and we don't have a lot of time left."

"What are you going to do?"

"Try to replicate the digital overlay that Tanner made. It's the only thing I haven't done."

Accha nodded. "So that's the key?"

"I don't know, maybe. It's what connects the two pieces—the dryer itself and the time. I can only assume that the reason fixing it didn't work is because the other side isn't in harmony, and I have no idea how to troubleshoot that."

"Huh." She lifted her hand to graze her fingers across my cheek. "You think it's more than a display."

"Yes. It does something to change the dryer machine into, well, a time machine. Tanner obviously figured out how to make that work, and I don't get how yet."

Her fingers traced my chin and shoulders. If nothing else, I didn't have to run from her. I leaned to kiss her. Every time her lips met mine, it was like we were in third year again, but at the same time, it was nothing like that at all. It had all of the safety without the distance that would eventually break us apart.

Her arms looped around my back. She tried to slide me onto her, but hit the console, popping it open. "Why do we keep doing this in cars?" Reaching for the passenger side, she nudged it back into place, trying to be gentle while the napkins inside bounced around.

"It's nice," I said. "I don't want to go inside, anyway."

She hummed. "Me neither." Her hands rested on my chest. "When you were at the seminar, were you trying to learn more physics so you could understand it?"

"Kind of."

"So yes, then."

I flushed a little. "Fine. You caught me. I've never understood a single thing going on in that class, and I had to take two physics credits to graduate."

Neither of which I paid attention during. Accha didn't point that out, though. "Do you think Tanner understood it?"

"He must have."

She shook her head, her hands trekking across my arms. Her fingers found mine. Gentle. So very Accha.

Students passed in groups to the cafeteria, and beside our car, a parking space freed up. The trees swayed on the pathways.

"In the same way that you understand it?" Her head tilted. "In the same way that I understand it?"

"He must have," I repeated, though it was more of a question this time.

"Trust me, that would be pretty hard. It's not easy. I'm not saying that it's impossible, but if you were trying to explain something to someone, how would you do it? You'd give examples, and try to... help them frame it in a way they'd understand."

"So... I'm not approaching it the right way."

"You're trying to understand it like a physicist. But you're not a physicist. You've got to find a way that makes sense to you. Not to Tanner. Not to me."

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair.

"An electron can be in two places at once," she said.

Of course, something like that made total sense to Tanner. I had to reframe it, but I didn't quite know where to start.

It didn't help that now I had the looming detonation of Parkland slowly ticking away, waiting to implode.

"I'm sorry we didn't get to have that date," I said.

"We can reschedule. Seven years from now sounds pretty nice to me."

My eyes flickered to meet hers. She squeezed my hands.

My heartbeat rushed to my ears. It was all of the reassurance I needed to hear. Like she was promising she wouldn't go anywhere. Even through the timelines. From here until the end of time. Until forever.

With a parting smile, I turned to the passenger side as a limousine peeled into the parking lot. The speed of its wheels kicked up a cloud of pebbles in its wake, and when it claimed the space next to our car, my mouth opened. But no words escaped.

I summon him, and he arrives.

Because Tanner was the only person it could have been, and there he was—all manicured in his suit and tie on a university campus.

Dread hit me in a tsunami.

Tanner sped to my window and knocked. If he wanted to talk to me, it meant nothing good. Especially when there were tears in his eyes.