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I lean against the side of the lifeguard tower, scanning the beach around me It’s pitch-black except for the faint sliver of thehere is in black and white—the sand, the water, the sky, the few stars visible over the light of the city The only thing with any color is the Ferris wheel in the distance

After so quickly over the sand As it gets closer I make out the shape of a wo this has to end here, tonight I wish I had a weapon or soun of e She’s probably never been in a real fight before though My best chance is to get her to confess, distract her, and then attack

When she’s only a few feet away, she raises the gun with a gloved hand “Hello, Elena”

I don’t see any regret or hesitation in her eyes Her hand is steady as she aims at me And that certainty, that confidence scareselse I trusted her We all did, and now she’s ai deal How could she lie to our faces, both now and in the future? How could she swear she would help us and then kill us all?

“You don’t see you knehen you suggested the beach Did you see that in the future?”

I step back quickly,in the sand Suddenly I doubt ainst a woet her to talk

“You lied to us all along, both you and your future self,” I say “Our entire trip to the future was set up just so you could get the cure, wasn’t it?”

“That’s true Dr Kapur did want to use teenagers, but I had to convince Aether to go along with it so I could recruit Ada the cure, and I didn’t have time to send multiple teams And I chose the rest of you to assist hi You, in particular, were chosen to protect Ada That’s why I gave you a gun”

All this tiht I was chosen for my memory, but that was another lie I flash back to the first tiht and I said, “No, but I will if I have to’’ I re those words

And on that first day at the Aether facility, they’d left the five of us alone, probably to see e did and hoe interacted Only after I defended Ada about the project Even

I glance around, looking for help or a way out I have to keep her talking “And you sent us thirty years into the future instead of ten, didn’t you?”

“I had to Adam discovered the cure ten years from now, but it was still brand-new and untested and not available to the public yet I wasn’t sure how many years it would take for it to be safe to use and widely available, so I secretly set the accelerator back to its previous setting I figured in thirty years it should be easy for Adaet the cure”

“But why kill us?” I ask, inching closer to her “You got your cure!”

She sighs, and I hear the first hint of emotion in her voice “I never planned for any of this to happen, truly Trent stole my doses of the cure, and when I went to talk to him, he said he didn’t have them But then he attacked me and I shot him It was an accident, I swear After that…well, I had to deal with the others too”

“You killed them,” I spit out “They trusted you, and you killed thehter…she only has weeks left to live Maybe days Do you knohat it’s like, watching your four-year-old child wither away in a hospital bed, and there’s nothing you can do? The cure was the only way to save her life!”

“But you have the cure noon’t tell anyone about this,” I lie as the wind twists my hair behind me “You don’t need to do this!”