I toweled my hair off by George's small stove while Adam went in the bedroom to scavenge for a dry shirt that might fit him. George stared out the window, shotgun in hand, in case any Russian soldiers came to investigate the source of the gunfire.

"I don't get it, George," I said through significantly warmer lips. "Why is any of this still here if there was never a portal?"

George seemed confused by my question for a moment, but then he nodded slowly to himself. "I'm sorry, Marina, I thought you understood how this works."

I shook my head in frustration. Did he mean that I had some basic principle wrong? The portal was never built, therefore the world beneath the lake...

Oh God. My mind caught up with George before he even finished talking.

"All you did was remove a door. But the world on the other side continued to exist."

"Of course," I agreed, cringing with anger at myself. How could I have been so naïve? This underlake reality wasn't caused by the portal—the portal was just a doorway into it. It was caused by something else, long before that. I didn't know what.

All this time, I'd been telling myself that I'd stopped the evil version of my mother and John and Alexei, and whoever the hell else was taking over here, from their ruthless quest for power. And that I had stopped the disease from spreading too. But I didn't stop any of those things.

I had just stopped them all from reaching me.

"When you and I buried that beaker in the sand," George continued, "you created another timeline—one in which our world down here and yours up there stayed separated, and as a result, one in which the version of your mother who raised you continued to exist above... with your brother.

"But in DW, creating a new timeline has no effect on any of the others. For the people down here, nothing has changed. In fact, it's been getting worse since I last saw you. Much worse."

I looked up and realized that Adam was in the doorway, wearing a shirt that was comically too tight for his broad chest. He had been listening with a sober look on his face.

"How did you get back down here?" I asked George.

The older man hesitated for a moment, but then shook his head sadly. "I crossed over before the solution completely dissolved in the sand. I knew this world needed me, to keep an eye on things. And I've been here ever since."

My heartbeat fluttered at the thought that he had allowed himself to be trapped here, just to make sure that his friends were safe.

Suddenly a rustling outside made George raise his hand, indicating that we should be quiet. "It's probably nothing," he said softly. "I'll go check it out. Stay here." He stood to leave, turning just before he made it to the door. "And, um, try to get along, all right?"

With the door closed behind him, Adam came fully into the room and sat down at the small dining table in front of George's half-eaten breakfast. He then leaned over and squeezed a little more water out of his pant legs.

An awkward silence filled the dense air between us as we both continued trying to get as dry as possible.

After a moment, Adam sat down near me in front of the stove, munching on a slice of bread. He must have noticed me swallowing down some spit when I saw it, and he silently handed it to me and went to get himself another.

We sat stiffly next to each other and ate our bread. Several minutes passed.

"Did you really save my life?" he finally asked.

I turned my head to him slowly. The yellowish remains of a fist-sized bruise still formed a halo around his left eye socket. I had to admit that he had been quite brave when facing off against Alexei—that he had upheld his part of the promise.

"Yes," I said, and he nodded silently, eating the last bite of bread.

"Then I owe you one."

"You don't owe me anything," I insisted. "We're even. But I have to ask you a question." I swallowed down hard, too afraid to give voice to the fear that had been paralyzing me since I realized Adam had those pictures from the beach. "You stole that vial of solution from the beaker my mother had, didn't you?"

"You know I did."

"Did you... did you change anything else while you were there?" My palms grew slick with the question, and my breath got trapped in my throat. The events of that night at the beach were so delicate, and I had already altered them once. If anything else had changed...

"No," he answered, not having any way of knowing why I seemed so nervous, but clearly seeing that I was. "No, you told me you buried the beaker in the sand. I waited until late at night, when everyone was gone. I carefully poured out a vial, just enough to make a portal but not so much to tip anyone off to my presence if they went looking for it. And then I left."

"That's it? Do you promise?"

He looked confused again, but his voice was soft when he answered. "I promise."

My body collapsed with relief. Everyone was okay. Robbie was fine. I could breathe again.

Finally, perhaps sensing that he had me in a vulnerable moment, he cheated his body in my direction, his eyes moving from the warm stove to me. "I thought, when I saw the surveillance photos—I thought they proved you were a spy for your mother."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because she's your mother."

"I hate her," I spat out, realizing as the words escaped me that they weren't true. Of course they weren't. I never hated my mother. I just hated who she let herself become.

Was that the same thing?

"Why didn't you just ask me?" I looked up into Adam's eyes, trying to engage him, to force him to be honest.

"Ask you if you're a spy? That wouldn't make you a very good spy, would it?"

I couldn't help but laugh at his logic. He did have a pretty good point.

"Where did you even get those photos?" I asked. "How do you even know about this world?"

"Ado gave them to me. About a year and a half ago, after you were here. He's hacked into every camera in this place. Told me to check you out, that he didn't trust you. I was going to ask Sage about you, but I didn't get a chance."

The look on my face must've told him that I had a million more questions.

He sighed, and seemed to be making a decision in that moment. A decision to trust me, perhaps? "I've been coming here for a few years. When I first came, looking for Jenny, George tipped me off about the lake portal."

"So you did know?"

"Of course I knew. But it had been so long, I just forgot... that you have to swim the other way." He shook his head in anger at himself.

"Easy mistake to make," I offered, remembering that I had almost drowned myself the last time I'd crossed over.

"I didn't find Jenny, obviously. But when I realized what was happening down here, I knew I had to help. I came several times. The last time I was here was when Ado gave me those pictures. I was supposed to check you out, see if you were working for Rain, but I—I blew it off."

"Why?"

"I thought I had a lead on Jenny. I was in between dimensions that night, in the Yesterday door, when suddenly something shifted. I could feel it more than see it."

My eyes grew wide as I listened.

"I hurried straight back here and I tried going through the lake portal again. I couldn't find it. I assumed I was in the wrong place. I kept diving down to try again."

My throat grew tight around the bread I had been chewing, and I looked around feebly for a glass of water.

"George was gone. I couldn't ask him. Finally I got so frustrated, I just asked the other Sage, the one in the hotel, 'What happened to the lake portal?'"

"And she didn't know what you were talking about," I nodded. "Because for her it never existed. Only those of us who were between dimensions at the time it was destroyed will remember it."

"The world around me had shifted to the new timeline you created, and there was no way to get back. You cut me off my from my friends for a year and a half."

"How do I know you're not the spy?" I asked, remembering that just a few minutes ago, I was sure he was pure evil.

Adam looked at me for several seconds, his mind landing on a decision. Finally, he rolled up his left sleeve and turned his hand over to show me something I hadn't seen in a long time—something I never thought I'd see again.

It was three dime-sized scars, running in parallel lines next to the protruding tendons of his wrist.

"I'm part of it," he confessed.

The air forced its way into my lungs. How did I not know that? Sage had never mentioned him.

"When I saw you didn't have your scars," he continued, "I just assumed..."

"That I wasn't part of it?" I finished his thought, using the phrase that Caryn and the other members of Sage's little gang had coined to show they were working against my mother's corrupt government.

"The resistance was making real progress. We had a plan...to take down President Koenig. We were about to put it into effect."

"But you were locked out," I nodded, feeling as though I was marooned in the middle of a rough sea.

Adam broke away, going to check on his damp shoes by the front door.

"And Jenny?" I asked, my voice somehow diminished with hurt pride and regret. "Was any of that real?"

He stared at his shoes for a moment, seeming to be more interested in them than in anything I was saying. But then he sighed. "It was all real," he confessed. "At one time."

"Oh."

The tone of his voice let me know that "one time" was probably quite a while ago now.

"You were on the beach at the same time as her. You must have seen her?"

"I did."

"And you didn't talk to her?"

"I hid until she was gone."

My mind struggled to make sense of this. All this guy ever talked about was how desperate he was to see Jenny again. Last night, he was within shouting distance of her and he hid until she was gone? "Why?"

"Because, Marina," he smiled up at me, irritated that I was scratching at an old wound. "I didn't want to see her." He sighed, dropping his drenched shoes and standing to face me. His tone was softer when he started speaking again, like he was reliving something painful and hard to talk about. "I met Jenny when I was seventeen. We were together for almost three years, sneaking behind Dave's back the whole time, and then..."

The words seemed to be stuck in his throat, but I nodded encouragingly for him to continue.

"I ditched her. Didn't tell her why, I just..."

"Ghosted her," I finished the sentence for him.

"I told you, it wasn't healthy. After a year without her, I was losing my mind. I didn't know how to function. I went back in and found her. We were both twenty, way too young, but I asked her to marry me."

I cleared my throat, the thought of marrying that young utterly bizarre to me, but I tried to hide it behind a friendly nod.

"She said she wasn't ready. She needed time to forgive me. And so I thought..." he paused, laughing bitterly at himself, "hey, I've got a solution for that."

"The portals."

"I just went in and found her three years down the line, when she was twenty-three. And I said..." again, he chuckled at himself with a sad air of regret, "'You ready now?' She laughed and said yes. She was supposed to meet me at city hall a week later. She never showed."

I blinked, embarrassed now that he was sharing so many personal details. But I was also anxious to hear more.

"When she didn't meet me, I assumed she was trapped in DW somewhere. That she needed my help. I spent three years looking for her." He shook his head, the humor he had been finding in his story seeping away. "Some hero."

I thought about the pictures of Jenny in my mom's album—her easy smile, her flouncy hair. She didn't seem trapped to me.

"You said those pictures on the beach were from twelve years ago?" he continued. "So she was twenty-six." He shook his head, still mad at himself for what he must have now realized: Jenny wasn't trapped anywhere. "I wasted three years of my life looking for her. And all that time..."

He let the words float away from him, drifting off somewhere into the air between us. He didn't need to say it: All that time, Jenny had been with Dave.

I knew that you would understand what it's like... he had said to me. Being this alone.

And I did understand. I understood all too well.

"It's not about her now. It's about this world..." he looked around him at George's small cabin, at the dark and ominous reality that lurked outside these deceptively charming walls. "This world that I think she created somehow... the night she went into DW and never came back out."

My eyes must have revealed my shock. "You think Jenny's responsible for this?"

"I do. She was always messing with the portals, taking too many risks."

This was something I had never expected. I always thought it was my mother who had made this dark reality come true—her insatiable need to control everything, her incredibly selfish nature. But could it be that it was all Jenny's fault after all?

He sighed, chewing on his lower lip for a second before settling on a thought. "I should probably admit something. The night I helped you get back to that beach..."

"What about it?"

"I suspected that that's where you were going to—the night you stopped the portal from being built. And my original plan had been to follow you to the beach and stop you. Make sure the portal did get built so I could get in. But then Alexei got a lucky punch in and knocked me out."

"No," I stuttered, "no, no, Adam, you can't do that. Please, you can never do that." I grew more desperate the more I talked, my voice seeping out of me like lava. "Please, I beg you, you can't go back to that night again. It's a miracle you didn't disturb anything when you stole that vial of solution."

He looked surprised, his arms folded over his muscular chest, clearly thinking I was still trying to manipulate him in some way.

"That night is too important. You can't change anything that happened on that beach." I was on my knees now, not caring how pathetic it might seem.

"What are you doing? Stand up."

"Promise me, Adam."

"Why? Because you'll lose your boyfriend again?"

"No," I pleaded, "it's... it's my brother." I steadied my breath, feeling the emotions threatening to overtake me. "I saved my brother that night. In the old timeline, he died at fourteen. In this one he's alive. He lives in Boston. I'm..." the tears were forming in my eyes, but I shook my head, knowing I had to convince Adam to trust me or he could ruin everything. "I'm supposed to go live with him in the fall. Please, Adam. I'll help you however I can if you just promise me. You said you owe me your life."

"Stand up," he said softly, his hands now under my elbows as he guided me to my feet.

"Do you promise me?"

"I do," he answered, the softness back in his voice and his eyes. "I promise. I won't go back to that night."

I nodded, calming myself again. It was okay. He wasn't going to hurt Robbie. That was all that had ever mattered to me.

George came back into the cabin then, and leaned his shotgun against the wall.

Caught in this awkward moment, Adam and I broke apart. I turned away to collect myself while Adam returned his attention to his shoes.

"Haven't you two killed each other yet?" George asked.

"Not yet," Adam replied, his voice betraying no hint of the spectacle I had just made of myself. Instead, he acted completely casual, trying to pry his damp shoes back onto his feet, but they wouldn't fit as the leather had shrunk.

George's eyes fell on the half-devoured loaf of bread he had left on the table, then on me. With a weariness that he always seemed to possess—that I had noticed in him the very first time I had seen him in the diner back home—George plopped himself down at that table in front of his depleted breakfast.

"What do you want to do, Adam?" he asked.

He wasn't talking to me, but I knew what my answer was.

"We need to go to Sage," I said.

Adam seemed shocked, his eyebrows squinting together in my direction. "Why?"

I smiled at him, an effort at reconciliation. Of redemption, perhaps. "So I can get my scars."

Without waiting for a response, I leaned down by Adam and grabbed my own wet shoes. All the poor people here were always barefoot anyway. So he and I should both fit right in.