The first part of our problem was solved for us: the MP escorted us in a jeep back to Fort Pryman Shard for questioning by a senior official. "Just a formality," he insisted as the jeep jostled its way down the pockmarked road between the hospital and the fort. "You should be cleared for leave after a few routine questions."

Adam nodded and I offered a halfhearted smile. Only the slightest brush of Adam's hand against my thigh in the back of the jeep informed me that he was thinking the same thing I was: At least we'll be on the grounds.

Now we just had to get down to the new portals somehow.

The same guard who had flirted with me in the morning was still on duty, and I saw a quizzical look pass over his bright freckled face when he noticed me in the back of the car while waving us in. Adam had yet to see the school in this condition, of course, and the shock was evident in the way his mouth fell open slightly while looking out the window.

"We'll be in here," the guard called over his shoulder, pulling into a parking spot at the building called Y12. It was the exact entrance I had used earlier, which relieved me if only because it meant I would be in a place that was somehow familiar. Yet once inside, the click-clacking of the typewriters filling the halls seemed somehow incongruous with the dramatic events of the past few hours. It was as though nothing here had changed at all.

Of course, for the secretaries behind the desks, nothing had changed. The world was exactly as it had been this morning for them: America on the brink of winning the worst war in world history; Germany on the brink of defeat. They were part of a winning team, these secretaries, and you could hear it in the decisiveness of their undulating fingers.

We really had succeeded, Adam and I. Alexei didn't have the plutonium; the Russians wouldn't get the bomb.

Everything in this reality would now continue on the same path as it had in the one I grew up in, the one where America got the bomb first, where we then dropped the bombs on Japan. And while I knew it was a good thing that the world under the lake had been prevented, I couldn't help but feel that it was the bitterest victory of all.

The bombs would still fall. The people would still die. What had we really accomplished?

The officer who had been escorting us dropped us in one of the offices—a clean, nondescript room painted in the same shade of greenish beige as the rest of the building. It could have been anyplace, and I guess that was the idea. It looked innocent and boring. It didn't look like what it really was: a factory. A factory that only made one thing.

"He'll be in in just a minute," the officer informed us, depositing us in our chairs like we were packages he had to deliver before he could get back to work. He left the room, and the knob clicked behind him as he locked us in.

We didn't speak for a moment, but a glance at Adam revealed a sea of thoughts overtaking his brain.

"Adam?"

"Yeah."

"How many people die in Japan?"

"Don't think about that."

"I have to."

He nodded, taking in a deep breath and slowly letting it out. "A lot."

"Thousands?"

"Over a hundred thousand. Two hundred with the radiation poisoning."

The words floated from his mouth and hung over my head. They expanded into the room like helium, filling every crevice.

My body began to shake beneath me, and before I knew it I was sobbing. "We didn't stop it."

"We weren't supposed to stop it. They were going to die anyway, Marina."

"No, we should have stopped it," I insisted through my tears, my throat clutching around the words.

"Then the war wouldn't have ended at all. And millions more would have died."

"You don't know that. Maybe there was another way."

"Don't, Marina. Please."

I was still shaking, my head buried in my hands. I could feel Adam crouching in front of me, his hands on my knees. He waited patiently for me to finish. "We did the only thing we could do," he whispered. "We stopped the Russians from getting it. We saved Sage and Caryn and even that jerk Ado. Their world will be the same as ours now."

But I could only shake my head. I was happy our friends' lives would be better, happy that the dark world under the lake could never take over ours again. But what difference did any of that make to the people of Japan? What difference did it make if we didn't even save any lives?

We'd just moved pieces around the chessboard. The outcome of the game would always be the same.

I had handed that canister to Dr. Kleiner, glad to be rid of it, knowing that it was on its way to New Mexico. And all I had felt in that moment was relief because handing it off meant it wasn't my problem anymore.

Despite what Adam might have believed about my education, I did remember certain things from history classes over the years. I remembered what happened in New Mexico: the mushroom clouds. The Day After Tomorrow. Mannequins melting in their chairs.

And Dr. Oppenheimer, on seeing what he had done, thought of an ancient Sanskrit text. I couldn't remember how it went.

"What did Dr. Oppenheimer say about seeing the bomb for the first time?"

Adam bowed his head low before me, his face falling in my lap. When he looked up at me again, his lip was quivering. "I am become death," he answered. "Destroyer of worlds."

I gulped down an unsteady breath, trying to calm myself. But I couldn't find any rhythm to it. "Are we good people, Adam?"

He sighed, heavy and long, then leaned up a kissed me tenderly on the lips. He stood and started pacing without answering me. There was nothing more to say.

"I want to go home," I whispered. And hearing the words escape my lips solidified them in my brain. "I want to go home. I miss my dad. I miss my brother."

"We will."

"Now."

He rolled his head as he walked, shaking off his frustration. Then he padded over to the door and tried the handle, even though we both knew it was locked. Looking futilely around the room, he seemed to be seeking something—anything—that could get us out of this.

"Is anyone out in the hall?" I asked.

"Just a cleaning lady."

My head popped up at the words. "What does she look like?"

He turned back to me with a questioning face, but before he could say anything, I stood to meet him at the door and looked out of the little window. A smile cracked over my lips when I saw her. I wiped the tears off my cheeks.

"Lorena!" I called through the door. She didn't hear me at first, so I called again. Finally she looked up.

"Marina?"

I nodded. "Ayúdanos, Lorena. Por favor."

***

The inside of the Lorena's cleaning cart was definitely not big enough for two people, and yet it was our only option if we wanted to have any chance of making it down to the portals. And so, after much pleading and cajoling in my pathetically broken Spanish, Lorena agreed to take pity on us. She used her master key to get us out of the office and practically shoved us into her cart like overstuffed turkeys into a miniature oven. The metal doors wouldn't close completely, and so Adam had to maneuver the hand that wasn't crammed into my ribcage around the handle, pulling it as close as possible to our hopelessly entangled bodies.

I only prayed that nobody saw his fingers jutting out around the edge of the door as Lorena took us down the freight elevator and through a hallway towards the X10 building.

"Dime otra vez," she asked now through the shield of cleaning supplies and rags that separated us as she pushed our cart down the long corridor leading to the other building, "¿por qué tienen que regresar a este edificio?"

"What is she saying?" Adam whispered.

"She wants to know why we're going back to the other building."

"Tell her you forgot something important down there."

"Dejé algo importante."

"¿Y qué? No vale el riesgo. Ustedes deben irse mientras ya se pueden."

Adam grunted into my hair. "What's she saying now?"

"She says it's not worth the risk to go back."

"¿Y qué dejaste?" she asked now.

I had to think of an answer quickly, something that would have been worth going back for. "Mi anillo," I said, the long-lost Spanish words starting to drift back to my tongue now that I was using them again. I remembered my abuela in the kitchen, frying tortillas. The words in my mouth tasted like her cooking oil. She had a ring on her finger, a small diamond. The only thing my grandfather had left her. She would twirl it around her finger sometimes and talk about him."Mi sortija."

"What did you tell her?" Adam asked.

"Nothing," I dismissed him. "Just nonsense so she'll take us there."

"I thought you didn't speak Spanish," he teased. But I clenched my mouth shut, a cramp forming in my right leg and something jutting into my other thigh. It was all I could do not to leap out of the cart from the mixture of pain and claustrophobia before we could even get there.

Finally, we came to a stop.

"You can't go in there," a man said.

"Ellos me enviaron para limpiar," Lorena explained.

"No go in," the man repeated in painfully slow speech. "Big disaster. Mess."

"Sí, hay un lío. Y por eso voy a limpiar."

"Oh boy," the man muttered.

Lorena simply sighed, then spoke back to the man in an equally slow cadence. "I clean. Clean mess."

"Oh, I see," the man now returned. "They sent you?"

"They send. I clean."

"Mmm."

I couldn't tell if the man was believing her story, or simply didn't want to deal with the hassle of finding someone to translate, but before I knew it, the cart was rolling again, and whatever was stabbing my thigh doubled down on its determination to pierce into muscle.

Clenching my lips together, I somehow managed to keep the painful grunt from escaping. And before I knew it, Lorena was opening the little door to the cart. Adam and I practically fell out onto the floor, toppling all over each other.

Looking up, I could see that we were shielded from view of any potential onlookers by a large green Army tent. The inside of it was illuminated by two military-grade camping lanterns, hooked onto carabiners latched onto the metal support post at the top of the tent's A frame.

At our feet, three parallel three-foot-wide holes had burned their way into the ground like molten lava. They still glowed pink with ooze.

Lorena called from outside the tent flap, "Apúrense. Les espero aquí."

"We're hurrying," I whispered in English, forgetting anything but the abject fear of knowing that the only way home was to chance jumping into the center hole.

Adam took my hand, and I could feel the sweat pooling in his palm. He was just as nervous as I was.

"The portal I made under the lake worked immediately," he assured me.

"I know."

"So this one will too."

His voice was unsteady. Was he trying to convince me or himself?

"What if it doesn't take us home?"

"When you go to another time period, the Today door always leads home. So long as you have the coin."

"Do you have the coin?"

He reached his other hand into his pocket, pulling out what I assumed to be the last of the magical of supply of flattened pennies he had kept in there.

"I'm scared, Adam."

"It'll work," he whispered.

"I'm so scared. What if—"

But I never got to finish the sentence. Adam squeezed my body to his, and together, we leaped.

****

Keep reading for chapter 46!