Amalia was already dressed when I entered her room, sitting primly on the end of the bed in another one of those flowing silk tunics. The room was bigger than mine, built into a corner of the house with a 180-degree view of a forest through floor-to-ceiling windows. There were no curtains, nothing to obscure their view of any deer or birds that might come to visit. The morning sun was bursting through those trees in long streaks that hit my face.

My aunt chuckled when she saw me staring at it, my jaw hanging open slightly. Then again, she'd been smiling and laughing quite a bit since last night, so happy here that she couldn't help herself. A stack of novels sat by her bed, and flowing green vines dripped out of macrame plant-holders in nearly every corner.

"Do you like it?" she asked.

"It's beautiful," I admitted. "You must be very happy here."

She nodded, but a hint of guilt overtook her face. "I'm sorry about this," she said, pointing to the sensor at my temple.

"Are you?"

"Yes. I can only imagine what you're thinking about me now."

"I'm not thinking about you at all," I said. And it was the truth—a thought which made me shake my head in frustration. Of course it was the truth. I had no choice now but to tell the truth. Was it the device making me say it? Or myself? Would I spend the rest of my life never knowing the difference?

I had to get this thing out of my head. Before it was too late.

Of course, I wouldn't say any of that to Amalia. Instead, I just wondered how Elaheh had paid for all this. I knew I could ask; Amalia would have to tell me. But I already suspected the answer. There were many ways to cheat the system with time travel. My mother's boyfriend John had done it, too, in the world beneath the lake. All it takes is a couple winning lottery numbers or...

Or knowing about an important invention before it goes public.

I shook away the thought, reminding myself to focus on the problem at hand. It was none of my concern how they'd done it. They would have to live with their own consciences. "You know," I said instead, "you didn't have to trick me. I would have come anyway if you'd told me Brady needed me."

"I didn't mean it as a trick," she said. "I just left clues vague enough that only you would know to follow them. We can't have anyone else coming through the door."

A pulsating sensation gripped the side of my head, and I swear my mouth opened of its own will. I had to clamp it shut. I almost told her about Adam. It took a concerted effort to train my thoughts onto something else.

"Was there something you wanted to say?" Amalia asked, standing now. She had a knowing smile on her face, like she had seen me flinch and realized I was hiding something. But I would never tell her what, even if I had to tape my mouth shut.

Adam was out there somewhere.

And I was going to find him.

"Knock knock," came Elaheh's voice from the doorway. She poked her head in. "It's almost seven, love."

"Right," Amalia said with a smile before turning back to me. "Come on, then, Marina. Let me show you what we've built."

*

In the light of day, the forest looked even more beautiful. As my aunt and I walked down the long pathway that had led me to their house the night before, I could see that all the other little houses, tucked away behind the trees, were springing to life. The chimneys emitted small plumes of white smoke, the smell of coffee and cooking butter intermingled with the sap from the trees, and the children were somewhere out there too—bursts of color and laughter that flashed momentarily in the distance.

"We've been building this for a long time," Amalia said, her voice so low and earthy she sounded almost like my mother. They both had a tendency to slip into abuela's Mexican accent from time to time. But then they would catch themselves, and the accent would disappear. "There's a school, a farm. A self-sufficient society."

I wasn't really listening. Instead, my eyes were pointing up at the canopy of the trees—the way the morning sunlight streamed through them, the kinds of birds that hopped from branch to branch, their blue wings occasionally jostling a leaf that would fall onto our path.

"If you stay, you would be given a very important job. You could teach science, or work on the energy grid. It's all solar but we've been experimenting with geothermal."

I snapped back to attention as her words worked their way into my now plugged-in brain. "Wait, what?"

"I said, if you stay—"

"I'm not staying."

"Okay."

I stopped walking, a cold fear clenching my spine into place. "Amalia, look at me."

Her hands were doing that clenching thing again—that thing that everybody here seemed to do when they were wrestling with something. Or when they were trying to override the machinery in their brains. But she finally did look at me, a flash of sympathy in her large brown eyes.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm just saying you could stay now. You've got an ICD, and you'd be an asset to the community—"

"I'm going home, Amalia. I'm leaving today."

She only smiled. "That's what I said at first. I swear Elaheh had to ask me a dozen times before I said yes."

"I'm not you. I don't want to live here. I want to go home. My brother's waiting for me."

"Robbie could come, too, of course. I would never leave him behind. And Piper. And if they have kids, they could be raised right here." Her eyes scanned left to right as she said all this, her voice rapid. It was like she was reading off a prepared text. Like she had been planning to say all this forever.

Suddenly, one of those blue birds overhead started whelping—a sustained and plaintive cry like a siren. And I gripped the sensor in my head, feeling its whirring energy pulse into my brain. I'd heard that song before. When?

"Nineteen forties," I muttered.

"What's that?"

"I was here. I was in these woods. With Adam. And I biked here when I was little. And Alexei's house was where your house is. These are my woods." The words all poured out of me like water before I could stop them. I crouched down, grabbing handfuls of dirt into my palms and then letting them sift out again.

"It's okay," Amalia said. "It's just your ICD. You'll get used to it. At first every thought just bleeds out, but you learn to control it." She smiled, a gentle hand on my back.

"No," I insisted, shaking my head. "I'm going home."

"Marina," my aunt said, drawing out my name like it was a sad song. "You are home."

I pushed her hand off of me and started running. All those years of biking and swimming had given me strong thighs, at least, and I was going to use them now. I could hear Amalia calling after me, and even feel that she was trying to keep up for a bit. But there was no way she could outrun me, and after a minute I had left her far behind.

I ran with all my might, until I could no longer smell or see any evidence of those houses in the woods. I was deep in the forest now, wondering how long it would be before I reached my town. There were no landmarks to guide me; the path I was on seemed to be new and I didn't recognize any of the cutoffs or tree stumps that would have been so familiar to me once.

But I knew that I had been right—this was my own forest, the one that bordered my home town. The one I had spent countless hours in throughout my life. Which meant Amalia and Elaheh had too.

Of course. Home. It had been the word etched into the sign on Amalia's portal. She had practically told me. Why didn't I know it immediately?

I would get out of here and find Adam. Then we could go back through the portal in the woods together. Brady didn't need me anymore, apparently. Elaheh had already "downloaded" any information she might have needed from me. So I would have to go now, today, before they could do whatever else they were planning to do with me.

According to Elaheh, Adam must have landed somewhere "outside of the neighborhood." So maybe he was in town. Even though I didn't know the path, I knew the light. The rising sun was behind me now, low in the sky. So I was heading west. If I just kept going...

But the thought was hurled out of my head before I could take another step. A great force smashed into me, knocking me over. Or, rather, I smashed into it.

I grabbed my forehead, still stinging from the impact. My right hand had hit it as well, and there was a shooting pain in my index finger. I sat on the ground, inhaling sharply from the shock, and massaging my head with my good hand. My breath was coming in short bursts, largely from the exertion of running.

"What the hell?" I said to no one.

My eyes whipped around me. There was nothing around me but forest. Had I been so distracted that I ran into a tree?

No, I was in the middle of the path.

"What the..." I repeated, my mouth going dry before I could finish the question.

It took me a moment of peering at the view in front of me before I noticed what was strange about it. It just looked like forest at first. I stood up tentatively, guarding my injured hand against my chest. There was something in front me. Something...not right.

I reached out my other hand, slowly, fingers splayed, shaking. What the hell was I looking at?

In front of me, the forest suddenly...twitched.

There was a wall. A wall made of forest. No, a screen—a screen that projected the forest. My hand fell flat against it, and the image briefly blurred around the edges of my fingers, like the entire thing was just a huge plasma television. I stepped to the right, my hand trailing along on the screen. But the farther I went, the more screen I felt.

It must end somewhere. I kept walking.

I ran my fingers down and up, my head turning to the side, trying to find the end. Then I looked up. I saw only sky. Birds. The canopy of trees.

There was no end.

It was a dome.

And I was trapped inside.

"I didn't get a chance to explain it," Amalia said from behind me. I whipped around to face her. Elaheh was standing next to her, out of breath. They had run to find me. She rested a hand on Amalia's arm, as though trying to steady herself.

"Let me out of here," I insisted, my heart racing, skipping a couple beats along the way. "Let me out now. I want to go home."

But Amalia only sighed. "I told you, Marina," she said, grabbing Elaheh's hand and squeezing it. "You are home."

***

I want to thank everyone again for being early readers! I LOVE reading your thoughts and comments (and predictions, of course) so much. XO, Rebecca