In a nearby alternate universe, Slade doesn’t survive the military experiments.
Wintergreen and Adeline truly believed he might recover—he’d shown signs of awareness, of improvement. On the last day, he weakly insisted on holding both their hands. Closing his eyes, he murmured that he wished he could have seen Grant grow up.
He never got that chance.
Wintergreen and Adeline are inconsolable, their grief quiet and suffocating. Everyone calls it a tragic accident. Who could have predicted this outcome? Just a truth serum.
They’re too shattered to hear the other whispers circulating through the halls of the military hospital.
Until one day, they do.
The doctors are surprised Slade lasted as long as he did. Until now, every other test subject died instantly.
Wintergreen and Adeline launch a crusade against the army’s intelligence services. In the moment, it’s the only thing that still makes sense.
Getting together feels like an insult to Slade’s memory—betraying the ghost that haunts and binds them. And yet, there are slip-ups. Often. Too often.
When they wake pressed against each other’s damp, bare skin in the chill of a bunker, neither of them can say whether this attraction existed before Slade’s death—no, his murder—or if they’re just trying to replace him in each other.
Wintergreen will never have to confess that he slept with Slade while he was still alive. Adeline notices immediately, the first time they sleep together, in a secured hotel room.
Joey is never born. Grant grows up on the road, flagged as a future criminal—a terrorist before he’s even old enough to tie his shoes. It never bothers him. He wants to avenge the man he barely remembers. He thinks it’s love. Filial duty.
In truth, it’s because it’s all his mother and his uncle have ever talked about, for as long as he can remember.
Wintergreen and Adeline can’t dissuade him.
Grant dies at nineteen anyway.
