Page 1 of The Scandal You Started
Prologue
Rayna
You’re not going to remember me.
That guilt-wrapped thought swirled through Rayna’s belly as her young Study, Poppy, squeezed her arms tightly around Rayna, uttering a flurry of earnest words.
“I’ll nev’r forget ya, ma’am. Everythin’ ya done for me, what ya taught me, I’ll always rememb’r. An’ when I open ma own bakery, your name will be on ev’ry wall, thanking ya.”
But Poppy wasn’t going to remember Rayna.
Not her name, nor the memories they’d made living, learning, and working together. Poppy would return to 602 PR on the exact day she’d originally left with no recollection of the future she’d seen.
Rayna forced out a huff of laughter and held Poppy in the same tight manner. “I’ll never forget you either, Poppy,” she said. “And I know your bakery’s going to be amazing. Don’t ever let anyone convince you otherwise.”
For the past two months, Rayna had watched twenty-year-old Poppy blossom from a shy, hesitant country girl into a confident, hopeful ray of sunshine with many ambitions and plans for her life. It sucked that without her memories of that time, there was no guarantee Poppy’s life would change from how history had already dictated it.
But that was the way the Past Only Time Machineproject—or POTeM for short—worked.
“Nev’r. Nev’r, nev’r, nev’r,” the young girl said and smacked a kiss to Rayna’s cheek.
A grin played on Rayna’s lips. “Good.”
As they pulled away, a man approached them, his footsteps clinking against the metal flooring of the reinforced room the POTeM was fitted in.
“Poppy,” Victor Johnson, one of the head scientists of the lab, said. He offered the girl a soft, pursed-lip smile as he stopped beside them. “We’re ready for you now.”
Poppy glanced from Victor back to Rayna and nodded. “I’m ready too.”
“I’ll be up in the gallery watching,” Rayna said, nodding her head to the right.
Poppy gleamed. “Goo’bye.”
“Bye, Poppy.”
Poppy seemed to shrink in size as she slipped a few steps back and closer to Victor’s tall, slim frame. He gripped a tablet in one palm and offered the opposite lab-coat-clad arm for Poppy to take, before he led her towards the elevated circular platform in the middle of the bustling room. Izzy, the red-haired historian accompanying Poppy back, was already waiting atop it, two scientists going through last-minute checks with her.
Metal sheets covered the four walls, ceiling, and floor of the room with bright spotlights lighting up each and every corner. Two large, curved consoles full of buttons, screens, and displayed data horseshoed the platform with wires taped to the floor coming out from the base. Some were attached to the consoles and others to the big nodes on the back wall. All around them, scientists and assistant scientists worked through the usual procedures and checks before a return journey, tapping on screens and keyboards with speedy fingers.
Once Poppy was standing on the platform alongside Izzy, Rayna made her way up the stairs in the bottom right corner that led up to the gallery. She pushed the handle of the door at the top and stepped inside, only to find someone sitting on one of the two benches occupying the square space already.
“I thought you said you were gonna leave,” Rayna said, shutting the door behind her.
George Aynsley, her childhood friend, adopted brother, and fellow historian, shrugged his thick shoulders. “It didn’t feel right not to watch her go,” he said, his mouth downturned and his chocolate-brown eyes missing their boyish shine.
With his wavy hair sitting messily atop his head, the freckles on his nose, and softer edges of his face, he looked like a moping puppy who’d been abandoned.
“George,” Rayna said softly, teasingly, as she approached the bench he was sitting on. She plopped down beside him. “We go through this every time with every Study.”
“I know,” he grumbled. “Doesn’t make it any easier, though.”
“I know. But she’s going back to where she’s meant to be.”
He hummed in absent acknowledgement, and she pressed her arm to his, offering him a little comfort.
A solemn quiet fell around them as they watched Poppy and Izzy being handed a pair of black goggles each to put on. Izzy also wore a band around her head, protecting her from the same energy that would take Poppy’s most recent memories.
“Countdown soon to initiate,” one of the scientists said into the mic on the furthest console. “Please move to your stations and put on your goggles.”
