“I’m still married.”

“That didn’t stop him.” There was a part of her that wanted him to talk her into it. To keep pushing. To not stop. “Remember how he made you feel? What was it you said to me, Theresa? Your love for him always burned at a hotter temperature.”

“I’ve seen him change in the last month. I’ve seen glimmers of—”

“Glimmers? Is that all you felt from me? Glimmers?”

She shook her head.

“I love you with everything I have. Nothing held back. No bets hedged. All in. Every second of every day.”

Off in the distance, a scream ripped through the forest.

An abby.

High-pitched. Delicate. Bloodcurdling.

Hassler staggered back from her, and she could see the intensity hardening across his brow.

“Is it—”

“I don’t think it’s inside the fence,” he said.

“Let’s get out of here anyway,” she said.

She buttoned up, zipped up.

They started back toward town.

Her body was humming and her head was spinning.

They reached the road and walked down the double yellow line.

Buildings appeared in the distance.

In silence, they headed into Wayward Pines.

She felt reckless but she went on with him.

At the intersection of Sixth and Main, Hassler said, “Can we go see it together?”

“Sure.”

They walked down the sidewalk of their neighborhood.

No one out.

The houses empty and dark.

Everything looked cold and gray and void of life.

“Doesn’t smell like us in here anymore,” he said as they stood at the foot of the stairs in what had once been their yellow Victorian.

He moved into the kitchen, through the dining room, and back out into the hallway.

“I can’t imagine how difficult this is for you, Theresa.”

“You have no idea.”

Hassler emerged out of the shadow of the hall, and when he reached her he went down on one knee.

“I think this is how it’s done, right?” he asked.

“What are you doing, Adam?”

He took her hand.

His were rough, not the hands she remembered. They’d become wiry and hard as steel, and there was dirt from beyond the fence embedded so deep underneath his fingernails she couldn’t imagine it ever washing away.

“Be with me, Theresa, whatever that means in this new world we’re living in.”

Tears dripped off her chin onto the floor.

Her voice trembled.

She said, “I’m already—”

“I know you’re married, I know Ethan’s here, but I don’t give a shit and you shouldn’t either. Life is too hard and too short not to be with the one you love. So choose me.”

IX

ETHAN

Francis Leven lived in a stand-alone structure in a far corner of the ark, built into an overhang in the rock wall. Ethan’s keycard didn’t work on the reader, so he banged his fist against the steel door instead.

“Mr. Leven!”

After a moment, the lock retracted.

The door cracked open.

The man who answered stood barely five feet tall, and he was dressed in a bathrobe, which filth and time had degraded to something less than white. Forty-five or fifty, Ethan guessed, although Leven’s advanced state of dishevelment made that approximation iffy. His dishwater hair was shoulder-length and shiny with grease, and through large blue eyes, he regarded Ethan with unveiled suspicion that bordered on malice.

“What do you want?” Leven asked.

“I need to talk to you.”

“I’m busy. Another time.”

Leven tried to shut the door, but Ethan shoved it open hard and forced his way inside.

Candy bar wrappers littered the floor and the air carried a moist, moldy scent, like the living space of a sixteen-year-old boy, but spiked with the caustic odor of stale coffee.

The sole illumination came from recessed lighting in the ceiling and the glow of the giant LED displays that covered almost every square foot of wall space. Ethan stared at the one closest to him, which showed a digital pie chart. At a glance, the chart appeared to reflect the atmospheric breakdown of the superstructure’s air content.

He didn’t know what to make of all the screens.

They showed a seemingly incomprehensible array of data.

—Sets of temperature gradients in Kelvin.

—A digital representation of what Ethan assumed were the one thousand suspension chambers.

—Vital stats on the two hundred fifty people still warm and breathing on the planet.

—Drone footage.

—A full biometric readout on the female abby in captivity.

It was like the surveillance center on steroids.

“I would like for you to leave,” Leven said. “No one bothers me here.”

“Pilcher’s finished. In case you didn’t get the memo, you work for me now.”

“That’s debatable.”

“What is this place?”

Leven glared him down through a thick pair of glasses.

Stubborn. Resisting.

Ethan said, “I’m not leaving.”

“I monitor the systems that keep the superstructure and Wayward Pines functioning. We call it mission control.”

“Which systems?”

“All of them. Electrical. Hull. Filtration. Surveillance. Suspension. Ventilation. The reactor underneath us that powers everything.”

Ethan moved deeper into the nerve center.

“And it’s just you responsible for all of this?”

Leven let slip a smirk. “I have minions. You know, in the event I’m hit by the proverbial bus.”

Ethan smiled, detecting the first inkling of a wicked sense of humor.

“I hear you keep to yourself,” Ethan said.

“I’m in charge of the engine that makes our existence possible. I work eighteen hours a day, every day. Before the burial this morning, I hadn’t seen the sky in three years.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a life.”

“Well, it’s the one I have. I happen to love it.”

Ethan approached a set of monitors in a dark alcove that streamed lines of code at the speed of a stock-market ticker.

“What’s this?” Ethan asked.

“Beautiful, isn’t it? I’m running some projections.”