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“Are you sleeping all right?” Theresa asked.
“It’s fu
“It’s difficult,” she said.
“Nightmares?”
“I keep dreaming that things went another way. That those abbies got into the jail cell.”
“How’s Ben?”
“He’s okay. I can tell he’s trying to wrap his head around what happened. A lot of his classmates didn’t make it.”
“He saw things no kid should ever have to see.”
“He’s twelve now. Can you believe it?”
“He looks so much like you, Theresa. I’ve wanted to see more of him, to just talk to him, but it didn’t feel right. Not yet.”
“That’s probably best,” she said.
“Where’s Ethan?”
“He was going to stay with Kate for a while after the burial.”
“Some things never change, huh?”
“She lost her husband. She doesn’t really have anyone else.” Theresa sighed. “I told Ethan.”
“Told him . . .”
“About us.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t just go on keeping it from him.”
“How’d he take it?”
“You know Ethan. How do you think?”
“But he understands what the situation was, right? That you and I were trapped here. That we thought he was dead.”
“I explained everything.”
“So does he not believe you?”
“I don’t know if it’s that so much as he’s just trying to come to terms with the idea that, well, you know.”
“That I was fucking his wife.”
Theresa stopped.
So quiet in the woods.
“It was good, right?” Hassler asked. “When it was just you, me, and Ben. I made you happy, didn’t I?”
“Very.”
“You have no idea what I’d do for you, Theresa.”
She looked up into his eyes.
He stared at her with such love.
An energy in the air, Theresa could sense that this moment carried more heft than she realized. Her heart had once been wide open to this man, and if she let him keep looking at her like this, like she was the only thing that existed in his world—
He moved in.
Kissed her.
At first, she drew back.
Then she let him.
Then she kissed back.
He walked her slowly back against a pine tree, and as he pressed into her she ran her fingers through his hair.
As he kissed her neck, she tilted her head back and looked up into snowflakes that fell and melted on her face, and then he was unzipping her jacket, his fingers making quick work of the buttons on her shirt underneath, and she found herself reaching for his.
She stopped.
“What?” he asked, breathless. “What’s wrong?”
“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 spi
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.”