Departure(25)

I awake to darkness and silence. The pain is back. I turn, looking back down the aisle, but I can’t make anything out. There’s almost no moonlight filtering through the small windows. It’s still raining, but not as hard, just a steady pitter-patter now.

I lie there, letting my eyes adjust.

On my right, a slim figure slips by. Yul.

Faint footsteps behind me. A woman, black hair, about my height. Mechanical walk. Sabrina.

Three seconds later I hear the click of a thick metal door closing.

I stretch my good leg out into the aisle, test the other. Not good. I limp, hop, and drag myself through the galley, keeping as quiet as I can.

They’re being more careful this time, and I have to stand close to the door to hear anything.

“We did this,” Sabrina insists.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“Correlation is not causation, Sabrina. You ask every passenger the right questions, and eventually you’ll discover that they all know somebody who knows Kevin Bacon.”

“Who’s Kevin Bacon?” Sabrina asks urgently. “Another agent? A passenger?”

“No—”

“How does Bacon figure into this?”

“Christ, Sabrina. Forget Kevin Bacon.”

“I want to know everything they had you do, every move you made before we boarded the flight.”

“All right.” Yul sounds exasperated. “What are they dying of?”

“Old age.”

“What?”

“They’re dying from different diseases, conditions that I assume would have developed in time as they aged,” Sabrina says. “But it’s happening to them all at once.”

“Why aren’t we affected?”

“I don’t know. Only half the passengers seem to have the condition.”

The voices begin to fade, and I lean closer, trying to hear them. A sound, a low rumble, is blotting them out. It’s not coming from the cockpit. It’s outside.

As I step back from the door, a bright spotlight breaks through the small oval windows, running quickly along the length of the plane. Through the rain, the roar grows louder. Then the light blinks off, and the sound recedes.

The cockpit door flies open, and Yul and Sabrina rush out. They don’t stop to interrogate me with their eyes this time. Yul jerks the exit door open and peers into the dark, dense forest, where rain drips unevenly down through the trees.

He glances back at me.

I nod. “I saw it too: a beam of light ran over the plane.”

Yul looks at Sabrina, opening his mouth to say something, but a crunching sound outside the plane stops him. Boots, grinding the fallen underbrush into the forest floor. Someone is running straight toward us, though I can’t make out who.

Someone from the lake? A rescue team? Or . . .

Yul jerks a phone from his pocket, activates the flashlight app, and holds it out. The light is weak, but it’s just enough to reveal shapes moving out there. At first it looks like rain catching on invisible, maybe human forms—three of them, barreling toward the plane.

Before we can react, the first form charges up the rickety stairs and stops on the landing. It stands over six feet, glittering in the cold glow of Yul’s phone, like a glass figurine.

It raises its right arm toward Yul, then Sabrina, then me, firing three rapid shots, almost silent pops of air with no flash of light. My chest explodes in pain.





15





For several seconds Mike, Bob, and I stand there, staring at the tall stone columns of Stonehenge, perfectly formed and aligned. How? No, how isn’t the right word. When? There are only two possibilities: we’re in the past (a past we don’t understand at all in 2014), or we’re in the future—a future in which this huge monolithic monument has been rebuilt.

I scan the octagonal glass and metal structure for clues but find none—no writing, no symbols, no hints of what the year might be.

The glass panel reseals behind us with a soft click, breaking the silence. Bob opens his mouth to speak, but a neutral, computerized voice drowns him out.

“Welcome to the interactive Stonehenge exhibit. To begin your tour, follow the path to your right. For your safety and the preservation of this historic monument, please do not leave the path.”

Tour. I look down, realizing for the first time that there’s a glass-tile pathway around the perimeter. It lights up, flashing green arrows that end at a pulsing red target, a bull’s-eye where it wants us to stop. Without a word, the three of us follow the path, stopping at the red circle.

“What you see now is how scientists believe Stonehenge would have appeared approximately four to five thousand years ago, when it was completed. Follow the path to continue your journey into the past, exploring the stages of Stonehenge’s construction.”

The glass tiles once again glow green, guiding us to another red bull’s-eye twenty feet away.

“Structure’s probably solar-powered,” Bob whispers as we shuffle toward the red beacon waiting in the path. I glance over at him, noticing that he looks even older now, but I keep my focus on Stonehenge.

The computer’s voice changes slightly. “Would you like to hear about Stonehenge’s connection to the solar calendar?”

We glance around at each other, confused, for a moment. “Maybe it can help us figure out what’s happened here,” Bob says. “What year we’re in.”