“While I certainly appreciate your support, I have a strong feeling I’m being played. This protest comes at just the same moment that you need to get into a secure government building? I thought all you wanted to know was about this SSA agency—”
“Oh, I do. But trust me, as someone who’s a champion for the rights of Americans, you’re going to want to see what’s down here.”
“The rights of Americans—”
The elevator kept descending. The display read floors 31, 32…
Forty-two. Go to level forty-two, William’s aunt Stella had told him in that first bizarre phone call. He’d been stunned when he checked his voice mail and heard Stella’s urgent message to call her.
He’d quickly returned the call. An hour later, he was on a chartered NetJet heading to Washington, leaving behind a seriously pissed-off board of directors that was waiting on an explanation for his disappearance. It had not been easy to slip away. But money talks, as it always did. His head of security—former head, he should say, as he was now on his way to the Caymans for a permanent vacation—was now rich enough to buy his own island if he wanted.
38, 39…
Stella had explained that the location William’s grandmother had pinpointed on a map ended up being a government-owned building that her own records showed was owned by some obscure agency called the SSA.
“Can you possibly get in if we create a distraction?” Stella had asked.
“And how does your grandmother know this?” he’d replied.
“Trust me, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Listen, sister, I’ve been on this crazy train for a while now. Did William say anything about a little girl?”
40, 41…
One call to Congressman Flip Smith, and a promise to heavily fund a reelection effort, and here he was.
He knew he needed to find William first. Make sure he was OK and ready to run. But Lily was down here too. And he didn’t want her to wait a half second more.
42.
As the doors opened to an empty hallway, the panel on the elevator began to rapidly blink red. The same flashing pattern was repeated outside the doors that lined the corridor.
“Wait,” Quincy said. “No security?”
“Why would there need to be security?” Flip asked.
“Because there are civilians down here, locked away without being charged with a crime. And this agency doesn’t want anyone to know.”
“Quincy, what the hell is going on—?”
As soon as the congressman stepped out, a piercing alarm resounded. The doors to the elevator began to swiftly shut, and Quincy stumbled through.
“Good God!” Flip said, covering up his ears.
“Go!” Quincy said, ushering him down the hall to the first door.
“You sure as hell never mentioned that you were told civilians were being kept down here!” Flip yelled. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Use your badge!” Quincy pointed as they arrived at the first door. The keypad flashed like an angry migraine, the sound hurting almost as much.
The congressman fumbled with the card and pressed it against the light. It immediately switched to green, and the alarm ceased.
“I bet we don’t have much time now,” Quincy said. “I bet we have company real soon. We should have swiped it at the elevator again. Some kind of final clearance system.”
“Clearance to what? I am fed up at this point—”
“I’m stepping inside. So you check your email, Flip. On the way down, I sent you a link to a Stella Roseworth’s website. She’s a journalist and the daughter of your old sparring partner, Senator Roseworth. She just posted a full report on this agency that includes some documentation of what they do. Looks like her dad did some digging before he died, based on what his wife discovered.”
“His wife? You mean Lynn Roseworth? This isn’t this alien crap again, is it?” Flip shook his head. “Jesus, Quincy. Is this all because you got caught up with those alien-obsessed nut jobs that kidnapped Roseworth’s grandson?”
“He’s not kidnapped. He’s here. With a little girl.”
“Roseworth’s grandson is down here? Isn’t he supposed to be missing? And a little girl?”
Yes. A little girl. The same one he wanted to ditch by the side of the road just a few days ago. A girl who clung to him in the back of a SUV after they narrowly escaped an explosion. A girl who held his hand while they ran through the blackness of an underground tunnel. A girl who slept on his shoulder while they drifted down a river in the dark, looking desperately for a place to find food and shelter. A girl who beamed with happiness after he bought her a cheap dress, and delighted in even worse pajamas, asking him to tuck her in. A girl he couldn’t stop thinking about as he was forced back to Los Angeles—the fear on her face as he was dragged out of the room.
When he found out she was somewhere inside a government warehouse, he whispered it over and over, tapping his finger on the armrest of the chair on the plane.
I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m coming.
Quincy hurriedly opened the door and exhaled.
Lily sat on a bed, surrounded by a trove of American Girl dolls that she had placed around her like a shield. As he stepped into the doorway, she practically plowed over them.
He could feel her tears wet his shoulder after he swept her up.
“You went away. Why did you do that?” she said, her voice muffled in his shirt.
He found himself nuzzling his face on the top of her head. “I didn’t want to, kiddo. But I had to get away from the men who took me. One of them I had to pay a whole lot of money to sneak away.”
She looked up at him. “I still have your dress on. They brought me new clothes but I didn’t care.”
He smiled, his vision blurry.
The dreams were coming constantly, an insistent barrage, making sleep useless. William could feel its hunger for him.
Hunger and rage, just as he experienced when he first sought out Jane during the dream, and again when he reached out in the vast, unexplored darkness that opened in his mind as he tried to find Nanna.
Anger at his defiance. And it grew in intensity each time he found a way to block it.
It took Jane to show him how.
He hadn’t thought of it when he communicated with the others. When he’d finally found Nanna, he was exhausted, barely clawing through the dark to cry out to her. It was if he were yelling at her underwater, knowing she couldn’t understand his words. He’d extended his hand, feeling as if he were a rubber band about to snap. She’d stretched for him. With a single touch, a brush of their fingertips, the connection was so strong that he saw exactly where she was, and in turn, knew she could do the same. He could barely speak.
“Quincy,” he’d said in that second. “Tell Quincy Martin. Level forty-two.”
The band broke, and he spun back through the black and into the fluorescent light of the room. He was so tired, he’d closed his eyes, only to find the dream waiting.
So he’d reached out to Lily, but she became so upset at his eventual departure that he worried he was doing more harm than good letting her know he was still there. Ryan, too, became agitated when he had to leave.
Jane, however, gave him no choice. When he checked on her welfare, she made it clear that he was not allowed to break their communication until she said so. With a doctor’s precision, she’d begun to grill him on the dreams: what he was seeing, what it might mean when he saw the eyes of the other abducted, how he had broken through the dream to get to her, and what was at stake for all of them.
They’d ended up talking for hours, exhausting every possibility, every option to escape the holding cells and the mental commands from the dreams to unleash the disasters waiting inside them all.