More minds reached out, all of them aware of him, now, a hundred minds, two hundred minds, more, focused on him, reaching out, pulling at him, opening to him, projecting at him. Nightmare visions flooded his mind. He tried to breathe and the air was poison sucking into his lungs. He coughed and fell to one knee. He was sweating, sweating. The room was spinning.

I can do this, he thought. I can do this.

Then all the rest of the minds reached out, feverishly, reaching towards the source of the new thoughts, the source of the music, the source of the peace. The room was a nightmare seen through two tiny holes in his mask.

He had to get on top of this.

Rangan pushed himself back up to his feet, and ripped the mask off his face.

“My wife!” John Stockton yelled, as the Secret Service agent tried to shove him into the Beast after his daughter. “Where’s Cindy!”

“Sir, they went out the other side,” the agent replied. “They’re in a car now. FLOTUS is safe, so is your son-in-law. We have to move!”

Then Stockton was inside the armored limo, with a terrified looking Julie and a screaming, crying Liam. The door slammed shut, and the agent behind the wheel took off at high speed, sirens and police flashers moving with them, drones rising up.

“We’ll be OK,” he told Julie, trying to soothe her, trying to soothe his grandson. “We’ll be OK.”

Julie was bouncing Liam, hushing him, kissing his head as the one-year-old cried and screamed, rubbing at his eyes, inconsolable.

Stockton’s own eyes were burning. There was metal in his mouth. There was an itching in his lungs.

The world was melting.

Dissolving.

Transforming.

He closed his eyes, and everything changed.

Colors and sounds flashed through his mind. Tastes and smells. Memories and plans.

His first date with Cindy, in college: he, a popular quarterback; she, the daughter of a Senator, smarter than he was, more worldly than he was, full of stories of places she’d been that he’d only heard of, so much less impressed with him than any other girl he’d ever known, so different than the girls he was used to.

The final play of the Sugar Bowl, the blitz coming in, his offensive line collapsing around him, the animal sound of the clash of bodies as the Louisiana defenders charged in, the football leaving his outstretched fingers just an instant before three hundred pounds of lineman slammed into him. The breath leaving him with that tackle. The roar of the crowd as his pass connected with Tony Bates for the touchdown that won the game.

Julie being born. Cindy’s pain and utter exhaustion. The first mewling cries of his newborn daughter. Holding her in his arms. Watching her suckle at her mother’s breast.