All three flashlight beams gravitated to one of the side walls, where four lines had been stencil-painted in black over the tiles:

UNITED STATES D.O.D.

ASHLAND-STATION 14

LIMA 4 CLEARANCE REQUIRED

BEYOND THIS POINT

Staring at the words, and looking around at the tiles, Dryden thought back to the story of Kurt Reyher visiting the Bode Museum in Berlin, decades after defecting. Walking the rooms. Seeing the architecture. Things that looked exactly the way they had in his lost memories.

Here in Ashland, the houses had rotted and the streets had been torn up by weeds. Even Echo House was full of animal nests and invading plants—probably far more so than it had been in 1989.

But this place—this place could not have changed at all. It had to be identical to its past self, down to the color of the grout-lines.

All of which mattered.

Because he felt more than just déjà vu here. More than just passing recognition.

He felt the pull of connected memories, at last. They were right there, under the surface, straining upward. He looked at Danica and Lauren; they were reacting to the small room the same way he was.

Danica turned to the door at the other end of the room, shining her light on it. “There’s a stairwell on the other side of that. A hundred and twenty steps down.”

Every word of it sounded right to Dryden, his mind confirming it in a way that felt sure and spooky at the same time. He saw Lauren nodding, too.

Danica led the way to the far door. She pulled it open. The stairwell beyond stretched down into darkness.

As the three of them descended, an image of the space at the bottom swam into Dryden’s head.

Two doors: one with just a handle, and one with another keypad lock.

The five sevens don’t work on that one. We won’t be able to get past it.

Then he rounded the final landing and saw that he was only half right. One of the doors at the bottom did have a keypad lock—but they would certainly get past it.

Both doors were lying flat on the concrete floor of the stairwell, their hinges blackened and warped by the flame of a cutting torch. Across the foot of the stairs, two lengths of red plastic ribbon had been stretched, forming an X. Where the ribbons crossed, a sheet of paper had been stapled in place, bearing a message in plain black text:

ASHLAND SITE ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION

SURVEYED 1989 JUL

NO ACCESS BEYOND THIS POINT

WITHOUT WRITTEN AUTHORIZATION

Standing three steps up from the bottom, Dryden shone his light beyond the paper sheet and the torched-off doors. The stairwell floor was probably fifteen by fifteen feet, with the two empty doorframes facing each other across it—one on either of the side walls.

A left door and a right door.