They sprinted through the last dozen yards, entered the open space without stopping. By then Sam could see that all four doors had keypad locks. There was enough time for an ugly hunch to grip him: the five sevens wouldn’t work on these doors—not if this lit-up part of the station wasn’t abandoned.

He shouted, “Try the two on the right, I’ll try the left!”

Dani broke to the right before he’d even finished saying it. She crossed the square space toward the door just right of center; Sam lost sight of her as he focused on his own door, the nearest one on the left. He slammed to a stop against it, put a finger to the seven key and stabbed at it—one-two-three-four-five—

Nothing.

He threw himself sideways to the next door, the one at the left end. For a fleeting second before he punched the keypad there, he caught a sound coming through that door—a steady rumble, almost like a jet engine cycling up. He felt something, too: a trace of heat coming off the metal of the door itself. Coming through the door.

He punched in the five sevens.

Nothing.

He turned and looked along the row of doors, and found Dani looking back at him from the farthest one down. No hope left in her eyes—just panic.

He saw Lauren in between them, a few steps back in the space of the room.

His eyes returned to Dani. Her own seemed to be asking, What do we do? What do we DO?

Before he could think of anything, he heard Pierce’s footsteps click to a stop at the mouth of the tunnel.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

SEPTEMBER 2018

Dryden stepped across the threshold into the fourth room.

There was nothing interesting inside.

Nothing at all.

It was a simple, medium-sized storage room. Plain metal shelves lined the walls on all sides.

He swept his flashlight over them, one by one.

Empty. All of them.

Yet every detail of the room seemed to heighten Dryden’s fear—that irrational panic he’d felt before entering the tunnel in the first place.

He knew the feeling all too well: it was the exact sensation the nightmare had given him, all his life since he was twelve years old.

This room is the thing at the end of the tunnel. This room is what makes the dream a nightmare.

But why?

And how?

There was nothing here. Even when the room had been stocked full, as it probably had been in 1989, what would it have held? Food for the chimps? Boxes of cleaning chemicals? Random tools? It was a glorified office closet.

He watched Danica and Lauren take it all in. Watched their eyes in the backscatter glow from the flashlights. Wide eyes—like his own, no doubt.

Danica turned to him. Shook her head. I don’t understand.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

JULY 1989

“Look at me,” Pierce said.