“I’m taking you back upstairs,” Walker said. “To the sixth floor.”

Snow appeared supremely unsurprised. “By elevator?”

“We’ll walk.”

“Tell you the truth, I’m not sure I can climb stairs, shape I’m in.”

“Try.”

“Sure.”

By the time they reached the room on the sixth floor, Snow was pale, forehead dripping with sweat. A thin trickle of scarlet dribbled from one nostril.

“Well, look at this,” he said, out of breath. “Right back where we started, huh? What’s your next move?”

“I’m not sure what went wrong before, but I’m reopening the hole,” Walker said. “And sticking you back down into it, permanently.”

“Think you can do it without the book?”

“Get on your knees.”

“You’re an old man, Doc.”

“I said get on your knees.”

“Anything you say.” Snow wiped his nose, put his back to the wall, and sank to the floor. “I got the best seat in the house right here. I’m just going to sit right back and watch it unfold.”

He sat quietly, cuffed hands between his knees, gazing placidly up at Walker. The doctor didn’t look back at him. He could almost feel Snow’s smile on the back of his head.

He had to do this. But for the first time in his life he already knew he was going to fail.

CHAPTER 37

37.

Jolie woke to an inner alarm that seemed to emanate from the small bones inside her face. Her head ached badly and her first thought was: hangover, the worst of her life. Her muscles felt weak and there was too much tightness inside her skull, not enough in the rest of her body. Maybe if she lay here long enough without moving, the pressure would equalize.

Five more minutes, Mom, please?

Then she realized the buzzing was coming from the fluorescent lights overhead, and it all came back to her in a sudden, unpleasant rush.

She was lying in the fourth-floor hallway, up in the psychiatric ward, half-curled and shivering. In light of what she’d just remembered, two previously unremarkable facts took on critical importance.

The power was back on.

And she was alive.

Inside her cheek, there was some kind of cut. Her thoughts flashed to the drill that Snow had stuck in her mouth while she clung to the fence. Why hadn’t he killed her?

What time was it?

She’d never worn a watch, being one of those people who always seemed to know intuitively what time it was down to the minute. Now, though, she had no sense of the hour—day, night—or how long she’d been lying here. Standing up, testing her joints, she put her hands on the small of her back, stretched, and felt something crackle in her back pocket.

She pulled it out.

It was a folded sheet of yellow legal paper.