Neal stared at him, then at Madeline, who was holding out two sheets of paper. One of them Neal instantly recognized as the first of the mysterious letters he had found waiting for him when he had returned home to Arizona. The second was on the hotel’s stationary, but as he looked at it, he saw the same handwriting, in fact the same exact words, as the other one: a perfect replica.

She said to Neal, her eyes imploring him to believe her, “Neal, I didn’t show him these, after he came into the room he started to write this, as a way of showing me that I could trust him.” Neal took the sheet, the writing was identical, disturbingly so.

“I must say again, I don’t have much time.” continued John as Neal examined the sheets, “I hope by now that you have figured out that you are being watched. Well so am I. I am one of them, Neal, I arrived in one of the capsules you discovered. Mine landed near the Outer Hebrides, and since then I made my way to the south of England and joined the Royal Navy using a false identity created since my arrival by the machines that accompanied me. In the last three months I have graduated officer training school and been assigned as a junior lieutenant on the new Type 47 Destroyer, the HMS Dauntless.

“As we were sailing toward the Panama Canal to join the Pacific fleet for exercises I engineered an accident on board, knowing that the captain would be forced to put in at the nearest allied naval shipyard. After we had done just that, I used further misdirection to make my way here to see you.

“The AI above me tracks my every move and communicates it to the others, just as their movements are communicated to me. So I had to fool my monitoring system into believing that I was still on board, pretending to sleep between my shifts. The monitoring satellites believe that the person that left the ship and drove here was one of my roommates, a belief I have compounded by mildly drugging him and leaving him in my bunk, and by using his credit card and ID to get here.”

Neal stared flabbergasted, fighting multiple instincts battling in his head, not the least of which incredulity. On the surface he barely managed a nod, deciding that whether he believed this man or not, he still had to listen and keep track of what he was saying in order to decide what to do next.