At the base, the gates stood open. Planes sat on the runways with their glass canopies open. Avery was talking on the phone when she stepped down from her truck. As soon as she signed off, she walked over to the other four and said, “Okay, the US Navy has an aircraft carrier in range. We’ll fly there, and get further orders. They’re trying to organize a strike force now.”

They ventured inside the barracks, which had been converted to a hospital of sorts. Nearly half the staff were caring for the other half. They seemed to all be sick.

A man with a captain’s insignia, who introduced himself only as Mullins, was in charge. “My CO said to give you any plane you want and our best pilot.”

After some discussion, they selected a small cargo transport with the range they needed. They loaded it with as many doses of the cure as it would hold and took off immediately. From a window on the plane, Desmond watched the Australian Air Force men unloading the box trucks, carrying the boxes of jet injectors and vials of the cure into the barracks.

We saved those lives.

And if they were successful, they would save many more.

Peyton slept on the plane. Or at least, she tried. Her nerves wouldn’t settle. Her mind raced with feelings and thoughts she could barely sort out. Desmond Hughes was someone she had written off—had forced herself to forget about. Now he was back, and she knew her feelings for him were, too. They had never truly gone away after he left.

The same was true of her father. Knowing he had been alive all those years, unable to contact her, tore her apart.

And then there was the island. If her father was right, it held the key to stopping the pandemic. She wanted that more than anything—even more than her own happiness. She wondered if she would have to choose; if in the tangled web the Citium had spun, she would have to choose between saving many lives—or saving her father, or Desmond.

In the cockpit, William stared down at the massive aircraft carrier. The USS Nimitz was America’s oldest aircraft carrier in service, but the ship was still extremely formidable: over three football fields long and two hundred and fifty feet wide, with over four acres of flight deck and nearly five thousand crew on board. The sun was setting behind the RAAF cargo plane when the massive city on the sea came into view.

William activated the internal speaker. “On approach. Prepare for landing.”

The Australian pilot nodded, activated the radio, and called to the carrier’s tower. “Old Salt, this is Rescue Bird, request permission to land.”