Feeling like reality was slipping away, he hit the stairs and stopped again. What happened to all the graffiti? The stairwell had been coated with bullshit tags. This one was clean—totally clean.

Shaky now, he hurried up to the next floor—supposed to be the fourth but the door was labeled 12.

What’s going on?

He peeked down the hall. His was the fifth door down and it stood open. In fact, all the apartment doors were open.

And then the silence hit him. He realized he hadn’t heard a human voice or a single note of music since he’d left 11-M. That just didn’t happen in his building. Some asshole was always blasting rap or salsa or something equally obnoxious behind one of the doors.

Where is everybody?

Frankie crept down the hall and peeked into his own place.

Except it wasn’t his place. The furniture wasn’t the same, the walls were a different color, no work desk, no laptop, no bookshelves, and…and the emptiness was palpable. The whole building felt deserted.

He stepped to the nearest window where he looked out on a city he’d never seen before. He didn’t know where he was but that wasn’t the Lower East Side out there. Nothing on the skyline looked familiar. And worse—nothing was moving—empty streets, empty sidewalks. The place looked like a ghost town.

“Shit!”

Before he knew it he was fleeing along the hall and down the stairs and back to 11-M. He’d take his chances with Belgiovene or whatever he called himself. At least he’d be back in New York, not this…this empty movie set.

He charged into the bedroom and began to climb onto the dresser when he noticed that the ceiling was intact. No gap. Not even a crack. Sealed up as if nothing had ever been wrong.

Frankie kneeled on the chair and pounded on the ceiling where the gap had been.

“No! NO!”

HARI

The propjet flight from Newark was noisy and bumpy but on time. Enterprise had their rental—a black Taurus—ready and waiting, the only hitch being a brief argument over who would drive, which Donny lost. Hari didn’t like being a passenger, so she convinced Donny he’d be the better navigator. Once they got rolling they had a second argument when Donny wanted to play music from his phone through the car’s sound system. Thirty seconds’ worth was all she could stand.

“I would call that bad music,” she said, turning it off, “but that would classify it as music, which it most definitely is not.”

“You don’t like DMX? He’s from my high school days.”

“He makes the B-52s sound good.”

“Who are the B-52s?”

“You never heard of—I don’t believe it. ‘Rock Lobster?’ The worst rock song ever?”

A head shake. “Nope. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Consider yourself lucky. Find a country station.”

He looked horrified. “Country? You like country?”

She didn’t, but she figured he’d like it less.

By noon they were cruising through an industrial park just outside Albany where Sirocco Trucking occupied a huge warehouse. Hari passed it once to get the lay of the land. It sat on a low rise with a big, tree-lined parking lot. Good thing she had the address because no one had bothered to put a sign out front, just a number.