“Hari, are you gonna be sick?”

She found her voice. “What was that mantra you mentioned yesterday, the one in the Septimus Foundation emails?”

Now, Donny looked a little sick himself. “‘It will begin in the Heavens…’”

“I think that’s just what happened while we were trapped in Wherever: It began in the Heavens. This is what the Septimus folks have been preparing for.”

“The sun rising late?”

“I can’t see it being a one-time thing. Think about it: the sun rises progressively later every day when it’s supposed to be rising earlier. What’s the fallout from that?”

“Well, less daylight, for sure.”

“Which means crop failures, Donny. Not just local—worldwide. And worldwide crop failures lead to worldwide famine. And how do you prepare for worldwide famine?”

Donny’s voice was very small. “Stockpile food.”

“Right. For your own people and for others you want to control. When the world goes hungry, the guy serving lunch calls the shots. They’ve seen this coming and they’ve been preparing.”

“We’ve got to tell Art.”

“Tell Art?” She heard her voice rising but couldn’t stop it. “Sure. Tell Art so he can sell off his stocks and collect all that nice cash—for what? If this is going to go like they think, it’s the end of the fucking world, Donny, or at least the end of life as we know it! We’ve got signals from outer space or beyond outer space shooting into the Earth and maybe causing all this. We’ve got a hole through a mountain back there that leads to another planet! What if that passage doesn’t close one time and all those tar-clump things decide to migrate to this side? They like the dark and now daylight is shrinking! We are fucked, Donny! Royally fucked!”

She realized she was screaming and shut up.

“Don’t lose it, Hari,” Donny said with a wide-eyed stare. “Please don’t lose it. You’re the most together woman I’ve ever known—make that person I’ve ever known. If you can’t hold it together—”

“I’m okay. Just had to vent a little. I’m okay now.”

Not true. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be okay again—not with what the future promised. But she felt better. The venting had helped some, but only a little. The apocalypse loomed. She had to find her own way to deal with it.

She put the Tahoe in gear and got rolling again.

“You have a plan?” Donny said.

“I’m working on one.”

The signals…somehow the signals were key. Or at least a starting point.

“I can’t stop thinking about those Septimus sonsabitches,” Donny said. “They knew this was coming but they kept it to themselves. Coulda warned the world but instead they’re angling to take advantage of the shit storm. Someone needs to take them down.”

An uncomfortable thought struck Hari. “You don’t happen to own a gun, do you?”

A short harsh laugh. “No. I’m a lover, not a fighter. I couldn’t pull a trigger on man nor beast. But someone oughta do something.”