With his intrusion, he would complete the disjointed nucleotides, just barely, enough to awaken what had been placed within them all.

All it took was a blink, and it would be done.

Who was the woman? Who was that girl? The old woman, who was she? Why did it pain him to see her most of all?

He was inside her. She felt familiar somehow. He was somehow not just within her, but part of her. Where she began, he ended. What originated in her, continued to him. Not a mother. A grandmother.

“Nanna,” he whispered.

Nanna, Lily, Ryan, Juan. And Jane. Beautiful Jane, weary from passing through the storm in the government cells beneath the earth. Climbing the stairs to escape, wet and cold. William had reached her, and she responded in anger.

“This is not me. This is not me. I want it out of me. I want out,” Jane had said.

He remembered what he came here to do.

William felt the monster’s approval as he took control of all the DNA strains in all the abducted. Just a slight adjustment, and the activation would occur.

Instead, he began to break.

Beginning with the molecules, then the chromosomes, smashing the pervasive alterations. In doing so, he sensed how his own DNA had been placed inside the infected strands, and obliterated it.

To the furthest edges of the world he reached, finding the four in each population. From one nation to another; a flash of light sprinting around the globe. The relief from all those who had been taken washed over him as he then began to exit their bodies, their original DNA strands almost gleaming in response.

But before he could completely break free of them, the rage from the creature blasted him like a furnace, so hot it felt as if he were on fire. He felt the infusion again, this time a hundred times stronger.

Everything faded. He was a breath away from becoming a husk of himself; a mindless tool to once again reach into the abducted and twist the very fabric of their being to reignite their weapons.

His hand, however, had already reached behind him and pulled out the gun.

There should be five bullets. All he needed was one.

“You’re free, Jane,” he whispered.

He raised the gun to his own head, and fired.

SEVEN DAYS LATER

TWENTY-THREE

The two vans pulled up to the small house deep in the palmetto trees.

“Are you sure this is it?” Stella asked, stepping out.

“It’s the address,” Kate responded. “Mom, are you sure—”

Lynn was already out of the van, walking towards the house.

“Is this it?” Anne called out. Chris had hurried around to open her door.

“My God, it’s hot here,” Brian commented, stepping out and shading his eyes.

“Son, your seventy-nine-year-old grandmother seems to be doing quite fine in this heat. Greg, help her,” Chris motioned.