“Before Wayward Pines, Hassler and I used to work together. He was my supervisor in the Secret Service and the one who sent me here. I had no idea he was here until I saw him on the street a couple days ago. Come to find out, before Pilcher brought me out of suspension, Hassler was living here, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Something doesn’t feel right.”

Leven scooted back to the console array and went to work on the touch screens.

“And what is it exactly you’d like to know?” he asked.

Hassler’s face appeared on the monitor, his eyes closed, skin pale—a post-suspension photo.

“How he came to be here.”

“Oh.” Leven quit typing, spun around in his chair. “I don’t think I’m going to have that level of detail. You’ll have to ask Pilcher himself.”

Ethan stepped inside the cage, found David Pilcher eating his supper—some freeze-dried abomination from the winter reserves. The old man looked even older with the beginnings of a white beard fading in across his face, and as Ethan sat down across from him in the cramped cell, he wondered just how much rage simmered underneath the surface. Ethan had plenty of his own. He couldn’t drive the image of those grieving families out of his mind, the sound of those shovels spearing into dirt. All that pain this one man’s doing.

“That does not smell like Tim’s cooking,” Ethan said.

Pilcher glanced up.

Hard. Indignant. Defiant.

“It’s like Satan shit on a plate. Must give you great pleasure.”

“What?”

“Seeing me like this. Relegated to a cage that was built to hold a monster.”

“I’d say it’s serving its purpose perfectly.”

“Thought you’d forgotten about me down here, Ethan.”

“No, just been busy cleaning up the mess you made.”

“The mess I made?” Pilcher laughed.

“Adam Hassler.”

“What about him?”

“I hear that before I was brought out of suspension, Adam lived with my wife and son.”

“As I recall, they were quite happy too.”

“How did Adam Hassler come to be a resident of Wayward Pines?”

A touch of life crinkled in the corners of Pilcher’s eyes.

“What does it matter now?” he asked.

“You do not want to fuck with me.”

Pilcher set his plate aside.

Ethan said, “I’m told that he came here looking for me after my disappearance. And that you abducted him. That he woke up here just like I did. Like everyone in town did.”

“Hmm. Interesting. Out of curiosity, who told you to come see me about this? Was it Francis Leven?”

“That’s right.”

“Is it possible that Francis also shared with you a piece of shocking news about our prospects going forward? And when I say ‘our’ I of course mean the human race.”

“Tell me about Hassler.”