“He didn’t trust his people to make the right choices,” Theresa said, “because he was afraid. But you don’t have to be, Ethan. If you do what you know in your heart is right, if you give people the freedom to choose their own fate, their own destiny—”

“We could starve to death in this valley.”

“That’s true. But you won’t have compromised your integrity. That’s the only thing you really have to fear.”

That night, Ethan stood where it had all begun, on the bare stage in the opera house, under the burn of the lights, with the last two hundred fifty people on the planet looking on.

“Here we are,” he said to the crowd, “humanity at the end of the world. We’re here right now because of the choice I made to tell everyone the truth about Wayward Pines. Don’t think I’ve missed that. Many of you lost loved ones. We’ve all suffered. I’ll live with my decision and what it cost for the rest of my life, but right now, it’s time to consider the future. In fact, it’s all I’ve been thinking about this past week.”

The core group of Pilcher’s inner circle sat together off stage left—Francis Leven, Alan, Marcus, Mustin—all watching him.

The quiet in the theater was absolute.

A coiled silence.

“I know we’re all trying to figure out where we go from here,” he said. “What happens next. What our lives might look like. We have some hard truths to face, and we need to face them together. Right now. Here’s the first one. Our food is running out.”

Gasps and whispers trickled through the crowd.

Someone shouted, “How long?”

“About four years,” Ethan said. “Which brings us to the second hard truth. We can’t stay in this valley. I mean, we could. Until the next fence failure. Until a winter comes like we’ve never imagined. Until the food supply is exhausted.

“Francis Leven is here from the superstructure and he can walk you all through the particulars, explain exactly why our lives are no longer sustainable in Wayward Pines.

“But I didn’t drag you down here just to be the bearer of bad news. I also have a proposal for a new course of action. Something radical and dangerous and daring. A leap in the dark.”

Ethan found Theresa in the crowd.