Chapters (72)

Pope shoves him through the titanium door, and as Pilcher crashes to the floor, Pope scrambles inside.

Pilcher’s face presses against the cold concrete.

Pope shouts, “Get back! It’s gonna be close!”

The portal slams home.

On the other side, a series of dull thuds crashes into the metal.

Safe now, Pilcher’s consciousness is ebbing.

The last thing he hears before slipping under is Pam’s voice cutting through the hysteria, shouting, “What the fuck are those things?”

I

TWO HOURS AFTER ETHAN BURKE’S REVELATION

JENNIFER ROCHESTER

The house was so damn dark.

Jennifer tried the kitchen light out of instinct, but nothing happened.

She felt her way around the fridge to the cabinet over the stove, opened it, and grabbed the crystal candlestick holder, a candle, and the box of matches. She turned on the gas and struck a match to the back burner and set the teakettle over the hissing blue flame.

Lighting what was left of the candle, she sat down at the breakfast table.

In her life before, she’d been a pack-a-day smoker, and God could she use a cigarette right now—something to steady her nerves and her hands, which wouldn’t stop trembling.

As her eyes filled with tears, the candlelight fractured.

All she could think of was her husband, Teddy, and how far apart she felt from him.

Two thousand years apart to be exact.

She’d always harbored hope that the world was still out there. Beyond the fence. Beyond this nightmare. That her husband was still out there. Her home. Her job at the university. On some level, it was that hope that had gotten her by all these years. Hope that one day she might wake up back in Spokane. Teddy would be lying beside her, still sleeping, and this place—Wayward Pines—would all have been a dream. She would slip quietly out of bed and go into the kitchen and cook him eggs. Brew a pot of strong coffee. She would be waiting for him at the breakfast table when he stumbled out of bed in that disgusting robe, disheveled and sleepy and everything she loved. She’d say, “I had the strangest dream last night,” but as she’d try to explain it, all that she’d experienced in Wayward Pines would slip back into the fog of forgotten dreams.

She’d just smile across the table at her husband and say, “I lost it.”

Now, her hope was gone.

The loneliness was staggering.

But underneath it simmered anger.

Anger that this had been done to her.

Rage at all the loss.

The teakettle began to whistle.

She struggled to her feet, her mind racing.