Opening the door, he stepped down onto the stone. The ark was quiet, no sound but a soft hiss—the rush of forced air—coming from the blue-lit suspension center.

Ethan unzipped his parka and tossed it into the Jeep, shoved the impotent Desert Eagle down the front of his mud-smeared, bloodstained Wranglers.

Approaching the thick glass doors that led into Level 1 of the complex, it dawned on him that he didn’t have a keycard.

A camera pointed down at him from above the doors.

Are you watching me now?

You must know I’m here.

A voice behind him said, “Put your hands on your head. Interlock your fingers.”

Ethan raised his hands and turned slowly.

A kid in his early twenties with a bandage around his head stood fifty feet away beside the closest of the massive cylindrical reservoirs in the ark, pointing an AR-15 at Ethan.

“Hi, Marcus,” Ethan said.

Marcus moved toward him, and in the jaundiced illumination of the hanging globe lights, looked mad as hell. To be fair, he had cause. During their last encounter, Ethan had pistol-whipped him.

“Mr. Pilcher knew you’d come,” Marcus said.

“He told you that, huh?”

“He told me everything you did.”

“Everything I did?”

“And he also told me to shoot you, so—”

“People are dying in Wayward Pines, Marcus. Women. Children.”

Marcus had halved the distance between them and Ethan could read enough rage in his eyes to suggest he might actually pull the trigger.

The glass doors opened. Ethan glanced back, saw a big blond man enter, aiming a pistol at his heart. Ethan remembered him from that day in the morgue. Alyssa’s friend, Alan—Pilcher’s head of security.

Ethan looked at Marcus, the kid now shouldering the machine gun, preparing to shoot.

Ethan said to Alan, “You have orders to shoot me on sight as well?”

“Better believe.”

“Where’s Ted?”

“No idea.”

“You might want to hear me out first,” Ethan said.

Marcus was closing in. As Alan pointed his pistol in Ethan’s face, Marcus reached forward and tugged the Desert Eagle out of Ethan’s waistband, threw it across the stone.

“You have no idea what’s going on out there,” Ethan said. “Either of you. Last night, Pilcher turned off the fence and opened the gate. He let a swarm of abbies into the valley. Most of the town has been massacred.”

“Bullshit,” Alan said.

“He’s lying,” Marcus said. “Why are we even listening—”

Ethan said, “I want to show you something. I’m reaching slowly into my pocket—”

Alan said, “I swear to God that’ll be the last move you ever make.”

“You just took my weapon.”

Marcus said, “Alan, we have orders. I—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ethan said. “Adults are talking.” He looked back at Alan. “Remember when we met in the morgue? Remember what you asked me to do?”

“Find who killed Alyssa.”

“That’s right.”