The edge of the storm reaches the stadium, its 196-mile-an-hour winds causing the folded-down arena seats to flap open and closed, the sound echoing across the empty arena like a flock of cackling geese.

Immanuel nods at the Balam. ‘Go find our father.’

Jacob takes Dominique by the crook of her arm and leads her into the starship, the portal resealing behind them.

Waves form on the flooded field. The wind howls in Immanuel’s ears as the starship’s engines power up. Salt grabs the Mohrs, Beck takes Chaney. ‘Move! Everyone in the limo!’

Immanuel turns to Lauren, who is smiling at him, tears in her eyes. ‘I love you, Immanuel Gabriel.’

‘I love you.’ He reaches for her—

—a scarlet explosion splattering his face. He falls backward, Lauren collapsing against his chest in a shattered heap.

Kurtz wheels around, his smart-glasses instantly retracing the line of fire. Zooming in on the target, he fires, the laser burst from his rifle igniting inside the tunnel, vaporizing Collin Shelby into a wisp of organic ash.

Manny holds Lauren, his fiancée’s life gushing from the still-expanding scarlet gap in her waist. ‘Lauren! Lauren!’

She glances up at him, unable to speak, her face pale and drained.

‘Oh, God, Lauren, don’t leave me!’

The hazel eyes glass over. The pulse in her neck stops beating.

‘Oh, God! Oh, God, help!’

Kurtz scans the stadium with his smart-glasses. ‘We’re sitting ducks out here. Pep, grab Manny.’

Lauren Beckmeyer’s remains continue disintegrating in blood-soaked clumps. Immanuel releases her detached upper torso and stands in rigid defiance against Ryan Beck’s grip and the blasting wind, his fists balled, tears streaming from his azure-blue eyes as he looks up and screams, ‘Ja—cob!’

The gold starship continues its majestic ascent into the swirling heavens until it disappears into the diminishing blue eye of the storm—

—leaving him behind.

A wisp of thought, in the consciousness of existence.

The site of the gold-paneled starship on that distant moon did something to me.

Michael Gabriel’s anguished soul seemed to cry out to me for your mother, or maybe it was Bill Raby’s tortured heart, refusing to go on without his Jude.

Whatever it was, I had finally had enough. Aiming a high-energy taser at my head, I pulled the trigger—

—and awoke!

Bill Raby was gone. I was Michael Gabriel again, still aboard the Guardian’s pod, only my vessel was no longer moving through space, I was hovering over the alien moon.

Moments later the pod landed in the domed subterranean facility.

Before me stood the Guardian survivors, behind them the Balam.

The wormhole …

The time loop …

Am I conscious, or is this all a dream?

Am I Michael Gabriel or Bill Raby?

Where am I? On a moon somewhere in the Orion Belt, or lying unconscious in solitary confinement back in my cell in Massachusetts?

Michael Gabriel? One Hunahpu?

Bill Raby? Osiris?