Jack’s gaze is steady, focused. “Have I ever lied to you?”

Evan stands up, stumbles back a step. It dawns on him that Jack’s flannel shirt is still mopped around his hand. His fist tightens around it, moisture spreading between his fingers. Somewhere above them in the structure, tires screech. Boots pound concrete.

“Son,” Jack says gently. “It’s time to go.” He rotates the barrel beneath his own chin.

Backing up, Evan arms the tears from his face. He takes another step back, and another, and then finally he turns.

Running away, he hears the gunshot.

Jack’s words echo in his head. It’s time to go. It’s—

—time to go.

“Goddamn it,” Evan said. “Damn it. Damn it. Stupid fucking way to die.”

The blood-crusted fingers of his left hand had gone numb, making it harder to hold the seal on the slick flesh of his shoulder. He lost his center of gravity, tilting into a soft white bank. He tried to right himself, but the snow gave way beneath his weight, delivering him gently to the ground. His hand was too weak to hold back the blood anymore. The warm current trickled through his fingers. He breathed into the cold earth. Blinked ice crystals off his eyelashes.

Since Jack he had let no one into his life, and so there would be no one to miss him.

“Stupid,” he said.

He felt himself fading away, the Nowhere Man blurring into the whiteness. A lifetime spent blending in, leaving no traces. Which also meant leaving no mark. He’d built his armor, ring by ring, but now he felt himself crushed under the weight of it, sinking into oblivion. So this was how it would end? The proverbial whimper?

His entire body was shuddering. A more intense vibration near his hip differentiated itself, and it took him a moment to identify it.

The RoamZone.

The kid.

The ringing phone called his thoughts to Alison Siegler as well. It occurred to him that when he died, instead of the customary tunnel of light, he was going to see the Horizon Express steaming relentlessly for the Jacksonville Port Authority.

Evan squeezed his eyes shut.

Son. It’s time to go.

He released his shoulder, the blood flowing freely now, and dug for the phone in his pocket. He lifted the battered RoamZone to his face. His hand, a uniform crimson. His knuckles, tacky against his cheek.

He thought of how he usually answered the phone—Do you need my help?—and wanted to laugh.

He said, “I … I can’t…”

The boy’s voice, hushed and fierce. “You forgot.”