Wolgast said nothing. The question made no sense to him.

Lear touched his shoulder. “Agent, leave him. There’s no time.”

The man licked his lips. He’d lost so much blood he was becoming dehydrated. His eyes had started to flutter; his hands lay loosely, like empty gloves, on the floor at his sides.

“Because I’m here to tell you, I’ve been having the worst goddamn dream. I said to myself, Grey, you are having the worst dream in the world.”

“I don’t think it was a dream,” Wolgast said.

The man considered this and shook his head. “I was afraid of that.”

He twitched again, a hard spasm, as if he’d been hit by a jolt of current. Lear was right—there was nothing to do for him. The blood from his neck had darkened to a deep blue-black. Wolgast had to get Amy away.

“I’m sorry,” Wolgast said. “We have to go.”

“You think you’re sorry,” the man said, and let his head rock back against the wall.

“Agent—”

But Grey’s mind already seemed elsewhere. “It wasn’t just me,” he said, and closed his eyes. “It was all of us.”

They hurried on, to a room with lockers and benches. A dead end, Wolgast thought, but then Lear withdrew a key from his pocket and opened a door marked MECHANICALS.

Wolgast stepped inside. Lear was on his knees, using a small knife to pry loose a metal panel. It swung free on a pair of hinges, and Wolgast bent to look inside. The opening wasn’t more than a yard square.

“Straight on, about thirty feet, and you’ll come to an intersection. A tube leads straight up. There’s a ladder inside for maintenance. It goes all the way to the top.”

Fifty feet at least, climbing a ladder in pitch blackness holding Amy, somehow, in his arms. Wolgast didn’t see how he could do it.

“There has to be another way.”

Lear shook his head. “There isn’t.”

The man held Amy while Wolgast entered the duct. Seated, his head bent low, he’d be able to pull Amy along, holding her by the waist. He backed in until his legs were straight; Lear positioned Amy between them. She seemed to be poised on the edge of awareness now. Through her thin gown, Wolgast could still feel the warmth of her fever rising off her skin.

“Remember what I said. Ten yards.”

Wolgast nodded.

“Be careful.”

“What killed those men?”

But Lear didn’t answer. “Keep her close,” he said. “She’s everything. Now go.”

Wolgast began to scooch away, one hand clutching Amy by the waist, the other pulling them deeper into the duct. It was only when the panel sealed behind him that he realized that Lear had never meant to come with them.