Michael felt his frustration boiling over. “What party? Peter, what’s wrong with you? We’re stranded in the middle of no place. We’ve lost all our gear. This woman tried to kill us. You’re talking like everything’s fine.”

They were interrupted by the sound of the door opening and a burst of cheerful laughter. Alicia, on crutches, swung around the screen. Trailing her was a man that Michael didn’t recognize—fierce blue eyes, a chin that looked like it had been chiseled from stone. Was Michael hallucinating or were the two of them playing some sort of chase game, like Littles?

She stopped abruptly at the foot of his bed. “Circuit, you’re up!”

“Well, look at that,” the blue-eyed man declared. “Lazarus, back from the dead. How you doing, pardner?”

Michael was too startled to respond. Who was Lazarus?

Alicia turned to Peter. “Did you tell him?”

“I was just getting to that,” Peter said.

“Tell me what?”

“It’s your sister, Michael.” Peter smiled into his face. “She’s here.”

Tears sprang to Michael’s eyes. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking, Michael. Sara’s here. And she’s perfectly all right.”

·   ·   ·

“I just don’t remember.”

Six of them were gathered around Michael’s bed: Sara, Peter, Hollis, Alicia, the woman they called Billie, and the man with the blue eyes, who had introduced himself to Michael as Jude Cripp. After Peter had told Michael the news, Alicia had left to retrieve his sister; moments later she had burst into the room and flung herself upon him, weeping and laughing. It was all so completely inexplicable that Michael hadn’t known where to begin, what questions to ask. But Sara was alive. For the moment, that was all that mattered.

Hollis explained how they had found her. The day after their arrival, he and Billie had driven back to Las Vegas, to look for the Humvees. They’d reached the hotel to find a scene of total destruction, a smoking mound of rubble and twisted girders. The whole east side of the building had collapsed, filling the street with a mountain of debris. Somewhere beneath this lay the Humvees, smashed to pieces. The air was thick with soot and dust; a rain of ashes coated every surface. The fires had leapt to an adjacent hotel, which was still smoldering. But the building to the east, where Hollis had seen the viral taking Sara, was intact. This, as it turned out, was something called the Eiffel Tower Restaurant. A long flight of stairs led to the structure at the top, a large round room encircled by windows, many broken or missing, that looked out on the demolished hotel.