“So where are the rest of the guns?” Alicia said. “And who moved this in here?”

“We did.”

They swiveled to see a single figure step from the shadows: Olson Hand. More figures began to emerge, surrounding them. Six of the orange-suited men, all of them armed with rifles.

Alicia had drawn the revolver from her belt and was pointing it at Olson. “Tell them to back off.”

“Do as she says,” Olson said, holding up a hand. “I mean it. Guns down, now.”

One by one the men dropped the barrels of their weapons. Alicia was the last—though Peter noted that she didn’t return the gun to her belt, but kept it at her side.

“Where are they?” Peter asked Olson. “Do you have them?”

“I thought Michael was the only one.”

“Amy and Mausami are missing.”

He hesitated, appearing perplexed. “I’m sorry. This isn’t what I intended. I don’t know where they are. But your friend Michael is with us.”

“Who’s ‘us’?” Alicia demanded. “What’s going on, goddamnit? Why are we all having the same dream?”

Olson nodded. “The fat woman.”

“You son of a bitch, what did you do with Michael?”

With that, she raised the gun again, using two hands to steady the barrel, which she aimed at Olson’s head. Around them, six rifles responded in kind. Peter felt his stomach clench.

“It’s all right,” Olson said quietly, his eyes fixed on the barrel of the gun.

“Tell him, Peter,” Alicia said. “Tell him I will put a bullet in him right here unless he starts talking.”

Olson was gently waving his hands at his sides. “Everyone, stay calm. They don’t know. They don’t understand.”

Alicia drew her thumb down on the hammer of the revolver to cock it. “What don’t we know?”

In the thin lamplight, Olson appeared diminished, Peter thought. He seemed hardly the same person at all. It was as if a mask had fallen away and Peter was seeing the real Olson for the first time: a tired old man, beset by doubt and worry.

“Babcock,” he said. “You don’t know about Babcock.”

Michael was on his back, his head buried beneath the control panel. A mass of wiring and plastic connectors hung above his face.

“Try it now.”

Gus closed the knife switch that connected the panel to the batteries. From beneath them came the whir of the main generator spinning up.

“Anything?”

“Hang on,” Gus said. Then: “No. The starter breaker popped again.”