The stars are falling.
After avoiding the atrium for months, the sight of that wall is a shock: entire blocks of screen gone dark. Others filled with nothing but static, so that the night sky looks like one of those tile puzzles revealing only clues of the picture beneath.
The others look uneasy, though they’ve saved a place for me. At least they won’t have to tolerate my presence much longer.
Chase gives me a quiet nod from across the room, his blue eyes more vivid than I remember beneath those well-formed brows—an effect, perhaps, of his new beard. Or perhaps of the hair that now curls past his ears. He’s leaner than he was—not thinner so much as more defined. But of course he is; he’s spent hours inside the gym every day.
Then again, so have I.
We’ve changed—all of us. Our chins are sharper, our skin paler, our arms wirier, and waists trimmer.
Only Rudy Bryant, CLU, looks the same, except that he now has a ponytail.
Preston clears his throat. “Wynter, thank you for joining us. How’s Julie?”
“Not well,” I say.
“I’m sorry to hear that. With hope, we can get her the help she needs on Open Day.”
“If she makes it that long.”
Gazes drop away. As they should. As I want them to, because I’m angry. Not at anyone specifically—except Chase. And myself. Because whatever happens, I should be nothing but grateful to have Truly with me. To have sheltered her these last six months in comfort and safety.
Instead, I feel robbed. Of the picture that we created and that I clung to those first weeks—not just of a new start in Wyoming but of a future I could look forward to for the first time in my life.
Someone coughs and the silence grows uncomfortable.
“With that day in mind,” Preston starts again. “We wanted to consult you on what the health protocol should be on our reemergence. If there’s anything extra you learned during your time with Dr. Neal in Colorado.”
“Assume anyone you come in contact with above is infected,” I say. “Wear your mask and gloves. Don’t accept blood transfusions from anyone who might potentially have been exposed—which is everyone. Try not to require surgery from a hospital that operated on someone infected. Which would be all of them. Oh. And know where your meat comes from.”
They sit forward as they listen. A few of them take notes.
It hits me then: time might have stopped for Julie, Lauren, Truly, and me, but Open Day is three days away. A matter of hours. Everyone else here is preparing to exit, making plans to continue life on Noah’s ranch above or to attempt a return home.
After months of knowing exactly what my life and routine will look like for the next week and month and month after that, I have no idea what my life may look like three days from now.
Except that we will not be able to leave until Julie recovers . . . or dies.
And I will never see Chase again.
“This raises a big question for me,” Ezra says. “Of how and when we want to go up. Because if there’s a chance of anyone other than Noah being up there—”
“We’d just come back and lock the door,” Nelise says with a shrug.
“Does it lock without engaging the time mechanism?” Brit asks. “We have limited supplies. We can’t go another six months.”
“I can’t go another six days,” Sha’Neal mutters.
“No,” Micah says. “It’s only designed to lock by agreement from inside and outside, both.”
“We have to leave eventually,” Preston says. “Do we know what time of day it’s supposed to open?”
“It should open the same time it closed,” Micah says. “Five p.m.”
Preston reaches over and stands up a whiteboard I recognize as the one we use for school. I can still see the chart I made to show the kids’ progress through a series of individual assignments just faintly beneath his swift erase job.
He writes 5:00 p.m. on the board. “Obviously, it’ll still be light out,” he says, and adds light beside it.
I get up to leave, step past several people sitting on the floor, who crane to see around me. I move past the pool table, averting my eyes from the spot where Braden died, and am about three feet from the exit that leads up to the time lock when I hear something.
I pause, gaze resting on the padlock Ezra installed after Braden forced the door open to tamper with the vault entrance above.
It comes again: a brief siren blast from above, like the one at the car wash Julie used to frequent, that told you when to drive in, and when to exit . . .
Or the alarm that sounded every five seconds before the time lock engaged six months ago until it was a single undulation of sound.
The discussion across the room grows louder, someone saying, “What if the strike on Hawaii wasn’t just a rumor—what if Jax was right and we walk out into nuclear winter?”
“What if it doesn’t open at all?” someone else says.
I move closer and then press my ear to the door as Chase comes over.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Listen.”
He stands beside me, head tilted against the cold metal surface until it comes again.
“Hear that?” I ask.
He frowns and then straightens and gives a shrill whistle, startling the others to silence.
“Hey,” he says. “Anyone know how long the siren’s been going off?”
Micah comes around the edge of the group, looks from me to the door, and then presses his ear against it.
An instant later, he says, “Irwin, get the key.”
By the time Irwin returns, the siren has turned into one ongoing alarm. He removes the padlock and throws open the door.
For an instant, the sound is deafening.
And then it stops. The grind of gears fills the sudden silence, rumbling down the metal stairs.
Chase steps through the door onto the landing.
“What’s happening?” someone hisses as Micah brushes past me to join him, the two men staring up at the dark stairwell above.
A heavy click sounds from above.
Followed by the unmistakable slide of a bolt.