The horn outside the cabin continued to blare. “They’re in trouble,” Lyle said to Alex. It wasn’t the sort of stupid obvious thing he usually said, but this woman was well more than unnerving him. What the hell was she talking about?
“It’s only the beginning.”
“What?”
“This is alpha, not even beta, not quite the way it should go. Give me a month to work the kinks out. You helped find them, the kinks. Of course you did, I knew you would. We needed a genius, the world did, and there you were.” She paused. “I had no idea it wouldn’t work on kids. I’m glad, of course. They need it so much less.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Better days ahead.”
“What did you say you do at Google?”
He looked at the door, wondering how he was going to just get past this person.
“You won’t feel a thing, Dr. Martin.”
Then, for some reason, he found himself staring at her hat. There was something odd about it; hadn’t he thought so all along? It looked like wool, sort of, but it had these metallic strands built into it. Gold colored. Gold, right? Like that rectangle he’d found on the flight deck door.
He felt his phone buzz again. Did she say she’d gotten a signal? He pulled out his phone and thought about Melanie. She was out there, and her son. He reached the door and caught a glimpse of what was out there. Jerry lay on his back in the snow; in the pickup, Eleanor’s face was buried in the steering wheel, where she must have been—
Lyle’s phone buzzed. He swiped at it and saw the image of the cover of an album that he’d been listening to when he fell asleep on the plane.
Everything went black.