Zack sat down last. He dragged the sixth folding chair in front of him and used it as a footstool.
“Okay, Sterling. We’re here. Dazzle us.”
Quint glowered at him. “Put that back.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is this for the prophet Elijah?”
“I think you already guessed who it’s for.”
“I have,” Zack admitted. “You could have just told us, you know.”
Amanda eyed him strangely. “What are you talking about?”
The double doors opened again. Now Beatrice escorted a young Asian man in a dark blue sweatsuit. He swept his nervous gaze through the crowd, recognizing only Quint and a handful of physicists. The five people in folding chairs triggered a cloudier air of familiarity, as if he’d seen them all in dreams.
One in particular stood out, just as she stood up.
“Oh my God . . .”
Hannah had only met him once, for a short but eventful eighteen minutes. Still, with nearly seven billion people gone, it was a drop of medicine to see him again. It was just so damn sweet to find another survivor from her world.
She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight.
“Hi, Theo.”
—
The last any Silver had seen of Theo Maranan, he lay unconscious on a stretcher, bleeding from his nose and mouth. The Salgados had given him a baby spot sedative, which reacted violently to the alcohol in his bloodstream, which threw him into a coma.
Though Azral had been surprisingly tepid to the loss of Natalie Tipton, Jury Curado, and the elusive Evan Rander, he was far less pleased about Theo’s plight. Four weeks ago, just moments after Theo’s bloody arrival in Terra Vista, Quint received an irate text message.
<That was an infuriating error, Sterling. Foolish and avoidable. I trusted you to find competent help.>
Quint blanched as he keyed his reply. <I take full responsibility. Rest assured I have access to one of the nation’s best neurologists. I can have him here by sundown.>
<Keep your butcher. I have a specialist of my own. We come tonight.>
The news stunned Quint. For five long years, all of Azral’s instructions had come from prerecorded videos, all mysteriously delivered to some corner of Quint’s house and accompanied by staggering amounts of cash. On the morning the nine Silvers became flesh in this world, Azral suddenly began communicating through mobile texts. Now suddenly he was coming in person.
At midnight, a round white portal bloomed on the wall of Quint’s office. An exquisitely tall couple stepped through the surface. Though Quint had no trouble recognizing Azral from the videos, the brown-haired woman was new to him. She wore a fluffy fur coat over a sheer cocktail dress. The shopping bag in her hand was adorned with Japanese text. Quint reeled to wonder if the pair had just stepped away from a sunny afternoon in Kyoto. (It was actually Osaka.)
Mercifully, Azral appeared to be in a genial mood now. With a soft grin, he introduced his companion as Esis Pelletier. Quint had no idea if she was his spouse, his sibling, or possibly both. (She was neither.) He had a hard time believing she was the medical specialist in question. The woman dressed like a European prostitute and grinned like she was high on four different opiates.
“Precious Sterling,” she cooed. “We gave them silver in honor of your name. We found it amusing. It still makes my heart laugh, when no one’s looking.”
Despite her questionable state of mind, Esis wasted no time getting to work. Quint watched with rapt fascination as she cut a bloodless path through Theo’s forehead, using tools and gels Quint had never seen anywhere. After seventeen minutes of tinkering, she closed Theo without a trace of incision. He looked exactly as he had before, except now his eyelids fluttered with restless life.
“He’ll awaken tomorrow,” Azral informed Quint. “It’s fortunate. That one’s of particular value to us. Had we lost him, I would have held you responsible.”
Quint felt a cold squeeze around his heart. “I apologize again. Are you . . . do you wish to see the others while you’re here?”
“Let them sleep,” said Azral. “They had a trying day. I would like to meet your staff, however. Please summon them.”
By 2 A.M., the physicists and Salgados had assembled in the lobby, sleepy and perplexed. To all subordinates, even Czerny, Azral Pelletier was merely an obscure Canadian philanthropist who’d given Quint carte blanche to run the operation. Azral did little to counter that notion. He shook everyone’s hands, congratulated them on their fine work, then wished them a merry evening.
Esis smirked at Quint’s befuddlement. “If you saw the strings like we do, you’d know the need for this charade. My wealth labors now to prevent future difficulties.”
Once the staff left to return to their homes and beds, Azral summoned a new portal in the wall. He turned around at the rippling surface and looked to Quint.
“Keep Maranan isolated. Until he recovers from his alcohol addiction, he’ll be a negative presence among the others.”