“I won’t die again. Because of you.”
It was true. The following week, when the son came home, he didn’t discover his father hanging from a rope in the basement. Instead, beer in hand, his father was turning thick steaks on the grill in the backyard.
“Your mom will be down in a minute,” his father said. “Why don’t you set the table for three.”
His mother, who had passed away when he was three, would be down in a minute. And even though she never did come down to join them, it was a comfort knowing she was close by.
Through the secret passage, the world existed only as the prisoner needed. It was a seductive power—to experience his life as he wished it had been—and he used it to escape his cell at every opportunity. Why shouldn’t he? If he could, he would gladly die to end this solitary existence. To escape this hell. He would do anything his keepers asked. If only they would ask. But they never would. The door would never open. He accepted that now.
And then, after a thousand years or perhaps only a single day, something unforeseeable happened.
The door opened.
CHAPTER TWO
The aircraft banked to the left and continued its descent. Beneath the hood, Gibson Vaughn’s ears popped. A small detail, but one that made him believe that all this might actually be real. Could you hallucinate a change in cabin pressure? He hoped not.
During his imprisonment, he had imagined his release innumerable times—it was the cruelest trick that his mind played on him—and now he feared that this was but another of his elaborate fantasies. It concerned him that he couldn’t easily differentiate one from the other. Frustrating that, even though he knew intellectually that he’d lost his mind, he still couldn’t bring it to heel. He leaned forward in his seat to take the tension off the shackles that bound his wrists and ankles. His hands tingled as sensation rushed back into fingers. It felt so real. It had to be real, didn’t it?
Supposing for a moment that it was, he still had no idea how long they’d been in the air. His captors had dosed him with something to calm him, and by the time it had worn off, they’d already been airborne. It had been a blessing, protecting his mind from too much, too soon. After so long in solitary confinement, the world beyond his cell door had been traumatic—an overload of brutal sensation. It had overclocked his senses, overwhelming him, and at first he had fought the guards like a lunatic. Simple human contact had felt like fire on his skin; human voices had been a dentist’s drill grinding into a brittle molar. Ironic, since it had been all he’d craved. It had taken three men to wrestle him to the ground and sedate him.
Strong hands on his shoulders pressed him back in his seat, checked his restraints, tightened his seat belt. The vibration of the aircraft’s hydraulics hummed as the landing gear extended. That felt real too. Fear and excitement swept through him at the prospect of landing. He didn’t know where, or even why, but it was something new, and that was enough.
Duke Vaughn snorted from the window seat. “You really believe that? This is a trick, son. They flew you in a circle. You’re going right back into the same cell. To break you.”
“I’m already broken,” Gibson whispered from under the hood.
The aircraft touched down on the runway. Gibson was thrown forward as the plane decelerated in a roar. When it lurched to a halt, hands lifted Gibson from his seat and marched him down the aisle. He shuffled forward in abbreviated, manacled steps. A knife of cold wind cut through his clothes. He dug in his heels, whining like a beaten dog, and struggled back from the open door, certain that they meant to throw him from the aircraft. A hand clamped around the back of his neck; an unsympathetic voice told him to calm down. Gibson remembered the plane had landed. How had he forgotten that already?
The hand at his neck guided him down the airstairs. He stumbled on the last step but righted himself before he sprawled across the tarmac. A short distance from the aircraft, the voice ordered him to kneel, shoved him roughly to his knees when he was slow to comply. In the wind, he heard a click. He braced for the bullet that would put an end to his life. Instead, the shackles came off. The voice told him to lie facedown and lace his fingers behind his head.
The runway was a block of ice, so cold it hurt his bones. But it was a wonderful pain, the pain of being alive. Outside. Unbound. A miracle. The door had opened. The wind blew right through his lightweight clothes, and he laughed crazily at the sensation. The engines of the plane powered up and began to recede into the distance.
“Hello?” he called out.
No reply.
He called out again, then once more. Gibson struggled to his feet and yanked the hood free. The daylight, reflecting off snow that had been shoveled to the edge of the runway, burned his retinas. He shielded them with his hands, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the glare. He looked about wildly to confront his jailers but saw none. At the far end of the runway, an aircraft climbed the morning sky. The sky. Dear God, the sky. Vertigo swept over him as his mind tried to make sense of it. A kaleidoscope exploded before his eyes. Heart galloping. He dropped back to his knees and cowered at the overwhelming grandeur of a gray winter’s morning, certain that this must be dying.
His nausea passed, his vision cleared, and he dared uncover his eyes. A hundred yards away stood a corrugated hangar and, beyond that, a simple office. There had to be two feet of old snow on the ground, salt brown. The airfield looked vaguely familiar, but his mind pulled in a thousand different directions, and he couldn’t place it. At his feet sat his old duffel, the one he’d had with him when the CIA had taken him. Shivering, he knelt, unzipped it, and pawed through his dirty clothes. They were all lightweight spring clothes that he’d taken to West Virginia a lifetime ago. Little use in winter, but he put on his windbreaker for all the good it would do.
Bear’s baseball cap was missing, and he panicked until he remembered that he’d left it with Gavin Swonger. He wished he had it now; he thought it might tell him definitively if any of this was real. Could this be real? Had he gone through the secret passage without knowing it? He dug through the duffel again but found only a plastic bag. Inside were his wallet, his keys, and his phone. The phone had long since lost any charge. He put it in his pocket, if only to feel normal.