William closed the door after they entered. “Perhaps learning more about you might help us understand how you’re connected.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh. All right then.”
“Desmond told us you were a relief worker in the early eighties.”
“I was. Well, I was at university then, but I volunteered as much as I could.”
“And after uni?”
“Med school.”
“Specialty?”
“Family medicine. I got a masters in Public Health. That was really my passion.”
“Where did you work?”
“After school? The WHO.” Some of the cheeriness faded from her, as if it was something she didn’t want to talk about.
“And you lost someone close to you there.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Yes. In 1991.”
That was the year Peyton had seen her. She had been thirteen years old then, standing at a gravesite in San Francisco. The cemetery was on a hill outside of town. Skyscrapers and the bay stretched out in the distance. A thick cloud of fog hung over the water and snaked into the city, its white tendrils flowing in and out of the red steel supports of the Golden Gate Bridge and the glittering silver buildings.
When the service ended, a woman in her early thirties had walked over, a sad smile on her lips. She spoke to Peyton’s mother, then her sister Madison, and finally to Peyton.
Her accent was Australian, her voice kind.
“Your brother meant a great deal to me, Peyton. He told me you wanted to be a physician.”
“Not anymore.”
The woman took a small metal item from her coat pocket and held it out to Peyton.
“He was very proud of you. I believe he would have wanted you to have this.”
She placed the small silver pin in Peyton’s hand. The teenager examined it.
“I thought it burned.”
“I had it cleaned and refinished.” The woman smiled. “I wanted you to have it in the same condition it was in when your brother carried it. All things can be repaired, Peyton. Some simply require more time than others. Don’t let tragedy take your dreams away.”
The woman in the shabby office in Australia looked at Peyton now, twenty-five years later, with the same kindness in her eyes. And now, recognition.
“You’re Andrew’s youngest sister, aren’t you?”
Peyton nodded.
“I still think about your brother a great deal—miss him a great deal.”
“Me too,” Peyton said quietly.
“Would you like to see him again?”
Chapter 99
Desmond walked slowly to the burned remains of the home where he’d spent the first five years of his life. Weeds had reclaimed some of the once-charred terrain. Only the masonry foundation and fireplace now stood, like a blackened tombstone.
He felt his cell phone buzz in his pocket. He pulled it out. There was a message from the Labyrinth Reality app:
Download Complete
Download of what? Another memory?
Without warning, Desmond’s vision blurred. His head swam. He staggered, lost his balance, and fell to a knee. What’s happening to me? He braced himself on the ground with one hand. He felt nauseous. He tried to focus, but the memory came like a blow to the head, hitting hard, overwhelming him.
He stood in a bathroom, at a long vanity with two sinks. In the mirror, he saw a bank of three urinals, all empty. He seemed to be alone. He couldn’t place the location, but he felt like this wasn’t long ago—probably shortly before he woke up in Berlin.
He stared into his own eyes in the mirror and spoke solemnly. “I hope you know what’s going on by now. This location is a backup. I wasn’t able to figure out where the Citium was manufacturing the cure, but I know they shipped it all around the world. There must be a storage site close by, maybe in Adelaide. Search for it. I’m also enclosing the rest of the memory that took place here. It may help you. But it could also hurt. It’s leverage, but it goes both ways.”
The bathroom disappeared, and Desmond was back in Australia, on that day in 1983 when the bushfires killed his family. Except, this memory was from that morning, before the fire killed his mother. He didn’t understand what he was seeing. His arms felt weak.
Then he felt Avery at his side.
He closed his eyes, thought he would throw up.
When he opened them again, he saw figures, clad in woodland camouflage, racing in from the tree line. A dozen of them. He reached back for his rifle, but it was gone. It lay on the ground twenty yards away. Who had thrown it over there?
He pushed up, but a boot hit his chest.
“Stay down, Des.” Avery towered over him. Her rifle was pointed in his face.
“Avery—”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” She studied him. “You remember, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Chapter 100
Peyton watched Charlotte rummage through the old filing cabinets in the storage room.
“It’s here somewhere… along with some other things of his I’ve kept.”
Peyton’s father cut his eyes at her, silently saying, Where’s this going?
Charlotte pulled an old VHS tape from the bottom drawer.
In a room with a small, cathode ray tube TV, she popped the tape in a VCR and pressed play.
“This was taken the day Andrew died.” Charlotte studied the picture, which was coming into focus. “He’s in Uganda, on his way to Kapchorwa, his last stop.”
Peyton saw her brother riding in the back of an SUV, which bounced on a dirt road with a trail of dust rising behind it. It was so incredibly good to see his face again. His hair was dark, like Peyton’s, but his features were less Asian than hers; he looked more British, like her father and her mother’s father.