Each email was a punch in the gut. He felt the prospect of financial security slipping away. It focused him.
He dug in, tried to figure out why some companies survived and others went up in smoke. It seemed almost arbitrary. He spent hours thinking about it, reading articles, studying books on business history.
The week after Christmas, Peyton insisted that he stop eating canned meat and beans for every meal.
“You’re going to get some weird digestive disease and die, Des. The obituary will say, ‘Desmond Hughes, talented programmer and lover of books, died of pork and beans in an RV park outside Palo Alto.’”
He laughed and relented, letting her cook at least half his meals. They were a lot tastier. He also began staying at her place without exception; another one of her theories was that the electric heater was going to cut out in the night and he would freeze to death in the Airstream. Neither one of them really believed it, but in the days before New Year’s Eve in 1997, they spent every night together, and neither of them was cold.
Chapter 68
In the helicopter, Desmond watched the sun set over the mountains. Peyton was still asleep beside him, her head on his shoulder.
There were so many things he wanted to ask her. Why they hadn’t ended up together—how they had lost what he had felt that night in Half Moon Bay. What had happened to them.
When Peyton stirred, he leaned forward and caught her eye. She seemed to sense the change in him. “What did you remember?”
“Us.”
She looked away, down at Hannah, who lay still, her breathing shallow.
Desmond gripped her arm. “I remember the Halloween party, and xTV, and that mermaid ornament and the glass heart and Half Moon Bay and that badly carved oil rig I gave you.” He smiled, but she didn’t return it. To his surprise, she looked away.
Gently, he placed a hand on her chin, turned her to look into his eyes. “I remember us being happy. But not what came after. Tell me, please.”
“No.”
“What if it’s related to what’s happening right now?”
“It’s not.”
“Did I hurt you?”
Peyton closed her eyes. “It wasn’t like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“What happened… hurt both of us.”
What does that mean? He was about to ask when Avery glanced back from the pilot’s seat and pointed to the headset.
To Desmond’s dismay, Peyton pulled her headset on quickly. He reluctantly followed suit.
“Let’s talk about what happens when we land,” Avery said.
Peyton methodically laid out her plan. Avery made a few suggestions. Demands, really, but they were all in agreement about the course of action.
With that out of the way, Desmond focused on Avery, asking the first question among so many he wanted answered.
“The people on the ship, in the hospital ward. What were they infected with?”
“I don’t know. I was part of the IT group.” She glanced back at him, a curious, unreadable expression on her face.
“What?”
“It was… It was your experiment, Des.”
“I did that to them?” Desmond felt sick at the idea.
“It was part of the Rendition project.”
“What is Rendition?”
“I don’t know.”
Peyton spoke up. “What do you know, Avery? Why did you rescue us?”
“I wasn’t aware I needed a formal invitation to rescue you.”
They started snapping at each other then, voices escalating. Desmond waited for an opening that never came. With forced calm in his voice, he interrupted.
“Let’s just… back up here. Okay?”
A pause.
“Look, if we keep fighting each other, we have no chance of stopping what’s happening.”
He let another few seconds pass, hoping everyone’s nerves would settle. Then he suggested that each of them share what they knew and see if the pieces fit together somehow.
Taking their silence as agreement, he went first.
The two women sat quietly while Desmond recounted his story, beginning with how he had woken up in a hotel room in Berlin with a dead man on his floor—a security employee with Rapture Therapeutics. How he’d had no memories and no idea what had happened to him. How his only clue had been a cryptic code, a Caesar cipher that, when decoded, read, Warn Her and listed Peyton’s phone number.
“Was the warning about the pandemic or warning me not to go to Kenya?”
“I’ve thought about that. I think the warning was meant to keep you from going to Kenya. I think I knew they would abduct you, that you were personally connected to this somehow. On the ship, did they ask you personal questions—not related to the outbreak?”
Peyton thought for a moment. “Conner asked me when was the last time I spoke with my father and brother.”
“Why is that important?” Avery asked.
“They’re both dead.”
Avery glanced back at her, surprised.
Desmond turned the information over in his mind. There was definitely a larger picture here, a connection he couldn’t quite make.
“Conner also asked about my mother. She’s a genetics researcher at Stanford.” Peyton paused. “They wanted my CDC password. They drugged me. I think they got it.”
Peyton recounted the rest of her time on the ship, being thorough, which Desmond appreciated. When she was done, he continued his story, describing how the police had appeared at his door just as he had called Peyton. How he had spent the next few days evading Berlin’s security forces while decrypting messages he believed he had left for himself. How the codes had led him to a reporter for Der Spiegel who had agreed to meet Desmond at a cafe on Unter den Linden.
“The reporter said I was an informant. I had told him that I was going to provide proof that would expose a network of corporations and scientists working on the largest experiment since the Manhattan Project. He said the project was called the Looking Glass, and that I had told him it would change humanity forever.”
“Makes sense,” Avery said.
“How?”