Ted nodded.
“I didn’t think you would answer me,” Ted said, “but that’s okay. I know what that information is. I should’ve told you last night, but I was too scared.” Pilcher cocked his head. “I found the footage of what you and Pam did to your daughter.”
For a moment, it was painfully quiet in Ted’s quarters.
“Because Sheriff Burke asked you to help him?” Pilcher said.
“I sat here all night, trying to think what to do.” Ted reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of hardware that resembled a flake of mica.
“You made a copy of the footage?” Pilcher asked.
“I did.”
Pilcher leveled his gaze on the floor, then back at Ted.
He said, “You know the things I’ve done for our project. For us to be sitting here right now, two thousand years in the future, the last of humanity. I saved—”
“There’s a line, David.”
“You think so?”
“You murdered your own daughter.”
“She was helping an underground—”
“There is no scenario in which killing Alyssa is okay. How do you not know that?”
“I made a choice, Ted, in that previous life, that nothing, nothing, was more important than Wayward Pines.”
“Not even your daughter.”
“Not even my sweet Alyssa. You think”—tears spilled down his face—“I wanted that outcome?”
“I don’t know what you want anymore. You murdered an entire town. Your own daughter. Years ago, your wife. Where does it end? Where’s the line?”
“There is no line.”
Ted ran his fingers over the memory shard in his hand. He said, “You can still come back from this.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Call everyone together. Come clean. Tell them what you did to Alyssa. Tell them what you did to the people of Wayward—”
“None of them would understand, Ted. You don’t.”
“This isn’t about them understanding. This is about you doing what’s right.”
“Why would I do that?”
“For your own soul, David.”
“Let me tell you something. It’s the story of my life, people not understanding what I was willing to do to succeed. My wife didn’t get it. Alyssa didn’t get it. And I’m sad, but not shocked, that you don’t either. Look at what I’ve created. Look at what I’ve accomplished. If there were history books still being written, I would be listed as the most important human being who ever lived. That isn’t delusion. That’s just fact. I saved the human race, Ted, because there was nothing I wasn’t willing to do to succeed. No one has ever understood that. Well, two people did. But Arnold Pope is dead, and Pam’s missing. You know what that means?”
“No.”
“It means the dirty work now falls to me.”
And suddenly Pilcher was out of the chair and moving toward the bed, Ted not understanding what was happening until the short blade of the fighting knife in his boss’s hand threw a wink of light.
ETHAN
In the end, Maggie and Hecter were the only volunteers Ethan felt comfortable with. No one else in the group, not even Kate, had faced down the abbies like those two. He figured most courage would wilt in the face of a charging abby. Go with known quantities.
They armed themselves.
Maggie had only shot a .22 rifle once in her life, so Ethan loaded a Mossberg 930 with buckshot for her and filled the pockets of her trench coat with extra shells. He showed her how to hold it. How to reload. Prepped her for the aggressive recoil.
He slug-loaded a Mossberg and then a .357 Smith & Wesson for Hecter.
Kate chose the Bushmaster AR-15 with a .40 caliber Glock for backup.
Standing in the passage, Ethan glanced back at the handful of people he’d armed to guard the cavern door.
“And if you don’t come back?” the officer asked.
“You’ve got provisions here to last a few days,” Kate said.
“Then what?”
“I guess you’ll have to figure that out for yourselves.”
Theresa and Ben stood just inside the cavern.
They’d already said their goodbyes.
Ethan held eye contact with his wife until the heavy log door swung closed and the bolt rattled home.
It was freezing.
In the distance, daylight streamed past the opening.
Ethan said, “Nobody shoots unless we have no choice. Our best-case scenario, we get down into town without firing a shot. Once we broadcast our position, it’s probably all over for us.”
Kate led the way toward the light at the end of the passage.
Ethan replayed his last glimpse of Theresa and Ben as the door had shut between them.
Thinking, Was that the last time I’ll ever see you?
Do you know how much I love you?
They stood at the end of the ledge, looking out across the valley.
It was morning.
Not a sound rising out of the town a thousand feet below.
The sunlight felt good on Ethan’s face.
Maggie whispered, “It just feels like a nice, normal morning, doesn’t it?”
They were too far away to see anything distinct in the streets below. Ethan pictured the pair of binoculars sitting in the bottom drawer of his desk at the station. Would’ve been nice to have.
He stepped to the edge and looked straight down three hundred feet of vertical stone that glistened in the sunlight.
They worked their way across the plank and rested on the other side at the top of the highest switchback.
The stone was warm in the sun.
They down-climbed.
Clutching cables.
Following the steps that had been cut into the rock.
There were no birds out.
Not even a whisper of wind.
Just the four of them, breathing quickly.
Below the tops of the trees, below the reach of the sun, the steel cables were like ice.
Then they were off the rock, standing on the soft floor of the forest.
Ethan said, “You know the way into town, Kate?”
“I think so. It’s weird. I’ve never been here in the daylight.”
She led them into the pines.
There were still patches of snow in places, footprints from the night before. They followed the tracks down the mountainside, Ethan scanning the trees, but nothing moved. The woods felt absolutely dead.