Departure (25 page)

WHEN I RETURN TO OLIVER'S HOME IN THE
afternoon, his assistant doesn't lead me to the master-of-the-universe study where we met before. Rather, she leaves me in a much smaller space, an office with a simple, worn desk, two chairs, and a couch. The shelves are filled not with collector's editions of books, but with personal photographs and popular nonfiction books, mostly history and science—books the masses read.

This is Shaw's personal study, and its simplicity and humility reflect the man I met earlier today, the person the public has never seen. He sits on the couch, a keyboard and trackpad on the coffee table in front of him. “Hi,” he says, pushing up from the couch to greet me.

“Hi.” I hold a hand up, urging him to keep his seat. It's strange. I only met him this morning, but I feel like I've known Oliver Norton Shaw for a hundred years or more.

He focuses on the screen on the wall opposite, a high-resolution panel that must have cost a small fortune.

To my surprise, he pulls up Facebook: the profile of a girl in her late twenties or early thirties. Blond hair. A twinkle in her eyes and a slightly mischievous smile on her lips, as if the picture was taken just before she laughed out loud at a prank pulled on a friend.

He studies the screen intently, reading the latest posts.

“Didn't figure you for a Facebook user.” I pause, then shrug. “No offense.”

“None taken. I'm not. My assistant's idea. Apparently it's become somewhat acceptable to stalk people on the Internet.”

I take a seat on the couch beside him. “Just some harmless stalking, huh? Glad it's not anything weird.”

He chuckles as he works the keyboard.

“She's a biographer, a really talented young lady. I met with her recently. I want her to write my story, but I haven't been able to get an answer from her. My assistant suggested looking her up to see if she'd posted any clues as to what she might do. This new generation . . . they revel in putting it all out there, dirty laundry and all.” He gives me a sly sidelong glance. “No offense.”

“None taken,” I say, smiling. I scan the profile. Harper Lane.
Harper Lane
. I don't know the name, but . . . I know the face. For a moment, my mind flickers between memories, places I think I've seen her. On a plane. Her captivating eyes looking up at mine. The plane shaking. No. That's not right. A guy behind me, long blond hair. Jerk. Me turning to him. Then . . . I get her bag out of the overhead and set it in the aisle for her, pausing a second to hold the handle, afraid it will topple over.

Oliver pauses, registering the look on my face. “You know her?”

“I . . . think I was on a flight with her to London.”

“She lives there. She was probably headed home after our meeting. She's a big part of this, Nick. We won't have a lot to show for years, maybe decades. We'll be selling the sizzle for a long time, the promise of what's to come. There's only so much you can accomplish sitting in a room, telling these people firsthand. This biography will lay out my vision, where I'm coming from. I want it to inspire and explain. I want it to be a call to arms—written by an outsider. She's the one. I hope she takes the job.”

“How's it looking?”

“Doubtful.”

He scrolls down, revealing Harper Lane's latest post.

Harper: Can't bloody sleep for two days. Losing it. The Decision. The Decision is crushing me :( Remedies anyone?

The comments section is a mix of wisecracks from guys and actionable advice from women, everything from Ambien to chamomile tea, with several recommendations to hide all snacks if she opts for the Ambien route.

So she's undecided. But that isn't what really interests me.

I can't tear my eyes away from her. There's something about her, maybe—

“Sir, your three o'clock is here.”

Oliver's assistant retreats, returning quickly with a woman about my age, perhaps slightly older, late thirties or early forties. She's fit, and her eyes are intense, unblinking. Her hair is black, about shoulder length. She strides in mechanically.

“Nick Stone, this is Dr. Sabrina Schröder.”

She extends her hand and I take it without thinking, an automatic reaction.

When her skin touches mine, the study disappears, and I'm no longer standing. I'm lying on my back on a cold metal surface, blinding lights shining down on me. I can barely see her standing above me, holding my hand in a different way, squeezing as the table I'm on slides away.

Her hand slips from mine as the lights fade, and I'm once again standing in Oliver's study, her hand still in mine, as if we had never left this place.

I open my mouth to speak but stop, not sure what to say. What's happening to me?

For a brief moment, I think Sabrina might have seen it, too. She blinks, searches my face, then turns toward Harper Lane's Facebook profile on the screen, looking confused.

“Do you two . . . know each other?” Oliver asks, glancing between us.

A pause.

If she says yes—

“No,” Sabrina answers curtly, releasing my hand.

And then the woman who walked in is back, the unblinking eyes and expressionless mask. She takes the seat opposite Oliver and me on the couch and begins without any prompting.

I rub my temples and close my eyes, wondering what exactly is happening to me.

“You all right, Nick?”

That's a very good question.

“Yeah, sorry—lots of travel in the past few days. Dr. Schröder?”

“Yes. Mr. Shaw asked me here to describe my research, which relates to progeria syndrome . . .”

INCREDIBLE. AFTER SABRINA LEAVES, OLIVER
and I sit in his private study, reflecting on the day's conversations, him sipping tea, me drinking water, pacing occasionally.

The scale and genius of his plan is finally gripping me. Immortality is the key, the linchpin that will ensure that what we build is never destroyed. I've bought in. Completely. I know it now. This is
the
change. What I must do. What's been missing. Excitement. Energy. I feel inspired again, curious about what tomorrow holds. There's so much to do.

I imagine our cabal, a hundred people marching across time together, the world's best and brightest, carrying the torch for a better tomorrow. I'm humbled to be involved, and yet I know I am meant to be a part of this. To help
lead
this.

The Titan Foundation isn't about a handful of innovations—Q-net, Podway, Orbital Dynamics, or the Gibraltar Dam. It's about an endless flow of projects on the same scale, generation after generation. An endless human renaissance.

We're not talking about feeding a single starving village for a year, providing clean water for a war-torn region in ruins, or curing a plague in the third world. We're talking about an end to all humanity's problems, any that come, in any age. A group to guide us, watch over the world. Continuity. I feel as though I'm standing at a turning point in human history.

Oliver's phone rings. He apologizes for taking the call, which he says is urgent. I insist he take it and get up to leave, but he gestures for me to stay.

He picks up and listens attentively, shaking his head every few seconds. Whatever the caller says disturbs him deeply. He seems to deflate with every word, slumping back into the brown leather chair behind the desk. Finally he starts asking questions quickly. He's out of his element, that's clear. The talk is of the British court process, gag orders, whether he can sue for conspiracy to libel before anything has been published.

After he hangs up, he stares at the bookshelf beside his desk for a long moment.

“We're all going to have to make sacrifices for this foundation, Nick.”

I nod, sensing that he wants to say more.

“My son's very upset about my decision. He's throwing a selfish, irrational fit, the type a child might throw when you take his toys away, which is essentially what's happening. And it's my fault. His mother died twenty years ago, of cancer, far too young. Broke my heart. She's the only thing I ever loved, besides my company. That company was all I had left, and it never would have grown into what it is if she hadn't passed away.

“I was a sorry father. I doted on Grayson. Coddled him. Never said no. The worst thing you can do for a child is give him everything he wants. Humans should grow up a little hungry, struggle a little, be made to strive for something. That's what builds character. Struggle reveals who we really are. That journey shows us what we want from this world. Now Grayson wants what he's always taken for granted: my money.”

“What do you want to do?”

“He says if I give him a little money now, that'll be the end of it. If not, he promises he'll extract his inheritance by other means, and it will cost me a lot more. He thinks he knows me, thinks I'll figure up the dollar amounts and pay out the lesser: cash to keep him quiet, hush money that will keep my reputation intact. That reputation is essential to building this foundation.”

I don't envy Oliver's situation. He walks over and stares at a picture on the wall: a young man in his twenties with long, flowing blond hair, the smile on his face just a little too self-confident. I've seen that face, slightly older, but wearing the same smirk. On a plane. Then outside it. Him shoving me. My fist connecting with that face.

No. That's wrong. We were on the plane, shoving. He walked away muttering obscenities.

It's like there are two memories.

I reach up, touching my temple. The migraine is back. It's nearly blinding. I close my eyes, hoping it will pass.

I can barely hear Oliver's words.

“If there's one thing I've learned in business, it's that giving a tyrant what he wants doesn't solve your problem. It only makes it worse. My son has to grow up sometime. This is as good a time as any.”

I say nothing to this. But I want to. The kid in the picture is acting like a brat, but the truth is that he just wants his father's attention. That's all. I have my own feelings about my father. I've come to terms with them, and I was lucky enough to find my own way. There's so many things I want to say, but flashes are going off in my head, washing over me, plunging me into darkness, and then blinding light.

I stumble, groping my way to a chair. I sense Shaw near me, yelling something—I think getting his assistant—but I wave him off. I just need to sit . . .

I WAS ONLY PASSED OUT FOR A FEW
minutes, Shaw told me. I apologized profusely—the idea that my . . . episode might have jeopardized what we were talking about today almost brings on a new wave of nausea—but he assured me he was only concerned for my welfare. The concern in his eyes, the way his hand rested on my shoulder—it was genuine.
Is
genuine. He ordered a car for me, waited for me to get in, and told me to get some rest.

“Seriously—get some sleep. You're health's important, Nick.” He smiles. “Soon, we're going to have all the time in the world.”

THE MIGRAINE FADED DURING THE
ride from Oliver's home to the hotel, but I can still feel it idling at the back of my head, waiting to attack, almost taunting me, the dread as oppressive as the pain. I've been lucky. For my entire life, I've been pretty healthy. Now I'm beginning to understand what it's like for a few of my friends with chronic medical conditions. The uncertainty. The lurking fear. Knowing when you go to
bed that tomorrow your health could be markedly worse. Knowing that right when you have to be someplace important, when people are counting on you to be at your best, you might not be able to, and there's nothing you can do about it. Committing anyway—that takes guts. I know, because I'm scared now. I'm scared this won't just be an episode, a bump in the road I get past. I'm scared this will persist. I'm scared it will limit what I can do, keep me from this incredible opportunity with Oliver. That's new. Yesterday I didn't have that kind of hope, or fear for that matter. Feeling. That's something.

I need help. I'm desperate enough to risk another flight back to San Francisco. Seeing a doctor there, at home, where I know people, feels a lot less scary. I'm sure I'll need to find a specialist.

In my room I instinctively turn on the TV to the six o'clock news—my postwork ritual—and get my laptop out, ready to search for flights.

The travel site flashes my most recent trips, and my eyes lock on one.

Flight 305: New York (JFK)
London (Heathrow)

A bolt of pain shoots from the back of my head to the front, bulging there. The pressure pushes at my eye sockets like water from a fire hose. The surge passes, the pain tapering to a drip.

My eyes still tightly closed, I stand and stagger to the sink. I feel around, find a glass, fill it with tap water, and gulp it down. What could help? Advil. Anything. I don't have any. Maybe the front desk does.

I'm reaching for the phone when the newsreader catches my attention.

“. . . lost contact with the plane around four fourteen p.m. Eastern time. At this time, authorities don't believe the flight was hijacked. However, they have activated search-and-rescue teams to begin . . .”

Every word is a sledgehammer to my head. I stumble toward the table, grabbing for the remote, almost blind from the pain.

The report about the missing plane goes off before I can reach it, and the pain fades.

Sight returns. I glance at the papers strewn across the table.

The sketches of the Gibraltar Dam. They're wrong. I pick one up.
The buildings—they're too short. They look like nubs. Nubs of what? Fingers. Fingers that have been cut off. Why would buildings be fingers? Makes no sense. But they were. That's what I remember. Not imagine—
remember.
I rifle through the rest of the papers, everything from the last two days of meetings. This is the only sketch of the dam. It's wrong. It should be a giant hand, reaching out of the dam . . . a symbol.

A wave of pressure. I squeeze my eyes shut. A single tear rolls down my face.

This is it. The origin point. I think.

It all started after the Gibraltar Dam meeting. Or did it? Was it after the Podway meeting? Or the flight?

I glance at the stack of papers. The letterhead reads R
AIL
C
ELL
. It's wrong, too. It will never be called RailCell. Why am I so certain? The cars are off, too. They're too big. They'll be smaller.

Another pulse through my brain, like a balloon being inflated, pushing out in every direction.

I lay my head on the table.

The first attack was on the plane back from London to San Francisco. I must have contracted this before then.

When?

What do I know?

What was the next event?

Yul Tan. Q-net. That meeting. The entire time I felt a nagging sensation. His voice echoes in my head.

It works with quantum entanglement. Particles encounter each other and become linked. After that, their states become dependent upon each other. I use that quantum phenomenon to transmit data across space and time.

His research is the key.

Key to what?

Q-net.

No. That's not right. It's not about Q-net.

What's happening to me? I rub my eyes.

Yul's voice is in my head again.
I've had some interference the past few days, like static on the network. I was worried, but it just stopped.

It just stopped.

But something started for Yul after we met. He was sick, too. Just like me. He felt something, as if we had met before. Memories he couldn't reach.

The next attack: the flight to New York. But it wasn't as bad. Wasn't the same.

Breakfast. The orbital colonies. The pitch that was wrong.

Shaw knew it was wrong. The way it was presented was wrong. But the idea was right.

The whole time with Shaw, everything was right.

Sabrina.

When I touched her hand, I was gone, on a hard, cold table, staring up. The lights. She was there.

She knew. I saw it in her eyes.

The touch was the key.

The woman on Facebook. The biographer. The sensation when I saw her. Sabrina looked at her, too. Knew her.

I focus on my laptop. My eyes catch on the open window, on Flight 305, and a strike splits my head, sending me reeling back.

That's a flash point. Flight 305. What does it mean? Is it because the flight from London was total agony?

My eyes closed, I find the Windows key, hold it down, and press M, minimizing all the windows. I open a new browser and navigate to Harper Lane's Facebook profile.

The instant I see her face, chills run through me, growing stronger, numbing my body.

I replay the moment we met. On the plane. In the aisle. It was dark, and half the plane was gone.

No. Wrong.

Our plane was whole, sitting on the tarmac at Heathrow.

The tarmac at Heathrow. A sea of grass.

I shake my head. That's impossible.

Planes overturned, crumbling.

Not right.

Our plane was whole, sitting at the jet bridge. She was there, in a first-class seat, waiting to get off. I stood up, helped her with her bag. She peered up at me, her beautiful eyes wide.

I blink and she's trapped in the seat, her leg caught.

Water all around her.

She's scared, can't get free.

No. Impossible. A flooded plane at the jet bridge?

Focus.

I scan the screen.

There's a new post on her profile.

Harper: Indecision 2015 Update. Finally slept for a few hours and dreamed I was on sinking plane after it crashed. I was pulled underwater and couldn't get out :(

She saw it, too. How is that possible?

Sweat springs up on my forehead. I feel the memories slipping away, the two versions of reality separating again, a kite I can see clearly at first, carried away by the wind, drifting up until it's just a tiny speck and then invisible, as if it were never there.

I reach for the remote, intending to turn the TV off, but the words from a new report stop me cold. “
Authorities say if the plane did crash into the water, that makes it much harder to find and decreases the chances that there will be any survivors
—”

A new wave of numbing spasms battles with the surging pain in my head.

I close my eyes.

The plane did hit the water. But they lived. Some of them.

I tried to save them.

How could a plane hit the water without disintegrating? It would be like hitting concrete at six hundred miles per hour.

The answers are in my head—how, I don't know.

Facts emerge, as if answering my unspoken question.

The plane slowed down after the turbulence. The pilots deployed the landing gear to further slow it down. It broke apart and the tail section spun and dragged against the trees, which also decreased its speed. It hit the lake backward, tail first. Something—trees under the water, maybe—kept it from sinking right after impact. I can almost see it sticking out of the water.

I feel dizzy. I'm going to throw up. I grip the table, then push myself up. I stagger to the sink, push the handle back quickly, and
watch the water pour out, gushing down the drain, which has a single bar across a round circle. The water flows in, like water into a sinking plane, a plane torn in half.

For a second I don't see the sink drain. I see a plane in cross-section, a jagged dark circle.

Then it's gone.

I splash more water on my face. It's so cold, but . . . it helps. I remember the feeling. Cold water on my face, numbing it as I swim. I turn the faucet all the way to cold, cup my hands until my fingers tingle, start to burn, then go numb. With each second it hurts more, but I can feel less. As the burning, numbing sensation creeps up my hand, my mind becomes clearer. I splash the water on my face and inhale, shivering.

I'm running through the woods. A dozen points of light bounce in the dark forest before me. My breath flows out, white steam against the beads of light.

Then I'm back in my hotel room, the water flowing from the sink, the TV silent in the background.

I'm giving a speech. On the lake bank in the dark.
No one will save those people if we don't. Their lives are in our hands. . . .

I look at the laptop screen. At her eyes. I hear the running water. Like a waterfall.

My head explodes. Waves coalesce into a bolt of pain. A hammer strike. Pain so bad I lose feeling in my extremities, and for a brief moment I think I'm paralyzed, but I can see my hand moving in the mirror.

I bring another handful of water to my face, pressing it into my eyes, and when I take my hands away, I'm standing on a muddy bank before a torn plane sticking up out of the lake. Every exhalation sends white steam into the night, and there's no sound, no other sensation. The world, save for my breathing, seems frozen.

Slowly, with great effort, I turn to my right, where a woman stands still, her face unreadable. “How about you?” I ask.

“Yeah . . . I'm good. I'm a good swimmer.”

I turn back to the plane in the lake, but it's gone. I'm in my hotel room. The newscast is ending. The glowing computer screen stares at me. The face. The woman on Facebook. It was her.