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Frantically, he ripped open the cardboard with his teeth. There were two strips of ten tablets sealed in plastic. It could have been poison. It could have been yet another cruel hoax by the North Koreans, but Lee couldn’t help himself. He tore open one of the strips and tossed four or five white tablets in his mouth, crunching them beneath his teeth.

The tablets tasted disgusting. They were bitter and dry, breaking up into a powder in his mouth, making them hard to swallow without water.

As nearly as he could tell, they must have been the North Korean equivalent of ibuprofen.

Lee was surprised by how the sense of taste engaged his mind, drawing it away from the aches and pains, refocusing his world.

Who had given him these tablets?

Had the medic been merciful?

Lee was tempted to take more tablets, but decided it was better to let these take effect and save the rest for later. He'd need them, and he knew it.

Lee stashed the remaining tablets in his socks on the inside of his ankle, feeling paranoid about being searched and losing the painkillers. They were still in their plastic case, so he folded his socks inward, tucking the hem over the tablets, knowing they wouldn’t be seen and feeling as though he’d won a small victory over his captors. That he had something hidden returned a sense of power to him. He took the cardboard packet and forced it between the grates of a drain, getting rid of any evidence.

Lee wasn’t sure how effective the painkillers actually were and how much of a placebo bounce he was getting out of suddenly having a sense of purpose, but the pain subsided.

As he moved back by the door he noticed a scrap of paper lying on the straw. It must have fallen out of the packet as he'd ripped it open with his teeth. He unfolded the paper and read one word scrawled hurriedly in pencil:
Midnight
.

“I don't understand,” Jason said, getting off the motorcycle inside the back of the semi-trailer, surprised by how much his legs were shaking. For a moment, he thought his legs were going to give out beneath him. With the swaying of the truck, Jason felt clumsy, and had to reach out for the inside of the trailer to steady himself.

Lily put the motorcycle on its kickstand and hopped off of it.

“Jason,” she said, gesturing toward the professor. “This is my father, Captain John Lee of the South Korean National Intelligence Service.”

“Am I dreaming?” Jason asked. “Tell me this isn't real. None of this. None of this can be real.”

“Please,” Professor Lachlan said, pulling a thick folder from under his arm and gesturing at a crate loaded against the wall of the trailer. “Have a seat. There is a great deal we need to tell you.”

“I ...” Jason was speechless.

Lily scooted up onto the crate, leaving room for him beside her. She patted the wooden surface, signaling for Jason to sit next to her.

“It's OK. I don't bite,” she said. “Well, at least, not on good days.”

Given all they'd just been through, her small joke seemed almost normal, bringing a smile to his face.

The truck swayed and Jason lurched. He widened his stance, fighting to keep his balance as the truck rounded a corner. He reached out and grabbed the edge of the crate, pulling himself closer.

“We have a ways to go,” the professor said. “We need to get well clear of the city before they have time to analyze the video footage and realize where we've gone. We chose Lexington for the switch because there are no traffic cameras in that block, only a few surveillance cameras mounted on ATMs. That should buy us a few hours.”

“What's going on?” Jason asked, raising himself up on the crate and leaning against the thin sheet metal wall of the semi-trailer.

Lachlan held up his mutilated hand, displaying the stumps of three fingers, saying, “You don't remember, do you? No, you wouldn't. You were young, too young, and so much has happened since then.”

Jason pursed his lips. For him, the strangest thing that had happened so far was not the insane motorcycle ride flying across a lake, or riding up into the back of a moving truck, or even running into his physics professor in the middle of the night in the back of a semi, it was the sense of calm that swept over him as Lachlan spoke. There was something familiar about the professor's words, as though he'd heard them before. The professor had always had a calming effect on him, and now more so than ever. Jason didn't understand why, but he trusted Lachlan implicitly.

“None of this was our doing,” the professor continued. “For decades, we lobbied against the subterfuge, but DARPA insisted. They felt the best way to get information from you was to allow you to be free. Your subconscious seemed to be providing them with the answers they wanted, so they allowed you to live a normal life while they collected the data they needed, but progress has been slow. In the last few weeks, there's been a change of administration. The presiding general decided it's time to bring you in and extract the knowledge that's buried in your mind. They're tired of waiting and they don't care if they break you.”

“I don't understand,” Jason said. “None of this makes any sense.”

“They were coming for you,” Lily said, cutting through the explanations and going straight to the heart of the issue.

“Me? Why me?” he asked.

Lachlan raised his hand, scratching at his forehead. Jason could see he was struggling to decide where to begin and what to explain. Jason had never seen the professor flustered before.

“What about the UFO?” Jason asked, turning to Lily.

“You fell for that?” Lily asked, punching him playfully on the arm. “I can't believe you fell for that. I thought it was too corny.”

“Smoke machines and wires,” Lachlan replied. “A disco ball and strobe lights, nothing more. Just like Hollywood.”

“And the projector in my bathroom?” Jason asked incredulously, nonplussed at hearing these revelations about a murky world that existed in parallel with what he perceived as reality.

“It's the only place inside your apartment that's not under constant surveillance.”

“What? But why?” Jason protested. “Why me?”

Professor Lachlan held up Jason's research paper, but he was holding up the reverse side covered in Jason's doodles and speculative calculations.

“Because ever since you were a child, you've been drawing these equations.”

Jason went silent. Lily held his hand, squeezing his fingers. Initially, he wasn't sure what to make of her touch. On one hand, her support was welcome. On the other, this wasn't the Lily he knew. The Lily he'd known had never existed. She'd never been more than an actor on a stage playing a role for the crowd. Yet there must have been a genuine connection between them, as she seemed to feel something for him. He squeezed her fingers gently in reply, letting her know he was doing OK.

Lily turned to him, saying, “You don't know just how special and unique you are.”

Her comment took him off guard. She wasn't trying to flatter him or appeal to his vanity. He could tell that from the sincerity in her voice. She was speaking as though this was something he didn't understand about himself.

Rain lashed the outside of the truck, pelting the trailer with what sounded like hail. It probably wasn’t hail, but the thin sheet metal magnified the sound of the torrential downpour that had begun to fall.

Jason felt as though the night were a dream. He looked into Lily’s eyes and saw her compassion for him. To her, this whole scenario apparently seemed quite ordinary, and as bizarre as that was, he was drawn to accepting her position. Her demeanor was relaxed, as though her blistering bike ride was nothing, as though sweet, little, lost Lily had returned to sit beside him. In his mind's eye, he saw her again asking something quirky about the torn, tatty posters in his rundown apartment. She may have been acting for the past few days, he thought, but even knowing that, he felt he understood those points at which the real Lily had shone through.

Between the demeanor of Lily and the familiarity of Lachlan, Jason felt accepted, as though this twisted reality that had caught up with him was the norm. While he was tempted to freak out, they set him at ease with their matter of fact handling of the bizarre tempest breaking around him.

Lily was Lachlan’s daughter! As strange as that was, that was perhaps the easiest thing to believe so far. In the back of his mind the notion that someone had been shooting at him was disturbing.

Lachlan must have sensed his distraction. He flipped through a thick folder as he spoke.

“The NSI has been working with DARPA for decades, trying to figure out what these equations mean,” Lachlan continued. Jason wondered if he should think of him as Captain John Lee? But that name meant nothing to Jason. To him, this was Professor Lachlan. As surreal as his world had become, the professor was a link with reality, with sanity.

“Do you remember these?” the professor asked. He held an old piece of crumpled paper marked with crayon. The formulas weren't as advanced and the handwriting was childish, but Jason remembered them. Somewhere in the back of his mind, that sheet of old, brittle paper looked strangely familiar. “You've been drawing these equations ever since you were a child. Haven't you ever wondered why?”

Why?

No, he hadn't ever stopped to think about why he scribbled.

For Jason, abstract thinking was as unconscious as humming a tune or chewing on gum. He'd never wondered why he doodled, he just did, in the same way some people chewed their nails when lost in thought. It was more than being absentminded, he knew that. Time would drift. Hours would pass, but he was content, at peace. Nothing else mattered, nothing other than those equations. Slowly, they'd take different forms. Each time, his perceptual awareness enlarged, and he found himself with a deeper appreciation of the universe.

Most of the equations were common, having been derived by others like Bohr or Schrödinger, but Jason had arrived at them himself, having reasoned through the math alone, and he found that intensely satisfying.

Why did he scribble physics equations? Was there a reason beyond his own simple whim and want? He could see Lachlan was giving him time to think this through for himself. He thought he knew, but clearly there was more for him to learn. He pursed his lips, leaning forward intently, listening carefully as Lachlan explained.

“Twenty years ago, a meteor streaked across the Russian Federation, entering the atmosphere over the region of Krasnoyarsk. US EarthSat picked it up over Lake Baikal. It should have struck somewhere in Mongolia, but the meteor conducted a course correction.”

Jason felt his mouth dry out at the implications of Lachlan's matter of fact recounting of this distant, historical event. He had no reason to doubt the professor. This wasn't Mitchell sitting next to him in a diner with some trashy online tabloid, bullshitting his way through some crackpot conspiracy theory. This was a senior college professor with a mastery of physics.

“The object crossed the northern plains of China, passing over the Gulf of Chihli before ditching in the Yellow Sea, off the coast of North Korea.”

“Ditching?” Jason asked.

Lachlan nodded, adding “The USS Winterhalter was on exercise out of Seoul. She picked up the craft doing Mach 2 and observed it decelerate before ditching roughly fifty nautical miles north of her position. The Winterhalter then launched a helicopter, assuming she was searching for survivors from a downed military jet.”

Lachlan handed Jason a couple of photos. Although they were in color, they were grainy, highlighting the distance at which they'd been taken. The first image showed what looked like a whale or a submarine sitting heavy in the water, with just a small, broad, flat expanse above the waves. The object was circular rather than elongated, though, and looked out of place beneath the sea. A North Korean fishing boat floated just off to one side of the submerged object, providing a sense of scale. The dark object was roughly a hundred feet in diameter, with faint lights glowing around its circumference.

The second image was one Jason had seen before. This was the picture Mitchell had shown him in the Weekly World News article, only this image was grainy, with features like the mast and sails on the fishing boat barely visible. Jason looked up at Lachlan who seemed to know what he was thinking.

“These are the originals,” Lachlan explained. “Taken from the raw footage before any digital enhancements were applied.”

As in the crisp, clear version he'd seen in the Weekly World News, a North Korean fisherman was leaning over the side of his boat pulling a young child from the water. The UFO was completely beneath the waves in this shot, drifting slowly below the fishing boat.

“So this is real?” Jason asked, already knowing the answer. “This actually happened?”

Lachlan must have recognized the rhetorical nature of Jason's comment as he didn't respond directly, he simply said, “Two days later, I flew in with a SEAL team to rescue you.”

“Me?” Jason replied, still struggling to accept everything that had happened since he'd returned to his apartment. His hand brushed against the bandages on his arms, marking where he'd rolled on the ground after jumping from a bus earlier that evening in what seemed like another lifetime.

Had he hit his head and been concussed?

Was this some kind of trauma induced hallucination?

Blood seeped through from around one of the plastic bandages sticking to his arm like a second skin. His left forearm was tender. The throb of pain after so much exertion holding on to the back of the bike convinced him this was real. This was no illusion. This was reality.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” Lachlan said, crouching before him. “But I was originally a search and rescue pilot, and look at me now, teaching physics in New York, and all because of you, all to try to unravel the mystery surrounding your life.”

Jason was shaking.

“It's OK,” Lily said, squeezing his hand. “We're here to help.”

“Me,” Jason repeated, only this time not as a question uttered in disbelief, but rather in sullen acceptance.

“I'm sorry,” Lachlan said, standing up. “Your life has been an elaborate ruse to try to unlock the secrets buried deep within your brain.”

“And my parents?” Jason asked.

“They never knew,” Lachlan replied. “They only ever saw a beautiful young boy abandoned in an orphanage, but you were never out of sight. DARPA, the South Korean Intelligence Service, the US Secret Service, they’ve never been more than a heartbeat away.”

“But you're saying—”

Jason was cut off by a radio squawking on the professor's hip. Lachlan raised the radio to his lips, depressed the transmit button and said, “Are we close?”

“Thirty seconds out,” a disembodied voice replied.

“Quick,” the professor said, gesturing to the back of the truck. “Time to go!”

Lily hopped off the crate, still holding Jason's hand, gently leading him along with her. Jason followed her, dazed. The truck swayed and he reached out with his hand, steadying himself against the wall.

“We need to switch vehicles,” Lachlan said, gesturing for him to follow. “We'll continue this conversation in our next ride.”

Lily let go of his hand and grabbed the motorcycle.

She pulled the bike up, standing beside it as she flipped the kickstand back beneath the exhaust pipe. Lily began wheeling the bike to one side, walking it in a three point turn as the truck began to decelerate slightly.

Professor Lachlan stood by the door. He had an industrial control panel in his hand, a thick, long rubber-coated panel with only a couple of buttons. As he held his thumb on one of the thick buttons, the door began lowering back down as a ramp again. Hydraulic pistons eased the ramp down until it was level with the scuffed wooden floor of the truck.

Jason came up behind the professor.

Wind swirled into the back of the trailer, drawing in the spray and rain. The freeway behind them was devoid of cars. Streetlights stood at regular intervals, lighting up the lanes of the freeway as they receded behind the truck.