Castro rose. “Can I send you on your way with some food or something?”
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 10:14 AM MST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2025.
“Can you tell me what time it is?” Leslie asked.
“I can,” Arnie said, “and I will as soon as I see evidence of cooperation. It’s frightening, isn’t it, not to know whether it’s day or night after a while? But, you know, we need to know what is going on—”
“Doctor Yang—Arnie—I know you don’t believe me, but I’m innocent.”
“You’re right that I don’t believe you,” he said. He smiled as if it were their private joke. “Yet. But this is only our fifth session, and you are becoming more believable. That’s at least progress.”
“I always feel so safe after you leave but by the time you come back I’m scared out of my mind again.” She shifted uneasily in her chair; his gaze stayed on her face, and the corner of his mouth turned up as if something he hadn’t quite identified wasn’t quite right. He had been sitting and watching her quietly all that time, and she realized that it had been a long time since she’d spoken. “I… I should just answer every question, and try not to guess why you ask or what you’re looking for?”
“Same rules as every other time,” Arnie said, softly. “Are you in good enough shape to do that? Have you been sleeping?”
“Too much,” she said. “A chance to run or swim or climb something would be heavenly.”
Arnie’s mouth twitched, but he said nothing.
“What?” she asked.
“Bad joke. I was thinking if you had a head start, you’d probably get to do plenty of running, climbing, and swimming, at least until they caught you.”
She couldn’t help it; she laughed. “All right, let’s get to work. I know I’m innocent, anyway.”
He didn’t nod or smile, but he didn’t scowl either. “All right. Think back to conversations with friends and family since Daybreak. Remember times when you’ve said that Daybreak was sort of a blessing in disguise, or not all bad, or sometimes you were maybe secretly glad it happened. Tell me exactly what you said.”
“Do you need to know who I talked to?”
“No, not at all. I’m interested in what you said. All right, so when you have been thinking about the good things about Daybreak, across these last few months, what do you think of?”
“I’m not sure I remember.”
“What do you think you might have said? Just do what you’ve done before, try not to block anything, blurt out any old thing I ask about, just relax and let your mind open to me. Now what do you say when you’re explaining the good parts of Daybreak?”
Part of her wanted to object that she didn’t think she ever had, but it seemed that even before she objected, she was already telling him about the positive side of Daybreak, and that she was remembering thinking those things even before Daybreak. It was nice to be sitting here with a guy who understood; Arnie was smiling, listening intently. Just when she realized she was uncomfortable, he poured water for her. “Need a break? Hungry?”
Arnie would get her out of this. She clung to that.
THE SECOND NIGHT AFTER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 11:30 PM MST. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2025.
“Leslie.” The voice in the darkness was so soft she thought perhaps she was dreaming. She sat up. “Leslie,” the voice repeated, “come to the door so you can hear me better. Don’t make any noise.”
She rolled off her cot and crawled to the door, feeling ahead of her so she wouldn’t knock over the pitcher.
“I don’t know how long we’ve got,” the voice said. “I’ve got the guards timed, but if I hear them I’ll have to go that second—they vary the timing. If I disappear, don’t call out, just get back in your bunk and pretend to be asleep. I’ll always be back.”
“James?”
“Who else?”
Reasonable question. She lay prone to put her mouth and ear by the crack at the bottom of the door. “Can you do anything for me?”
“Working on it. Is Arnie still your interrogator?”
“He’s the only person I’ve seen since I was arrested.”
“Jesus, he’s got things just the way he planned. Leslie, there were three suspects. You were one; I was another. The third was Arnie.”
“Oh, God, James, you’re telling me Arnie Yang is working for Daybreak? We are so fucked, James, so totally fucked up the ass. What can you do? Do you have some evidence to prove I’m not guilty and Arnie is? Are you going to try to break me out?”
“Not right away. If they’re going to torture or kill you, or they hold a secret meeting without me, I have a way to know, and I have a way to break you out right then. Otherwise, though, I’m going to keep working on catching Arnie Yang. He says you’re refusing to talk.”
“I’ve been totally cooperating! I’m answering every question he asks me! He said it was my best chance!” Her rage shocked her.
“I bet he did. Tell me about what he does. He’s already got you framed so he doesn’t need to create more evidence. He could have had you executed by now. So he can’t be after information because he knows you don’t have any, and he can’t frame you any more than you are already framed. So what’s he spend all that time talking about?”
Even there, lying on the dark floor of her cell, and feeling like she owed James her life, Leslie couldn’t help noticing that James spoke in the same tone he did on the drunken lonely evenings when she told him too much about her love life. But he was right, he needed to know this, so she said, “Well, he always tells me to put myself into his hands and trust him, and he wants to talk about Daybreak ideas I had before Daybreak day…” She told James everything she could remember.
He said, “I think I’m recognizing the basic technique for implanting a false memory, but it’s been a long time since I read that circular. FBI thing, I think, about how not to be fooled by things like UFO abduction stories and Satanist conspiracy stories, and how not to lead witnesses into deceiving you. I’ll find it and be able to tell you for sure next time. Meanwhile I guess the main trick is to not believe any thought that might have been his suggestion. So if—gotta go.”
She rolled onto her cot silently, pulling the blanket over herself. She counted six long, slow breaths before a guard came in with a candle in one hand, and a tray holding a dubious meat patty, fried potatoes, onions, and zucchini in the other; as always, there were no utensils, just one wet and one dry cloth. Same thing four times in a row; probably another way to break down my time sense. She ate looking down at her plate, because she never knew when they were watching, or from what angle, and she was afraid they might see her smile. On the last bite, she blew out the candle, wiping her face in the dark.
3 DAYS LATER. NEAR THE RUINS OF ALTON, INDIANA. 6:45 PM EST. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2025.
“How deep is that?” Roger asked.
“After it’s past your neck, it doesn’t make much difference,” Debbie pointed out. “Unless you can’t swim. Last chance to tell us.”
“I can swim. I just hate being wet and cold at the start of a thirty-mile hike in soggy moccasins.”
Samson looked up from where he was lashing the last of the 55-gallon drums together. “I agree. We’re going to do it, of course, but I agree; I hate it too.” Before them, the Ohio River was broad and olive-green.