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About the Authors
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For Tom Doherty and Bob Gleason Vision doesn’t age
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ALL BOOKS ARE A team effort and we’re incredibly grateful for the team behind this one. The list starts with Tom Doherty, as great a publisher as he is a friend, who gave birth to The Rising when he took us to lunch and said, “The two of you should do a book together.” Bob Gleason, the best editor in the business, took things from there on a team led by Linda Quinton, Phyllis Azar, Patty Garcia, Elayne Becker, Ryan Meese, Lucy Childs, Aaron Priest, and Natalia Aponte whose input was crucial in helping this book reach its full potential.
We are especially indebted, as well, to Jeslyn Farrow Russo for sharing her remarkable grasp of the Bay Area and Northern California, including St. Ignatius Prep where her son Xavier starred on the same football team as our book’s hero, Alex. Jeremy Wall provided crucial input on the technical side of things, a big shout-out to Dennis Pozzessere for his knowledge of all things Alcatraz, and our deepest thanks to everyone at NASA for all their encouragement and support, both technical and otherwise.
No man or woman is an island and no writer is either, even when there are two of us. And we also want to thank all those from the production and sales side of things who believed in this project from the very beginning.
As for us, we now turn our attention to the next book in the series (tentatively titled Blood Moon), but for now there’s this one to enjoy. So let’s turn the page and begin.
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
—Seneca
FROM AN ANONYMOUS JOURNAL
YOU DON’T KNOW WHO I am, and you don’t need to. This isn’t my story.
It’s Alex’s.
I can’t explain all of it; it’s better if I just tell it the way it happened and let you make up your own mind. I’m writing this down and I don’t believe all of it myself. Like it’s all some crazy dream or maybe somebody slipped something into my soda and I imagined the whole thing.
I never wanted to become a hero and don’t consider myself one now. I look back on all of this a lot, looking for something I could’ve done differently, but there’s nothing. My decisions weren’t really conscious ones; I did what I had to do in each respective moment and regret none of those decisions. So if I had it to do all over again, would I?
The answer is simple: I didn’t have a choice then, any more than I’ve got one now. None of us does.
Know what, though? When I look back and think about all I left behind, everything, really, I still know I could never have left Alex alone. He needed me, and if you believe in the cosmic nature of fate, maybe that’s what had brought us together in the first place.
I don’t regret any of it. Some things are bigger than you, me, and the whole world. And this was about the whole world. Literally, as crazy as that sounds.
I want to lay it all out for you, so you’ll understand even if you don’t totally believe it. I don’t blame you, either. Maybe I’m really writing this for myself, to help me understand. Sure, I was there to watch it all unfold, but looking back, I’ve started to doubt my own thoughts and memories. So I need to get this all down to make sure I don’t lose it, because this isn’t just a story.
It’s a warning.
There’s a reason why people once thought the world was flat or ended at the ocean. It made it easier to convince ourselves we were in control of our own planet and destiny, neither of which is even close to the truth. That’s what I learned from Alex and what I need to tell you, what you need to hear. Sure, we know the Earth isn’t flat now and stretches well beyond the oceans. But the truth I’ve learned is born out of a new reality that’s just as extreme and unimaginable.
We want to think this is our world.
It’s not.
We want to think we’re safe.
We’re not.
Like I said before, though, this isn’t my story. It belongs to Alex. If there’s any hope for us left, and I mean all of us, amid the terrible truths I’ve come to know, amid the rising of a dark, new world around us, it rides with him. This is his story.
Because he’s the survivor.
PROLOGUE
PATTERNS
Northern California, eighteen years ago
Only those who risk going too far
can possibly find out how far one can go.
—T. S. ELIOT
THOMAS DONATI CHASED HIS NASA supervisor down the hall of the secret underground level, cutting him off just before he pressed the “up” arrow for the elevator. “You need to take a look at these figures.”
“I have,” Orson Wilder told him.
Donati reached out and flipped around the pages Wilder was still holding. “Right side up this time.”
Wilder sneered, then nodded grudgingly as he reached around Donati and pressed the “up” arrow once and then a second time when it failed to light. “What am I looking for?”
“Signs.”
“Signs?”
“Of a potential cosmic convergence of unprecedented proportions. Here, let me show you.…”
The elevator door slid open and Donati followed Wilder into the cab. “This earthquake in Tibet, a rogue wave wiping out an entire island in the South China Sea, the inexplicable malfunction of our interstellar monitors located in the northeast Pacific Ocean.”
Wilder pulled away as far as the cab would allow, suddenly discomfited by Donati’s proximity. “We have people you can bring this to on the extraterrestrial-communication side.”
“This isn’t about communication, no,” Donati insisted. “Communication would fascinate me, not scare me.”
Wilder looked down at the wad of papers. “So this scares you?”
Donati nodded. “Taken individually, no. Taken together in the aggregate, yes.” He whipped a marker from his pocket and drew a circle on the elevator wall. “Picture this as the Earth. Here are the locations of the stimuli I just mentioned.” Donati proceeded to draw X’s to accompany his continued narration. “Tibet, the South China Sea, the northeast Pacific Ocean. A neat line,” he finished, drawing his marker across the elevator wall to connect them, “perfectly following the curvature of the Earth.” Donati popped the cap back onto his marker. “You asked me if I’m scared? I’m terrified. The prospects of this make me feel like I’m walking a tightrope with the lights out.”
“Colorful metaphor.”
“Accurate, in this case. We’re talking about seismic levels of quantum disruption accompanied by radical spikes in the discharge of electromagnetic radiation. You see what I’m getting at here?”
“No, not really,” Wilder said impatiently.
“Our
lab exists on the same plane as these apparently random events. Our work could be causing disruptions leading to ripples in the time-space continuum. Or…”
“Or what?”
“The pattern could indicate contact from the other side of the doorway we’re trying to open, a precarious proposition, indeed, no matter how exciting it may be. Now do you see what I’m getting at?”
The elevator stopped. The door opened. Neither man made any motion to step out.
“All right,” said Wilder, “what would you recommend?”
Donati hesitated before responding. “Shutter the lab.”
“Our lab?”
“Until we have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”
Wilder thrust the pages out between them. “What does this have to do with that, even remotely? And I couldn’t shutter the lab even if I wanted to.”
“Why?”
“You know full well why.”
“I guess I don’t.”
“You think we’re the ones in charge here, making the decisions, pulling the strings?” Wilder shook his head slowly, better to make his point. “Not even close. It’s the people pulling our strings who call the shots from behind a curtain that would make the Wizard of Oz proud.”
Wilder started to step from the elevator, but Donati latched a hand onto his forearm, restraining him. “They don’t know what we’re dealing with here; we don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”
“Are you trying to scare me, Doctor?”
“Inform you.”
“And now you have.” Wilder looked down at the hand still clamped to his suit jacket. “So if you don’t mind…”
But Donati left it in place. “Shut the lab down, Orson. There’s one more indicator I left out.”
“And what’s that?”
“The last energy readings for the quantum field displacement grids registered at an eight-point-five on the eigenstate of the wave function.”
“So?”
Donati’s eyes bore into Wilder’s. “So our generators are only capable of producing slightly over seven.”
He released Wilder’s arm but the facility’s director made no effort to leave, holding a hand before the door so it wouldn’t close again. Wavering for sure, until his expression hardened anew.
“I’ll take this under advisement, review your findings in more detail, Doctor.”
Wilder had stepped out of the cab when Donati’s voice chased him back around. “Just keep this in mind.” He had his marker back out and ready by the time Wilder turned, adding a fourth X to the neat line around the Earth. “This is us, right here. I can’t explain what’s happening any better or clearer than that. I just know you need to shutter the lab until we understand this phenomenon better.”
The elevator doors started to close and this time it was Donati’s hand that stopped them.
“Under the circumstances—” Orson Wilder began.
But the sudden shrill screech of the emergency alarm blaring throughout the facility cut him off before he could continue.
ONE
ALEX
The Present
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man,
but he is braver five minutes longer.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
1
COIN FLIP
“ALL RIGHT, VISITING CAPTAIN, the call is yours.”
Alex Chin watched the referee toss the ceremonial coin into the air, watched it spiral downward upon the St. Ignatius College Prep turf field set on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the Sunset section of San Francisco.
“Heads,” he heard the captain of the Granite Bay Grizzlies say.
“It’s tails,” the referee said, stooping to retrieve the coin. “Home captain?”
“We want the ball,” Alex said, long hair matted down inside his helmet.
His gaze drifted again to the man in the wheelchair situated just off the sideline. He was clapping up a storm with the rest of the jam-packed crowd on the home side, gathered to watch the Central Coast sectional championship game between Alex’s St. Ignatius Wildcats and the Grizzlies of Granite Bay, a public high school near Sacramento.
Tom Banks was as close to a legend in these parts as there was, quarterback of the last Wildcats football team to make a run at the state title until a vicious hit out of bounds put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. His son Tommy played linebacker for the team now and had cracked the starting lineup earlier in the season. Alex had heard Tom Banks hadn’t been back to this field in all the years since his injury, tonight marking a quiet, unceremonious return just to watch his son play. The first time Alex had heard his name was when his own parents brought it up as a rationale to keep him from playing football.
As a result, Alex had joined the freshman team four years ago without saying a word to Li and An Chin, except to make up lies about where he was and what he was doing when he was really at practice. They didn’t find out until the local paper ran a story about the Wildcats promoting a freshman to start at quarterback for the first time in the school’s storied history. They’d been oh-and-four when Alex took over but then won five out of their last six games to finish at five hundred. The team upped that to seven wins Alex’s sophomore season, then eight his junior, before going undefeated this fall and earning a home play-off game.
Alex and the other two Wildcat captains switched positions with their Grizzly counterparts at the fifty-yard line to mimic the direction in which each would be going to start the game. The Cats were representing the Western Catholic Athletic League, and the Grizzlies, the Sierra Athletic Conference, with the winner advancing to the Division 3 state championship. St. Ignatius had taken the ball, instead of deferring possession until the second half, because they’d scored all eight times this year when they received the opening kickoff.
We want the ball.
Right now, though, Alex stooped and picked up the game ball the ref had laid down in the center of the Wildcat logo smack dab in the middle of the field.
“That’s not yours, son,” the referee scolded.
But as his fellow captains rushed into the pile of teammates cheering and jumping in a tight mass on the sideline, Alex tucked the football under his arm and jogged out toward the end zone near where Tom Banks sat alone in his wheelchair.
“That’s unsportsmanlike conduct!” he heard the ref call after him. “Fifteen-yard penalty, son!”
Alex still didn’t stop, didn’t even look back.
“This game’s for you, sir,” he said, handing Tom Banks the ball. “We’re gonna finish what you started.”
He watched Banks tuck the football under his arm the way he must have when he, like Alex, was an all-state quarterback. The man’s eyes teared up, the two of them looking at each other until Alex threaded a hand through his face mask to wipe his own. Then he ran off to a ripple of applause through the crowd, toward the sounds of Coach “Blu” Bluford yelling for him to get with it, the game was about to start, and what the hell was he thinking, anyway?
Alex knew his parents were up there somewhere, soon to be holding their breath as always in fear of his being injured. They may not have yelled at him the way Coach was yelling right now, once they found out he was playing football, but they’d been pissed too.
“Why can’t I play?” he’d challenged. “It’s my life.”
“You don’t understand,” his mother said.
“We are doing this for your own good,” his father added.
“You have to trust us.”
“No,” Alex said adamantly. “I want to play football. I’m going to play football.”
He remembered how his parents had looked at each other in that moment. Not angry, not disappointed, more like …
Scared.
Alex threw himself into the lurching pile of teammates pounding each other, swarmed by them and he felt the energy radiating like the air on the hottest day summer had to offer. The referee blew his whistle to summon the teams out for the
kickoff, the crowd rising to its collective feet, stomping on the bleachers.
“What are we?” Alex shouted from the center of the swarm.
“Glue!” came the deafening response.
“What are we?”
“Glue!”
“What are we?”
“Glue!”
“Then let’s stick together and play some football!”
And with that Alex led the kickoff team out onto the field where the referee was waiting for him, tucking his yellow flag back into his belt.
“So was it worth it, son, was it worth fifteen yards?”
Alex turned toward Tom Banks, now cradling the game ball in his lap.
“Absolutely,” he said to the ref. “No question about it.”
2
GO, TEAM, GO!
“SO, SAMANTHA,” CARA, THE head cheerleader, said to Sam Dixon after the Wildcats had gone up seventeen to ten in the second quarter, “you make up your mind yet?”
“Yes, call me Sam.”
Cara rolled her eyes. “That’s a boy’s name.”
“It’s been a boy’s name for the whole twelve years we’ve been in school together,” Sam told her. “And it’s what you’ve always called me until, like, yesterday.”
Cara rolled her eyes again. “Really? Fine. Whatever. Just tell me if you’re going to help us out or not.”
Sam was spared an answer when the upcoming kickoff forced Cara back to the rest of her squad.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she yelled over her shoulder above the cheering crowd, smiling. “I know you won’t disappoint the CatPack. We’re your friends.”
Sam lifted her backpack from the concrete and laid it on the bleacher seat next to her in the very front row. Earlier in the day, Cara had stuffed Monday’s AP bio exam, pilfered over the Internet somehow, into one of the backpack’s side pockets after a request, more of a demand, that Sam provide the answers over the weekend. The cheer squad liked calling themselves the “CatPack.” But Sam preferred to think of them, less affectionately, as “Cara and her Clones.” And now they wanted to be spared the bother of studying for a test none of them stood any chance at all of acing, maybe not even passing. They didn’t even belong in AP bio and Sam had no idea how they’d managed to qualify, wanted to tell Cara maybe the CatPack should just transfer into a different class.