As she struggled again to get out of the wheelchair, she felt a prick in her arm and saw the glint of a needle in the dim light.
"I'm sorry, Alexa. It should all be over in just a couple of days. And I swear no harm will come to you."
She was feeling her consciousness swirl as Marion began rolling her through the steel air lock.
The last thing she heard was Van de Vliet saying, "Don't worry. A week from now, all this will seem like a dream."
Friday, April 10
7:04 a.m.
Stone felt his consciousness returning as the blast of an engine cut through his sedative‑induced reverie. Where was he? There were vibrations all around him and a deafening roar that was slowly spiraling upward in frequency and volume.
As the haze that engulfed his mind slowly began to dissipate, he wondered if this wasn't more of the fantasy he'd been having, of flying through some kind of multicolored space‑time continuum. Or was he waking up to something spectacularly real?