The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

nodded. Waited for him to go on.
    “What if we have it backwards?” he said. “What if it mastered him?”
     
    VERSE VIA MAY AFTERNOON IN 2001
     
    The cell measures nine feet by seven. There are no bars. Instead there are four concrete walls painted the ugliest possible shade of blue, and a steel door with a two-inch vertical strip of security glass set into it. It is the only window in the cell. Encased in the ceiling is a fluorescent light, which is never turned off. Since last December it has been flickering in a way that gives Travis headaches right behind his eyes. For more than eight years he has spent twenty-three and a half hours of each day inside this room.
    There is a letter taped to the wall above the bed. It arrived three months ago to inform him that his parents had been killed, shot while waiting at a stoplight in Minneapolis. Two detectives came to ask for his input on the matter. Travis enjoyed their undisguised apathy over Mr. and Mrs. Chase’s deaths.
    The only other letters he’s received are from his brother, Jeff. These are not on the wall, but folded neatly beneath the bed, where he doesn’t have to look at them, or think about the survivor’s guilt that saturates the space between every line. Jeff is convinced that Travis’s actions, on that night in 1992, are the only reason he himself was spared being drawn into the family business.
    Travis is lying on the bed now, eyes closed to take the edge off the flickering. It barely helps. Sometimes he manages to simply forget about the flickering, even while it’s happening, and sometimes that helps. Letting things slip from his mind is a skill he’s perfected in this place. Days. Months. Years. The time behind him. The time ahead of him. Letting it all slip away is how he keeps from going crazy.
    He stands from the bed and paces the room. He is hardly aware of the decision to do this; it is an automatic action that he makes several dozen times a day. His pacing follows the same path as always: door to toilet, toilet to door, door to toilet.
    At that moment the lock on his cell door disengages with a heavy click, and the guard pushes it in.
    “Visitor,” the guard says, and Travis senses that the guard is nervous. Which is strange.
    Then a man strides into the cell, dressed in an expensive suit, and the guard closes the door behind him. The man’s hair is graying at the temples, and he wears sunglasses even in this windowless room. He grimaces at the flickering light, and says, “Hello, Travis. My name is Aaron Pilgrim.”
    He reaches for Travis as if to shake his hand, but instead Travis sees that he’s holding something out to him. It is a bright blue sphere, the size of a softball. The radiance of the thing swims. It is hypnotic, and Travis takes it into his own hand without even considering to refuse.
    The moment it touches his skin, a voice speaks in his head. A voice he thought he would never hear again.
    “Travis,” it says, and the strength departs his legs. He sits hard onto the bed.
    Emily.
    Beyond the blue light—beyond everything that matters to him now—he is vaguely aware that the visitor, Pilgrim, is smiling about something. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
    Travis says her name. The light flutters in response, then settles into the rhythm of his pulse.
    “We won’t be talking for long,” Emily says. “Not this time. Not next time, either, years and years from now, when we meet again over that muddy hole in Alaska. But the third time … oh sweetie. The third time will most certainly be the charm.”
    “Why can’t you stay with me now?” Travis says. He hears the longing and pain in his own voice. Missing her already, before she’s even gone.
    “I have work to do,” Emily says. “Complicated work. I could never explain it to you, I’m afraid. Not here and now. Someday, I will. If it helps, just know this: you’re more important to me than anyone in the world. More than the grinning jackass standing in this cell with you. Out of six billion people, you’re the one whose involvement I need the most. You’re the irreplaceable component of my plan.”
    Travis feels something wonderful swell in his chest, at her words. He matters to her. She has chosen him. In this moment, it is all he can do not to cry.
    “Why me?” he whispers.
    She giggles softly. “You’ll find out.” The light continues in step with his heartbeat for another few seconds. Then it changes. Darkens, in a way. “Now I’m