James Frey - Sky Key

“So no one can actually see what caused this alleged beam of light?”

“That’s right, Stephanie. But the light isn’t alleged. Fox News has obtained four separate smartphone videos of the beam, as you can see in this footage.”

“Wow … this is the first time I’m seeing——”

“Yes. It’s shocking. You can see the beam shooting up in this one——apparently from an area of Stonehenge called the Heel Stone. But the really strange thing, Stephanie, is that all four phones stopped recording at the same moment, even though the people operating them tried to keep shooting.”

“Stonehenge is——was——a tourist attraction of sorts, Mills. Has anyone——besides the people who took those videos——has anyone come forward from the site itself? Any eyewitnesses?”

“As I said, things are very much under wraps here——literally. There are rumors of people being held by the authorities, and that some may be on HMS Dauntless, a Royal Navy destroyer currently in the English Channel. Of course, a military spokeswoman wouldn’t confirm or deny these rumors, based on the fact that this is an ongoing investigation. When pressed on exactly what they’re investigating, the standard response seems to be——quote——‘unexpected developments in and around Stonehenge.’ That’s it. All we know for certain is that, whatever has happened, they don’t want people to know what it is.”

“Yes, that is … that is obvious. Mills, thank you very much. Please keep us abreast of any new developments as they become available.”

“Will do, Stephanie.”

“Uh, next on Fox News, the ongoing crisis in Syria, plus a heartwarming story from the meteor impact site in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates …”

Aisling Kopp saw the impact site on the way in through one of the plane’s small oval windows. That black bowl-shaped scar in the city, 10 times more devastating than any of the pictures from 2001’s man-made terror attack.

But something about it had changed.

It wasn’t that it had been fixed up or cleaned away—that would take decades. What had changed was at the crater’s center, the very point of impact. Now, instead of ash and rubble, there was a clean white dot.

A tent. Just like the one that covered whatever had happened at Stonehenge. Whatever the Cahokian and the Olmec had done to the ancient Celtic ruin.

One of her line’s places. An ancient La Tène power center.

Used. Taken away. And covered up.

The white tents are like signals to Aisling. Governments are scared, ignorant, groping. If they can’t fix what’s happened—the meteors, Stonehenge—then they’ll shroud the damage until they figure it out.

They won’t figure it out, though.

A few minutes after the plane arced over Queens, she saw something else. Something she wanted to see. There, in Broad Channel, on the stretch of land bridging the Rockaway Peninsula to the Queens mainland. Pop’s house. The teal bungalow on West 10th Road, still standing after the meteor that hit several miles to the north, killing 4,416 souls and injuring twice as many more. It would’ve been so much worse if the meteor hadn’t landed in a cemetery. The already dead bore the brunt of its impact.

Aisling is still alive. And her house still stands.

For how much longer, Aisling doesn’t know. How much longer will JFK stand? Or the government’s white tents? Or anything at all?

The Event is coming. Aisling knows when but not where. If it’s centered on the Philippines or Siberia or Antarctica or Madagascar, then Pop’s wooden house will survive. New York will survive. JFK will survive.

But if the Event hits anywhere in the North Atlantic, towering waves will crash down on the coast, washing away miles and miles of houses. If the Event hits on land, if it hits the city, then her home will go up in flames in a matter of seconds.

She’s convinced that wherever the Event is concentrated, it will be an asteroid. It has to be. That’s what she saw in the ancient paintings above Lago Beluiso. Fire from above. Death from above, just like life and consciousness from above. A massive hunk of iron and nickel as old as the Milky Way that will crash into Earth and alter life here for millennia. A cosmic interloper of massive scale. A killer.

That’s what the keplers are. Killers.

That’s what I am too. In theory.

She moves forward in the long, slow immigration line.

Why didn’t she shoot the Cahokian and the Olmec when she had the chance? Maybe she could have stopped everything. Maybe, for that brief moment, she held the key to stopping Endgame.

Maybe.

She should have shot first and asked questions later.

She was weak.

You have to be strong in Endgame, Pop used to tell her. Even before she was eligible. Strong in every way.

I’ll have to be stronger to stop it, she thinks. I won’t be weak again.

“Next at thirty-one,” says an Indian woman in a maroon sport jacket, interrupting Aisling’s apocalyptic train of thought. The woman has smiling eyes and dark lips and jet-black hair.

“Thanks,” Aisling says. She smiles at the woman, looks at all the people in this vast room, people from every corner of the world, of every shape and size and color, rich and not-so-rich. She’s always loved JFK immigration for this reason. In most other countries you see a predominance of one type of person, but not here. It almost makes her sick, thinking that it will all be gone. That all these people from so many different walks of life will no longer smile, laugh, wait, breathe, or live.

When will they find out? she wonders. As it happens? In that split second before the end? Hours before? Weeks? Months? Tomorrow? Today?

Today. That would be interesting. Very interesting.

The government would need a lot more white tents.

Aisling arrives at desk 31. There is one person in line before her. An athletic African-American woman in a royal-blue jumpsuit with fashionable bug-eyed sunglasses.

“Next,” the immigration officer says. The woman crosses the red line to the desk. It takes her 78 seconds to clear.

“Next,” the officer repeats. Aisling approaches, her passport ready. The officer is in his 60s with square eyeglasses and a bald spot. He’s probably counting the days to his retirement. Aisling hands over her passport. It’s worn and has been stamped dozens of times, but as far as Aisling is concerned it’s brand-new. She picked it up at a dead drop in Milan on Via Fabriano only hours before going to Malpensa airport. Pop had sent it via courier 53 hours earlier. The name on it is Deandra Belafonte Cooper, a new alias. Deandra was born in Cleveland. She’s been to Turkey, Bermuda, Italy, France, Poland, the UK, Israel, Greece, and Lebanon. Pretty good for a young woman of 20 years.

Yes, 20 years. If the meteors had landed just a few weeks later, she would have aged out. But Aisling celebrated her birthday while she was holed up in that cave. Although “celebrated” is a pretty generous word for eating spit-roasted squirrel and drinking cold mountain spring water. She did enjoy a few sugar cubes after her meal, along with two small pulls off a flask of Kentucky bourbon. But it was no party.

“You’ve been around,” the agent says, leafing through the passport.

“Yeah, took a year off before college. Which turned into two,” Aisling says, shifting her weight from one leg to the other.

“Headed home?”