Two identical chocolate croissants. Quantum donuts.

He brushed the ants aside and took long strides across the wasteland to join them. They were coming from farther behind the Door, as if they'd traveled in a wide circle.

"What are you doing here?" called Jamie.

"Looking for you."

"The bomb didn't go off?"

"We've got about a minute and a half."

"Did you reset it?"

"What?"

"We can't find the Door," the other Sasha said.

The ants pulled up their map and rendered it in three dimensions. He glanced over his shoulder. The rings were sixty-three yards away in the sand-covered remains of Site B. The off-white housings blended with the wasteland, and the shimmer in the air wasn't visible from this direction. He wouldn't have found it again if he didn't know just where to look. "This way," he said.

They turned around, and the ants in Mike's head went mad. The thing in the sky was turning, soaring out from behind the sandstorm in its wake. It was like watching a jumbo jet bank in the air, something that had to go miles out of its way just to turn around. Its wings thrust down again, and the far side of the canyon was swept clear.

He took in the size and the tentacles and the wings and the sheer impossibility of it. The ants scurried and flailed and came up with nothing to compare it to, nothing that could explain it.

More and more ants appeared and he forced them away. The ones that mattered were holding the timer. One minute, thirteen seconds. He'd wasted seven seconds staring at the thing in the sky as it swung itself around.

The seraphs on the ground seemed to shout and cheer at the thing even as the wind of its pa.s.sing hurled them into the air or slammed them to the ground.

The dust before the endless sandstorm, the patchwork man had said. They are the tide going out before the wave comes in.

He traced the curve of the alpha predator's path. It led back to the Door. Straight to it.

"I think we should go," said Sasha.

He pointed the way again, and they ran for the Door. It was time to run. They stumbled and dragged one another across the sand.

Mike took a step, and the shimmer appeared in the air as if he'd walked around a corner and found it. Outside, without walls and a ceiling blocking the view, it was clear how big the rift had grown. The heat haze stretched almost fifty feet into the air and a hundred feet across.

Big enough for the thing in the sky to force its way through.

They found the hose, already slipping beneath the sand. Mike tripped over the buried cinder blocks, and his side flared hot and wet. They dragged him back to his feet and headed for the rings.

Twenty-eight seconds.

They slogged the few yards past the dead bugman to the fold in s.p.a.ce. The air coming through it felt chilly. "Move fast," said Mike. "There's only one charge, but I think it's still enough to kill us if we're too close. Just run as far as you can."

They stepped through the Door.

The steel pathway clanged under their feet. A wave of cold hit them. They danced around the body of the bugman and staggered down the ramp.

Sasha-the Sasha at the bottom of the ramp with the b.l.o.o.d.y neck and bandaged arm-swung her rifle around. The Sasha with the bloodshot eye held up her hands. "Whoa."

"f.u.c.k me," Sasha said over her rifle.

"No time," yelled Mike. "Go!"

"What? But you were barely gone a minute."

Mike stopped short and almost fell. Jamie caught his arm. "What?"

"A minute tops," said the Sasha with the rifle and bandages.

The ants spilled out. The relative distance. The bushes and the seraphs moving back and forth across the wasteland. He glanced up at the charge and looked at Jamie. "How long were you over there?"

Jamie shrugged. "Ten minutes, maybe."

Bloodshot Sasha nodded. "Sounds about right."

"Okay, then," he said. "Just over two minutes to save the world."

"Oh, f.u.c.k me," said bandaged Sasha. "It's gone."

They all looked up. The plastic carapace that Dylan had chopped away with a hatchet had reappeared. It was smooth and pristine. The C4 charge had vanished.

"I think it's inside the carapace," bloodshot Sasha said.

Mike closed his eyes. The side of his shirt was wet. The air was stale with nitrogen. The ants were seething. Red and black, carrying facts and snippets and ideas. What was setting off the bleed-through? Was it the items themselves? Certain actions or temperatures or...

Or what did Koturovic say would help break down the barriers?

"It's us," he said to Jamie. "The more of us here, closer to it, the more possible outcomes. The more potential. The more potential, the more bleed-through. We're making reality flip channels."

"What?"

"It's how we made the extra bolts appear, and how we brought one of the charges back when we all got too close. It's why more tool chests appeared when the Marines got here and why everything calmed down when they were killed." He stepped up onto the ramp. "Come on, get closer to it."

Bandaged Sasha raised her eyebrows. "Closer?"

Jamie looked past him. The alpha predator had finished its huge turn and was heading back to them. It was over the canyon, maybe two miles away.

But time went faster over there.

She stepped up onto the ramp. So did the Sashas.

Mike watched for a ripple or a change. He blinked, then blinked again. When he opened his eyes the second time, Dylan's rifle and the remote were back on the pathway.

"What are we doing?" asked bloodshot Sasha. She looked out across the wasteland. The alpha predator swelled in the sky.

"We're looking for quantum donuts," said Mike. The rings flickered. The carapace vanished again. One minute, twenty-one seconds. There'd been three of them by the rings when the first charge came back, and there were four now. The rate of change should be faster. Unless the Sashas counted as one mind. Or- There'd been four people near the rings when the charge came back.

He looked across the room, then at the bandaged Sasha. "Did you kill him? Frankenstein?"

She shook her head. "I've just been stand-"

"Drag him over here. We need more minds. More potential."

The Sashas ran across the room. They dragged the patchwork man across the floor. The slender figure left trails of dark blood on the floor. Mike could see three good-sized lumps and bruises forming on its head from the rifle stocks.

"He used to be human," Mike explained. "I bet his brain still is. Enough to factor into Koturovic's equations, at least. The more minds, the stronger the rift, the more bleed-through."

They hauled the twisted body up onto the ramp. A few st.i.tches broke open as they dragged it across the expanded steel. The fingers on one hand twitched and the lid over the human eye fluttered.

"I think it's waking up," said bloodshot Sasha.

Fifty-three seconds.

Mike turned his head and fishhooks of pain pulled at his ribs. The alpha predator filled the sky in the wasteland. It was less than a mile away.

Its tentacles splayed open like a green flower. Mike glimpsed huge amber eyes, each one twenty feet across.

Then the rings rippled in his peripheral vision. "Get back," he yelled at them. "Get back fast."

They leaped over the patchwork man and off the ramp. Mike's side and stomach were on fire, and they flared up as the shock of landing shook his body. Jamie grabbed him and tugged him away.

The first ring had turned silver and lumpy.

"What..." said Jamie.

It was tape. Duct tape. The entire ring was wrapped in it. The loops covered the whole thing, wrapped back and forth across almost every inch of surface.

The tape held down C4 charges. Dozens of them. They were doubled and tripled and quadrupled up at every point on the ring. All of them had jury-rigged detonators. On at least four-fifths of them, the detonator had a faint red glow.

Ten pounds'd take out that whole wall if you placed it right.

Mike made a conservative estimate that the front ring had eight hundred and fifty pounds of C4 attached to it.

FIFTY-SEVEN.

"No f.u.c.king way," the Sasha next to Mike said.

Forty-two seconds.

"Go," he said. "Must go now." He tugged at the bandaged Sasha. She dropped her rifle, pulled his arm across her shoulders, and dragged him across the room. The fishhooks in his side tore down, their barbs scratching against his bones.

Jamie ran ahead, and he heard the magnetic locks thump open on the big door.

Other Sasha with the bloodshot eye gave a quick nod and pulled his other arm over her shoulder. He yelped as the bones stretched apart and the hooks sank in even deeper.

They ran across the room, and Mike glanced back at the patchwork man. It raised one clawlike hand and rolled over on the ramp. It glared across the room at him.

They ran down the hall toward the front entrance. "Where are we going?" yelled Jamie.

"Outside," he said. The air in the hall felt warm and humid, but it filled his lungs. "Bottom of the stairs."

She ran ahead again and pushed open one of the gla.s.s doors. The Sashas half carried Mike past Anne's desk, through the door, and down the concrete steps. They started across the parking lot.

"No," he shouted. He twisted around and pointed at the walkway down to the trailers. "There."

"We've got to get away," said bandaged Sasha. "There's too much-"

Mike shrugged loose, ignored the knives in his side and staggered a yard or so down the path. He stopped in front of the landing and dropped to his knees. "Here."

Jamie ran to join him. The Sashas did too. "Are you sure?" asked Jamie, crouching down.

He reached out and smacked his hand against the wall next to them. "Between this and the foundation, there's almost seventy feet of concrete between us and the-"

The ground rumbled.

The gla.s.s doors and windows were carried out on a wave of fire and hurricane winds. Something slammed into the railing above them and parts of the front desk were hurled out into the overgrowth. The air burned their eyes and lips and lungs and then the air was gone altogether and they were gasping for breath. Black clouds whirled around them and took away the world, and they screamed and the flames blasted over their heads and around the sides of the staircase.

A trio of cinder blocks crashed into the walkway near Jamie. A piece of rebar plunged into the ground next to Mike. What looked like an I beam flew out across the overgrowth and decapitated half a dozen trees before hitting the ground hard enough to shake it. Dust and gravel rained down on them. An oversized silver hex nut slapped into the ground next to one of the Sashas.

The overwhelming white noise became thunder and screaming and car alarms. A crack split the wall next to them. The railing tipped over and fell as one piece. It slid down the wall and landed across them.

The noise and clouds settled. Mike tried to shake his head and slammed it against one of the uprights on the railing.

"Oh, yeah," muttered the Sasha with the bloodshot eye, "you're a genius." She had dust and bits of grit in her hair. A sleeve had ripped free on her T-shirt and slipped down her arm. A wide scratch bled across the front of her shoulder.

"Everyone okay?" he asked, rubbing his temple.

"I think so," said Jamie. Her face was streaked with soot. Her hair was singed at the tips.

"My leg's pinned under the railing," said Sasha-the bandaged Sasha. "I think it might be sprained. It's throbbing."

Mike inched out from under the railing. The hooks and pins and blades in his torso wiggled and twisted as he did. They felt wet again. Jamie and bloodshot Sasha were already clear of the wreckage and helped him up.

They shifted the railing enough for bandaged Sasha to get her leg out. Her ankle had caught a lot of the weight. It was already swelling. Bloodshot Sasha stepped in to help herself up, but their eyes met and they both froze. She went to help Mike instead. Jamie moved in to give bandaged Sasha a shoulder to lean on. They hobbled away from the stairs, then turned to get a better look.

A blackened steel framework stood where there'd been concrete walls. The upper floor of the building was gone. It wasn't clear if it had collapsed onto the first floor or been blown clear off. A haze of dust and ash stretched out into the parking lot and past the guard shack. The guard shack, Mike noticed, had lost all its windows.

Almost every part of the complex that could burn was on fire. It hurt to look at it too long. It sent a pillar of black smoke into the air, letting every fire department within a few miles know they would be needed. "Well," Mike said. "That was disturbing."