They crossed the water to the other side in a motorboat, reaching it in just under twenty minutes. The boat was in far too good a condition for someone who claimed to have lived isolated on an island for ten years, without any contact with the outside world.
Isaac helped Billy ashore, and together they followed the old man to a road that served as the main route for workers at the fish farm. Isaac’s patience was clearly wearing thin at the old man’s slow, crutch-assisted pace, while Billy didn’t mind the leisurely pace through the snow. In fact, it seemed as though he was following the old man step-for-step rather than lagging behind. He couldn’t help but wonder, though—if Nicholas Curtis was truly the same as the mysterious stalker who had trailed him not so long ago, why was he suddenly so slow? Were Nicholas Curtis and Billy’s stalker actually two different people?
At the side of the road sat an ancient, moss-covered three-door car crawling with bugs, probably as old as Nicholas Curtis himself. Billy eyed the half-flat tires suspiciously as the old man unlocked the driver’s door and got in, reaching over to open the passenger side. Billy folded the seat forward so Isaac could squeeze into the back, then slid into the front seat. The car ran on an old diesel engine, coughing and sputtering smoke into the early morning.
"These things have been illegal for years now. Where’d you even get the fuel for it?" Billy asked.
"It’s been in the tank since ’39," the old man replied.
"Looks like we’re running on fumes," Billy remarked.
"It’s not far," Curtis said flatly.
Billy leaned back, feeling the painkillers from the lab losing their battle against the relentless ache. His body felt heavy again, each movement laced with pain. As he slowly drew the seatbelt across his stomach and clicked it into place, a searing pain flared up, his insides twisting as if he were swallowing razor blades.
A light snow began to fall on the windshield. Nicholas Curtis set the wipers to their lowest speed for now. The wipers squeaked and scraped across the glass, the rubber on the right blade flapping like a snake against the window.
"There’s one thing you haven’t told us," Billy said. "How do you plan to get us through without passes?"
"Through where?" Curtis replied, the sincerity of his tone again making it unclear if he was joking or if time had genuinely clouded his understanding.
"To get us into Central Park," Isaac clarified.
"How many roads lead to Rome?"
Billy and Isaac exchanged a look in the rearview mirror. "Plenty?" they both answered at once.
"Exactly. And the secret research lab is like Rome. You two only know one way to get there. I know plenty."
Within minutes, they hit a full-blown storm. The windshield filled with a barrage of snow, grime, twigs, leaves, and rain. Curtis cranked the wipers up, making the grating noise an incessant background hum. Billy turned up the radio loud enough to drown out the squeaking and prevent himself from nodding off. To the sound of Bad Moon Rising, they drove along the deserted road, and Billy couldn’t shake the feeling that the oldie was an omen, warning them that they were on a straight path into the belly of the beast, oblivious to what it meant: that the beast was waiting to devour them.
A radio host cut in mid-song with an emergency weather update: "Couldn’t have picked a better tune, folks! If you’ve got a home, best watch tonight’s fireworks from there, because we’re in for some heavy storms and brutal hail! Not that anyone’s worried—end of the world’s on the horizon, right? Aliens are coming, so they say! You’ve read the papers. Happy New Year, everybody, and let’s get back to the music. Yee-ha!"
Isaac shook his head in frustration and angrily turned off the radio. "Hey, old fart, why do you live out here alone? Did they stick you on this island to keep you from spilling their secrets?"
"No, that was my own choice." Nicholas sighed. "And I suppose now I have to explain it, don’t I?"
Isaac nodded, watching Nicholas Curtis in the rearview mirror.
"When you get to my age, memories wait like weeds in every crack of your life. Some are good, but most are bad. You start looking for a place in the world where no memories can reach you—a place where they won’t follow you. That’s why I’m on the island. To forget. Want another piece of wisdom?"
When neither of them answered, Nicholas Curtis continued, "It doesn’t work. Hiding from guilt is impossible. The past catches up to all of us. It haunts you in your nightmares, and it finds you again in real life, no matter where you hide. Tonight, it found me," he added in a whisper.
The wind whipped the rain against the windshield in icy gusts. The world was angry, and it showed its wrath through storms, which had grown increasingly unpredictable since the climate crisis era, especially here in America.
"So, we’re here for you tonight," Billy said in surprise. "Are we your past?"
"No, not you two," Nicholas Curtis answered cryptically.
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The lone working wiper struggled against the sheets of rain, while on Billy’s side, the glass was simply awash with water. The rivulets and streaks reflected the headlights, obscuring the already dim view of the narrow, old road. Billy traced random patterns on the fogged-up side window.
"Why did you even join those researchers?" he asked.
"I’d rather not talk about that. But," he continued, "I suppose you won’t stop pestering me until I do. So…" He drew a deep breath, as though planning to sum up his life story in one exhale. "My best friend Henry and I received an offer from powerful people. I guess that Nobel prize had gotten us a lot of attention. Anyway, the offer was too tempting to pass up. They convinced us we could save humanity with our work. At first, I refused, but in the end, I joined because it seemed it could also advance my personal goals, and I thought I was doing the right thing."
"But you weren’t?" Billy asked.
Curtis closed his eyes, a signal he didn’t want to go on.
"He figured out eventually that torturing innocent people wouldn’t exactly benefit humanity," Isaac interjected.
"Nonsense!" Curtis snapped. "My intentions were good, believe me. I devoted my life to humanity. I was part of the breakthrough in cryotechnology. Thanks to our team, the critically ill can not only be frozen but safely revived when a cure is found for their disease. I spent decades in cancer research, and Henry and I developed a method to destroy cancer without harming healthy cells."
"Well, that’s news to me—that cancer can actually be cured," Isaac said dryly.
"I know," the old man muttered.
"Wait a minute," Billy cut in. "You’re saying people behind the Paradise Walls can be cured of cancer?" Though he wasn’t entirely sure anymore what the Paradise Walls even were—an isolated corporate stronghold, or some kind of paradise, an utopian counterpart to the PROMISED LAND?
A surge of hope flooded Billy. For the first time in ages, he felt a spark. Was there a cure for him in Central Park? Could everything turn around for him? Could he actually get a second chance?
"I’m already saying too much," the old man muttered.
Isaac, once a rebel leader, seemed almost visibly to bite back a response. He likely felt even more rage for Nicholas Curtis than he had before. Isaac had lived through this before, back in his homeland—only it hadn’t been a secret circle of researchers but a power-hungry dictator who had bled his people dry to profit from their suffering.
"And so, nothing ever changes," Isaac said cynically, "a few people live well at the expense of the world’s population. Really, you’re a saint."
Nicholas Curtis shot him a reproachful glance in the rearview mirror, then focused back on the road, barely navigable through the storm.
They drove up the ramp, Nicholas Curtis pressing down on the gas and shifting gears. After sitting idle for so many years, the car's gear stick felt as smooth as stirring a stick in quicksand. In fourth gear, Curtis pushed the old diesel engine into the red RPM zone, and the roar inside grew until it drowned out both the music and the windshield wipers’ squeaking chorus. Yet, despite the racket, the car accelerated no faster than a racehorse might beat a motorcycle. Curtis had to wrestle the small car into gaps between two electric freight trucks that clogged the roads around the clock, the lifeblood of America's booming production industries. As he slipped into a tight space, the truck’s automatic brake kicked in, and the bleary-eyed trucker behind him flicked his high beams in thanks.
"The nice thing about getting old," Curtis said, "is people expect you to mess up on the road or drive too slow. So, if you’re not getting it right anyway, you don’t even have to try." He then committed his next infraction, cutting into the next lane without signaling and causing the car behind to slam on its brakes.
At 100 miles per hour, the roadside scene blurred by. The rain-soaked lights of the trucks glistened through icy morning fog on both sides.
"Something still doesn’t add up," Billy said, "one thing has been on my mind since we set off: Why are you even helping us?"
"Why do you young people always need to know everything so precisely? Try learning a sense of inappropriate questions."
"Well, I figured if you had a reason—any reason at all—it might earn you a few points, because as it stands, I don’t think highly of you."
"And you think I care what you think of me? Fine, son. I’ll tell you a story, but don’t ask me to repeat it if you drift off halfway through." Curtis paused, as if pulling up a distant memory. Billy could almost see a past chapter of the old man’s life flickering through his dark eyes. "At your age, which feels like a lifetime ago, I had a wife and a son who meant everything to me. My wife... she was my muse, my inspiration, my motivation. Smart, funny, beautiful, sexy…"
"And?" Isaac prompted, jolting him back to the story.
"We were the picture of happiness. But one day, she fell terminally ill. And what did I do in my young arrogance? Instead of being there for her, I threw myself into finding a cure. She was sick and needed me, and I—lost in my obsession—forgot to be with her. On her deathbed, in her final hours, she told me she forgave me. But I could never forgive myself. So, I decided to preserve her body, hoping that someday there might be a cure for her disease." Curtis clasped his hands over his head.
Billy steadied the wheel, preventing them from veering into the guardrail or the trucks to their right.
"Oh, that was so long ago," the old man murmured, taking back the wheel. "No one cares about an old man’s fate."
Maybe he wasn’t a bad person after all, Billy mused. Maybe life had simply pushed him into tragedy, caught up in the noise of the city, where everyone bore their own burdens. Just like it had with Omar Branett. And Curtis was right—there was little room to care about another’s hardship when you were living through your own.
"What happened to your son?" Isaac asked.
"Believing I was doing the right thing, I placed him in the researchers’ care."
"You did what?" Billy stared at the old man in disbelief. "You handed your own son over to be a test subject for their brutal experiments?"
"He was… exceptional. My wife and I followed the Brotherhood’s teachings fanatically. We believed he was meant to save the world."
"You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked you about your motivations."
"Save it, kid. My son despises me anyway, and that’s enough. Let me tell you this much: Unless you’ve lived the life of someone who made a mistake, you can never pass a fair judgment. It’s easy to say what’s wrong, but it’s much harder to admit that you might have acted the same way if you were in their shoes."
A tense silence settled over the car. The port cranes and drab buildings looming through the morning fog on the horizon. Less than a hundred meters to the west lay the industrial district. It was there that it all began—his disappearance, the accident. That was where the first stone had been set in motion.
Now, all that remained to be seen was where that fateful stone would stop.
With the collapse of Thandros Corporation?
With his death?
Would Isaac finally free his Tabitha from the hands of those mad scientists?
A chill ran down Billy’s spine at the thought of what they were about to find out.