The car came to a halt along Atlantic Avenue as the engine sputtered and died, completely out of fuel. The car rolled a few more feet before Nicholas Curtis managed to angle it up onto the curb with two wheels, jerking up the handbrake as he did. Billy glanced out the side window, his eyes once again catching sight of a common graffiti tag scrawled by the Stranded: NO FUTURE, boldly sprayed across the ruined walls of an old shopping center.

"Shall we take the sub?" Billy asked, reluctant to address the old man with whom he’d rather share no more words.

Outside, the storm howled, battering the car and making the ancient suspension creak while the car shook as if in a minor earthquake.

"No need," said Curtis. "We’re here."

Billy clenched his jaw, trying to make sense of their surroundings through the rain-splattered windshield. This was supposed to be a secret way into Central Park? How was that even possible…?

"… we’re still in Brooklyn," he muttered, voice incredulous. "Miles away from Central Park."

"That’s true. But it doesn’t change the fact that we’re here."

The storm-ravaged early morning streets were deserted. A few stranded souls huddled under the shop awnings, sheltering where they could from the worst of the weather. From one alley to the next, tarp shelters and patched-up tents spilled out onto the avenue, and far ahead, maybe a hundred and fifty to two hundred feet away, stood the glassy, cylindrical structure of the Bona Dea Hospital, its lights illuminating a snaking line of patients. Desperate figures braved the storm rather than abandon their place, the queue stretching from the hospital entrance down the road toward the slums.

"That’s where we’re headed," Curtis said, his gaze fixed on the hospital just as Billy’s was.

"So, there’s a magical portal in the Bona Dea that’ll take us straight into Central Park?"

Memories from his own funeral distracted him: The old man bending over him, handing him a business card for the Bona Dea Hospital, where both a psychiatric clinic and cancer center were located. It was the same hospital Conrad Blake had intended to bring him to when they’d met at the police station.

Curtis ignored Isaac’s question, instead reaching with both hands to shove open the car door, fighting against the wind that tried to slam it shut. Billy stumbled out, nearly thrown off balance, and circled around to help Curtis, struggling to keep the old man upright against the apocalyptic gusts. Under the flickering streetlight, Curtis looked every bit his age, hunched and shivering against the weather.

As they struggled across the street (Billy leaning heavily on Isaac, and Curtis clutching his crutch) a sudden weather anomaly over Atlantic Avenue caught their attention. It was a phenomenon that had haunted the city with eerie regularity since the onset of climate change: a waterspout, forming abruptly above the darkened street, began its relentless path toward the hospital. The slender, swirling column tore through the slums, splitting the hospital queue in two. Startled shouts and terrified screams echoed from the direction of the shantytown, and Billy had no choice but to watch in horror as tents were lifted and shredded, scattering belongings—and people—into the sky.

"Dammit," Isaac cursed, helpless against this powerful storm, a monster born of humanity’s own negligence.

The three men stood transfixed in the middle of the street, watching as the destructive vortex surged closer. "It’s headed right for us," Billy whispered, his dread echoed silently in the others’ expressions. The tornado uprooted a street tree that crashed onto the roof of a rusted-out car, smashing it flat, the alarm screaming into the night. The swirling winds slammed another two parked cars onto the road.

"Come on, hurry, we have to move!"

But it was no use.

Billy didn’t have the strength to run, and Nicholas Curtis was too old to move quickly. The remnants of civilization—discarded trash and debris—were already whipping past them, swirling like projectiles in the tornado’s fierce downdraft. The powerful gusts lifted everything in their path, hurtling it past them with deadly speed.

Billy shouted for Isaac to get to safety.

At the moment when Billy knew he couldn’t escape the cyclone’s pull, the funnel cloud suddenly dissipated, vanishing as quickly as it had formed.

The chaos was over in an instant.

Isaac had stayed by his side.

Billy’s heart pounded. The fear that hadn’t surfaced during the storm now came crashing down, and he sank to his knees in the middle of the road. His pale, vein-lined hands trembled, and the cold from the asphalt crept up his arms.

"After everything we’ve been through," he managed to say, "we survive a damn tornado, too." But whatever relief he felt was short-lived, as the wailing sirens of ambulances brought with them a bitter reminder: not everyone had been so lucky.

"You’ll probably hate me even more for what I’m about to say," Nicholas Curtis muttered, "but we should hurry. If they start taking in all those injured people, Bona Dea is going to be pure chaos." He shifted his weight on his crutch and offered Billy a hand.

Billy didn’t take it.

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With a strained groan, he pushed himself up on his own. The last dose of the unknown medication was wearing off; he could feel the pain returning like a dark army of demons, biding their time to reclaim his body.

He pulled the hood of his jacket up and tugged it low over his face.

"Let’s go," he said.

In the early twenty-first century, when R-Energy was booming and most companies were switching to renewable energy sources, the Bona Dea Hospital became a beacon of innovation. The words most commonly associated with it were forward-thinking, curative, and eco-friendly.

With a then-revolutionary energy concept, the hospital drew almost all of its power from geothermal energy, making it independent of harmful coal power plants. Knowing that things are rarely what they seem, Billy couldn’t shake his deep-seated skepticism about all the praise heaped on the hospital, especially now that Nicholas Curtis had revealed that the secret entrance to the research complex lay within the hospital itself.

Billy tried to imagine what might await him beyond the Paradise Walls, but he quickly gave up. The truth, he thought, is always more terrifying than anything we can imagine. And it always hides behind the surface of things. These were the two truths he’d learned from a brutal reality over the past few days.

"Where do we go? Where exactly is this damn entrance?" Isaac asked.

But Nicholas Curtis remained silent. After everything Billy had experienced—staging his own funeral, an android attempting to kill him—he wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if Curtis led them to a teleporter that could instantly beam them to the corporate headquarters, bypassing all the physical boundaries of time and space.

"The entrance is an elevator in the cancer center," Nicholas Curtis finally said.

"A damn regular elevator?"

Billy was increasingly convinced that the old man wasn’t actually guiding them to Central Park. He had other plans, plans they couldn’t yet decipher. Billy exchanged a wary glance with Isaac, who seemed to share his doubts.

"Follow me and stay low-key."

Federal soldiers were managing the line of sick people in an orderly fashion. It seemed that no hospital could keep up with demand anymore, though compared to facilities in Manhattan, this industrial district hospital had fewer people waiting for treatment—for now, at least. Sirens wailed, blue lights flashing, signaling that this would change soon.

Billy, Isaac, and Nicholas Curtis pushed through the glass doors bordered by an ornate marble frame, ignoring the complaints of those waiting in line. The lobby stretched over hundreds of square meters, and nearly every bit of it was occupied. Large flat screens, as big as small movie screens, covered the white walls, displaying a continuous slideshow of soothing landscapes set to gentle melodies that could only be heard by those willing to pull away from the murmur of the crowd and stand close to the speakers in the corners. This was intended to calm frazzled nerves, and either it was working, or pure exhaustion had taken over; no one in the room had the energy to start a conversation. The patients sat or stood in silence, crowded together, waiting for their treatment numbers to flash on the screens hanging from the ceiling.

Suddenly, Nicholas Curtis signaled to them to wait for him until he returned. As soon as he disappeared, Billy glanced anxiously around the clinic. His gaze caught on a short doctor with glasses—someone he’d crossed paths with once before. Seeing him triggered something in Billy, and without thinking, he strode toward the short, mustached doctor, who was just about to disappear down another corridor.

Fueled by anger rather than fear, Billy felt a surge of strength and speed.

"Hey, you!" he shouted, striding purposefully toward the doctor, who had turned to the sound of his voice, unaware of what was coming.

Billy struck the cooler box from the doctor’s hand with full force.

It slid across the floor, flipped over, and landed near a group of homeless patients.

As the contents spilled out, people began to scream. Next to the upturned cooler lay a pair of dripping human lungs.

After the horrified screams came an abrupt, heavy silence. One by one, the visitors and patients in Bona Dea turned toward the commotion. At first, all eyes fixed on the organ lying on the floor. Then those piercing looks turned toward the madman who had slapped the fragile, life-saving cargo from the doctor’s hands: Billy Jones.

"You damn bastard! I know what you’re doing—I know where that lung came from!"

"What have you done?" the doctor shouted, barely able to contain himself.

But Billy was undeterred; he recognized the man, the one he’d encountered in the dark corridor among the organ traffickers.

"Does the hospital collaborate with organ smugglers? Do the patients waiting for transplants know where their new hearts, kidneys, or lungs come from? From innocent people your men slaughter for profit!"

"You’re insane," the doctor spat back.

"No, I’m not!"

But apparently, Billy was the only one who thought so.

His gaze darted from one angry, condemning face to the next. The sheer volume of furious people closing in around him made his head spin.

"This man is part of the organ-trafficking ring," Billy yelled, pointing at the doctor. "The gangs in this city abducting the homeless, torturing and killing them for their organs to sell," he said, only now realizing how his actions must look to everyone else.

After a moment of tense silence, someone from the crowd shouted, "Call the police!"

From an outsider’s perspective, Billy could completely understand the anger and shock.

But he knew the truth.

Or did he?

Doubt crept in. Just like back then, when he had ripped open his own coffin at his own funeral.

My god, he thought, what if I really am just insane? What here is real, and what am I imagining?

"The man’s in league with organized crime!" he shouted, as if convincing himself. "I know it because I’m a victim of organ traffickers myself! Test that lung! Test it! I swear it’s meant for the mayor and was taken from an innocent person, an Asian man, and…"

"This lunatic needs a psychiatrist!" another voice called out.

"The psych ward’s on the third floor. Send him up!" shouted someone else.

Several nurses and aides started moving toward Billy, some of them big and slow-moving but strong enough to overpower him easily.

He spun around, searching for an escape, but several Stranded blocked his path, standing firmly in his way. Panic gripped him, stifling his breath as the hospital staff and visitors tightened the circle around him.

He thought he heard Isaac’s voice somewhere, calling his name, but it didn’t reach him through the crowd.

When Billy tried to push his way toward the exit, two doctors grabbed him—one seizing his right arm and the other clamping his large hand around Billy’s neck, forcing him down, making him crouch as they escorted him out. His hood slipped off, revealing the smooth, pale, glimmering skin of his scalp.

A murmur rippled through the crowd as they took in his strange, vulnerable form. He looked like something out of the tabloids. An alien. Only the doctors who were leading him seemed unfazed by his appearance. "Call the police," one of them barked. "We’ll sedate him so this lunatic can’t cause any more damage."

"He’s in with the traffickers," Billy shouted one last time, though he knew it was hopeless.

When the doors shut behind them, the two doctors threw him onto a gurney.

For the first time, Billy could see their faces.

No, he thought. No!

These men weren’t doctors.

Not at all.