“You sure this is him?”

She nodded. Across the gulf, lightning licked at waterspouts. She brushed the fine salt spray from her cheeks.

“Specifics?”

“Pattern confirmed. Subject is Fourteen-Seven When intact. Age twenty-three… twenty-three years and thirteen hours. REM signature confirmed; this is the author.”

“What’s a kid from the sticks of New York doing alone on the Gulf Coast on his birthday?”

“The library’s empty.” The mathematician shrugged. “Watching the lightning. Getting high. Running away?”

West nodded. “He wanted to die down here, away from everyone he knew. Tonight was the night.”

“Shit, he’s got another fifty years before—”

“That’s why we’re here.”

“It’s all there, everything we need?”

“It’s there.”

Benton sighed. “Hard to believe this kid caused it all.”

“Wasn’t really his fault.”

“What if we—”

“Hope, I’m disappointed.” West took a handful of sand, let the grains sift through his fingers. They danced with the wind. “You of all people should know that killing him wouldn’t stop this.”

“I’m just a mathematician.”

He scoffed. “Our best quantum X theorist.”

“Just a maths egg.”

He wiped his hands of the beach. “You ready?”

“Guess so.”

“Unlock the When.”

Benton tapped the subdermal in her throat. A halo sparked to life around her head. “Agents West and Benton, Fourteen-Seven When, request immediate unlock on my mark. Play.”

nav fix on your position. jog to play in three, two—

And I knew somehow that on that night in Lincoln, Nebraska, Abigail wasn’t sleeping well. Thoughts of tomorrow’s flight to Vermont, the uncertainty of a future spent mostly between airports and stages, behind cameras, and I knew that a baby was born, and his parents would name him David for his father, Smith for his mother’s side. The family lived three blocks east of Abigail, one block west of the recording studio where Lullaby recorded the album I couldn’t get out of my head.