Five minutes ago, I never would have imagined that the person most closely connected to something this bizarre—the son of the one who started it all—would turn out to be someone like him.

  Even the unusually cold air conditioning on the plane couldn't stop the sweat from beading on the shiny bald head of the middle-aged man. The security officer held the urn of ashes with both hands, his face solemn as he asked the man detailed questions about the deceased. Rafe and I sat in the closest row, pretending to be a despairing couple, holding hands and praying together.

  He was a middle-aged accountant under immense pressure—recently divorced, paying child support for two teenage kids. His father's death was merely a brief interlude in a life that never gave him room to breathe.

  What surprised me most was that a son could truly know nothing about his father's profession. But then again, I was the last person qualified to laugh at him—I’d had two fathers, and to this day I didn’t really know either of them. How was I any different from this unlucky guy?

  So I couldn’t afford to die here. I activated Hoffman's Skill again, scanning the overweight middle-aged man with such focus that I barely heard their conversation—this, after all, was the task Rafe had given me.

  Under the threat of death and a crashing plane, even the weakest person might summon a kind of all-or-nothing courage—let alone the son of a Hunter. Before the man completely lost his temper, I gave Rafe's hand a squeeze and subtly shook my head. It meant there was nothing inside the man that didn’t belong—like a head burned to cinders, or a torso wrapped around someone else's heart.

  With Rafe’s signal, the security officer and the flight attendant offered the man an apologetic but firm escort back to his seat. They did not return his father's ashes.

  “Even if you didn’t solve the problem your way, I’m not giving the ring back. Unless you want to bring this plane down.”

  The moment the thought “experience a plane crash firsthand” crossed my mind, it rooted itself firmly into my wish list. I pretended not to notice the alarmed look from the officer and started writing in my notebook—which made Rafe visibly tense again. The two men exchanged a glance and, thinking they were subtle, began shifting into position: one in front of me, the other behind.

  “So what exactly are you planning? That thing isn’t even a Collection. Using Collection methods on it is like trying to fly a plane with fry-cooking instructions.”

  On the paper—in handwriting untouched by Skill—I wrote a few words:

  Who (What)? Where? What?

  “The three ultimate philosophical questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Given our particular goal, I’ve rephrased them—what is it? Where did it come from? What is it trying to do?”

  I looked up at Rafe, now standing in front of me, and gave him a polite smile—the kind reserved for sponsors.

  “If you can answer those three, I might return the ring. We don’t have to let the plane fall. It’s your family’s, right? I imagine it means more to you than just its price.”

  After all, someone who practically has “pragmatism” written all over them, who hasn’t worn a single piece of jewelry in over half a month, wouldn’t just be carrying around a clearly engraved women’s ring that wasn’t even a Collection—unless he planned to propose mid-crisis, which seemed unlikely.

  Rafe gave me that speechless look again, then brought his hand out from behind his back and opened his palm to show me a tangled clump of black thread.

  “This is an earworm. One of the least harmful pseudo-bios in Nowhere. It picks up the voices inside a person’s heart and replays them. That man isn’t a Hunter—he doesn’t even know Hunters or Collections exist. To this day, he still thinks his father was an electrician who died in a nuclear plant accident.”

  Rafe looked as exasperated as I felt.

  “I know how this sounds… Normally, when a Hunter finds a Collection, we reactivate it with minimal damage—by relocating it or changing its trigger. I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “So you're using the same old method on something entirely different? Honestly, might as well let the plane crash in the middle of the desert.”

  I hesitated, then told Rafe about the initial interaction with the severed head. He swore—on everything he had—that Collections never talked. Then, as if to make his case stronger, he invoked the former owner of the ring and assured me: that thing was absolutely not a Collection.

  “It’s not a pseudo-bio either. Trust my Skill,” Rafe said.

  “If it’s a Resident, then what would you do about it?”

  Rafe’s face went gray as a corpse.

  “Hunters don’t ‘deal with’ Residents. In Nowhere, we survive by staying out of their territory.”

  “We’re not in Nowhere.”

  I glanced at the time. According to the ticket, we had about thirty minutes of flight time left—landing would take at least twenty.

  I was running out of time.

  Rafe’s temple pulsed with a bulging vein as he clenched his jaw and growled under his breath:

  “That’s exactly the problem! Residents can’t exist in this world. The few that slip through get rejected—completely—by the world itself in under thirty minutes. This has never! Ever! Happened before!”

  “Congratulations to us—witnessing history on an airplane. So, you’re out of options now? Nothing left you want to try?”

  I still had things I wanted to try. Plenty of them.

  “Mo has already contacted the ground. According to protocol, the local police and CDC will seal off the plane. Everyone on board will be quarantined and observed... for more than fifteen days.”

  Rafe was already shaking with rage, so I didn’t ask him something cruel like, “And what about the oilfield job?” Instead, I came up with a good idea.

  “If we can get whatever’s in that head to return to Nowhere—or at least hide somewhere undetectable—within ten minutes, that should be enough, right? Since that thing is capable of communication and already tried talking to me, why not try negotiating with it?”

  “Fuck! No—no, that’s on me, I never told you. Never! Ever negotiate with a Resident!”

  Rafe was gripping my collarbone so hard I thought he’d snap it in half. My head whipped around like it was about to come off my neck.

  “You’re not the first to think like this. Your life’s just getting started. Don’t screw it up so soon, okay? Don’t do this just for me—”

  “You arrogant idiot. What makes you think I’m doing this for you?”

  I shoved his hand off my shoulder, which had gone numb from the pain.

  “You just said it yourself—this has never happened before. So we shouldn’t be using old methods to deal with it. It didn’t need to make contact with me at all in the beginning. That only made two Hunters suspicious—how does that help if its goal is to kill everyone on the plane?”

  “It talked about airplane meals and even mentioned we should meet in Haisen.”

  I tried to recall everything, pouring all my lifetime’s worth of persuasion into my voice.

  “It hasn’t hurt anyone except that one old lady it entered. If it wanted to cause real damage, I can think of ten more effective ways. If it had talked to the pilot instead of me, we’d already be a fireball crashing into the earth! Think about it!”

  “Exactly! Listen to how much sense she’s making. You so-called experienced Hunters—your heads are filled with the Residents you happen to know. And guess what? The ones you’ve encountered aren’t even half of what’s out there.”

  My breath caught in my throat. My heart skipped a beat. My instincts screamed at me to grab the nearest person and scream.

  But reason kicked in faster—I turned immediately toward the voice.

  And instantly regretted it. I slapped a hand over my mouth, forcing back the vomit rising up my throat.

  Human facial features—wrinkled, discolored, and ancient—were densely packed onto a fist-sized lump of flesh.

  It took me several seconds to figure out whether those folds were crushed skin or overlapping features.

  It was a human head stretched sideways, emerging from above the curtain that separated economy from business class, like a tube snaking out from behind the fabric.

  “Hello there, little princess,” it said.

  “I’m an Explorer from Nowhere. You said you wanted to have a little talk, didn’t you? But you’ve got no time no time no time no time left.”