In the turbine hall, Maria stood at the microphone, smiling at the crowd, singing the final lines of “A Hymn for The World After.”
And that star gave us The World After With all its light
Shining all around us
A new dawn
Beyond the darkness
Where peace has no price And no end
The last note echoed in the hall. The band fell silent.
The crowd rose and clapped. The pounding applause reached her like an ocean wave crashing onto the shore.
She swayed, feeling the afterglow of the performance, a sensation of pride and accomplishment and self-worth that her bad decisions had deprived her of for so long. It reached down and soothed the hurt deep inside her wounded soul.
In her peripheral vision, she saw Helen Klein step to the lectern. She was clapping too.
When the applause abated, the woman spoke in a clear voice that rang through the vast room.
“I suspect Miss Santos’s performance here tonight has been far more transformative than any of us suspect. Let’s have another round of applause for her.”
The ovation started up again, and Maria glowed in the adoration.
When it receded, Helen spoke again. “I have one small alteration to tonight’s agenda: the launch viewing outside the power plant has been canceled. Instead, we’ll skip directly to the reception. But rest assured, The World After has begun. It’s not the world we expected. But I believe it’s going to be far better.”
A more muted applause filled the room.
In the front row, the Gestapo agent stood up and motioned to Maria, pointing toward the exit door to his right.
She scanned the room, searching for Kato, Ty, or Nora. But she didn’t see any of them.
With a sinking feeling in her stomach, she trudged off the stage. Another Gestapo agent was waiting at the tram. Her bags were already loaded in the back. Still, there was no sight of Kato, Nora, and Ty.
The lights of the tram carved into the night as it careened toward the airstrip. Maria racked her mind, trying to think of a way to help her team. Her friends. She didn’t even know where they were. But the missiles weren’t launching. That was something. What did it mean?
At the airstrip, the Gestapo officers ushered her toward the waiting plane.
She climbed the staircase, her suitcase in hand.
The moment she stepped inside the cabin, she saw Kato and Ty sitting at a table, playing cards. Nora was lounging in a club chair nearby. Beside her was a woman who looked almost exactly like her. Almost. Her counterpart wore a stern, wounded expression, like a wild animal that had just been freed.
Ty set down his cards and rose from the seat. “Heads up! We’ve got a celebrity on board!”
Maria smiled. “Haha. Very funny.” “How was the show?”
“Good. But it seems like I’ve missed the real show. What happened?” Ty shrugged. “Things didn’t go as planned.”
“Understatement,” Kato muttered, also rising from his chair and moving to close the plane’s outer door.
“To be precise,” Ty said, “things didn’t go as planned. But in the end, they turned out better than we could have planned.” He smiled at her. “You were part of it. How do you feel?”
“Better than I have in a long time.”
