17. The Squirrel Wood

Turner wakes in a camouflaged smart plane hidden in a forest near running water, disoriented and recalling Lynch’s death. He checks on the unconscious young pilot, Angie, and confirms she is Mitchell’s daughter. Angie says Mitchell remained at the Maas mesa, believing he could negotiate because they needed him, and that he sent her away due to her dangerous dreams.

Turner links to the plane and discovers their logged destination was Bogota, not Mexico City; Angie thought they were bound for Japan. He wipes the craft’s recent data, then carries Angie on foot toward Rudy’s farm, wary that Maas may track them. Along the way, augmented hounds spot them and guide them in.

At Rudy’s expanded homestead, Rudy and his partner Sally take them in. Rudy treats Angie’s sprained ankle while Sally feeds Turner and questions the danger following them. Turner showers and asks Rudy to scan Angie.

Rudy’s imaging shows long chain-like structures throughout Angie’s brain—neither tumor nor standard implant—likely advanced biosoft grafts, which Rudy has never seen. Turner explains the failed extraction, the blinding strike at the Arizona site, and warns someone will come for Angie. Rudy relays the news: authorities suspect a blimp-mounted railgun destroyed the derelict mall on Maas land, not a nuke.

Later, Angie falls into sleep after an episode Sally compares to speaking in tongues, some of it sounding like French; Rudy tapes the end. As night falls on the porch, Sally confides Rudy’s recent decline into drinking and home-cooked drugs. Drawn together by memory and circumstance, Sally and Turner kiss, and she invites him upstairs.