Chapter 25

Jack confirms the antibiotics survived flipping and instructs Alice on dosing. He gathers the group in the mayor’s garden, shows the smashed Door of the Worlds and tire tracks, and leads them away from the unsettling, widening portal. Jack reveals that Ayden Hestin, like Buzzy, is an artificial being—an ageless, predictive intelligence that has secretly governed Mejis.

Jack explains the origin of the redhead plague: Roy Kinneston and Tara Lynne Speckhoffer crossed from America through the Gullet, were infected by a buried evil, and seeded a Children’s Crusade here and in Hemingford Home. Though Roy and Tara are dead, surviving redheads are drifting west, “sleeping” as a near-spent battery meant to power the Gullet. If it reaches critical mass, Hestin warns, the Gullet could consume Mid-World, then America-side, then all worlds.

The ka-tet meets Hestin at Trolley Road. He leads them to a sealed installation marked Arrowhead Project/Sombra. Inside the cold, decaying hold, they pass relics—including a functional M249 SAW—and reach a chamber containing two gray, sweating boxes kept cool by failing sprayers. Hestin says transporting these volatile boxes to the Gullet will snuff it, like dynamite extinguishing an oil fire.

Risks are extreme: the boxes could obliterate Dezi and beyond if jostled or if cooling fails. Hestin claims there is no Plan B and that only the whole ka-tet can succeed. He offers to send the America-siders home if they prevail. After skepticism and fear, Alice refuses to run; Ry, George, Larry, and Mary all commit. Jack recognizes Hestin’s maneuvers but accepts the mission. They leave the hold resolved to undertake the perilous haul.