“What is that?”
“Lucas, go back.”
But Adrian was staring at him strangely.
“Your son is fourteen?”
“Yes.”
“When’s his birthday?”
Maya’s eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
“When?”
“March ninth.”
Adrian became pale.
“What?”
He looked at Ethan’s fighter outside.
Then back at Lucas.
“No.”
Maya grabbed his jacket.
“What?”
Adrian whispered, “This flight was never about sabotaging the plane.”
The radio burst alive.
“Maya, get Lucas away from him.”
Ethan sounded different now.
Desperate.
Adrian looked directly at Maya.
“It was about getting your son into the air.”
Maya’s grip tightened.
“Why?”
Adrian turned the display on his wrist toward her.
A file appeared.
Encrypted.
He entered a code.
A photograph opened.
Maya stopped breathing.
The image had been taken fifteen years earlier.
A hospital room.
Maya was asleep in a bed.
Beside her stood Ethan Cole.
On the screen beneath the photograph:
PROJECT ICARUS
SUBJECT M.L.
PROCEDURE SUCCESSFUL
