Even now, flurries blow in off the lake, drifting down like cold confetti. I wander away from the box, trying to temper my hope. This could be an abandoned power plant in South Chicago in any number of worlds. As I move slowly down the row of generators, a glint on the floor catches my eye. I approach. Resting in a crack in the concrete six inches from the base of the generator: an empty ampoule with its neck snapped off. In all the abandoned power plants I’ve passed through during the last month, I’ve never seen this. Perhaps the one Jason2 injected himself with seconds before I lost consciousness, on the night he stole my life. — I hike out of the industrial ghost town. Hungry, thirsty, exhausted. The skyline looms to the north, and even though it’s decapitated by the low winter clouds, it’s unmistakably the one I know. — I board the northbound Red Line at Eighty-Seventh Street as dusk is falling. There are no seat belts, no holograms on this El. Just a slow, rickety ride through South Chicago.
