The interior of the Bell 407 smelled of high-octane fuel, expensive leather, and the metallic scent of Elias's blood. The helicopter bucked and surged through the turbulence, the rotors screaming against the -5°C mountain air as they cleared the jagged peaks of the Cascades, heading north toward the Canadian border.
Elias Thorne sat on the floor of the cabin, his head resting against the vibrating plastic of the door. The 40.5°C fever was a predatory animal clawing at the inside of his ribs. He looked at his mother and sister. Sarah was staring at him with a look of pure, unadulterated horror. Mia was curled in a ball, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands over her ears.
"Elias," Sarah whispered, her voice barely audible over the engine. "You just... you just tried to kill a man. You blew up a building."
"I saved your life," Elias rasped, his eyes bloodshot.
"From who? A janitor? We didn't even see his face! You're acting like a terrorist, Elias! You have a million dollars and a helicopter and a gun... where did my son go?"
Elias didn't answer. He couldn't tell her that her son had died twenty years from now on an Oregon cliff. He couldn't tell her that the "janitor" was a man who would eventually murder forty-two people, starting with her.
The Memory Migraine flared—a vision of a remote cabin in British Columbia, a place called "The Ghost of Vancouver." It was a safe house used by the RCMP in a high-level witness protection case in 2012.
54.2 North... 128.6 West...
The coordinates burned into his mind, followed by a spike of pain so intense he blacked out for a split second. He gasped, his forehead hitting the plexiglass.
"Pilot!" Elias roared, leaning into the cockpit. "Change of plans. We aren't going to the regional airport. Head for the Skeena River. There's a logging pad at the base of the Seven Sisters peaks. I'll give you the exact heading."
"Sir, that's deep bush," the pilot shouted back. "In this weather? We'll be flying blind!"
"I'm paying you $200,000 to be blind!" Elias screamed, his voice breaking. "Just get us across the border!"
He checked his laptop. The $1.4 million was already down to $922,090.42. The "Blood Money" was bleeding out. He was an intellectual using his future knowledge to buy distance, but he was realizing that in 2006, the world was much larger and much harder to navigate than the digital landscape of 2026.
He looked back at the city of Seattle, now just a smudge of amber light in the distance. He knew Julian wasn't dead. He knew the explosion was a stalling tactic, not a killing blow.
"He's coming," Elias whispered to the dark mountains below. "He's going to fix himself, and then he's going to look at the flight logs. He's going to find the money."
Elias realized then that he couldn't just hide. He had to build a counter-intelligence network. He needed to find the people who would become the tech giants of the future and buy them now. He needed to own the infrastructure Julian would use to find him.
"I have to buy the world," Elias murmured, his eyes closing as the fever took him again. "Before he can burn it."
As the helicopter crossed the 49th parallel, a single tear of frustration and exhaustion carved a path through the grime on his face. He was a detective who had become a billionaire overnight, and he had never felt more like a victim.
The snow continued to fall, erasing their tracks in the sky.