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“One day we’ll travel to the stars, and that will be the greatest act of exploration ever undertaken, but make no mistake about it, we’re traversing an arid desert, a desolate Arctic wilderness, an oxygen-starved mountain far more dangerous and inhospitable than Everest. The distances involved and the difficulty of maintaining life in outer space should not be underestimated.”

Helena seemed more interested than Mitchell, saying, “But we’ve been traveling into space for decades. We’ve been to the Moon. We’ve got a space station.”

“Honestly,” Jason replied. “That’s like playing in a duck pond, never being more than an arm's length from shore. If space travel was swimming, we’d be comfortable in a kiddie pool. Getting to the Moon would be like swimming a few lengths in an Olympic size pool, while traveling to Mars compares to swimming from Cuba to Florida. Going to another star, well, now you’re taking on a distance that makes crossing the Pacific look like your kiddie pool.”

Mitchell disagreed, saying, “And just because we haven’t done it, you think no one can? That makes no sense. There’s no reason to think aliens would be at the same technological level as us. They could be millions of years more advanced.”

“Or billions of years behind us,” Jason added.

“So you don’t believe in aliens?” Lily asked.

“Oh, it’s not that I don’t think there are aliens. I just don’t think they’re surreptitiously visiting Earth every couple of years to probe the rectums of a select few rednecks.

“That life exists in outer space is undeniable. Just look at us. We’re in outer space and we're alive. Sounds strange to consider, I know, but our perspective is so narrow and prejudiced toward seeing Earth as unique. We naturally assume our Earth-centric view of the universe is reality, as though the Sun, Moon and stars really do revolve around us, but they don’t. Copernicus and Galileo proved that over five hundred years ago, but in practice it’s very hard not to think of sunrise and sunset. Try picturing Earth-turn instead. You'll give yourself a migraine!”

“You’re such a geek,” Helena said. “Only you could take a perfectly romantic notion like a sunset and turn it into something weird.”

Jason laughed, saying, “Well, reality is weird, and that’s the problem, it’s our notions that are distorted, not reality.”

Helena just shook her head as she finished her breakfast. “Listen,” she said, checking the time on her phone. “I don’t know what you boys are up to today, but how about I take Lily with me. We can’t have her running around the city in your baggy clothes. I’ve got some spare clothes I can give her.”

“I’ve got plenty of spare clothes,” Jason said, feeling a little affronted by Helena assuming she could lay claim to Lily.

“Have you got any spare bras?” Helena asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Ah, no.”

“I didn’t think so.”

Jason couldn’t help but smile. Helena liked to be right. She got up, motioning for Lily to follow.

Lily looked a little bewildered. She glanced at Jason so he said, “Have fun.”

“But what about your phone?” Lily asked, holding it out in front of her. “What about my father?”

“I'll call Helena if I hear anything,” Jason replied, taking the phone gently from her.

“We’ll let you boys pick up the tab,” Helena said, taking Lily’s arm and winking at them as they left.

“She’s a wild one,” Mitchell said, but it took Jason a moment to realize Mitchell was talking about Helena not Lily, and that surprised him, exposing how much he’d taken a shine to Lily.

“Dude,” Mitchell continued, seemingly reading his mind, “you realize this can’t go on, right?”

“Huh?” Jason said, lost in thought for a moment. Sitting there in the booth, he could see the girls outside waiting at the lights, getting ready to cross the street.

“She’s going to find her dad, and then she’ll be out of here.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Jason was doodling, drawing equations and ratios on a napkin, barely aware his mind was running through a physics calculation. Dark strokes outlined various Greek letters and scientific notation. He’d written one equation several different ways, reversing and inverting portions of the equation but always arriving at the same result.

“You are such a weirdo,” Mitchell said, pointing at his scribbled notation. “When most people are distracted, they bite their nails, they don’t reframe Schrodinger’s equations.”

Jason laughed, “Yeah, funny one, that. Just the way my mind works, I guess. I find math soothing.”

“Oh, it’s a cure for insomnia,” Mitchell added, pretending to agree. “So, Mr. Good Samaritan, what are you going to do when she leaves you?”

“There’s nothing between us,” Jason confessed, “Just a passing fascination, I guess. But if she’s still around tonight, I thought we’d go to the fireworks in the park.”

“You and a couple of hundred thousand other people,” Mitchell quipped. That was the thing about New York, even when it seemed empty over a long weekend, there were still millions of people around. Empty was a relative term in New York.

Down at the intersection, Helena turned and pointed, directing Lily’s gaze up to the second floor window where the two young men were seated. Lily waved. She had one hand on her purse with the strap sitting comfortably over her shoulder. To anyone else, it would seem perfectly rational for a young woman to want to keep her purse secure, but Jason knew otherwise.

“It’s empty, you know,” Jason said, his mind still dwelling on that fact.

“What is?” Mitchell asked, sipping some coffee.

“Her purse. There’s no money, no passport, no credit cards, no ID, no names and addresses, nothing.”

“You looked?”

“I looked,” Jason confessed.

“Dawg,” Mitchell replied. “I’m telling you, she’s about the right age to have been plucked out of the water by those fisherman.”

Jason shook his head. “You’re an idiot,” he said affectionately, unable to suppress the grin on his face.

“You laugh, but I’m telling you, this shit is real. I saw lights over Manhattan last night.”

“What would an alien be doing in my apartment?” Jason asked, humoring him. “Why would an alien come all this way to sneak around disguised as a young asian woman?”

“I don’t know,” Mitchell replied. “Maybe it’s like those nature documentaries. You know, where they film animals in the wild. Yeah, that’s it, they’re doing a special on the mating habits of Homo sapiens and are looking for some live footage.”

“You really are an idiot,” Jason repeated, finishing his coffee.

Mitchell put on his best English accent, impersonating Sir David Attenborough as he said, “The mating call of the wild physics student can be heard for miles, echoing through the concrete jungle.”

Jason punched him playfully on the shoulder, saying, “Let’s get out of here.”

But Mitchell wasn’t finished. He kept his voice in a style that could only be described as BBC English, giving his words a crisp, clipped tone as he added, “The call of the Asian American is distinctly different from that of the African or European American, earning these fascinating creatures the title of the Great Warbling Bed Thrasher.”

Jason laughed.

Night had fallen in North Korea.

Lee staggered in the rain.

Blisters had formed on the sides of his feet where his boots had rubbed the skin raw. The pain caused him to hobble, but he had to push on.

Rocks and pebbles crunched under his stiff rubber soles.

Torrential rain blurred his vision, running down over his forehead, across his eyes and down his cheeks. Blinking and squinting, he raised his hand to shelter his eyes from the rain. The rain sounded like a jet engine warming up, thrashing the leaves, splashing in puddles, and slapping at his shoulders.

The young North Korean woman slipped on the muddy track so Lee braced her against himself, catching her before she fell. Although her arm was draped over his shoulder, her body felt limp.

“I can’t do this,” Sun-Hee said as Lee struggled to keep her from slipping to her knees. “I can’t go on.”

She was shivering. Her clothes were soaked. Rain ran down her face like tears. Her straggly black hair was as wild as the darkened tangle of trees and vines around them.

A stream ran down one side of the track, cutting its way into the trail, curling around rocks and over boulders, washing away sections of the track. The rain pounded the leaves of the trees hanging over the path.

In the darkness, Lee couldn't see more than a couple of meters. The trail seemed as though it would never end.

“Please,” she whimpered. “It is too much. I must rest. Let me rest.”

If they stopped, she would die from hypothermia, Lee was sure of it. He had to get her to the village, but the look in her eyes pleaded for mercy.

A thicket of bushes provided some relief from the rain.

Lee helped Sun-Hee sit on a gnarled root beneath an old tree holding the embankment together. He tried to get her out of the worst of the weather, but the rain dripped relentlessly upon them, washing over his eyes and cheeks, running down his neck.

He stepped back, arching his head toward the sky and allowing the rain to wash over his closed eyes and fall into his mouth. After a few seconds, he cupped his hands, catching what rain he could and drinking, trying to quench his thirst.

“You should leave me,” she said.

Lee put his hands gently on either side of her head as he crouched before her, looking deep with her dark eyes as he spoke.

“Hey, it’s going to be OK. You’ll get through this. In the weeks and months ahead, all this will seem like a bad dream. A year from now, you’ll laugh as you tell this story to your friends and family, relaxing around the warmth of a fire.”

Sun-Hee smiled, but her smile was forced. Lee couldn’t be sure, but he thought she was crying. Her tears mingled with the rain. Her blank stare told him she had given up. She couldn't go on.

It wasn’t until he pulled his hands away from the side of her hair that he realized she was bleeding from a head wound. She must have taken a knock to the back of the head when she’d fallen from the track. In the darkness, he hadn’t noticed before now. Gently, Lee reached around, his fingers touching gingerly at her matted hair. Sun-Hee winced in pain.

“I feel ... I feel sick.”

The muscles in her neck felt weak. Her shoulders sagged.

“Hey,” Lee said. “Stay with me. Think of your grandfather. Think about seeing him again. Think about the sunshine. Think about a warm summer’s day. We’re going to make it.”

Lee pulled her to her feet, determined to continue on, but it was as though he was dragging a sack of coal. She had no strength with which to stand. Even with a broken leg, she seemed barely aware of the world around her.

Sun-Hee collapsed in his arms, her legs dragging on the ground behind her.

Lee crouched, placing both arms under her frail body. He lifted her up, holding her in a cradle before him.

“This night will end,” he said softly. “There is always a dawn. There is always a new day ahead.”

Somehow, their fates seemed entwined, and he felt as though he were destined to save her. Lee had never been fatalistic, had never been into horoscopes or fortune tellers, and would have ordinarily dismissed such a notion as bogus, but on that dark, cold night he felt vulnerable. Perhaps it was his own impending demise he felt so acutely. Having watched one of the SEALs being murdered on the beach, he knew his own prospects of survival were next to nil.

Lee had been through evade and escape scenarios and one thing they made very clear was that the chances of escape were like winning the lottery. In the exercises, everyone got caught. It didn't matter how fit you were, how smart you thought you were or how cunning you could be, nobody escaped.

Perhaps saving Sun-Hee would make up for his loss. Perhaps that's why he felt so drawn to help her. If he couldn't survive, maybe she could and in that he'd find some hollow victory.

“My grandfather,” she mumbled. “Not my brother ... Don’t let my brother see you.”

She was deteriorating quickly, becoming delirious. Lee had seen this before on too many occasions, the cumulative effect of shock and the onset of hypothermia. The solution was always the same: get the patient warm and dry. He had to get her to that village.

Her head rolled to one side as he staggered back onto the track and continued down the hill, focusing on one step at a time. His ankles felt as though they had lead weights strapped around them. His boots scuffed at the loose stones as he stumbled along.

“Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me, how I will know your grandfather? Where does he live in the village?”

It didn't really matter, and he knew that. He could leave her with any of the villagers and they'd care for her and find the old man, but he wanted to keep her talking, to keep her conscious.

Sun-Hee rested one hand at the nape of his neck, touching him gently. Her fingers were cold, but that she could touch him filled him with hope. Such tenderness was overwhelming to a man on the run, fighting for his life. With all he’d gone through, surviving both the crash and the raging sea, seeing his fellow man brutally murdered, running for his life and the physical exhaustion of a forced march over the best part of thirty kilometers, enduring the cold and wet, after all this, her touch was incongruous, disarming. Feeling her soft touch spoke to him of compassion, a reminder that beyond the calloused enmity of two nations on the verge of war, humanity was only ever one isolated soul reaching out to another.

“Look for the diesel tank ... He lives by the tank.”

“That’s good,” he said. “And you, tell me about yourself.”

“I ...” But that was all she could manage.

Lee had to keep talking. Already, the muscles in his arms were burning under her weight. It wasn’t that she was overly heavy, but that he had her in front of him, forcing him to lean backwards slightly to distribute the weight and maintain his center of gravity. If he favored one side and then another, he found he could alternate the stress on his arms, giving them a brief sense of relief.

Talking helped Lee to shuffle on down the mountain, pushing through his own exhaustion.

“What do you do in the hinterland? Do you trade seafood with the farmers?”

Sun-Hee didn’t reply. Her head lolled to one side, falling limp. The rain eased, softly tapping at her bare neck, running beneath her wet clothes.

“Oh, stay with me,” he said, tears running down his cheeks. Normally, Lee kept himself distant from any emotional attachments with strangers in distress. His ingrained professionalism allowed him to be detached, almost as though he were interacting with a video game rather than a real person in real life. Yet when it came to Sun-Hee, he couldn’t help but feel as though their fates were somehow intertwined, as though it was his life hanging in the balance, not hers.

Pebbles crunched beneath his boots. The sound of the rain faded, signaling that the heart of the storm had passed.

“I was raised in the city,” he said, knowing she couldn’t hear him, but needing to talk. “We rarely ever went into the countryside. Why would we? We had everything we needed. Malls, movies, nightclubs. And the food, oh, you’d love the food: cold soup noodles and kim bap, almost like sushi, spicy rice cakes, oxtail soup and pig's feet, oh, but it's the deep fried chicken that is the best.”

Those words and the memories they brought carried him to another place, another time. Physically, he was exhausted, trudging through the mud, dragging one foot after the other. Mentally, Lee was at home in Seoul, going out for a bite to eat with friends. He could picture the bench in the kitchen beside the back door of his apartment.

In his thoughts, Lee grabbed his wallet and keys, slipping them into his jacket as he opened the door, making sure he thumbed the lock as he stepped through the doorway, listening as the lock clicked in place behind him. Garbage bags lined the alleyway, but neither the sight nor the smell bothered him. His eyes saw beyond the shadows, seeing the flickering neon lights in the distance. A truck roared past the end of the alley. There was the sound of a siren in the distance. A woman’s voice laughed from somewhere upstairs, while a feral cat skittered away as his shoes splashed in a puddle.

Lee’s boot caught on a loose rock, causing him to stumble and twist his ankle. He avoided a sprain, but the stabbing pain dragged him back to the present. His legs faltered. With each step, he fought not to slip and fall.

Slowly, the ground leveled out. The trail no longer wound back and forth, opening out onto a crooked path. Mud gave way to coarse gravel. The forest surrendered to freshly plowed fields surrounding the village. In the darkness, they looked lifeless and inhospitable, as though they were a source of death rather than life.

Lee felt his thighs cramping, but he pushed on. He desperately wanted to be back in Seoul. In a strange way, the darkened village represented those glittering lights in his mind. He wondered if he’d ever see those bright lights again.

“I’ll take you to Seoul one day and show you where I was raised. The air is not as crisp. The city is dirty, and the noise can be overwhelming, but for me, it’s home.

“Oh, the lights. You’ll love the lights. Everyone does, the first time they see them. Sure, you’ve got the beauty of the stars out here in the country, but our neon constellations are a sight to behold; a galaxy of man-made stars. They’re like rainbows, dazzling the eye.”

In his delirious state, he imagined a conversation with her. He felt as though he were replying to her as she questioned if anything could be as beautiful as the North Korean sky on a clear night or a field of wildflowers in the spring.

“Flowers?” he mumbled. “Flowers may look pretty for a day, but their beauty fades. City lights have no season. And the surge of the people. Ha, you’ll probably find it all a bit too much at first, but I love the bustle, I love the noise, the sense of purpose everyone has, whether they’re going to or from work, heading out to the mall or off to the theatre. There’s a symphony of humanity. Seoul never sleeps.”

Thin strands of light broke through from the shutters of the huts in the village.

A dog barked, but no one seemed to care.

Oxen stood in the fields, silently enduring the drizzling rain.

Lee fought to change his hold on Sun-Hee, wanting to give his arms some relief. She was completely limp. Her arm swung down as he shifted his hands and he almost dropped her as her weight shifted. Clutching at her frail body, he pushed on.

The diesel tank was easy to spot as it was mounted on a raised platform visible above the rooftops. The village must have used gravity feed instead of a pump when refueling tractors and fishing boats. The tank was next to the pier and he saw that boats could be refueled with ease. Yet the fishing boats at rest by the dock all had masts with wrapped sails tightly bound against the storm. Lee wondered if the tank had held any diesel in years.

Flecks of paint peeled off the aging tank. Spots of rust marred its legs. Steel rungs ran up one of the legs to a hatch on top. A wooden hut sagged beside the tank, its roof bowed with age. Smoke rose from the chimney. Light glinted out around the cabin's window shutters.

Stumbling, Lee stepped up onto the porch of the hut. The wind blew the rain into his back. There was no handle on the door, no lock, just a rough wooden bolt set into the vertical wooden planks. Lifting the bolt and shifting it to one side would be easy. From there, the wind would probably blow the door open, but then reality struck him.

Up until this point, no one knew he was this far north. All the searches he’d seen by North Korean troops had been to the south. He was about to expose himself to the villagers, and that thought struck him like a bolt of lightning, sobering him.

This was one of the amateur mistakes they talked about in his evade and escape training: never trust the locals, their loyalty will always be with the defenders. He was risking detection by walking through the village, as any boot prints not washed away by the rain would reveal the presence of a stranger.

He should leave her.

Perhaps, he thought, he could lie her on the porch, knock on the door and run. No, just put her down and run. He needed to get out of the village before being spotted. Someone would find her in the morning. Would she last till morning?

Lee wondered what the grandfather would do. Would he betray him to the authorities? Perhaps he would help him? It was wishful thinking, but Lee wasn't thinking straight. He was tired, hungry. Would the old man turn a blind eye? Lee needed food. He needed shelter. He needed to rest. Stealing a boat sounded like a good idea until he was down beside the dock, looking at the fishing boats with their rigging and their old-fashioned sails. Could he sail single-handed? What if they removed the rudder or locked the wheel at the helm overnight? Lee felt his mind struggling with the unknowns. What had seemed like a clear idea on the ridge, now felt like a disaster.

Standing there, he couldn't think clearly. He was bitterly cold. His body ached. He could smell the distinct aroma of a stew wafting through the air. Temptation was the enemy.

There were voices inside the hut. Compassion must prevail, he thought. He’d saved Sun-Hee's life. That had to count.