Chapter 39 Summary and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Chapter 39 — Day 5 aboard Many Flags: Gwendy's hopeful morning is shattered when she discovers Gareth Winston attempting to crack her safe, setting up the novel's central confrontation.

Summary

On Day 5 aboard Many Flags, Gwendy Peterson is nearly at the cafeteria in Spoke 4—close enough to smell the freeze-dried scrambled eggs and sausage—when she realizes she left her red notebook back in her suite. She had set it down on the coffee table next to her laptop earlier that morning and, like so many other things these days, forgot it.

Despite that small lapse, the morning has been a good one. For the first time in five or six years, Gwendy enjoyed an uninterrupted night of sleep. She dreamed she was camping out with Olive Kepnes in her backyard in Castle Rock, toasting marshmallows, flipping through a new issue of Teen Beat, and giggling about cute boys until sunrise. When she woke, fifteen minutes before her alarm, she felt like a new woman—brimming with energy, determination, clarity, and hope. Two more days, she told herself, and all of this madness would be over.

Humming the theme from The Sopranos and practically skipping down the main corridor in Spoke 1, Gwendy runs into Dr. Glen heading the opposite direction. He grins and remarks that someone got up on the right side of the bed. She cheerfully tells him she has nothing scheduled all day and might crawl back into bed after breakfast. He glides past on the tips of his toes, and she waves him on, saying she just needs to grab something from her room.

Still smiling, Gwendy opens the door to her suite—and freezes.

Gareth Winston is down on one knee in front of her sitting room closet. The door is open, her extra pressure suit pushed aside. A shiny black gadget, not much larger than an iPhone, is attached to the keypad on the safe, with dark wires running to a small calculator-like device with a digital readout. Winston drops the device when she bursts in and scrambles to his feet, leaving the gadget to float in zero-g.

Gwendy demands to know what he is doing, warning that tampering with classified material is a federal offense. Winston calmly replies that he is not in any trouble at all. When she turns to leave, he lunges across the room—rattlesnake quick—grabs her arm, and shoves her down onto the sofa. He explains that even if she managed to get away, it would be too late by the time she returned with help.

He gestures to the gadget on the safe: a LockMaster 3000, a commercially available device that can reset a four-digit combination in about ten minutes. These Many Flags safes are trickier, he admits—probably because TetCorp expects high-powered guests—but the device will do the job in twenty minutes or half an hour.

When Winston says the words button box, Gwendy feels dizzy and thinks she might pass out. She knows that would be the end of everything. She asks what he knows about the button box. He says he knows some, but not enough, and he is counting on her to fill in the rest. She refuses.

Winston smiles and says she will. He outlines his plan: once he has the box, Gwendy will have an unfortunate accident. If the box cannot provide one, he has something that can—a small object from his pocket that looks like a tube of lipstick, the same weirdly vibrant green as the Chrysler from the Derry video. It is virtually undetectable by modern security systems and lethal: one spray turns a person's insides into jelly. There is enough in the canister to take care of the entire crew if necessary.

Gwendy argues that everyone will know, that he will go to federal prison for life. Winston dismisses this, noting that several people on board suspect she is mentally challenged. Sam Drinkwater and Dave Graves think she cheated on the cognitive test—that nobody could score as high as she did. A fatal accident would be mourned, he says, but no one would be surprised, given her cognitive issues. Dr. Glen would likely take some of the blame.

Gwendy counters that she has sent emails to friends in high places back in the States, that they know Winston stole the combination to the security case. Winston's smile falters—it is a possibility he has not considered—but he notes that suspicion is one thing and proof quite another, and proof would be nearly impossible without witnesses.

When Gwendy blurts out a question about Winston's