Jason makes dinner with Daniela and Charlie while they discuss Ryan Holder winning a prestigious science award.

A masked man abducts Jason at gunpoint on his walk home and forces him into an SUV.

Jason wakes up in an unfamiliar medical facility where Leighton Vance welcomes him back as a returning hero.

Jason escapes Velocity Laboratories by crawling through a bathroom window and fleeing into the night.

Jason returns to his home address and finds it elegantly remodeled with no trace of his wife or son.

Jason flees Mercy Hospital after a doctor attempts to place him on a 72-hour psychiatric hold.

Jason finds Daniela at her art exhibit and learns she is a successful artist in a relationship with Ryan Holder.

A gunman breaks into the apartment, shoots Daniela Vargas dead, and takes Jason back to Velocity Laboratories.

Leighton gives Jason a tour of Velocity Laboratories and reveals the 12-foot metal box at the facility's core.

Amanda breaks Jason out of his cell and they escape together by entering the box.

After waking in a dead family's house, Jason and Amanda realize their fearful mental state determines which worlds they enter.

Amanda leaves Jason a note with half the remaining ampoules, choosing to find her own path through the multiverse.

Jason gets himself arrested so Daniela will bail him out, then convinces her that an impostor has replaced him.

The impostor Jason arrives at the Wisconsin lake house, shoots a rival Jason, and confronts the family at gunpoint.

Jason, Daniela, and Charlie push through a crowd of alternate Jasons, enter the box, and let Charlie choose their new world.

Jason Dessen is a Chicago physicist who is abducted on a quiet October evening and wakes up in an alternate reality where he is a celebrated scientist with no family. He escapes the research facility, searches for his wife Daniela, and discovers she is a stranger in this world who never married him. After being recaptured and learning that an alternate version of himself built a device that travels between realities, Jason escapes with the facility's psychiatrist, Amanda, through the device known as the box. The two travel through terrifying alternate worlds, guided by the revelation that their own mental state shapes each reality they enter. Jason finally makes it home only to discover that dozens of alternate versions of himself have done the same, all competing for his family. The novel ends with a final confrontation against the original impostor and a desperate escape through the box, with Jason's son Charlie choosing their new world.

The core journey from abduction to multiverse escape.

Jason drinks with Ryan at the bar; Ryan criticizes Jason for abandoning scientific work that could have changed the world.

The masked man drives Jason to an abandoned power plant, strips him down, and gently asks whether he is happy with his life.

Leighton subjects Jason to a painful cold decontamination process before escorting him to a cheering crowd of researchers.

Jason dials Daniela's cell number from a landline in the remodeled house and a strange man answers.

Jason escapes Leighton's men at the remodeled house by diving down the laundry chute and fleeing through a neighbor's yard.

Jason ties a piece of curtain thread around his ring finger as a physical reminder that his marriage is real.

Jason and the alternate Daniela sleep together after she lets him stay the night in her apartment.

Leighton shows Jason video footage of himself entering the box and stumbling out collapsed fourteen months later.

Jason realizes the masked man who abducted him was actually an alternate version of himself.

Jason and Amanda emerge from the box into a deserted Chicago filled with swirling ash under a grey sky.

Jason and Amanda open a corridor door to find Leighton's men executing alternate versions of themselves.

Jason secretly calls Daniela from a prepaid phone to tell her he loves her and notices she is pregnant.

Jason discovers an online chat room where dozens of alternate Jasons are actively plotting to kill each other.

Jason is mugged and loses most of his ampoules, then spends eight nights sleeping on cardboard in an alley.

The family breaks into a boarded-up Wisconsin lake house and spends a quiet night together by the fire.

Behind the novel's main action lie a series of pivotal moments that deepen Jason's journey from the very first evening. The night of the abduction begins with a tense bar meeting with his rival Ryan, followed by the masked kidnapper's surprisingly gentle question about whether Jason is truly happy with his life. Stranded in an alternate Chicago without his identity or resources, Jason ties a curtain thread around his ring finger as a private talisman of his true self. His travels with Amanda take him through catastrophic alternate worlds — an ash-choked Chicago, a corridor where they witness their own executions — before he secretly contacts his wife and discovers she is pregnant in this unfamiliar world. When Jason finally returns to his own Chicago, he loses his ampoules, his money, and nearly his hope before piecing together a plan that reunites him with his family for one calm night before the other Jasons close in.

The hidden details and secondary turning points.

Daniela convinces a reluctant Jason to leave their family dinner and go congratulate Ryan at his party.

Jason2 returns home claiming he nearly got hit by a cab and he and Daniela make passionate love.

Amanda tells Jason during his debriefing that he has been missing for 14 months while armed researchers watch through glass.

A hospital doctor reads Jason an alternate Wikipedia biography describing his prestigious career as a scientist at Velocity Laboratories.

Ryan2 pulls Jason aside at the gallery and quietly accuses him of exploiting his compound research without giving credit.

Ryan2 reports Jason's deception to Leighton, who has Ryan2 taken away and killed for knowing too much.

After reading his own research notes on the laptop, Jason realizes another version of himself built the box to steal his life.

Daniela suspects the man living in her home has changed too profoundly to be the same person she married.

Jason and Amanda write their desired destination in a notebook before stepping into a stunning futuristic version of Chicago.

A naked, bloodied, screaming version of Jason staggers past them through the box's dark endless corridor and vanishes.

Jason injects a plague-disfigured Daniela with a fatal dose of morphine at her own desperate request.

Jason breaks into an alternate family's home at night and briefly contemplates killing that world's Jason to take over his life.

Having nearly run out of ampoules, Jason writes in his notebook about the night he first met Daniela and opens one last door.

Jason explains the full multiverse situation to Daniela and Charlie at a downtown Chicago shopping mall.

The dying impostor slides Jason's wedding ring back onto his finger and reveals ampoules hidden in the glove box of his car.

Dark Matter's most significant shifts happen in moments of sudden revelation and quiet emotional reckoning. The story begins with a seemingly small decision — Daniela encouraging Jason to leave dinner and congratulate a friend — that sets the entire chain of events in motion, while at home the impostor slowly unravels as Daniela senses something is deeply wrong. In the alternate research facility, Jason pieces together the truth that another version of himself built a reality-crossing machine specifically to replace him and claim the family he had once abandoned. As Jason and Amanda travel through alternate worlds, each new reality strips away another layer of his identity, driving him from stalking alternate versions of his family to contemplating stealing another man's life entirely. A series of hard revelations — including reading his own research notes, surviving a plague world, and exhausting his last ampoule — force Jason to reconnect with what truly defines him. The novel's emotional climax arrives when the dying impostor slides Jason's wedding ring back onto his finger, and Jason walks his family into an unknown but chosen future.