Before I could even open my mouth, Yusuf snapped, “I don’t control him. He can make his own decisions.” Over the burnt orange carpet, we plodded across a scaffolding of shadows cast from the skylights above. Then, after a few swears in Arabic, he murmured just loud enough for me to hear, “Be safe. You know we can’t trust them.”

Hallways, rooms. We changed hands from one security detail to another like a suspicious package before they led me to a large room that was split in half by a glass wall. From the doorway I could see Kaori sitting on a single metal chair on the other side of the glass—a straight-backed metal hornet—while Figueiredo paced the wall behind her, seething at me.

I’d stared at the hard angles of his face for hours and hours, never thinking I’d ever meet him. Never wanting to, with the way his voice rattled in my head, looking for the gaps in my armor. His undercut hair that swooped down into his eyes that he’d absently brush away while yammering to the camera. He wore his usual gold-rimmed glasses and dusty green lab coat even away from his lab, screaming for all of us that he really was the great scientist. I swept my eyes over him with a detached fascination like I was studying a film still. Even though he wouldn’t look at me, I could feel the heat of his rage, like his footsteps left a trail of lava.

Kaori—in a black turtleneck and pants, asymmetrical bob framing her face with uneven parentheses—just waited. Her legs crossed, her interlaced hands resting on one knee. I slid into the chair across from the glass wall.

“Hi, Hayes,” she said. “You left without even saying goodbye.”

Through the glass, her voice carried a hollow buzz. As a kid, I’d gone camping, once. I’d been invited by one of my friends from school—more likely pushed by his parents to invite the poor city kid—to get out into nature for a weekend. In the woods, one of us had stepped on a hornets’ nest and the whole swarm swirled out of the ground and attacked us, the air buzzing with wings.

“Goodbye,” I said. “Now, how about you leave?”

I kept my eyes on her and away from Figueiredo, with the looking-through-someone-else’s-glasses queasiness he was kicking up in my stomach.

She shrugged. “As soon as you come back with us.”

“I don’t think so. I have a joust tonight.”

She tipped her head. “I’m intrigued. Sounds like you’ve been having fun. While I’ve been trying to avert a world-ending cataclysm.”

“Sorry, I would’ve asked about you. I guess I’m still annoyed about the whole threatening to kill Yusuf thing.”

“I get it. And you look well. Unburdened by the deaths of billions.”

“And you look like a low-rent assassin.”