“That’s nice,” said Mollie, lying on the cold hard concrete of the warehouse floor. The Andromeda Strain guys couldn’t be bothered to bring her a pillow or blanket; they refused to get too close to the pinhole Talas portal.

“No, seriously. I’m seeing furrows in the earth and, and, it looks like what little remains of this building was torn apart by an earthquake.”

“You know it’s probably not even earth anymore,” said Mollie. “Not really. It’s—”

Ana Cortez.

The name leapt unbidden into Mollie’s mind. She didn’t think she’d absorbed any of the information about the A-team that Babel had given her. In fact, she’d consciously tried to disregard the briefing, knowing better than anybody that the aces who’d gone on that first ill-advised foray were forever lost. But now one name from the briefing echoed through her memory.

Ana Cortez. Earth Witch.

Mollie sat up, aching from the hard floor. “Show me.”

As always, it took a bit of triangulation and negotiation before she zeroed in on the location that one of Joey’s wandering zombies had shambled to. But sure enough, barely visible through the sepulchral non-Euclidean meat-fog, the ground—she’d never call it earth—had been torn apart as if ruptured with a giant machine. Machinery didn’t work there, of course. The furrow cut through a nest of pulsing purple roots to an edifice that might once have been a building but which was now a shuddering blubbery massif covered in boils and suppurating gashes. The flesh structure had collapsed where it met the furrow, as though it had been shaken apart.

It was a tedious process, following the furrows through the zombie’s eyes, constantly closing and opening new portals. But she eventually found a rent in the ground that looked as though somebody had physically peeled back a layer and laid it back down with a deliberate wrinkle. A shelter; a hiding spot.

Joey enlisted several more dead things scattered around the hellscape to help with the digging. If there was one thing zombies could do, it was scrabble at dirt, impervious to rot and ruin. Though it had been buttressed with stones and roots, the dead tore it open in short order.

It was a burrow. Maybe a crypt. It contained an unconscious woman, Joey reported. When the excavation was complete, Mollie gritted her teeth and widened the portal to Talas for a quick look. The woman in the burrow was barefoot. She looked to be in her late twenties. It looked as though the ground had simply swallowed her, as though taking her into its embrace. She’d hidden herself, Mollie realized.

Safe in the outermost ring of the warehouse, Babel looked at the unconscious woman through a high-powered rifle scope. “That’s Ana!” she shouted.

Mollie opened a portal under Ana and dropped her in the lobby of the Jokertown Clinic. Then she slammed the connection to Talas closed again.

“Boston may be shit, hot and sticky, but the show is brilliant. Lovely reviews for the previews. I’m sure we’ll get to Broadway.”