Gingerly, he raised his arm, bringing it closer to his eyes. He could smell its dusty smell, see its mites running among its feathers. The little creature was so delicate that it might have belonged to another reality, with different laws of life, different, more fragile meanings. He watched its tiny, sparkling eye turn this way and that. He said, “You’re real, aren’t you.” And he thought, also, of Gina. A thing like him, yes, but in memory so fragile.

As suddenly as it had come, the bird flitted away and was gone.

He called to mind a map of his location, which was Marin County. He looked at the nearby towns of Sausalito and Larkspur. If he moved at a shallow angle to his left, he saw that he would soon enter Sausalito, or whatever remained of it.

He was pushing through the woods when he first noticed the pulsation. He stopped, listened. Clear on the silence it came, a steady, deep sound.

Then he noticed that the birds had ceased to sing. He no longer saw any wrens jumping among the lower limbs. Overhead, the larks had gone silent. His ears began to throb with the rising sound, then his chest. He could literally feel it in his bones, this rising, pulsating pressure.

Above the woods, he saw a shadow coming. It was a military helicopter with a silenced wing, a hunter.

His body was warmer than that of pure hybrids, so its infrared detectors would easily locate him. He pressed himself against the trunk of a tree opposite the direction of the sound.

The helicopter drew closer, casting a brief shadow as it crossed the face of the sun. It continued on past him, moving off toward the beach.

Soon, it died away entirely. He listened, but all seemed quiet. He was too seasoned a soldier to believe that, though, and his hand slid into his pocket seeking his knife—which wasn’t there. Of course not.

The place remained quiet, the sound still gone. But the birds had not returned, so he remained hypervigilant, his senses cocked.

His fatigue level was almost terminal but he began to move north and west, hoping to come into the area of human habitation. To minimize the chances of infrared detection, he stayed close to the trees and the densest part of the woods.

For a moment—just the split of a second—he was aware of movement to his left. Then he knew that something was close to him, a shape, a presence.

Again to his left, he spotted a silver-white uniform and a bulging black helmet. To his right and behind him, there was more movement.