“Yeah, it left after ours. Or, at least, I think it did. Loaded with Chimæra. Fifteen or so, and three Cêpan, and maybe a baby. I had visions of it when Henri and I were training, though he was skeptical. But so far all my visions have proven true.”

“I had no idea.”

“It took off in an old rocket that kind of looked like a NASA shuttle. You know, powered by fuel that left a trail of smoke behind it.”

“Then it wouldn’t have made it here,” Six says.

“Yeah, that’s what Henri said.”

“Chimæra?” Sam asks. “The same kind of animal as Bernie Kosar?” I nod. He perks up. “Maybe that’s how Bernie made it here? Could you imagine if they all made it? After seeing what Bernie did during the fight?”

“It’d be amazing,” I agree. “But I’m pretty sure old Bernie here was on our ship.”

I run my hand down the length of Bernie Kosar’s back and can feel matted scabs still covering most of his body. Sam sighs, leans back in his seat with a look of relief on his face, probably imagining an army of Chimæra coming to our aid at the last minute to defeat the Mogadorians. Six looks into the rearview mirror, and the headlights from the car behind us illuminate a band of light across her face. She looks back to the road wearing the same introspective gaze that Henri always did when driving.

“The Mogadorians,” she begins softly, swallowing as Sam and I turn our attention to her. “They caught up to us the day after we responded to Two’s post, in a desolate town in West Texas. Katarina had driven fifteen straight hours from Mexico, and it was getting late and we were both exhausted because neither of us had slept. We stopped at a motel off the highway, not all that different from the one we just left. It was in a tiny town that looked like something out of an old Western movie, full of cowboys and ranchers. There were even hitching posts outside some of the buildings so that the people could tie up their horses. It was very weird, but we had just come from a dusty town in Mexico, so we didn’t think twice about stopping.”

She pauses as a car cruises past us. She follows it with her eyes and checks the speedometer before turning back to the road.