Kaveh opened the rear door to the Land Rover and gestured to Nikola, Here you fucking go. Nikola paused to examine the door, less seemingly out of hesitation than curiosity, as if to say, Ah, so this is how your people do hinges. Our people evolved a very different way of doing hinges. It all started when—

“WHERE WILL YOU TAKE ME, DEAR CLEVER CREATURE?”

“I don’t know.”

This didn’t seem to perturb Nikola at all. If anything, his eyes brightened, as though he was excited by the prospect of a surprise. The Land Rover, being fucking huge, was big enough that it fit Nikola comfortably, if only just. Kaveh closed the rear door behind him and climbed into the driver’s seat. All of this happened so quickly, with so little thought, that he did not realize that he had forgotten his cell phone.

* * *

Kaveh began by driving north, and then once out of north owing to a wall of mountains in his way, he headed west. He remembered that this highway had an entrance to the national forest north of Pasadena, and so turned off there. He kept going in the general direction of the observatory until the sun was up, and then he stopped.

Once Kaveh pulled over, he finally got a good look at the situation in the back seat. Nikola looked like he was asleep, arms curled in under his body, legs tucked neatly at his side, and the line of his neck curving his head almost at a ninety-degree angle, his head laid out in a long line like a snake.

What do I do with you?

He hadn’t wanted Nikola to stay in that inhumane situation, welded to the floor in his own filth, but now they had slingshotted to the complete other end of the spectrum: total freedom. He turned forward, and let his eyes rest, figuring it would be all right to doze a little. One of his handier life skills—he had never had any difficult sleeping in even the most uncomfortable of places.

He rested his head on the window, closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the sun was piercing through the trees, prying his eyes open with crowbars of harsh light. Going by the sleep in his mouth, he must have been out for at least a couple of hours. He turned around to check on his passenger.

Nikola was gone.

He smacked his hand in the back seat to make sure that Nikola hadn’t pulled his invisibility trick. Nope, he was not there.

Kaveh all but fell out of the car, sprinting back to the road and up the hill. “Nik? Nik!”

“YOU ARE AWAKE, DEAR CLEVER CREATURE.”

He slowed to a stop, falling over and balancing his hands on his knees to steady himself. “Nik, where are you?”

“FIND ME AT THE TOP OF THIS HILL.”