“With Kaveh,” she said, taking a long sip of water, trying to wash down all the anger and disappointment she’d been feeling with it. She felt like a withered balloon that had been left in the hot sun for weeks, cracked and brittle. “He took Enola away in the Land Rover.”

“The man may be dead.”

“I don’t think Enola would kill him.”

She watched him for a while, his eyes still half-lidded and dark, and then turned her attention back to the television, unmuting it. The two stayed like that for a while.

“I cannot find Obelus.”

She turned to him, waiting for him to elaborate. Was this a gesture of good faith? “How dangerous is he, now that he doesn’t have the body of a Similar anymore?”

“He will defend himself.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t believe he would kill out of spite, but he certainly would kill if he felt he was in danger, or if anyone, human or otherwise, were to impede him. He does not need the body of a Similar to pose a danger to others.”

“And in his current form, any human that lays eyes on him is a potential danger.” CNN had gone to commercial, so Cora muted the TV. “Why is he running away from you? What is he planning to do?”

“He is trying to get off-world. But to do that, he needs a new body. Only one inhabiting the body of a Similar can escape Earth’s gravity to reach the resources he’s left in orbit.”

“New body,” she said, running through her inner catalog of what that could mean. “Not yours?”

Ampersand didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at her.

“Nikola’s?”

Again, nothing. Then, she realized if Obelus needed the body of a Similar, there was only one real option left. “Brako.”

She caught a flash in Ampersand’s eyes. Esperas’s Similar, the only other amygdaline on Earth more powerful than Ampersand, besides Enola. Obelus intended to kill and body-snatch the only other Similar on the planet.

“They have to know about this.”

She couldn’t catch anything in his movements that might resemble a response, and she certainly couldn’t feel what was going on on the other side of the wall at this moment. “You know I don’t like the military or the massive surveillance apparatus they’ve built in the last few years, but we need help. We need to tell them the truth.”

“They will kill him if they find him.”

She shook her head, too tired, too drained to be incredulous that he was still, still focused on protecting Obelus when there was all this fucking shit going on. “You have to let him go.”

Perhaps that was why. Perhaps all the fucking shit was too much for him to handle, but if he could just capture and control this one thing, this one thing that was ultimately impossible to capture and control.