The crowd eventually parted once he got to the fallout zone surrounding Nikola, from which most had fled but a few brave souls still stood, ready to bolt but taking pictures with their cell phones nonetheless. Kaveh sprinted to Nikola so fast he nearly slammed into him, grabbing him by the arm. “We have to get out of here!”

“YOU ARE HERE, DEAR CLEVER CREATURE,” said the voice in his ear. “SPEAK TO HIM FOR ME.”

“Fucking no!” Kaveh spat, tugging him by the forearm.

Miranda’s stunned gaze drifted to Kaveh, morphing into a bemused horror, as if he were beginning to entertain the idea that he was dreaming. Eventually he managed, “Kaveh?”

“HE ASKED TO SEE ME. HE WANTED TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT US. ASK HIM WHAT HE WANTS TO KNOW.”

Kaveh turned to get a handle on the situation, saw that a line of humanity had formed at a radius of about fifty feet from where he was standing, at least half of whom had their cell phones and/or digital cameras out, snapping wildly. He looked over toward the Gadsden Line, but only saw a few of them, and the few he did see looked to be mobilizing. “Nik, we need to get out of here. Please take us out of here.”

“SPEAK FOR ME, DEAR CLEVER CREATURE, AND I WILL GIVE HIM HIS TRUTH.”

“Absolutely not!”

Miranda was looking at Kaveh like he was the nine-foot, spider-fingered alien cyborg, not Nikola. “He’s harmless!” Kaveh said, tightening his grip on Nikola’s forearm.

Miranda finally found his voice. “Harmless?”

Kaveh nodded curtly. “Mostly harmless. We need to go. It is dangerous for him to be here.”

“You can understand it?”

Kaveh had been so tuned to the sounds of human horror that he hadn’t noticed the chopping of a nearby helicopter. He looked up to scan the sky, and there it was, descending toward the roofs of the skyscrapers, likely a traffic helicopter for one of the news stations.

Meaning that it had a camera on board capable of transmitting a live feed.

“Yes, I can understand him,” he said, whipping his head back to Miranda. “Don’t ask how, but he’s not here to hurt anyone. He considered your speech a call to action, and he took it.”

Miranda nearly choked on his own spit. “How?”

“Because he understands English!” He looked up at the helicopter, lower now, almost at the height of the nearby skyscrapers. Some in the crowd had begun to inch closer, the people who hadn’t totally scattered realizing that what was effectively a very civil, albeit stressed, conversation was going on, and not the end of the world (for now).

Gravity pulled Miranda’s jaw down as he grasped for how to respond. “I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t expect—”