“Let’s just get on with it.”

“Okay,” said Nils, not missing a beat. “Not one but two documentations of you being with my daughter falling into my lap within a couple of weeks of each other, the second of which looks pretty . . . not good! Care to tell me what’s going on?”

“She’s been working with Luciana at ROSA,” Kaveh said, keeping his voice measured and choosing his words carefully. “We met by chance at a Third Party rally in Temecula, the morning of the Enola Gay landing.”

“Now, I know you wouldn’t lie to me about something like that. But that police report? Well, looks like the feds have already scrubbed it, so it’s a good thing I got in while the getting was good. But the details were pretty interesting.”

“I didn’t hurt her.”

“I believe you. But ‘boyfriend’? Really?”

“I had to think of some plausible explanation for why it was me bringing her in.”

“Care to tell me what she was doing with you at four in the morning in the first place?”

“Staying at my house,” he said, knowing that any lie would get back to Nils, and soon. “She really, very much does not want to live with Demi.”

“And Luciana?” His tone indicated to Kaveh that this news pleased him.

“They aren’t on the best terms right now.”

“I see. I gather the reason you were at the Third Party rally in Temecula was for a story.”

“Yes.”

“So what’s your angle?”

He threw his head back against the headrest of his seat. Here we go. “Simple. Full personhood. No in-between. What’s your angle?”

“Debridement.”

Kaveh ran through his vocabulary database, flipping between languages, unsure what Nils meant, or how that word applied to . . . anything, really. “Debridement?”

“Corruption is the gangrene, and gangrene only spreads. We both know full transparency alone won’t tear down the system. You think getting rid of Bush will remove the infection? No, sir, the rot runs deep.”

Kaveh’s grip on his steering wheel tightened, his knuckles starting to turn white. “Dude, you already took down Bush—”

“And yet, the administration still stands. Nothing has changed. Same administration, different coat of paint. Cheney, Pelosi, Reid, McConnell, McCain, all of them—the rot has to be cut out, because if we don’t cut out the rot, if we don’t root out the corruption at its core, then we’re going to have to amputate the limb.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Revolution.”

Kaveh straightened back up in his seat. A year ago, he might have laughed. A year ago, all of this was a joke. Aliens were a joke. The world economy collapsing was a joke. The mere idea of Bush resigning was a joke. A rapid resurgence in fascism was a joke. But Nils’s tone was dead serious. “What do you want from me?”