Sol nodded to an open door across the hall with a sign that read, “Smoking Room.” “I’m within twenty-five feet of that; they don’t care.”

She smiled. There was a slight possibility that she might have even missed him. “How’s it going?”

“Have to head back west tomorrow, so I’ll miss your testimony. The fucking nutbars have found out where the body of AG-ETI-047 is being temporarily evaluated, so I have to go oversee the move.”

Weird, he didn’t just call AG-ETI-047 “Obelus” like everyone else. “What do you mean? Like the Gadsden Line?”

“Yup. You know, they’re wrong about most things, but broken clock, twice a day, et cetera. Main thing they’re wrong about this time is that they think the body we have is alive, but either way, it’s turned into a huge liability.”

Cora nodded, and she caught him looking at her like she might know something that could help, as if she might know how they found out Obelus’s mangled corpse was in San Bernardino.

“I know you no longer have any obligation to tell me anything,” said Sol, “but you really haven’t heard anything from Jude?”

“Honest truth, no,” she said, and a knot formed in her stomach at the thought of Ampersand. It had been more than six weeks since he and Nikola had disappeared, and the only clue she had as to what had happened was their bond, the wall that thickened and thinned at its own mercurial whim. As for where Nikola had gone, she had no idea, but Ampersand had not been taken against his will, of that she was fairly sure. Her senses told her that Ampersand had left of his own volition, likely to resume his pursuit of Obelus, but that it was not a coordinated effort. Wherever Ampersand was, she was fairly certain he was alone.

“Well, if nothing else, this hearing will have pretty big consequences for our other two asylum seekers.”

Cora hadn’t heard news of Woodward and Bernstein in weeks. She didn’t even know which government agency had them in custody, but she assumed it was Customs and Border Patrol, or some other branch of Homeland Security. It was hard not to think of them as prisoners, wherever they were.

“They have names, though,” said Sol. “It’s kind of on theme.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jude is an apostle, and Nicholas is a saint. So they told their caretakers to name them after apostles, so they liked ‘Andronicus’ and ‘Junia’ of the options presented.”

Cora laughed faintly. She only knew about those two minor apostles, one of which might have been Jesus’s sole female apostle, from distant Catholic trivia factoids. “‘Andy and June.’ It suits them.”

“I thought so.”

“Can you tell me where they are?”