But the one she had been dreading the most was the one who got his turn toward the end, and that of course was Senator Todd Julian, Miranda’s biggest supporter in the Senate and champion of the Third Option. The man who had given “Enola Gay” his first, infamous name.

“Cora Emiliana Ortega.” It made her nerves itch. He had done that to disarm her, she knew, but it worked. “Many are deeply concerned about the potential superhuman capabilities possessed by the ETI species known as ‘amygdaline.’ There is some speculation that they may even be able to control human thoughts.”

“To my knowledge, they cannot control a human mind any more than other humans can,” she stated coolly. This was true, on a technicality. Ampersand had the ability to control human bodies through a form of hypnosis, and he certainly had the ability to erase short-term memories—but humans were also presently capable of both. Hell, a bottle of vodka could erase short-term memory. “Individual anecdotal evidence of people feeling like they are being manipulated by alien powers is not evidence that they have that capability.”

Julian casually flipped through the briefs in front of him as if he were reading the morning newspaper. “If you were not under any form of mind control, why did you put yourself between Tony Cascio’s gun and the body of the ETI?”

“I did it for the same reason I would do it for any person I cared about,” she said without hesitating. “I’d do it for my friends, I’d do it for my sister, my brother—”

“Your father?” he cut her off. Her already itchy nerves spasmed at the word.

“So you consider the . . . ‘amygdaline’”—he said the word with a slight chuckle—“to be on the level with family?”

“After a fashion, yes.” You knew this was coming, she told herself. Nothing to be ashamed of. This is the point.

“So for an eight-and-a-half-foot-tall alien . . . we aren’t even clear what they are made of. Is it alive?”

She wanted to believe that United States senators read their briefs, but as Cohen’s staffers and the lobbyists had warned her, these people didn’t really care about details, nor about what she said. They just wanted sound bites they could take back home to help with their reelection campaigns. “Yes, they are alive. Their bodies are synthetic, their brains are not.”