Cora still had her hand level, but now it was starting to shake. Nikola continued struggling to stand, and Ampersand was still on the ground, but in a way that spoke to Kaveh that he was not incapable of standing up if he wanted to; this was the posture of someone who had been utterly defeated.

Then, a shot tore open the silence. Then another.

The sound made Cora shriek and drop the pulse emitter. “Shit, we have to go!” she said, kneeling next to Ampersand. “Get up! Come on!”

“Pill bug!” said Kaveh. “Do you have that pill bug thing?”

“Right,” she said, fumbling it out of the other pocket of her jacket. She slapped it down onto the spot on Ampersand’s back near the base of his neck, and it went off like a defibrillator, causing him to spasm slightly.

“Give it to me!” said Kaveh, and Cora tossed it to him without pause, continuing to shake Ampersand by his arms.

“Come on, come on!” she said. “We have to get out of here. There are more men with guns.”

Kaveh placed the pill bug on Nikola’s back and nearly dropped it in revulsion when it latched onto the “skin”; it moved like an actual bug, and the base of it had thousands of filaments that reached out and moved like the legs of a millipede.

He could hear the voices of the men now almost well enough that he could understand what they were saying, close, no more than a few hundred feet away. Another three shots rang out in rapid succession.

“Come on,” he said, more to the pill bug than to Nikola. “What do I do? What am I doing wrong?”

Nikola didn’t respond, still trying to stand up. Kaveh heard Cora cry out and turned to see that Ampersand had grabbed her, forced her to the ground, and had crawled on top of her like a soldier falling on a grenade. He watched dumbly, knowing Nikola was their best chance at self-defense but his instinct pulling him to get his girlfriend out from under the alien monster.

He pressed the pill bug to Nikola and felt nothing. “Come on, buddy, we need you!”

Ampersand had practically curled his head around Cora’s, blocking the rest of her upper body with his hands like a cage. She was trying to reach out for Kaveh, but she couldn’t get her arm out. “Get down!” she yelled. “Kaveh, he says you need to get down!”

Again, gunfire. One, two, three shots. There was a fourth shot, but Kaveh did not hear it.

53

53

Cora didn’t see it when it happened; her vision was blocked by Ampersand’s head and hands holding her down. She could see Nikola through his long, slender fingers, but not Kaveh. Nikola had almost stood back up to his full height, the pill bug on the ground next to him.