“We have to get out of here,” she said, grabbing his arm and tugging it. He didn’t move, and she found she could sense what was happening. This was a burst of energy, far away but inescapable, faster than sound, faster than thought. This was a supernova, a blast of energy so powerful that nothing in the solar system could possibly escape it. It would mow through everything—first Jupiter, then the outer planets, then every asteroid, then Mars, then Earth, then the inner planets, and finally, it would obliterate the sun. There would be nothing, and even if they moved right this second, nothing on Earth, human or alien, was physically capable of escaping this.

Then, as quickly as the tear in reality had opened, it receded into itself, the energy pulling back into its concentrated mass, an inverse big bang. The light dimmed, and then it disappeared.

She clung to him tighter. “Are we going to die?”

“I don’t know.”

She actually did feel something like relief to see that he was still capable of speech. “Ampersand, please, what was that?”

“A large release of energy.”

“Where was it?”

“The origin of the blast is approximately forty-four light-minutes away.”

“There was no way we were going to escape it,” she said, eyes still skyward, her retinas burning in the spot where that light had been.

“I don’t see the shock wave anymore. Whatever caused the blast reabsorbed the energy back into itself.”

He finally moved, and she saw that some of the characteristic luminescence had returned to his eyes, that he was able to focus. He was swaying a little, not dissimilar from the way he had been moving yesterday. She moved in front of him, grabbed both of his forearms in an attempt to steady him. He was so big and so heavy, she hardly had any effect on him at all. She held back from asking where it came from, already knowing the answer: I don’t know.

Now that the buzzing in her mind had calmed, now that she was out of the maelstrom of ice, she came back to reality, the reality in which they had just up and left ROSA yesterday without notice and in chaos. The reality in which they weren’t the only ones to have seen the light in the sky.

She remembered the resolution she’d made before she’d gone to sleep, that they needed to get out of the country, away from Esperas, away from the U.S. government. She still believed it necessary, but that wasn’t the responsible thing to do right this second. The world would be freaking out, and with good reason. Their great escape would have to wait.

“We have to go back to the security complex,” she said, looking up at him urgently. “We have to tell them what we know.”

He hesitated, then summoned his semiautonomous plate, turning her around, pulling her back toward him, and enveloping both of them in liquid metal.

* * *

The next thing she was aware of was a banging sound, one that sounded like a human fist on a door. She opened her eyes, unfolding her limbs as the sleek liquid metal of Ampersand’s autonomous plate slid back up under the carapace on his back. She’d barely gotten her bearings before the door swung open, both of them standing there stupidly like they’d been caught making out under the bleachers, and someone she didn’t recognize stared both of them down angrily. Not ROSA, not even one of Sol’s underlings—this guy was military, and he had about half a dozen other goons behind him.