“This is a breach of our agreement,” she snapped before Ampersand could say anything. Normally, he would be beyond furious about this sort of thing, but right now, she could sense that the army breaking the agreement they had made with regard to his privacy was well below his bar of low priorities.

“We haven’t gotten any response from you in hours,” said the man, a guy in a soldier’s uniform with a name tag that read Bishansky. An army corporal, from what Cora could tell. Of course the government had retained the right to bust into his space in an emergency, which, in fairness, this totally was. But that agreement had been made with ROSA, not with the army.

“Something just happened outside. Something big. A bright light. Does he know what happened?”

“Yes.”

“How does he know?”

“He has drones.” She turned to look at Ampersand, who was standing about three feet behind her, his body in profile and his head turned toward them in a half-antagonistic stance. Good. He could not afford to look weak right now.

“Is it alien?” asked Bishansky, his voice cracking. His soldier’s veneer was slipping. He was afraid.

She took a breath, and when Ampersand didn’t answer, she said, “He doesn’t know, but probably. I need a moment to brief with him.”

“Kaplan is on his way,” said Bishansky. “All-hands meeting in fifteen.”

“I’ll do my job, but he’s not going out there. It was a breach of agreement that you put him in a room with Brako and Esperas without warning him. He’ll speak through me, but he’s staying in here.”

The muscles in Bishansky’s jaw twitched, and he turned to leave. He tried to slam the door, but it was a heavy hydraulic thing incapable of being slammed. When the door latched, Cora let out a long breath and turned to face him. His posture relaxed, and his head drooped in a way that felt almost human. “Fifteen minutes,” she said.

“He did this. He is alive. He did this.”

“Obelus?” she said on reflex.

“He did this. He is alive. He was gone, he was dead, I felt it.”

“Obelus?” she repeated, her voice firmer.

“Not Obelus.”

Why had her mind even gone there? Obelus was dead. She had watched him die. She racked her brain. Čefo had been his only other living symphyle she knew of, with the rest dying in the Fremdan genetic purge. Meaning that, excepting Cora, all his symphyles were dead.

Then she remembered that her math wasn’t quite right. Before Obelus had died, and before he had fusion bonded with Cora, Ampersand had mentioned having had seven symphyles during his life, of which two, including Obelus, still lived. Now Obelus was dead, but presumably, the seventh was not.

She put her hands on the bottom of his head, where his “jaw” would be if he had one, bent him down to face her. “You mean . . . Your last living symphyle?”

“He did this. He is alive. He was gone. I felt it as the blast hit. He was the blast.”