It was after 10:00 A.M. before she was able to get away, and getting back into his lair took even longer than usual, as she had to file paperwork in triplicate after it hadn’t been filed last time. She half expected Ampersand to have already disappeared by the time she shut the second door to his lair behind her. He hadn’t, but he was in mid-motion when she returned, and even in the dim light, she thought she saw the wisps of his semiautonomous plate disappearing back into him like liquid wings.

She shook her head, exhaustion diluting the adrenaline that had been keeping her going since she woke up. Now wasn’t the time to demand where in the hell he had been. “The press has a name for them already. ‘Enola Gay.’”

“I have sent several communiqués, but none have been met with a response. I must prepare for the possibility that they are hostile.”

She approached him, hoping that he would touch her to comfort her like he usually did, but he stayed stone still, arms drawn in.

“I’m really scared.”

“Rational.”

“Is it possible he . . . they . . . were with Obelus?”

This seemed to shake something in him, and the defensive posture relaxed. “That is extremely unlikely.”

She watched him, unsure what to make of this. “You’re afraid of Enola Gay.”

“I have very good reason to be afraid, as do you.”

“Why?”

“You see what he is capable of. But more to the point, I do not know what he wants. I do not know what would drive anyone to attempt an experiment so dangerous, so reckless.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I have been preparing for the eventuality we may encounter more hostile members of my kind.” The carapace of his back slipped open on the left side as though his semiautonomous plating was about to ooze out, but instead he reached onto it and withdrew a device the size of a can of soda, and handed it to her. “I have considered the possibility that you can protect yourself, in manners we have employed in the past.”

It didn’t look too dissimilar from the pill bug device the Genome had used to revive him after his own EMP had knocked him out, the one that Cora had thought of as a defibrillator. But this one had a more kidney bean shape with the same iridescent, off-white silver color and texture as amygdaline skin.

“I designed this for human hands, in case of an emergency, the only means we have to defend ourselves against Similars, or those like myself inhabiting the body of Similars. It generates a charge pulse of the same type and frequency that Obelus employed against me.”

“And that you used against Obelus to rescue me,” she finished, turning it around in her hands.

“Handle it carefully; pressure in the center will detonate it. It won’t affect humans, but it will short out electronic devices. But you will not be able to test it.”