“Enola . . . or one of the Enolas . . . is his symphyle. Like Čefo was.”

“Jesus.” Sol chuckled. “How many symphyles does this guy have?”

“Originally, seven. Now he’s down to . . . the one.”

“And Enola Gay contains the last remaining one . . .”

“That’s what he says.”

“Well, I’m going to be uncharacteristically optimistic and choose to interpret that as a good thing. At least there’s the possibility we aren’t seeing a repeat of Obelus, where the new party is here to kill them.”

She nearly snorted at that statement. Obelus being Ampersand’s symphyle hadn’t precluded all sorts of violence against alien and human alike. Cora thought of Vincent Park, Sol’s junior agent who had been killed by Obelus. His death, along with the deaths of the other three CIA agents who had been with them in the caravan that day, had been so buried it was almost like they never even existed at all. Sol had made it clear in no uncertain terms that Vincent Park’s death was never to be discussed.

“So what’s he doing about it?” asked Sol.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he’s obviously not back in his lair doing nothing. I mean, what is he really doing about it?”

She opened her mouth, rummaging her exhaustion-addled mind for an excuse. “I don’t know.”

“Cut the bullshit.”

“I don’t know, he . . .” She sighed, looking down at her upturned palms. “He isn’t really talking to me. Only when you or Sev or someone forces it. It’s like . . . being back in the Cheyenne Mountain bunker all over again.”

Sol looked at her quizzically, but it wasn’t a malicious or accusatory look. “What did your conversations look like before Enola Gay?”

The pit inside her was always there, a bottomless thing that invited dread by standing next to it. But that question pushed her right up to its edge, and she found herself suppressing tears. “He was trying to help me.”

Sol waited for her to continue, but she just stared down at her palms resting on her lap. “Go on?”

She looked up at the traffic, which had slowed to a crawl now that they were finally off the interstate. They could walk on their hands and move faster than this. “He was piggybacking off my PTSD diagnosis, decided he wanted to cure it.”

At this, Sol shot her an alarmed look.

“Nothing . . . unorthodox. He was trying to figure it out, what my symptoms were, what triggered them, what goes on in my brain when I have an episode, chemically. It was like . . . a side project of his, I guess.”

Sol’s expression of alarm cooled by, at most, two degrees. “What did he do?”