“Sol!” she cried, trying not to fall, as she knew there was a good chance if she did, she might not get back up. This was a stampede, and anyone who fell in front of it ran the risk of getting trampled. Two more bodies slammed into her before she regained her footing. “Sol!”

“I am sending for you,” said a mechanized voice in her ear.

Still trying to move with the flow of the crowd so she didn’t fall down, she frantically scanned everything—rooftops, houses, the casino— for signs of Ampersand.

“Where are you?”

“I am sending for you.”

Without further instruction, the only thing she could think to do was to get out of the flow of the crowd, and the best way to do that seemed to be to get up next to the side of a building, where the crowd was thinnest. Only problem was there were no buildings nearby, just a massive stucco wall bordering the housing development. She pushed her way to the wall, then ran with the flow of humanity until she found a break in the wall that opened into the neighborhood on the other side.

Here she had to press through some people who had stopped and were standing in the goddamn way, obviously not residents but spectators who seemed content to stand back and watch the end of the world while everyone else ran for their lives. She nearly made it away from the crowd when she saw that someone was blocking her path, someone who stopped her short upon recognizing her.

It was the Murderguy who had been staring at her earlier, the tall, lanky man with his slender face and curly black lion’s mane hair. Reflective sunglasses now blocked his eyes, but even amid the chaos, he still wore that intense, vindictive expression. World-shattering alien shenanigans were one thing, but it was only now that she started to panic.

“Ampersand, I am in danger,” she said, turning from him and making a beeline for the nearest yard. It was fenced, but at least it wasn’t by a twenty-foot wall. “I need extraction.”

“You must stay still.”

She hopped over the fence into the yard, a nouveau riche McMansion with a pool and even a stone water element. She peeked back over the fence to confirm that, yes, he was still marching toward her. “I am still. Hurry!”

“At your feet.”

She looked down and saw that a plate of liquid metal had appeared on the ground right next to her. She fell onto it, collapsing herself into as tight a ball as she could. She couldn’t be sure, but she was fairly certain that the man might have looked over that fence just in time to see her disappear.

9

9

Cora opened her eyes inside a cave.