But what could Sol do? What could any human do? If any human (or god forbid, any “militarist”) tried to compel Ampersand to do anything he did not want to do, well, his little charade with the broken glass showed how that would go.

She nearly slipped on a pebble she couldn’t see, then kicked it, its delicate clinking the only other sound besides her footsteps. She’d been trudging for what felt like an hour and she hadn’t seen a car, when there should have been a pilgrimage. She figured that the road must be blocked somewhere down the line, which meant she must be inside the containment zone where Enola Gay had landed.

She hopped up and down, trying to get her blood warm. Even if she did tell Sol, and then Sol told the powers that be, and the powers that be swooped down on this place, what would they find? Nothing; Ampersand would be twenty steps ahead of them, long gone.

She saw the light before she heard the accompanying sound, the hum of an engine. A car! And one that seemed to be headed right for her. She could see the headlights illuminating the road almost a minute before the vehicle itself came into view, and she stepped right into the middle of it, hoping the car wasn’t careening up the mountain so fast that it hit her before it saw her. When it rounded the bend, it slowed to a stop immediately, and she winced, her dark-adjusted eyes unable to look at the car head-on. She wondered what a blue-haired girl alone in the dark on a mountain must look like to the driver. God, she must look like a ghost in a horror movie.

Or an alien.

The vehicle just sat there, its engine humming. She tried to tamp down the inherent terror of the situation and stood there almost guiltily, like she’d been caught by the janitor, vandalizing the high school after hours. It was a black SUV, lending credence to her suspicion that this was probably the feds and that, counterintuitively, those fuckers actually were on her side this time (sort of). Hell, she was a fed now.

The engine stopped, and the headlights switched from high beams to parking lights. Then the driver’s-side door opened and a man stepped out. She couldn’t see his face, but she could see his frame illuminated by the headlights, the tall lanky figure, the wavy lion’s mane hair, and her blood, only having regained some of its warmth, froze in her veins.

It was the guy from the rally, the same guy Sol had warned her about. The one who had looked at her like he wanted her dead. The thump of her heartbeat turned into a timpani, and she ran.

“Hey!” he called after her.