She started to peel down the duct tape she’d placed over his eyes, which, given the length of time it had been affixed, had basically become one with his skin. He crushed his eyes closed as tightly as he could to protect his sensitive eyelids. She wasn’t merciless, so it was only really, really painful. Finally, he opened his eyes for the first time in hours, and once his vision cleared, he got a look at her.

No gun, but she had his pocketknife drawn, and she was trying so, so very hard to look like a badass. But looking at her posturing, he wanted to shake his head. She wasn’t a killer. She wasn’t even a maimer. What are you even doing? he wondered for roughly the fiftieth time. Are you under duress? Are you being mind controlled? It didn’t seem like either was the case, and either way, she wasn’t the one he needed to worry about.

She didn’t look much like Nils at all, with her round face and slightly upturned button nose a direct contrast to Nils’s pert little beak. And of course that goofy blue hair, which in the darkness actually looked kind of ethereal, fitting, like what an alien’s herald would look like, just left of human.

She cut the twine around his neck (thank God), and hardly breaking eye contact, she cut all the rest of the twine that was binding him to the tree, but not the twine that was binding his wrists and turning his fingers into cold water balloons.

“Get up,” she said. Easier said than done when one had been unable to move for several hours and desperately had to pee. “Walk in front of me. Down the hill.”

Kaveh stumbled like a baby ostrich standing for the first time, taking a moment to linger on her before he did as he was told. She was afraid of him, that much was obvious, but he couldn’t really blame her. It was probably because of the stink eye he’d been giving Sol Kaplan back during the rally, that was weird enough, but finding her alone on the road and then following her into the woods? Yeah, in hindsight, that wasn’t a good look. But what was he supposed to do? Yell, “Hey, did that hemorrhoid Kaplan abandon you out here in the middle of nowhere because that’s sure what it looks like and yes I know who he is and yes I know who you are but don’t worry about it”?