Nearly an hour later, at nearly three o'clock in the morning, Hawk gratefully sank into a bathtub. According to Kaiser's people, the skyscraper they'd camped out in was high enough to avoid most of the Glass energy at its feet. It was safe to stay and rest here, at least for now. Well, it'd be safe for Hawk anywhere, as long as the honeypot nectar held out. But it was also safe for the plethora of people that one required when one wanted civilization around. She hoped they were right about safety for their sake; there were enough aural spikes coming off the base of the tower to put her back on edge. Gunshots at the Event Horizon hadn't slowed that advance one iota. Fortunately, she'd been told they kicked the evacuation into high gear, as soon as their cameras had caught the giant bugs.

She had advised a flamethrower for the giant bugs. She'd been given a towel in return and told that they'd installed showers on the twentieth floor, with bedrooms on the twenty-second. There were another ten stories for them to work with, so she assumed they were settling in for more than just basic supervision of disaster.

The bathtubs proved to be aluminum bins, almost like pools for cattle. Hawk wasn't going to argue. The building had a very impressive system of boilers, and they'd attached garden hoses to multiple sinks for hot running water. At least, what came out of the attached hose was warm enough to satisfy her urge to soak. Alex and the others were all sent to their own metal tubs. She could hear Alex whistling as his tub filled up, and Em and Dyson were speaking to each other, hushed and low. She might have been worried if she didn't hear the sheer joy in their conversation. Happiness like that defied death and convention and gave lie to fear. Everything else aside, Henry's little fear-addled confession had just made Hawk's day. She hoped it'd made Emile's too.

She sighed and eased down into the water, and very pointedly did not look at the towel she'd been given when they carted off her khaki. It sat beside her small pile of belongings, her shirt, her pants, her cell phone--safe to assume that was now bugged, or tracked, or whatever else Kaiser could do to a phone--and her purse and wallet. She could look at those things, but her eyes kept tracking back to the towel, no matter how hard she tried not to look.

That was, after all, what held the orb the Ape had left behind.

It'd been tricky getting it past security, and she'd had to sacrifice her Queen to get it. Handing over the dead male had been easy. It was, as mentioned, very dead, and she'd gotten a good enough look at the dead insects in the apes' baskets that she could relinquish her own sample without too much pain. The live Queen—showing every sign of being fertile as hell, including dropping eggs already, despite a gas station cup being completely unsuitable for a founding chamber—had been a more painful sacrifice. She was huge and gorgeous, and Hawk really wanted a chance to prove her out...But she agreed with Alex. Regardless of what she felt or wanted, letting Kaiser get his hands on the orb was going to be a mistake.

It lay quiescent beneath the white terrycloth towel. She'd juggled it into the rough, pale folds as she handed over the other items she'd collected on this little adventure. Of course, Kaiser would find out about the orb and their ruse as soon as he watched all the footage from the go-pros. She hoped they'd have enough time to find a better hiding spot for the orb before Kaiser got to that part. If they ask, I'll tell them I lost it.

Why did it feel so wrong to just let Kaiser have it?

For the same reason you didn't feel okay just letting Kaiser have Mrs. Cummings and her backyard. Hawk realized this was the first time in days she'd been able to sit down and really think. Not test theories. Not worry about ants. Not run for her life. She could breathe and wash the beige dust off her skin, and try to understand just what in insanity was going on here.

It was time to play "Find the reasons." Her least favorite game in the universe. It was somewhat similar to throwing wet pasta at the wall to see what sticks.

It's wrong to let Kaiser get the orb because the first thing he reached for was guns. She drew her knees up against her chest and looked down into the ash-clouded water. Was that why she'd done all this so frantically? Why her gut had turned to liquid when she thought about giving up the Orb? She wanted to protect it all from violence? No, that didn't feel right. Yes, she wanted to protect the Orb, largely because it was all that remained of the Ape, and she already knew she'd carry those memories for the rest of her life. But that wasn't why Kaiser, specifically, should not get his hands on it.

She reached for the shampoo, a dirt-cheap all-in-one in mini bottles, and began lathering up her hands. Oh, she expected violence from Kaiser, but she expected more than just that, because violence isn't good. No, scratch that. Violence isn't profitable. She was pretty sure that Kaiser had enjoyed the game tonight. Sending their little unwanted quartet to the hellhole that the Bronx Zoo had become...and he'd done it as if they were disposable. Like she and Alex, Dyson and Em were nothing more than bird-dogs, and who cared if you shot the dog on the way to your trophy, right? It must have felt familiar. People as wealthy as Kaiser could go on canned hunts; they'd purchase a tiger or an elephant or a big ten point buck, and they'd put them inside of a fence with nowhere for the animal to go, and shoot it from a place of safety. That's what tonight had been for Kaiser, a nice little canned hunt, and he'd sent in his quartet of bird-dogs to chase the tiger from its den. Maybe she should be grateful that he hadn't ordered a little accident for the Wests and the good doctors Yong and Dyson. Oh, bullets flying everywhere, so sorry. Here, have some cheap shampoo to make up for it. Hair washed, she lathered up her body, scowling at her hips. There was one flaw in that thought...Unless you were selling the animals, there wasn't a way to profit from a canned hunt. Kaiser didn't want things he could kill. He wanted things he could keep.

There. That was the reason. Kaiser would keep the Orb the way a conqueror hoarded the spoils of conquest. It'd be studied as far as they could manage, and then it would wind up in some mahogany alcove or temperature-managed cabinet. Maybe with a little label to call attention to the trophy. The Orb didn't belong there. This was not something human hands were meant to find. It should not be seen by human eyes, as driven home by the lethality of Glass. But Kaiser could conquer it, just the same. She had no doubt of that. He'd have this energy understood by Christmas, have a profitable use on the market in time for the following season. He'd take it and patent it and put it in boxes with security tape and little cellophane windows so you could get a glimpse of technology. And there'd be Intellectual Properties to protect and processes to patent, and maybe even a video game complete with merch. And that, right there, was why this was all wrong. It was one thing to violate nature. It was another thing entirely to keep trophies and charge admission to the assault.

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She rinsed off. She'd traded the ant for the Ape, and it hurt. She knew that Queen wasn't going to make it. Not in Kaiser's hands. Probably not in her hands, either. It was a honeypot and those didn't do well in captivity at all. But far worse was the orb. She didn't want him to get it because...because...

Because it's what made the Ape tick. She thought, stepped out of the tub, and grabbed the towel. She grabbed the Orb too, palm sized and still warm to the touch, marred only by a single shot to its substance. And if Kaiser can make one...

She froze. Of course. Of course. She'd been wondering what in all of this could be so worth Edgar Studdard blowing up his entire life, what could possibly make all his billions seem valueless. Why would Kaiser take the risks he was choosing, why would he elbow his way into what should be pure government work? Now, with gut-wrenching clarity, she realized what it was: Immortality.

The Ape had lived. From her view of the Event Horizon, Hawk had more or less confirmed that time did run faster inside the rift. She'd seen the plants growing, years passing in a handful of minutes. She'd watched people—apes, but people—appear out of the nothingness and haul themselves up, wearing different clothes and looking unexpectedly shocked at their surroundings. There'd been a whole pocket universe in there. She'd seen hints of an evolved culture, had watched a whole new language unfold in the hands of the apes speaking to each other. Saying even that years had passed in that hole was an understatement. They'd seen centuries pass down there, probably more than that. How much more time had passed in those twelve hours between Event and Hawk's arrival?

And the Ape had survived it all. If it truly was the elderly gorilla, as Hawk and Em believed, then it had achieved something near enough to immortality to be very attractive to someone like Kaiser, or Studdard.

Not to mention it seemed to have powers. It turned ropes into flowers and Glassed that one guy before it got shot. She shuddered, pinned the towel to her body with her free hand, and picked up the Orb in the other, pressing it down against her skin to hide it.

A hand knocked on the door of this little wash-room. She turned as that door opened. "Alex," she breathed.

"Yeah. You got..." he trailed off. She showed him the orb, and it was his turn to relax. "Good. I don't think Kaiser knows about it, yet."

"He will. As soon as he has a chance to review the footage." She paused. He was mostly naked, wearing just a pair of polyester boxers. "Didn't they bring you your clothes?" She said.

"Yeah. I just...wanted to check on you. We've been through a lot, the day's almost over...I wanted to make sure you were okay."

She looked up and met her husband's eyes. And she was so god-awful tired. She didn't want to be here anymore. She didn't want to think or act or feel. Actually, yes. She did want to feel. It was just a very specific thing she desired.

Alex, namely.

She considered how absolutely demented those thoughts were. She'd just seen apes walk like men, seen an immortal gorilla, and passed by hundreds of dead bodies on her way. There was no way she could actually be thinking about sex right now.

...she absolutely was thinking of sex right now. Fuck it.

Meeting Alex's eyes, she deliberately dropped her towel.

There was a pause of several seconds.

Alex said, "Serious?"

She shrugged. "Why not? I'm exhausted, you're exhausted, we have fuck-all to—"

And then he was on her with the explosive force of a bursting dam. His lips found hers with radiant shock, while his hands explored the landscape of her back. She traced the curvature of his teeth with her tongue, lavishing each line with attention. Meanwhile he traced each vertebrae with distinction, pausing on each crest, pressing into her valleys as if each one could evoke pleasure, which meant that every touch did. Then he let go of her mouth and began working his way rapidly down her neck.

"We can see if there's beds," she said.

"There are," he said, between his ministrations to her neck. "But they're two floors upstairs and there's an office right over there."

"Uhum," she said, as his fingers left off their travels of her backbone and began exploring the roadmap of her pelvis instead. He knew where every spot was, and lingered there just long enough to make her ache like an un-rung bell. "You really want to fuck on some stranger's desk?"

His chuckle was almost a growl. He finished his lip's trajectory with a gentle nip at her collar bone. "The only way it'd be better," he whispered, his breath pulling her skin tight with anticipation, "is if it were Willheim's desk." And then he lifted her into a romantic carry, catching the Orb with one hand. "And yes, love. I absolutely do want to fuck your brains out." He carried her through the door into the stranger's office. It'd been a woman, Hawk thought. She'd left a scattering of photographs, their frames festooned with cartoon daisies. Alex swept them all off with one arm and set her down on the desk, naked save for the towel.

"Take it off," he whispered into her braids. "Let me see you."

She did not hesitate, but stripped the towel off and allowed him to see the gentle swells of her coppery skin. Wet with bathtub water and the beginnings of sweat, she seemed to glimmer, almost, as if there was a tracery of gold beneath the warm ochre. Alex trailed his own pale fingers down her skin, breathing in the velvet magnificence of it all.

"You are so beautiful," he whispered.

"You say that every time we have sex," She said, struggling with his boxers. "It's like you forget in between—" she broke off when he drew her up and kissed her again, stripping off his boxers so that his penis was free for her to touch. There was no ambiguity between them, no pretense. He had a dick, and it was hard enough to tenderize a side of beef...and she wanted it.

She grabbed his member with lithe fingers, wrapping them fully around his girth. Hawk never compared him to other men, neither those she'd known in person nor the absolute cock insanity found in porn. This was Alex, right down to the tip of his penis, and he was without comparison.

His hands were also busy. One on her back, the other significantly lower. He was making his own map of her southern anatomy, and it was making her moan and clench her fingers into his shoulder. He had to take a break from kissing her neck to whisper, "I love the way your ass has changed since we got married."

"Hmmm," She said. "It's gotten bigger. Softer, too."

"Yeah," he said, and gave her another, longer kiss. "A full moon to light up my night. You're the highlight of my days. Twin suns. I see you coming from a mile away."

He eased her back on the stranger's desk, and murmured, "Hold on tight, it's time for a ride."

She leaned her head back and laughed. "God. You're so corny."

And she pulled him down for another, longer kiss.