When they were done, they retrieved their clothing from where someone had left it, just outside the office door. Hawk would have felt ashamed, fucking her husband on a stranger's desk, but she was pretty sure no one was ever coming back here. Still, after she was dressed she rummaged through the unknown woman's desk drawers until she found some hand sanitizer, and applied most of the bottle to the desk, using a paper towel to get a nice, even spread. There.

They weren't in a big hurry to leave and go upstairs to catch the last few hours of sleep before dawn. Sex wasn't just about the start and the climax. It was also about the slow spiral back down to earth. Alex and Hawk both made sure they hadn't hurt each other, and that they were ready to rejoin proper society. Grounding. That was the term for it. It was mostly cuddling, and laying softer, gentler hands on the places where pleasure had evoked a harsher touch. They hadn't marked each other up, this time...or if they had, it was hidden under all the bruises and blemishes they'd gotten wandering around the deadened zoo. Alex was especially careful of Hawk tonight. It was as if she were some treasure and he was worried she might fly apart. She wondered if he thought she was also taking extra care with him. She could have lost him tonight. The apes could have been...less than peaceful. The Ape could have been hostile. A bullet could have found him from the ricochet.

Or on purpose. Nobody would have blamed Kaiser if she and Alex (And Em. And Dyson) had all died tonight. It would be excused, the way their deaths at Mrs. Cummings' house would have been excused. Things happen when you're fighting disaster, right? All he would have needed to do is tell one of those gunmen to take aim. This thought drove her to burrow in against him and hold him tight. And Alex merely clenched his arms around her and buried his face in her neck, breathing her, drinking her in. I don't want to lose you, she read into that gesture, and she answered it with her own need. Not a need for sex. A need for Alex. She needed his clever mind, his ethics, his strength. She needed him to love her, because she loved him so much there were times she craved his touch.

She didn't believe in soul mates. She believed that every person was born whole...and that love required a breaking. You hollow yourself out when you love, carving a place for the Beloved, so that you will never be complete without them again. This was no bloodless process, but a visceral, willful wounding. A choice, over and over, to break the walls that used to serve, rip down the barriers, shatter one's own guard and even crumble the supporting structure, so that the Beloved became part of the support system itself. And when they're gone--when she did not have Alex with her--it hurt when the wind blew through. People say that love requires vulnerability. They don't mention that carving out your own backbone would be a far less violent process. There was a part of Hawk that regretted losing her own full autonomy, that loneliness, once a sacred right, now only brought on pain. But the rest of her luxuriated in the act of loving, and of being loved. Her soul was fattened on it, and on Alex, and that made it all so very worth the pain.

Alex's fingers walked up and down her arms. He paused then reached over and picked up the Ape's Orb. "Honey, if I ask you to do something insane, will you do it?"

"Insane? Like...stand up to Kaiser insane, or 'go home' sort of insane?" She arched a brow. He was bending into pretzels to keep her separate from Kaiser. She didn't think he wanted her to mouth off to the man.

He sighed and sat down at the edge of the desk, its mirror finish reflecting every lovely inch of him. Oh, well. It'd get dusty with Glass again in no time. "I want you to go home, yes. At least long enough to get this thing somewhere safe." he held up the Orb.

"You think that it's that dangerous?" She said.

"What do you think?" He said.

She dropped her head and prayed he was about to say something else. But no. He genuinely wanted an answer. Fuck. "I think...honestly? No matter how crazy it makes me seem?"

"You married me. That kind of crazy's hard to beat."

"I think its why both Kaiser and Studdard are doing this. It's effective immortality," She said. "I'm not going to guess how, or why, but somehow they knew that being inside an active Prism will...well, it'll do whatever it did to the Ape. The Prism took the elderly gorilla and made it...something else. Something...more than just a gorilla."

"They were an Archetype," Alex said.

"Right. So time has to be really wonky down inside these rifts. There's no other way to explain it, the honeysuckle growing, the giant bugs, the way the apes' clothes changed as they came through to our side. It was like watching us, watching humans evolve from...from..." she looked expectantly at Alex, almost hopefully.

"I would say from the Viking era to something like our 1920s, there near the end." He nodded. "You're right. Time has to be running faster in the hole than outside of it." Her husband took a deep breath, then released it slowly through his teeth, as if through a filter. "That's a lot, Hawk."

"I know. There's a lot of unprovable assumptions"

"That Ape, though. It was...I don't know. Didn't you feel it?" Alex said.

"What? The urge to bask in its presence?" She said. It was a joke, but it wasn't much of one. "Yeah. It was a little scary, how quick I wanted to trust it. Something about it screwed with my head. I think I still would have tried stopping the shooting, if I'd had enough of a warning, but..." She sighed. Closed her eyes. "What if Kaiser tries to recreate the Ape? If he had held it's leash when we were there—"

"Yeah." Alex put an arm around her, held her close. Let her revel in being close. Then he said, "But I'm more worried about what would happen if we put a human inside."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Hawk shuddered. "You think Kaiser would do that?"

"No." Alex said, then paused. "Or at least...not himself. He's too much of a coward. I've been thinking over the dynamic between the two of them, and Studdard was the guy who acted decisively. Kaiser's always been too cautious. If you look at their histories, together, neither of them were successful until they met the other guy. Kaiser gets the ideas and makes the connections, and Studdard acts on it. Kaiser isn't trying to act on this information. Not yet."

"Maybe he hasn't figured it out?"

"With the people he pays to do his thinking for him? No. He knows. It's one reason why Ararat is so compartmentalized. And that started way before this Glass shit. I talked to Dyson a little bit while you were catching ants in the zoo. He said that nobody in Ararat talks to each other. All he knows is, his job was initially to identify the most necessary animals for recreating an ecosystem."

"The short answer is 'all of them', honey," She said.

"Well, yes. But that, the laser he developed the Prism for, some of his other adventures in experimental science...and the name of the damn project itself. Ararat."

"It's religious, right?" She said.

"It's the mountain Noah's Ark landed on. Don't roll your eyes just yet. Remember, it doesn't matter what we believe. What matters is what Kaiser believes. And while I don't for a second think that man believes in any god but himself...I think he sees himself as a modern day Noah, and the Project is his ark. And he has--or had--a destination in mind."

"Which is why it's Project Ararat," she said, slowly. "He named it after its destination."

"Exactly. And I don't think 'Ararat' isn't something that already exists. It's something he was planning on making, I think. Either from the ashes of human civilization, or someplace like Mars—"

"—which is a no-hoper, by the way. Not with modern technology." She said. "Our planet is the only one with life on it for a reason."

"But if he believes he can get there, Hawk..."

"He can't." she paused. "But it wouldn't be good if he could."

"He would own any colony built with the Project's data and resources. He'd make sure of it. Either a Mars colony, or something built on Earth. He's an old-fashioned coal baron who is dying to pay his people in money that's only good at his company store. He's handcuffed by modern laws...but only as far as those laws can reach."

Understanding opened like a flower. "Holy shit. And we just proved that life in a Rift is viable as long as there's an archetype in the Prism." She thought for a second. "He could take monkey world and become...what, some kind of god-king?"

"No. Because he would find ruling monkeys to be an insult. He wants to control men. Think about it, Hawk. We almost started worshipping the Ape. Imagine how we would have reacted to a human with that kind of presence and power. That's what Studdard and Kaiser want. They want to be the god-kings of mankind. They always have. And Studdard is pretty close to pulling it off. He knows how to keep people alive inside a Rift, he'll probably know about the archetypes-in-the-Prism part real soon, because the Project leaks like a sieve, and he's going to know that time moves faster, which means if he makes a hole and moves into it, it'll be decades or centuries or longer before he has to deal with any response from outside his pocket universe. He even knows that an archetype, like the Ape, can die. He just doesn't know how to kill one...yet."

"And we do?" She said.

He held up the Orb. "The Ape was fine getting shot until they hit this thing. It's gotta be like the life-force or the brain or something. And the only thing that scares me more than Studdard as an Archetype, like the Ape, is the idea of Kaiser Willheim with a gun to an Archetype's head. Which is what he'd do. He's too much of a coward to do it himself. He won't go in a Prism. Not ever. But he'd absolutely let someone else do it, and then try to control that someone."

"And that's why you want me to take the Orb out of dodge. So neither of them can figure out how to kill an Archetype. But he'll see the footage, Alex. He'll know."

"But he won't be able to study it, because you'll have it back in Arizona, and you'll put it somewhere he can't get it." Alex ran his fingers down her arm.

"And what will you be doing?" she said.

"I'm going to go to Boston, to Bittermoss School. It's the Gifted-and-Talented program Studdard's paying in to. His wife and works there. I looked it up. I want to talk to her, see if I can't get a line directly to Studdard. See if I can't talk him down."

"But if Kaiser's in on this—"

"He's too much of a coward to do anything himself. He might find another patsy to do this for him, but you think he's gonna stick his neck in the noose like that? No, Studdard was the mover and shaker in their partnership. Kaiser is the showman. He's the carnival barker selling the rides to the general public, but that's all he is. And yes, love, he'd fight you if and when you said that. But it doesn't matter. Studdard is his backbone. If Studdard stops, all this stops until Kaiser finds someone else he can use...and that will give us and the government time to hedge him in. But somebody has to talk to Studdard, or get one of his people to turn on him to take him out of the equation. And his people are loyal enough to die for him. So I'm going to go get the ball rolling. I'm going to talk to his family and see if they can't get me a direct line to the bastard."

Gently, Hawk set the Orb to one side and took both of Alex's hands. "You're scared."

"You're not?" he said, and gripped her hands tightly.

"Petrified. I can't think on it or act on it because...well, I have to be mobile, and if I think too hard I might as well handcuff myself to a chair. But you're afraid of doing this. Alex, you're never this scared. Do you think they'll kill you?"

"Maybe. You stand between a billionaire and powerful immortality, you don't live very long. But I feel like I have to. I feel like...like if I don't go, if I don't do what it takes to stop this, these two men are going to tear our entire world apart to get what they want out of it." Alex shook his head. "Alright. So you'll go back to Phoenix. I'm going to Boston. Let's go upstairs and get some sleep."

"You think that's wise?" She said. "Are you going to get sleep?"

"Kaiser views us as a package deal. Which he should. But if we both leave in the same direction he's going to think we've got something. You leave first thing in the morning. I'll make sure he arranges a flight. I'll make my break for the fence at noon. Hopefully Kaiser will pay attention to me and not you, and that'll give you time to get home and put the Orb somewhere safe."

"Sounds like a plan," she said.

Alex nodded as if to himself one time. He started for the door, then abruptly turned around and kissed her. It was a long kiss, solid and deep and as desperate as a drowning main gulping air. It felt as if he were drinking her down with each stroke of his tongue. But there was little sexual to arouse here. He didn't want to fuck. What he did want hovered off the tip of Hawk's tongue, which was equally busy.

It wasn't until she got to bed that she understood what he was saying with that kiss.

Her husband was saying goodbye.