Kaiser provided a flight home. He was, in fact, almost eager to offload Hawk on the outside world. Alex helped by glowering and lingering and acting like he didn't want her to go. Hawk, having been married to her husband for a while, took a cue from his behavior and acted like she was pissed with him. It was easy enough. No talking. No long loving looks. Snapping at each other was a must. She'd never really tried to play-act like her marriage was dissolving, and decided that it was rather fun, as long as both she and Alex understood it was all fiction. She was so good at it, in fact, that before she got a helicopter to the airport, Em pulled her aside.

"Are you and Alex, like...okay? You're acting—"

"It's acting," she whispered. "Keep it on the down-low." And Em knew her well enough to let it go.

The helicopter ride was brief. Hawk wished she could say the same of the plane ride. Kaiser hadn't bothered getting her anything better than commercial economy, which she read as part of his discard process. Which she was happy to participate in. She'd never thought she'd be this eager to get away from someone. Kaiser Willheim had managed to reorganize her entire worldview. The plane ride gave her enough time to think about the best way to hide the Orb.

By the time she landed in Phoenix, she knew exactly what to do. Which started with getting an Uber home, seeing as how her car was still sitting in Emile Yong's front yard.

Arriving at her house felt strange. Almost alien. As if the person who had seen and done the things she'd endured, the last few days, had no business living in Hawk West's home. Not even Hawk West herself. She had to ignore the feeling, pay her driver, and walk up the short walk to her front door.

She froze when she opened it. Because her house should have looked like the proverbial bull stopped by on his way to the china shop, and instead it was perfectly neat. Military trim, almost. And there were roses on a counter. A huge bouquet of several dozen perfect red blooms, with a red ribbon and a card. She already knew who had sent them—Alex would have sent her peace roses or a bouquet of lilies. Indeed, the card proved it was from Kaiser...and he'd included money.

Dear Ms. West, the card read, Please forgive my intrusions into your humble home. I hope this check will provide you with due compensation for my transgressions. Be at PEACE, Ms. West.

Your loving friend,

Kaiser.

She nodded to herself. Picked up the bouquet by the vase, as if it were rabid. Carried it to the trash can. Dropped it in. The vase broke in three large pieces, water gushed across the bottom of the garbage can, and Hawk knew she was going to have to clean it out before she could put a fresh bag in there. She rolled her eyes at her own theatrics; she felt better, having jettisoned the roses. Now it was time to hide the Orb.

It was inside her purse. She walked it into the garage, set it on a bench, and then went through her fish tank graveyard. She had several tanks she'd either purchased for old, dead colonies, or gotten for free off the internet. Usually she was careful at this stage, but Hawk didn't have time to be choosey...and the species she intended for this wouldn't care one iota for the flavor of fish tank she chose. The nearest, largest would do. She hauled it down, set it on a work bench, then rummaged through a box of tubing and feeders and other Anting supplies, until she found her tiny bottle of fluon.

One of the first questions anyone asked Hawk, once they got past the WTF effect of ants, was how did she keep them inside the terrariums? Most of them didn't even have lids. And, like most ant-keepers, her answer was "I have a barrier". She'd tried lots of them over her career as an ant-keeper. Oil, baby powder and rubbing alcohol, Vaseline. Any line of something an ant either couldn't cross, or wouldn't. But the best, in her experience, was fluon suspension. She applied the milky liquid to the top two inches of the tank, on the inside. Normally she did one inch, but not with this species.

Tank dry, she went to her purse and put the Orb inside of it. Paused. Grabbed a handful of test tubes and set them up for ant habitation, then tossed those in there for good measure. Then she hauled the tank and the Orb outside.

Where there was a very large Red Imported Fire Ant nest.

Hawk had intended to take boiling water to the thing for months. It kept getting bigger and bigger, devouring her sage grass plantings. It was now a mound six inches high. Yes. It would work. She walked back to her house to get a shovel.

The Red Imported Fire Ant is the worst ant on the planet. It belonged in some tiny part of the Amazon, where things had to be fierce and fight for survival, but human exploration and globalization had brought the little shits to damn near every continent, with the possible exception of Antarctica. They were nasty, aggressive, and very, very bitey. They were, in fact, the only justification for owning a can of Raid in Hawk's opinion, though she preferred to rain destruction down upon RIFAs in the form of boiling water. Today, however, she was doing something she had promised both herself and Alex she would never do. She was going to keep RIFAs as pets.

Shovel after shovel of red, angry, poisonous creatures came up out of the ground. She saw the white bliss of brood, nestled in clods of dirt. Sometimes she could see, visibly, the beauty of RIFA nesting lines, the neat precision of their mindless creation. Normally, she'd be watching each shovel-full intently, hoping against hope that she'd get a Queen. But today, she didn't bother. Hopefully, she wasn't going to have these things long enough to need one. Because each shovel of prickly horror rained down upon the Orb itself. In two shovel-fulls it was buried, hidden away entirely by the ants, and the dirt. But Hawk kept going. Anywhere she saw tunnels or brood or shiny red bodies, she scooped them up with her shovel. She stopped only when she hit her weight limit. She'd need to carry the terrarium inside, after all.

Thank God, most people hate ants. She thought. In a few minutes she'd haul this thing to one of the few vacant shelves in the house, chuck in some food, and wait to hear from Alex. But for now, she was going to sit in the Arizona sunlight, watch the ants to make sure they couldn't get past her barrier, and acknowledge that soon and very soon, she'd be able to go back to bed.

Reality might be ripping itself apart in Kaiser's neck of the woods, but here, finally, she felt like maybe the horrors were all about to end. And while a small part of her felt disappointed, the rest of her relaxed. For now, it looked like her part in this little adventure was over.

She just had to hope that she'd done enough.

Alex West was waiting on his own helicopter to the airport when Kaiser approached him. Oh, God. What now? He chugged more coffee and tried, very hard, not to think about sleep.

"Hello, Alex," he said.

"Mr. Willheim. What can I do for you?"

"You're going home to your wife, I presume? I know she left quite a bit earlier today. Seemed a bit of friction between you two. I assume something happened while you were fucking on that poor woman's desk?" Kaiser said, his face schooled into a mask of perfect civility.

Gotcha, Alex thought. "No. I think we're going to spend a bit of time apart, for now. Had a little spat. Married people do that sort of thing." He did his best to sound put upon, tired. People with a martyr complex are easy to manipulate, and if Kaiser didn't know how to act on that he was a bigger sucker than Alex had initially thought.

"Ah. Well, I was hoping you knew where she was taking that little artifact you found in the gorilla's skull. Round. Pearlescent. It's got a bullet hole in it. Ring any bells?" Kaiser smiled down at Alex.

Yeah, that did not take long at all. He thought quickly, and came up with quite the decent lie. "It's what we fought about. I told her to leave it in the zoo, that you were better equipped to deal with that sort of fuckery, but you have to know Hawk by now, Kaiser. She doesn't listen, even when she ought to."

Mentally he apologized for talking trash about his wife. He'd have to make it up to her the next time he saw her, first by telling her he'd done it and then by giving her something extravagant, like a new ant Queen to play with. But he watched as Kaiser read him and swallowed that whole too. In fact, it was very interesting how Kaiser seemed to jump on the idea of him and Hawk being at odds. Almost as if he'd wanted their relationship to fragment.

"Well. I'm sure that she has her reasons. Would you call her and ask where the damned orb is so I can get that down to the lab boys?"

"I could, but she won't answer. She never does, when we're fighting." He leaned forward a bit, creating the illusion of an intimate space.

"Indeed, indeed," Kaiser said. "Women, am I right?"

Ugh. The misogyny dripping off every word made him want to vomit. "I don't know," he said, because it wouldn't look too good if he agreed with everything Kaiser said. Would it make sense for him to recommend Kaiser speak with her? He'd immediately try to drive a wedge in between them, if he gave Kaiser this opening. Yeah, he decided. Hawk knew he was playing games with the man; if Kaiser called and sympathized with her, she'd catch on that he was being conned, and given how much she detested Kaiser, she'd play along if only to make sure the sting burned him, bad. But asking Kaiser to speak to Hawk on his behalf would present a weak side for Kaiser to dig into. Yeah. That'd work just fine. "Maybe you could call her? She might listen to you more than me, right now."

But that wasn't what Kaiser wanted. This was an excuse. If Alex had done his job right, he'd just goaded Kaiser into asking the real question.

"Now," Kaiser said, and Alex knew he'd landed the fish, alright. "There's something I'm a bit...concerned about. You've had a lot of Glass exposure—more than anyone else in the Project—which means you are an invaluable subject. If we want to get ahead of this shit, if we want to give people a chance to survive Events, we need to understand how this substance from the honeypots is shielding you. If we can synthesize it..." he trailed off.

Alex took a chance to try and get a prize for Hawk. "You know, is that big Queen of yours still alive?"

A flare of interest sparked in Kaiser's eyes. "It is. But my people say they have no idea how to keep her that way. They've put food and water in the enclosure—"

Alex groaned. He'd been around Hawk long enough to know what a critical mistake that was. "No, no, no, no. Honeypot Queens are what Hawk calls claustral. They mate, pop off their wings, dig a hole, plug up the entrance, and stay in there with no food or water, save for what they can collect in the dirt, until they get their first workers. And they need to be undisturbed. Otherwise they'll freak out and eat their eggs." The very large number of times Hawk had gotten irate with him for disturbing her test tubes had driven that lesson home.

Kaiser looked almost crestfallen. "I should give it to her, shouldn't I?"

"I mean...she's had enough experience and papers published on the subject that she was annoyed the Bronx Zoo didn't contact her for advice when they got their colonies. If you can raise this Queen to maturity, that's one hell of an upgrade over the teeny tinies we've got right now."

"Well, then. I'll have it brought to her today. I'll even advocate for you. Most husbands bring their wives roses, but—"

Alex didn't—couldn't—let him finish. "Hawk doesn't hate roses, but she's real particular about them. She likes lilies better, and wildflower bouquets best of all." She thought he hadn't noticed it, how she got ten times brighter over a bouquet of blanket flowers and paintbrush than she ever did over store-bought flowers.

"Oh," Kaiser said, and looked genuinely crestfallen. "Well. Anyway, that's not why I came over here. We'd like to get a sample of your blood...and a spinal tap."

Alex blinked. "A spinal tap?" he repeated.

"We want to make sure your brain isn't showing signs of Glass related degradation."

Alex felt like a cat who had just gotten shocked, all puffed out and on edge. "So you want me to let your cronies stick a needle in my backbone." And his tone made it clear his answer was a provisional no. He was going to need to be bribed. And it's going to be one hell of a big bribe.

"What do you want, West?" Kaiser asked, and now he sounded tired.

Time to go all or nothing. "I want a direct flight to Bittermoss School in Boston. I want to be there before they break for the day." It was just now ten o'clock in the morning. Not that huge of an ask, getting from New York City to Boston before 3pm. Not when you were speaking to a billionaire with his own helicopter fleet.

And now Kaiser's smile was mercenary. "You want to talk to Ed's family, don't you."

"Have you?" Alex said.

"Yes. When this all began. Alright, Mr. West. I'll let you go interview that poor woman at her precious little school. But I want you to promise you'll be gentle with the poor dear. She's just lost..." A pause. "She's just lost her daughter. Amelie Studdard—you know of her, yes? How she has ALS? Lou Gherig's Disease?" He waited for Alex to nod, even though he had to know goddamn well Alex had already researched Studdard quite thoroughly. "She died several months ago. Right about when her father went off the rails for good. And her husband is a fugitive. She's been through quite a lot."

Alex nodded. He was highly, deeply suspicious of that pause, however. It hadn't struck him as Kaiser trying to break bad news. It struck him as Kaiser remembering there was something he did not want Alex to know about. And he didn't much like that. But he couldn't back down now. "I'll treat her the way I would Hawk. Can you let her know I'd like to speak with her?"

"Absolutely. Come on upstairs, we'll get this pesky little operation done, and then you can go catch your flight." And Kaiser walked away, pausing only once to look back. "Well? Come on, man."

And Alex felt he had no choice but to follow.