Caleb opened the passenger door.
He stepped out into the intersection.
Iris stayed in the driver's seat with both hands on the wheel and her face the face Caleb had seen on her twice before in nineteen years and which he was going to remember for the rest of his life.
She said: "I'll be here."
"Okay."
He closed the door.
He walked into the middle of the intersection.
The Hollow did not move.
It was the height of a small house. The plating was dark slate, the same shade as the vault statues in the under-grid. The three lit marks were a slow steady pulse. The other nine, the ones Marcus had said were hidden, were under a layer of something Caleb could not name on first read. It looked like cured leather. It looked like skin that had been treated and stretched and aged. It might have been both.
The hands at its sides were not the Hollow's hands.
