"Except by ordinary conversation, of course."

"She may still be compromised so any arguments she presents are suspect until we can confirm she is not, but if she's right you should be under her shadow, too."

"She's had plenty of time to talk to me. I'll cut her off if she presents unexpected new assertions."

"Very well. Thank you." She hangs up, then returns to the other conversation. "Who else have you told?"

"If you don't believe me then about now you're wishing you'd had me assassinated, so I'm not comfortable listing them for you."

"Do you understand what would happen to morale if this got out? Never mind that you know I'm Alexandria, I can just resign, but this is not the type of thing we can risk letting others know."

She texts a certain specific number with a certain specific code, and an interdimensional door appears behind her. Someone walks through it to her office as she starts typing an explanation into her computer.

"I am not going to the media. I am going to you, because I think that you probably had me and Library Elf dropped in a memory hole for six months of torture because you thought it was the right thing to do, to minimize. Endbringer. Impact. And I think you can be convinced that was a mistake. I trust all current holders of the information to do right with it at least as much as I trust you."

"Very well." The person who walked through the portal reads her explanation, nods, and busies themself with something. "I'm going to verify the content of what you've sent me, and that might take a while. In the meantime, you should probably stay on the line. I will give you an integer. Every now and then, I want you to pick an arbitrary integer less than or equal to the one I gave you and tell me what it is. Can you do that?"

"Yes."

"Forty-five. I will remain on the line, if there is anything you feel is important enough to interrupt me about then you can say it but otherwise please only talk to me to say a number."

"Thirteen."

She sends Contessa a message, asking her to stop moving for thirteen seconds. "How often you say a number should be as random as you can make it, too. If you're right—thank you for all your cooperation."

"Negative six."

She texts Number Man and asks him to count to four out loud.

"Thirty... eight... zero... negative twenty-two..."

She has a deterministic algorithm that turns each integer into a number of seconds to tell various relevant people how long to not do anything for.

Contessa finds the thinker they're looking for, and Alexandria sends her an encrypted copy of what Lorica has sent her. Eidolon and Legend arrive, but the Triumvirate stays on Earth Bet, so that there is as small a chance of anything going wrong with the call. The thinker is paid an exorbitant amount, frowns in concentration at the USB key in Contessa's hand, gets a headache, but eventually he says "Blue" and Contessa calls this in.

"No," Lorica can faintly make Eidolon's voice through the phone. "It's—a trick—a ploy—the Simurgh—"

"Seven," growls Lorica.

"I think," Alexandria tells Lorica, slowly, "this should be enough."

And the news blasts about the Simurgh appearing above Madison, Wisconsin.

Rete copies her on that.

"- if you can do anything hurry -"

"—we can—give us ten minutes—we will contact you soon."

She hangs up.

And Leviathan appears in northeastern Brazil.

Lorica clings to Fëanáro and stares at the news.

" - they're all - of course they would -" hug -