"What information? It might be possible to narrow their identity down."

"It is obscure for a reason, although I will consider telling you at some point. Can you get anywhere off the fact that it was delivered as an email from me to myself?"

"Probably not. It would be hard for anyone who isn't a parahuman, but we already knew that. If obscure means known only to you, no non-cape could have gotten that far in the first place, and that's ignoring the series of coincidences they apparently predicted from across the sea."

"I can send technicians for fingerprint analysis and DNA samples so on. The face alone might not be recognizable."

"Excuse me I need to go to Mars immediately back in a week if I'm lucky," Cam blurts into the phone. He drops it. He scrambles for his shuttle and homes in on his tracking device.

It is right where it was last left. Attached to a living person and everything.

"Hello the Simurgh wants you personally dead get in the spaceship we're going to Mars."

"Spaceship now explanations when we break orbit."

"I guess if you're lying you don't really need me to go along with whatever this is..." He gets in the spaceship.

The Simurgh is flying as usual, sixty-two miles above the earth's surface.

Cam will relax when she's still doing that and he's past the moon.

She doesn't chase them. She doesn't give any indication that anything happened at all.

"Start with why there's an Endbringer after me!"

"Because you yoinked me into the world, and if you die I yoink out of it again, and I'm just full to bursting with the kind of prosocial ambition known to keep the Simurgh up at night. I would absolutely relieve you of this feature if I could do it without being stuck at home, but I can't, because for some reason the process isn't replicating in the way I expect it to."

"No part of that made sense."

"Well, we have a long flight, I can give you the long version. I am from another world. I am a sort of magical creature, which can be pulled from my home to Earth. Normally it is not this Earth but a markedly less horrible one, but for some reason you managed to be the first person to get a magical creature of my variety here. I tried to have somebody summon an additional magical creature, but it didn't work. So that means I am the only one this Earth gets, and your particular summoning of me is the only chance this Earth gets to have me around, and it badly needs the help. Summonings end on the summoner's death. The Simurgh managed to get me to start a war in China with pomegranates by threatening your life, I don't want more of the same, I will make you a lovely arcology on Mars and you can have Internet access."

"I'm immortal. I actually find the fact that she had to extort me very encouraging, because it suggests that singing to me wouldn't have done the trick. I apologize for the solitary conditions. When I figure out a way to kill her I will happily bring you back, or just finish terraforming the place - I'd do it now but it'd take weeks - and bring some colonists. Hopefully the Internet connection will help; it'll lag but the bandwidth will be fine. I can take other requests for what would make you more comfortable too."