The car was a black sedan with no plates.
It was parked at the curb like it had been waiting there for hours, and it probably had been. Soma keyed it open with a thumb on the door handle. The interior light came on, soft and warm.
A private-vehicle light. Caleb had never sat in a car with an interior light that warm. The Defense Force surplus he rode in had hard fluorescents.
Soma got in the driver's side. Caleb got in the passenger seat.
Soma handed him a nutrient bar before he started the engine.
It was dense, dark, and wrapped in a plain brown wrapper Caleb didn't recognize. No corporate logo. No batch code. Caleb opened it. The bar smelled like roasted seeds and something else, faintly metallic. He ate it because he hadn't eaten since fourteen-hundred and his ribs were burning down their second-line warmth.
Soma pulled the car into traffic and started driving west.
