'Todash.' Cuthbert waved a hand vaguely to dismiss the notion. 'Between worlds, the way we have. We have a word for it at home and you might think that would make me less surprised by all this, but it doesn't, not a bit.'
He shook his head again, eyes straying back to the road. Capitol. District Four. He knew those terms, didn't he? They were places from that other world-moved-on that he'd mostly heard about second-hand, the one where-
Finnick. This man had to be Finnick, and wasn't Cuthbert a little pleased with himself for the deduction? Mayhap he hadn't lost all that he had going for him, after all. It helped but a little, though, because Finnick was asking him now of what he'd read, and that had to mean that he too was recognized. Not that it should have surprised him. Mid-World accents stuck out like anything in this America.
'Aye,' he said then, flatly, 'I read something, and aye it was bad.' Bad enough for him to abandon the apartment in search of a place far more isolated, to be sure. 'We lose the war at home.' That same monotone. 'Lose near-everything, if the story is to be believed.' And as Cuthbert was concerned the faint hope of Roland and Jake and the Tower still didn't begin to compensate, because that part, Roland that far ahead in time? It seemed like only a story in a way the earlier parts didn't.
Cuthbert shrugged, which was ordinarily for him a display of nonchalance, but with that far-off look in his eyes it couldn't be mistaken for anything of the sort. 'I mean to change it,' he said simply. 'When we go home. I will. You can do the same with yours, say true.'