If Tomorrow Comes

CHAPTER 17

Leo stood on the roof, watching Owen and Zoe, both green in his night-vision goggles, as they set off north toward the mountains. The camp, its population a quarter of its former size, wasn’t yet stirring. Were the Kindred left here the ones with no lahk to go back to? But everyone had a lahk. Maybe the vaccinated children and their parents were the hangers-on, the parents hoping to hand their kids over to the Terrans as the spore cloud hit and they themselves died.

But that horror would have to wait. Leo had another one to deal with.

Kandiss was on perimeter patrol. He would be back soon. Leo dropped from the roof and went inside the compound, where seven people slept. Plenty of room for them now.

In the ready room, he tried to smash the lock on Owen’s lockbox with the butt of his rifle. It didn’t give, and neither did the metal of the box itself. Okay, then—he’d have to blast it open, despite who might hear. Zoe was the explosives specialist, not him, but Zoe wasn’t here. Leo fitted the silencer, even though silencers never really were, onto his rifle and blew the lock.

Congrats, Leo—you just qualified yourself for court-martial.

Owen had taken all the weapons, the full monte. His lockbox held only a photograph of a beautiful girl—who? Leo had no idea—a plastic bottle, and a Kindred box made of the stuff that Isabelle called “bioplast.” Leo had almost forgotten what plastic felt like in his hand: smoother than bioplast, slipperier, somehow more slimy. The bottle held tabs of popbite. Leo knew what was in the bioplast before he opened it. But he’d had to look, had to be sure, had to prove himself wrong if he could.

God, he wished he’d been wrong.

He heard a sound behind him and turned. Isabelle stood there, dressed in some sort of flimsy nightie thing. She said, “I heard a noise and—Leo, what are you doing?”

“Nothing. Get out.”

She stepped into the room. Leo snapped shut the box, but she’d already seen. “Those are… oh my God, the vaccines. Did you… no. Lamont.”

He stood. “I said get out, Isabelle. Go back to bed.”

She ignored him. “He was the one who stole them. Lamont. When everything was so confused during that first assault—he was checking the compound before we all went back in even though it hadn’t been breached… but why? Why?”

“I don’t know,” Leo said, but he did.

Owen, disliking Kindred since the moment they’d landed, more and more lumping all natives together as “the enemy,” calling them “Kinnies” in that tone of utter contempt. Owen refusing to even consider training Kindred cops as force multiplication. Owen’s paranoia about the camp made a hundred times worse by popbite. Owen clinging to the mission, which was to protect the Terrans and get them home no matter what, not letting anything or anyone deter him from that. Even if, in dawning psychosis, it meant making sure that as few Kindred as possible survived to interfere. The Ranger’s creed said I will complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen this before. In Brazil, a guy in his unit had gone crackers, started shooting up their camp one night, raving about voodoo and demons and Armageddon. He’d been doing popbite, too, but it hadn’t needed that. Sullivan had been a little nuts even before he snapped. When he did, he’d managed to murder three Marines right in their own camp. There were always guys like that, couldn’t take the strain, but…

Not Rangers.

Not Owen. Owen might strain but he didn’t snap.

It still didn’t make sense. There had to be more. Owen hadn’t decided to go after Claire Patel until Dr. Jenner talked about that thing on the ship, the virophage thingy, that might save Kindred who breathed it in. Okay, so Owen was going for the call-back device so he could bring back the Kindred ship and help save the natives, long odds or no. But if that was true, then why steal the vaccines that had been the scientists’ best shot at saving Kindred lives until Dr. Jenner came up with this new science? Why?

Unless Owen wanted not to recover the call-back device, but to destroy it. Unless he really wanted all the Kindred dead. Unless that had been his reason for coming on this mission in the first place.

No. Stupid idea, ridiculous, disloyal.

Why had Owen stolen the vaccines?

Leo scoured his brain for anything else he knew about Owen, any scrap of information. There wasn’t much. Parents dead, raised by his grandmother Judith, liked the Pittsburgh Steelers, declined once to go to a bar with Leo and some guys because Owen had some sort of meeting to go to, a meeting he’d been secretive about…

The government would have vetted Owen for this mission. Looked into every nook and cranny of Owen’s past. Only… look how many nooks and crannies they had missed about Leo’s past. And Zoe’s, too, from stuff she’d told him.

Not Owen. Leo wouldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it.

But if he were right…

The box of stolen vaccines was still in his hand.

Leo put it down, opened his own lockbox, and began adding everything in it to the gear he already wore. Isabelle was still talking to him, but he wasn’t listening until she stood in the doorway, trying to bar him from leaving. “Are you going after them? Lamont and Berman? What is he going to do? It’s the call-back device, isn’t it? He wasn’t interested in going after Claire and Austin until we told him Austin had that in the mountains and… No. He still wasn’t interested, not until Marianne told him about the virophage. Leo—what is going on?”

“Get out of my way.”

“Wait till I get dressed—I’m coming with you!”

Leo said, “You’re not. You’d slow me down, give away my position, and distract me with keeping you safe. Isabelle, if you follow me, I’ll disable you with a shot to the foot. Do you understand?”

Her eyes widened. She saw that he meant it. Leo lifted her by the waist and set her aside so he could pass through the doorway. Over his shoulder he said, “Don’t tell Kandiss that I’ve gone, if he asks you. Go back to bed and pretend you never saw me.”

She didn’t answer. Leo let himself out the kitchen door, scaled the garden wall, and followed Zoe and Owen’s tracks toward the mountains.

The sky turned orange and red.

Leo lay flat behind a slight rise. The Rangers weren’t in any hurry, and catching up to them had been easy. Periodically Zoe scanned behind them but she wasn’t expecting to be followed—certainly not by Leo—and keeping out of sight wasn’t difficult even in this relatively open country.

How far was Owen willing to go? Leo had a pretty good idea of how Owen would breach the supposedly impregnable mountain fortress, but depending on the setup inside, it might kill the Terrans as well, including Dr. Patel, who was one of Owen’s protectees. And if Zoe objected—?

Zoe would not object. She was a Ranger: superbly trained, completely loyal to her unit, honed for just this kind of quick raid. I will complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor. A good creed—except when somebody’s mission wasn’t what everyone else’s was.

Was that why Owen had pulled strings to get Leo on this mission? It had never really made sense to transfer Leo to the Friendship at the last minute; the Rangers had their own snipers. Had Owen thought that Leo wouldn’t cross him, no more than Zoe or Kandiss would? If Leo was right and Owen was some kind of Army infiltrator from a xenophobic cult, if Owen had kept his hatred of the Kindred secret for years, then Owen was even smarter than Leo thought. Smarter than Leo, who’d spent years not thinking.

He would have to think now.

Owen had more knowledge, popbite, fanaticism, Zoe.

Leo had surprise.

They were moving again, hiking toward the mountains. As the terrain got rougher, it was easier for Leo to get closer to them and still stay hidden. If they talked, he couldn’t hear it. Well, duh—they had left their wristers behind. One of the Terrans who’d designed this survivalist bunker was a physicist; who knew what he could detect with monitors inside.

Leo buried his wrister. He began to scan carefully for cameras, motion detectors, maybe drones.

At least nobody here had surveillance satellites in orbit.

In Brazil, Leo had shot Sullivan straight in the face.

Austin slept on a pallet in the middle of the central cave, along with Graa^lok, Tony, and Beyon-mak. The nine women had taken all the curtains and strung them together to make a new alcove, with all the best pallets. Austin had been pleased to see that Kayla had perked up a little with the arrival of Claire and the other women, even though she could talk only to Claire.

A noise woke him. At first he thought it was part of a dream, but then he came fully awake and the loud pinging continued. Graa^lok snored loudly. Beyon-mak was shaking Tony’s shoulder.

“Get up, Tony. They’re here.”

Tony was on his feet so fast that his knees cracked. Austin sat up in the dim biotorch light. “Who’s here?”

Neither man answered him. They went to the “monitor”; Beyon-mak did something; the pinging stopped. Austin moved quietly—maybe they wouldn’t notice him—to stand behind them.

The screen, normally a flat blank rectangle set into a big wooden box, showed a picture. It was… it was the outside of the cave! Austin blurted out, “How did you do that?”

They ignored him. Beyon-mak was fiddling with knobs and muttering, “Fucking primitive system…”

Austin stared, fascinated. A word from his mother’s laments for Terra jumped into his mind: television. But Kayla had described moving stories on television, not something real, right outside Haven. Austin looked at Beyon-mak with awe, which immediately changed to anger. Did Graa^lok understand this technology but not tell Austin that it even existed?

The picture went away in a flurry of white dots and another appeared: two Rangers walking toward Haven. The images were blurry, but Austin recognized both their walks: Lieutenant Lamont and Ranger Berman.

He said, “They want Claire!”

Tony half turned. To Austin’s surprise, Tony grinned. “They won’t get her.”

“But… they’re Rangers!”

“Who have no idea what we have here. Nada. Zilch. Haven is both impregnable and weaponized. Now be a good kid and go wake Graylock in case Nate needs him. And then keep the women away from here; they’ll only get in the way.”

“How do I—”

The grin vanished. “Any way you can!”

“Okay, yes,” Austin said, although he didn’t think he could keep Claire away from anywhere she wanted to go. And maybe not Graa^lok’s oldest sister, either. He remembered her from when he’d played at their lahk as a child. Sher^llaa was sort of an Isabelle, and she had never seemed to like Austin much.

He went to wake Graa^lok.

Leo lay flat, camouflaged with brush he’d cut with his knife, studying the situation. He had circled around Owen and Zoe, moving faster, and was now between them and an abruptly rising, big, forty-five-degree hill. Or maybe it was a small mountain. It was where the tracks stopped, in front of dense brush fringing the base of the mountain. Through his scope, Leo could see the churned-up mud where people had gone into the brush and, he presumed, into a cave. Austin’s “fort.” Leo lay above the entrance and to the south.

Zoe and Owen had stopped to confer five hundred yards from the mountain base. No pipe gun could reach that far. But the two rogue Terrans had been inside for a long time, bringing in all kinds of equipment, and Beyon was some sort of fucking genius or something. They could have anything in there. Owen would know that. Also, the cave entrance would be fortified and maybe small. Zoe could maybe breach it, but not enter without being picked off like a rat in a barrel.

They were moving again. Zoe went south, Owen north, and they began to climb. Scoping out the terrain, or searching for a second entrance… No. Leo knew what they were doing.

Zoe climbed toward him. Silently, Leo slid in the other direction, careful not to dislodge any small stones. A few yards away was a shallow crevasse. Leo wriggled into it, pulling brush over him. He held his breath, rifle pointed upward between twigs, and waited.

He heard her boots on the rock.

She muttered, “Fuck.”

Her shadow fell over him. If she looked down carefully enough, she’d see him. If she stepped wrong, her foot would go through the brush and she’d land on top of him. But she was testing each step carefully with her boot before shifting her weight, not taking her eyes off the terrain but not looking down, either…

Shit! Her boot felt the edge of the crevasse and her head swiveled…

Leo leaped up from his crouch and grabbed her. She wasn’t ready, and he was. She yelled, “Enemy here!” which was right because now Leo was the enemy, but she had no radio and Owen was too far away to hear her. Zoe fought like the warrior she was, but Leo was stronger and he had the advantage of surprise. Still, no way he was going to win this quickly unless he either killed her or…

When he had the chance, he kicked her in the belly and she slumped to the ground, eyes rolled back in her head. He cuffed her hands behind her and barely had time to tie her ankles together before she was bucking and kicking with both legs together, her eyes furious and accusatory. She shouted loud enough to wake the dead.

He sat on her long enough to tape her mouth. Then, much more gently, he rolled her into the crevasse.

“Sorry, Zo. I have to stop Owen. He’s going to destroy the planet.”

Zoe shook her head, her mouth working under the tape. Leo could imagine what she was calling him. But there was no time to explain, and his nose ached and shed blood from where she’d gotten in a good blow. He dumped the brush on top of Zoe and stalked Owen, on the other side of the mountain.

Something exploded.

“Tony Schrupp. This is Lieutenant Lamont, US Army. Can you hear me?”

Austin stood ten feet from the flat TV window. He held out his arms on both sides to keep anyone else from going closer, but not only would this have been futile, it wasn’t necessary. Austin’s mother and the women of Graa^lok’s lahk stood in a semicircle behind him, still as rocks, watching. Graa^lok stood beside Beyon-mak and Tony. Claire had circled to the side, and only Austin noticed that she had a kitchen knife in her hand. But what was she going to do with it? Austin had no idea, and he suspected Claire didn’t, either.

Directly behind Austin was Graa^lok’s youngest cousin, Nan^hal, just Austin’s age. They’d had a long talk alone—well, almost alone—in a corner of the cave, because she’d wanted to know everything about him. He hoped that Nan^hal noticed how Tony was relying on Austin now.

“Tony Schrupp. This is Lieutenant Lamont, US Army. Can you hear me?”

This time Tony answered. Austin, who hadn’t known there was radio to the outside, either, watched the television window. Lamont wasn’t on it. Then he was, standing beside a low gray metal structure. An air shaft, not yet sealed against the spore cloud.

“I hear you,” Tony said. “Don’t touch that air shaft. Go away.”

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“You won’t,” Tony said. He jerked on a lever.

Then, all at once, the cave exploded into sound and the TV window into dirt and flying rocks. Austin went numb for a moment until he realized no one inside was hurt because the explosive had gone off outside.

Tony said to Beyon-mak, “Did you get him?”

“I don’t know yet. He was standing pretty close to the shaft and the bomb had to be farther away so as not to—”

A gunshot. A few seconds later, something dropped through the air and then the loudest noise and brightest light Austin had never imagined and he couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, was dying…

He wasn’t dead. Smoke choked him and sparkly light blinded him but he wasn’t dead. “Mom!” he cried, groping around the cave floor for Kayla. He didn’t find her until a fan switched on and the smoke blew away and he could see everyone: not dead, not even injured, just some terrified and some furious, and Beyon-mak, weirdly, smiling at his equipment. Smiling!

“That was a flashbang,” Lamont said. “Next down is a smoke bomb. I could smoke you out and pick you off one by one, but that’s not what I want.”

Tony’s face was so nearly purple that he looked like a leelee. Austin had seen that look before. Tony was not going to back down, not ever. Tony said, “You can’t have Dr. Patel. She’s with us now.”

“I’m not!” Claire shouted.

“I don’t want Dr. Patel,” Lamont said. “I want the call-back device. Send someone out the cave entrance with it and my squad and I will go away.”

“The what?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Schrupp. You know what I mean. Pyramid-shaped device to call back the infected colony ship. Send one person out with it, alone, and I won’t drop explosive charges down this airshaft or bomb both your entrances till rockfall seals you in.”

Beyon-mak whispered, “Both entrances. He doesn’t know about the third, or the—”

“Shut up,” Tony said, which shocked Austin almost more than anything else that had happened. Tony telling Beyon-mak to shut up!

Austin suddenly felt as if it were his head that contained explosives. Other entrances, flashbangs, Tony’s bombs and Lamont’s bombs, a call-back device…

Tony said, “Lamont, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

Austin said, “I do.”

Leo strained to hear the radio conversation, or whatever it was. He couldn’t see the transmitter-receiver and he was just far away from Owen that only words or parts of sentences were clear. “Dr. Patel…. both entrances… call-back device…”

Nothing he hadn’t already guessed, except that he doubted Owen would just take the call-back device and go meekly away. He’d have to kill all the hostages in the cave and call it collateral damage. Did Schrupp know that? Probably, but as far as Leo could see, Schrupp didn’t have a lot of choices. Unless there was more to the cave than Owen figured.

Certainly there was more to Owen than Schrupp figured.

Leo’s guts roiled. He didn’t let it interfere.

More words he couldn’t hear. Then Owen said, “Okay. Now.” Owen started moving in a wide circle away from the airshaft, away from Leo, down the mountain. His head moved constantly, scanning the ground for more explosives and the rest of the terrain for, presumably, Zoe. As he drew closer, Leo saw that Owen’s left arm hung limply at his side; the blast had torn his shoulder to ribbons. His rifle was back in its sling and he carried his Beretta in his right hand. “Berman!” he shouted.

No answer.

I could do it now. But there was always the chance that Leo was wrong. He could be wrong about Owen, he’d never wanted anything so much in his life as he wanted to be wrong. He had to know, for sure. This was Owen.

Owen vanished behind the rise of rock. They descended the mountain in parallel, Leo south of Owen. Leo stopped just above and to the right of the cave entrance and took a position behind a boulder. Owen kept going, onto the flatter land below, then far enough away to be within shouting distance but out of weapons range, unless the entire fucking plain was booby-trapped.

Leo waited. Who would it be? He was pretty sure he knew, but maybe he was wrong.

He hoped he was wrong.

“You knew about this, too, Graylock, and didn’t say a thing?” Tony said. “Not a fucking thing?”

“I didn’t know what it was!” Graa^lok said. Tears filled his big dark eyes, squeezed out onto plump cheeks. “I didn’t!”

Austin had retrieved the pyramidal call-back device—was that really what it was?—from the sand in the small cave beyond the fallen rocks. The rocks had fallen more, and for a sickening second he’d been afraid that either Beyon-mak’s bomb or Lamont’s flashbang had destabilized the whole cave and the roof would fall on him. Or that the rockfall had buried the device deeper. Or something. But the pyramid was there, and he shook the sand off it and clambered back over the rocks, their sharp edges cutting his hands and covering him with silt.

The call-back sat on the floor of the central cave while they all stared at it. Then, as fast as a diving bird on fish, Beyon-mak swooped down to run his hands over it, put his face close, lift it as delicately as if it hadn’t been shaken by earthquakes and rattled by rockfalls and scraped along by Austin.

“There are round bumps on all four faces,” Beyon-mak said. “That’s all. I’m guessing a long and complex sequence of presses—but who knows what they are? Austin?”

“I don’t know!”

“Of course he doesn’t know,” Tony said. “Probably nobody knows, or maybe the Mother of Mothers does—it doesn’t matter. We don’t want the ship. But that goddamn Ranger does, and he can have it. We’re taking this thing out to him.”

We. But there would be no we. One person, Lamont had said.

Tony said to Austin, “If you and Graylock found this thing and didn’t know what it was, how does Lamont know it even exists? Who did you tell about Haven?”

“I… Noah followed me here! But he said he already knew, Tony! He knew you were here!”

“Of course he did,” Beyon-mak said, straightening. He had sand on the knees of his pants. “But he didn’t know about this device. Who did you tell about it?”

“Nobody!” But he had a sickening memory of talking to Leo. What had he said to Leo, he couldn’t remember…

“It was you,” Tony said. “It had to be you. Nate, Graylock, take everybody into the backup cave.”

Claire said, “Backup cave?”

Tony actually grinned. “Separate airshaft, separate third entrance, tight closing door. Don’t underestimate our planning, Doctor.”

She said, “I’m taking the device out to Lamont.”

“You are not. We need you.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Schrupp, think. He’s not going to shoot the messenger or bomb the airshaft. What he wants is to go back to Terra and take his Rangers and protectees with him. I’m a protectee. If he has me, Branch Carter will computer-generate all possible sequences for that device and press those bumps in every single sequence until he gets that ship here. Or maybe the Council of Mothers knows the sequence. Either way, we’ll lift off and leave you to your postapocalyptic world-building on Kindred. But if it’s not me who takes that thing out there, Lamont will keep at you until he gets all his protectees. I’ve watched the man for months and you have not. He’s obsessive-compulsive with paranoid tendencies and the stress of this environment has pushed him over the edge.”

“I don’t care if he’s hallucinating green elephants and talking to his dead grandfather. You’re a Terran doctor and we need you more than Terra does. Sorry, Dr. Patel. We’ll treat you with every respect and courtesy, but you’re not leaving World. Austin, you created this mess—you take the device out to Lamont.”

Kayla, who’d been standing at the edge of the circle, screamed, darted forward and clutched Austin. Tony peeled her off him and handed her to Graa^lok, who could barely hold her. Exasperated, Beyon-mak helped him. Kayla went on screaming. “No, no, not Austin, no—”

“Get them to the backup cave!” Tony said. “All of them!”

Graa^lok looked at Austin. Graa^lok’s face twisted in anguish and indecision. Austin hated him; Graa^lok always got the best choice, the safe deal. But then Austin nodded and said, “Take care of my mother,” and Graa^lok nodded back. For a moment Austin felt good; he was doing the right thing. The feeling didn’t last.

When they had all gone through a locked door that Austin had always assumed was another supply area, Austin faced Tony. “Will you let me back in? After I give the device to the lieutenant?”

Tony hesitated. “That bastard shot out all the cameras. And there aren’t any monitors in the backup cave… Tell you what. You stay outside until the Rangers lift off in that second ship. Then come ring the bell and I’ll let you back in, through the airlock in the backup cave.”

Austin looked at him. It might be a long time before Branch figured out the code that Beyon-mak spoke about. It might not be figured out before the spore cloud hit. With the cameras shot out, Tony couldn’t see anything outside to tell him if the cloud had hit or not, which was only an approximate date. Even if there was an airlock, and there probably was, Tony would not risk spore contamination of Haven. He needed Graa^lok’s sisters and cousins to stay healthy and have babies who would inherit Terran immunity. He needed to keep his “protectees” safe from the riots and food shortages and roving bands of the collapse of civilization.

Austin would not be allowed back into Haven.

He could scream like Kayla. He could hang on to a table and refuse to go. He could act like a little kid, but Tony would get him out by sheer force if he had to, or if Tony didn’t, then Lamont would bomb Haven if he didn’t get the device. If that happened, Austin’s mother and Claire and everybody would die, anyway. Including Austin.

He wasn’t a little kid anymore. He was a man. His mother was his lahk, and maybe even Claire was, too. Bu^ka^tel.

He straightened his back and looked Tony in the eyes. “Do you think Lamont will shoot me?”

“I don’t see why he would. He’s getting what he wants, isn’t he? You heard Dr. Patel. He wants to go back to Terra.”

“Okay.” And then—without a quaver, sounding strong, and he was proud of that—he said, “Give me the device.”

“Well, there it is.”

Of course it was. But Austin refused to feel stupid about what he’d said. He picked up the call-back and headed for the tunnel to outside.

Owen waited for someone to emerge from the mountain, and Leo waited for Owen.

He could wait in the same position, barely breathing, for as long as he had to. The rising sun was behind him; the wind was too light to interfere with anything; the brush and rocks on the upland meadow below him were only waist-high. Leo sweated inside his armor and helmet; he ignored it. The orange light, though nothing like a sunny day on Terra, was enough to see by. Only his own memories hampered him.

Delirious and cursing, his body a mass of sores, his head about to explode from fever. Owen carrying him down the mountain on his back, murmuring over his shoulder: “Easy, buddy, we’ll get you to the medics, not your fault it’s just fucking poison ivy….” Owen visiting him in the infirmary, trying to convince him to recycle through Ranger training. Owen and Leo in a bar somewhere with two girls, Owen laughing but even then, even with a rhinestone blonde on his lap, Owen had been reserved somehow, holding back, in control… Owen getting Leo here to Kindred, counting on him to stick no matter what, using him…

The last thought wouldn’t stay. It was still Owen carrying him down the mountain, saving Leo’s life. Always Owen carrying him down the mountain.

In the meadow, Owen shifted position.

A figure crawled from the bushes at the base of the mountain, stooped, picked up something pyramidal and started across the meadow. Austin.

Leo was too far away to hear any conversation. But he already knew what Owen would say: Leave it there. “There” would be halfway between Owen and the mountain, where Owen could retrieve it without letting an enemy, even a thirteen-year-old enemy, get too close. Almost Leo could hear the words in his mind.

Except there was another sound, behind him. “Throw away the rifle, Leo. Without turning around.”

Zoe.

Time slowed down. He had days, years, eons to assess the situation. Even if her feet were free, her hands were still cuffed behind her back. She had her sidearm, but did she have a way to use it or was she bluffing? Or had she worked her body through the cuffs to get her hands in front? It was possible but only if you were very thin, unusually flexible, and willing to dislocate your shoulder. Zoe was thin; he had no idea if she was unusually flexible; she would dislocate anything on herself if she thought it was her duty.

Would she shoot him? In a pulse beat.

Leo didn’t turn around. He had one chance: to convince her.

Austin started trudging across the plain.

“Zoe, listen. Austin is bringing Lamont the call-back device. But he doesn’t want it to call back the ship. Dr. Jenner thinks there’s something on the ship, another damn microbe”—he couldn’t remember the fucking term—“that saved the leelees on the ship and might save Kindred, too, if they can get it here. But Lamont doesn’t want to save Kindred, he wants it destroyed. Everybody on it, all the Kindred. You’ve seen how he despises them, he fucking hates them, maybe because of the spore cloud hitting Terra, and he won’t call back the ship. Not right away, anyway, he’ll hide the device until the spore cloud devastates Kindred and nearly everyone here is dead, and then he’ll go home. But all the Terrans and Kindred in the cave—they know he’s got it now, so he’s going to have to kill them all. Even Claire Patel. He’ll kill them, Zoe. He’ll have to.”

She hadn’t shot Leo yet. She’d heard him out. Hope flashed through Leo like a jolt of electricity.

Then she said, “Bullshit. Lamont don’t like Kinnies, but he isn’t going to destroy them! Where do you get this fucking garbage?”

“It’s not garbage.” Austin was a third of the way to Owen, his arms wrapped awkwardly around the device. “Owen stole those vaccines. Not the kid—Owen. I saw them, in his lockbox, early this morning. He didn’t want Kindred vaccinated with the good stuff from Terra.”

“You’re fucking crazy, Leo.”

“No. He’s going to shoot that kid. He can’t have witnesses.”

Austin plodded closer, shoulders slumped over his burden. Owen raised his weapon.

Zoe said, “He’s just being cautious, warning the kid not to come too close, he could be a suicide bomber…”

“Austin?”

No more time. Owen’s gun was coming up. His mouth worked. Austin, obedient, put the device on the ground, and there was no more time at all.

Owen carrying Leo down the mountain…

Leo fired. The distance was no more than eight hundred yards; his best kill ever was nearly 2,200 yards. Simultaneously, two more shots shattered the meadow. Owen’s rifle and Zoe’s Beretta.

Leo was rolling to the ground the second his bullet left the barrel. He knew he was fast—in Brazil he’d changed weapons faster than the rest of his company could reload. But Zoe was close. Her bullet took him in the right side. He drew his sidearm and aimed, but there was no need. She stood completely still, her gun awkwardly in her cuffed right hand, the left dangling from her side, her mouth open.

“He… he killed that kid.”

Leo got to his feet, holding his left hand over his side, feeling the blood trickle between his fingers. “Drop the gun, Zoe.”

She did, unblinking, her face blank until it crumpled into pain that had nothing to do with a dislocated shoulder. “He killed that kid. You were right.”

Leo holstered his Beretta. The motion made him dizzy.

Zoe said, “Is Lamont dead?”

“Yes.” Leo didn’t have to look.

Then he slumped to the ground, and everything went black.

He didn’t think he was out that long, but when he came to, the sun beat down directly overhead and Zoe was gone. His armor had been removed and his shirt torn into bandages. Hers, too, he guessed—the pad of blood-soaked bandages on his wound was thick and the cloth tied around him to hold them so tight he almost couldn’t breathe.

He tried to raise himself on one elbow to see if Owen’s and Austin’s bodies were still there, but the movement caused something to rip, pain to shoot through him, and the conviction that he had better lie still until help came or he died.

One or the other.

But he would have liked to see Isabelle again. Just once more, with the orange sun shining on her pretty hair.