Ruins

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The hospital shook, and Kira stumbled. “What was that?”

The noise continued, a distant rumble, deep in the bones of the earth.

Green raised his rifle at Armin, and one of the Ivies saw the move, perhaps even anticipated it, raising his own rifle at Green. Armin leapt through a side door and out of sight. The entire exchange was so fast Kira barely even registered it.

“Holy—” Marcus spluttered, but that was all Kira heard before Green fired a long, loud burst into the hallway, scattering the Ivies, and pulled him and Kira back into the stairwell. The Ivies took cover and returned fire, but the three companions were already diving down the first flight of stairs, throwing themselves to the floor. Bullets riddled the door above them, tearing through the wood in a furious hail of splinters and shredding the drywall on either side, only to ping and ricochet off the thick concrete steps. At the first break in the shooting Green fired back, and urged the other two farther down the stairs. The rumble they had felt hadn’t gone away; instead it was gathering in intensity.

“We can’t leave,” Kira shouted. “That’s my father!”

“Your father wants to kill you,” said Green.

“I have to talk to him,” Kira insisted, trying to get back up. “I have to stop him.”

Green threw her back down, shouting to get through to her. “We’ve lost the advantage up there—they have the numbers, they have the high ground, and they have cover. Put your head above those stairs and they will shoot it off.”

“But they have a rotor on the roof,” Kira snarled, trying to wrench free of him. “They’re not trying to occupy the floor, they’re trying to get away!”

Another storm of bullets ripped through the air, and the three crouched down, covering their heads. Marcus crawled to Kira’s side and shouted in her ear, barely audible above the gunfire.

“There’re stairs at the other end of the hall!”

Kira nodded, and they crawled down out of the line of fire. “Each floor is a long T shape,” Kira explained to Green. “We’re on one branch of the T, but there’s another staircase on the end of the other branch, where we can get up behind them.”

“You don’t think they’re watching it?”

“I think they’ll take their blood and run,” said Kira. “I intend to stop them before that happens.” They reached the seventh floor and burst out into the hallway, running at full speed. Green dropped to the floor, holding the door open behind him and raising his rifle like a sniper—but instead of looking behind him, he was looking forward to the far end of the hall. Kira didn’t stop to question; if the Ivies linked him at that staircase they might not think to look for anyone at the other. She pulled out her handgun as she sprinted, cursing herself for dropping her rifle, praying she could get to the stairs and behind the Ivies before Armin had a chance to escape. Marcus puffed behind her, struggling to keep up. She poured on the speed, ready to slam into the door and race up the stairs, when suddenly it opened on its own and an Ivie peeked out into the hall, assault rifle up and ready. Kira panicked, ready to throw herself to the side, when a loud crack split the air and the Ivie went down, a red hole blossoming between his eyes.

“Go!” Green shouted, and Kira didn’t even slow down, thanking him silently as she pelted up the stairs. She heard boots above her, and then the roar of a vicious windstorm; Armin and his soldiers were already fleeing to the roof.

“We don’t know where they all are,” said Marcus, holding her arm to stop her. “If there are still some on the eighth floor, and we go up past them to the roof, we’ll be surrounded.”

Kira concentrated on the link. “You’re right,” she said, pointing. “A big group up top, and a smaller group still down here.”

“That’s so weird,” said Marcus. “You can . . . feel them?” The look on his face wasn’t shocked or horrified, but it broke Kira’s heart just the same: For the first time in his life, he was looking at her as a stranger, someone he could only barely understand. She tried to ignore her sudden emotional vertigo and whispered her strategy.

“I can’t feel much detail,” she said. “Not like they can. I can’t tell how many there are, or pinpoint their locations. I figure there are one or two left on this floor, and a few more than that on the roof.” The wind was howling wildly outside, as if a storm had risen up out of nowhere, and it had dragged their pheromonal data away and left her blind. “You stay here and watch that door like your life depends on it, because it does. Shoot at it the instant it moves—don’t wait for a clear shot, just fire.”

“You’re not going up there alone.”

“I’m not letting him get away,” said Kira. She racked her gun and ran up the next flight of stairs, steeling herself for . . . she didn’t know what. Four or five Ivies with assault rifles, she thought, and clenched her teeth as she thought of Green’s words. They have numbers and high ground, and who knows what kind of armaments on that rotor. I have a stupid handgun and . . . well, better cover than they do, probably. But what am I going to do? Kill the soldiers? Shoot my father? She remembered her father’s fevered rant about a world tearing itself apart with violence; the Ivie she’d shot was still bleeding on the hospital floor.

What else can I do?

She reached the roof access door and put her hands on it gingerly, just barely pushing it so she could peek out, but something was holding it closed. She shoved harder and it gave, only to slam closed again. The wind, she thought. What’s going on out there? And what was that rumble we felt? Marcus screamed below her, opening fire; she prayed he would be safe, and shoved against the door with everything she had. It flew open with a bang and she stumbled out, whipped by a raging windstorm that slammed the door shut behind her, and through her flying hair she saw the rotor lift off, a dull-gray jet with a belly like a cargo bus, and two massive fans in the place of wings. Her father stood in the open door, watching her wordlessly, and then the rotors tilted and slammed her back into the door. She ran forward as soon as the pressure released, shouting into the gale-force wind for him to stop, to come back. The rotor flew south, and she watched it shrink to a dot in the slate-gray sky. With its engines gone the fierce wind grew bone-chillingly cold, and she shivered as she watched him disappear.

“You okay?” asked Marcus. She hadn’t even heard him come up behind her. She nodded. His voice was a mixture of awe and terror. “What happened?”

“I didn’t make it in time,” she said softly. “They were already in the rotor when I—”

“Not that,” said Marcus, and took her by the shoulder. “That.” He turned her around, facing north toward the mainland, and she gasped. Out across the fields and forests, beyond the low hills of the island’s northern face, the sky was red and roiling, burning like a low flame. A massive mushroom cloud dominated the horizon, miles wide and towering into the atmosphere.

Green joined them on the roof, his link data so black with despair that even Kira could feel it. It made her sick. His voice was soft and ghostly. “White Plains is gone.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Mohammad Khan died at 8:34 p.m., in a small house on the North Shore. The disease had brought him to the brink of death; add the pressure the winter conditions had put on his body, and it was simply too much for a weeks-old baby to handle. Isolde was in the basement, holding him and crying, completely inconsolable. Ariel stood by the back windows, overlooking a steep, rocky bluff above the sound, and looked west to the mainland. To the mushroom cloud.

The Partials were gone.

They were her enemy, but they were also her people. The only real, biological link she had in the world, behind all the lies and deceptions, and she’d never even known them. There were still Partials on the island, of course, though she figured the group that had killed Senator Kessler was gone now. Dead of the same plague that killed Khan, she thought, but the thought gave her no joy, no vindictive triumph at the parity of their deaths. Nobody needed to die in that building, and yet six people did, and three more were wounded, and now Khan’s gone and White Plains is gone and . . . everything’s gone. Xochi had taken a bullet in the hip, and another in her hand; Hobb had taken two in his back, which Nandita said had pierced his lung and liver. As poorly as Hobb was doing, Ariel wondered if Isolde might be the next to die. She was physically unharmed, but her soul was destroyed.

Nandita herself had been clipped in the shoulder, the lightest of the wounds, but her gene mods had accelerated her healing so dramatically that the hole was already starting to close.

Ariel played with the gun in her hands, flicking the safety on and off. On and off.

Even if we could travel, we don’t have anywhere to go. That child was the entire purpose of our journey—protecting him, getting him to safety, curing his disease. He gave us a direction and a reason to hope. A reason to stay together. Now that he’s gone, what do we do next?

On and off. On and off.

Ariel knew exactly what to do next; she’d been planning it since the day Khan was born. Help Nandita save him, and then . . .

She turned and walked downstairs.

It was warmer down there, the windows blocked with old clothes and couch cushions, and a broken nightstand burning slowly on the bare cement floor of the laundry room. The house was barely half a mile from the country club, but still farther than Xochi or Hobb could have traveled on their own. Ariel had dragged them here, sliding them over the snow on a makeshift sled while the Partials, terrified of the infant bioweapon, had fled just as quickly in the other direction. For all Ariel knew, they’d gotten back to Riverhead before they died, and given the disease to everyone else. She looked at Hobb, bandaged like a ragged mummy and sedated on the floor, still completely unaware that his son was dead. He’d risked his life to save the child, which Ariel had never expected. She crept past him, past Xochi, past the wailing form of Isolde, to the last room in the narrow hallway. Nandita was sitting in the dark.

“The mushroom cloud is gone,” said Ariel. “No sign of anyone chasing us.”

“I imagine they’re somewhat preoccupied,” said Nandita. “Under the circumstances.”

Ariel sat across from her. Nandita had to see the gun in her hand, in silhouette at the very least, but she said nothing about it.

On. Off.

“You think Hobb’s going to last the night?”

“I don’t know,” said Nandita.

“I can’t help but think it’ll be easier for him if he dies,” said Ariel. “He sacrificed himself to save his son, and now he has to wake up and hear that his sacrifice didn’t mean anything.”

“His child did not survive,” said Nandita. “That doesn’t mean his sacrifice didn’t mean anything.”

The fire spit and crackled behind them.

On. Off.

Ariel wanted to shoot her now, to raise her hand and fire, but she didn’t. She wanted to rage and scream and yell and make this woman pay for the hell she’d put her through—for the hand she’d had in this entire, world-ending calamity. She didn’t do that either. She watched the orange lights from the fire dancing weakly on the wall, just out of reach of the room’s dark shadow. “I saw what you did with the chemical trigger,” said Ariel at last. “The night you dumped it in the fire, after Erin Kessler said she wanted to use it.”

“I didn’t want her to try anything stupid,” said Nandita.

“Looks like we didn’t do enough to stop her,” said Ariel.

“Looks like.”

On. Off.

“Why did you do it?” asked Ariel.

“Create the Partials?” asked Nandita. “End the world? Destroy your childhood? My list of crimes is long, child. I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”

“Why did you let them shoot us?” asked Ariel. She gripped her gun more tightly, though she still hadn’t pointed it anywhere but the floor. “You can control Partial soldiers with a thought—you could have stopped that gunfight before a single shot was fired. And yet you didn’t.”

“I . . .” Nandita stopped, a motionless form in the darkness. “I guess I decided that if I couldn’t stop Erin, I shouldn’t be able to stop the Partials.”

“You didn’t want to control them?”

“I did not.”

Ariel felt her voice rising. “You’d rather let them kill us all?”

“It was an inconvenient time for a moral revelation,” said Nandita. “You don’t have to tell me. But these things happen; I was ready to do it, and then I wasn’t. The moment happened, and then it was past.”

“So you think you made the right choice, then? That letting people get shot in the name of your moral revelation was worth it?”

“We didn’t get killed.”

“You had no way of knowing we wouldn’t.”

“I believe,” said Nandita, “that that is precisely the point.”

On. Off.

“I came down here to kill you,” said Ariel.

“I know.”

“I was always going to do it,” said Ariel. “That was the whole reason I came. You were the only one who could save Khan, and so I was going to wait until you had done that, and as soon as you did, blam.” She gestured with the gun. “No more lying, no more schemes, no more control. I figured the world would be better off.”

“I can hardly disagree with you.”

“Now here I am, and all I want to do is kill you, and . . .” She paused, waiting for Nandita to speak, but the woman said nothing. “You’re not the person I thought you were.”

“I can say the same about you,” said Nandita.

“Who did you think I was?”

“I thought you were a child,” said Nandita. She shook her head. “I was mistaken.”

Ariel stood up, pointed the gun at Nandita’s head . . .

. . . and stood there.

“Khan deserved to live,” said Ariel. “Maybe Hobb does, too. Or maybe he, and you, and all those Partials in that explosion, all deserved to die. I don’t know. Now here we are, and I’m the one with the control, with the power, with the ability to let you live or die with a thought. If I’m going to have any inconvenient moral revelations, now would be the time.”

She lowered the gun and turned away. “I’m going to go look for water.”

CHAPTER FORTY

Shon seethed, staring at the map until his vision turned red, and he slammed his fist into the table. It cracked under the force of the blow, and he collapsed to the floor of the middle-school gym he had made his base camp. Human rebels still swarmed through the forest, hiding and sniping and slipping away, killing his soldiers and attacking their supplies and leading them ever farther to the east: always north and east. Away from the mainland and away from East Meadow, and now White Plains was gone and East Meadow was emptying like a sieve. In hindsight it was obvious—the humans’ actions were a powerful deception precisely because they weren’t successful. Victory after victory, prisoner after prisoner, they had swept across the island and mopped up the guerrillas and played straight into their hands like fools. The ruse had worked, and the human civilians were getting away.

The sheer coldheartedness of it enraged him. War was war, but he had tried to conduct it honorably. He had stopped Morgan’s executions as soon as Morgan’s orders stopped coming. He had gathered the humans but he hadn’t hurt them; he’d tried to quell their uprisings peacefully when he could, and he’d worked to bring East Meadow food and water. They had repaid him with a vicious bioweapon, a campaign of terrorism, and now a nuclear explosion that had undoubtedly wiped most of the Partial species off the planet. His friends, his leaders . . . he had felt abandoned before, with no new orders for weeks, but now he was completely cut off. He would never receive new orders; he would never receive another message on the radio; he would never rejoin the rest of his army because it did not exist. He had twenty thousand Partials under his command, and there would never be reinforcements because they were the last living Partials in the world.

In ten more days the next batch would expire, and they would be down to seventeen thousand. A month later they’d lose six thousand more.

He was done being honorable.

A messenger walked toward him but kept his distance, probably because of the shattered table and the angry link data still boiling through the air around his head. He took a breath to calm himself before speaking.

“Report.”

“One of the prisoners is talking,” said the messenger. “Apparently the rebels have been spreading word of the nuke, telling people to flee south before it went off.”

“And we never discovered this?”

“You had given explicit orders not to torture anyone,” said the messenger. “Now that we are, they’re . . . We’re learning a lot.”

“Who was behind it?”

“A resistance group called the White Rhinos,” said the messenger. “They’ve been in operation since just after the occupation of East Meadow began.”

“I know who they are,” said Shon. “They’ve been notoriously hard to catch—do we have any in custody?”

“Just one, sir.”

“Lead the way.” He left his aides to pick up the broken table, pausing only to grab his sidearm from the rack by the door. The prisoners were kept in a pair of basement restrooms, chained to the pipes of molding sinks and dank, broken toilets. Shon nodded to the guards standing alert in the hall outside and marveled at the fierce, almost desperate anger that seemed to permeate the entire camp. As soon as they had a target for their vengeance, they would fall like a thunderbolt.

They opened the door, and Shon reeled back slightly at the smell. The messenger led him to a short, skinny girl in the back corner, who showed signs of having been interrogated.

“This is the White Rhino?”

The messenger nodded. Shon crouched down in front of the battered girl, showing her the gun. “What’s your name?”

“Yoon-Ji Bak.”

“And you worked with the rebel Marisol Delarosa?”

The girl’s face was hard, steely and determined even through the blood and grime. “Proudly.”

“Where are the rest of the humans you have been attempting to evacuate?”

The girl said nothing.

“Tell me where they’re gathering, and I’ll make your death quick.”

The girl said nothing.

Shon raised his voice, trying to emulate as much of the sound of human anger as he could. “Where are they?”

“Shoot me,” said Yoon.

Shon looked at her a moment, then handed the gun to the messenger behind him. He clamped Yoon’s left wrist tightly in one hand and grabbed her little finger with his other. “You are a terrorist, a murderer, and a war criminal,” he said. “That broken nose is the nicest treatment you’ll get here, unless you start telling me what I want to know. I’m going to find all of you bastards, and I’m going to do what I should have done months ago—years ago. What is the rendezvous point for the human evacuation?”

“I don’t know.”

Shon snapped her finger backward, breaking it with an audible crack. The girl screamed, and he grabbed the next finger in line. “Let’s try again. Where are the humans going?”

She screamed again, gritting her teeth against the pain. “We’re getting everyone off the island.”

“Be more specific, please. Where and how?”

“You’ll have to kill me,” she gasped.

He snapped another finger, and moved his hand to the third. “Eight more chances before I start to get creative. Where exactly can I find them?”

She was grunting now, tears streaming down her face, clenching her other fist into a tight white ball against the pain. “I don’t know!”

Snap.

“Seven,” said Shon. “Where?”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

The snow started again soon after the explosion, and Kira could only hope that the weather would diminish the spread of the fallout. Green said the windstorm was a side effect of the bomb, brought on as the fires in White Plains sucked in air like the eye of a tornado. They waited in the hospital for Falin and the others, and Kira led them all to Nandita’s house, hoping to find some trace of her sisters. The wind slashed the falling snow into their faces, stinging their cheeks and eyes as they hiked through the city. When they arrived at the home it was empty.

“Sandy said that Haru was here in East Meadow,” said Marcus. “If he knew about the nuke, he would have gone straight to Madison, and she wouldn’t have left without Ariel and Isolde. They’re probably . . . south, I guess. That’s where everyone’s going. They wouldn’t dare try to evacuate through Manhattan, with all the bridges all booby-trapped, so I’m guessing boats.”

“Do you have that many boats?” asked Green. “Thirty-five thousand people is a lot to move over water.”

“We have fishing villages all along the southern beaches,” said Kira. She closed her eyes as she spoke, collapsing on the old living room couch, battered and broken. She tried to remember the last time she hadn’t been running, either from or to something. Even the effort of searching through her memory made her tired.

“The fishermen have some boats, but not many,” said Marcus. “Still, they’re better than nothing. I think Nandita has an old atlas in here somewhere. . . .” He searched the bookshelves and pulled out a thick hardback, thumping it down on the coffee table and flipping through it to find a map of Long Island. “Most of the island’s protein comes from fish, caught either here, by Riverhead, or here, in the Great South Bay. There are a few smaller communities out here as well, on Jones Beach. The Riverhead boats are out of reach, but there’s a pretty sizable fleet of sailboats in the bay, and while it would probably take several trips, they could start ferrying people to the mainland . . . here, I guess.” He pointed to the Jersey shore. “If they follow the coast past Long Beach and Rockaway, they can cut across to New Jersey pretty easily, without ever getting out into the high seas and deep water.”

“So if we want to meet up,” asked Falin, “do we go to Jones Beach or look for the boats in the bay?”

“If I was trying to coordinate this I’d send everybody due south,” said Marcus, looking at the map, “to get as far from the blast as possible, then west as far as they can go. If the boats are just shuttling back and forth here, between Breezy Point and Sandy Hook, they can evacuate the island a lot more quickly.” He looked at Green. “Which is a long way of saying that we have a better chance of finding them if we stick to the beaches.”

“Unless the fishermen haven’t been able to get their boats out of the bay,” said Falin. “What if the Partials are holding them? They might need our help.”

Marcus leaned back on the couch, shaking his head. “Obviously you have never had the pleasure of meeting a post-Break fisherman. Where do you go if you’re so traumatized by the end of the world that you can never trust civilization again? Some of them live in the woods, hunting deer and wild cats and whatever else, but most of them became fishermen: They’re independent, they’re mobile, and if they don’t want to trade with our farms, they can ignore the rest of the world completely. That’s where Kira’s sister Ariel went when she left this place—straight out to Islip on the fringe of a fishing commune. I’d bet you no more than a handful of those fishing communities were ever rounded up by the Partials during the occupation at all. They could sail out to Fire Island or hide in Oyster Bay, and pretty much avoid the invasion the same way they avoided our society for the last decade.”

“Then who’s to say they’re going to help at all?” asked Green. “Even if the other humans found the fishing communities, how do we know they agreed to let those humans use the fishing boats?”

“Oh, they definitely found each other,” said Marcus. “Some of these causeways are miles long—we used to travel on them a lot when we did salvage runs—and when a fisherman sees a few thousand people crossing over he’s going to get curious, and when he finds out what’s going on, word will spread fast. I suppose it’s possible some of them won’t help, but I’d bet you dollars to doughnuts most of them will. They won’t want to stay on an irradiated island any more than the rest of us, and when they leave, they’re more likely to take us with them than not. They’re not evil, just . . . antisocial.”

Green nodded. “So what do we do?”

“We follow the other refugees,” said Marcus. “South on the causeways, then west on the beaches. We take as many of the final refugees as we can—we empty East Meadow completely—and then we follow the route the others took until we manage to catch up to them.”

Green asked another question, but Kira wasn’t listening anymore. Marcus’s analysis of the island was solid, and his plans were sound, but . . . how much of it really mattered anymore? Even if they could flee, what were they fleeing to? What hope did humans alone have for survival? They had Green and Falin and a few others, but four Partials, or even forty, couldn’t save thirty thousand humans. Who even knew how many Partials were left? And surely any chance at reconciliation was consumed in the nuclear blast.

Kira stood up and walked into the kitchen, smelling the herbs that reminded her so much of home. Nandita had gone missing two years ago, and after all that had happened Kira knew she’d never see the old woman again, but this kitchen, and these herbs, brought back a flood of fond memories. Xochi had kept up the garden after Nandita left, and the ceiling was hung with sprigs of dried rosemary, sheaves of brittle brown basil and bay leaves, fragrant bunches of chamomile. Kira stared at the mess—they had obviously left in a hurry when they fled the city—and after a long moment she opened a cupboard, pulled down the blackened metal teapot, and went to the sink to fill it up. The faucet dribbled for a second and went dry; apparently the cold had been too much for their aging water system, and the pipes had finally frozen and burst. She thought about using the pump in the backyard, but eventually just opened the side door and scooped a hefty chunk of snow into the teapot. Xochi had left a pile of split logs stacked neatly by the wood-burning stove, and Kira built her fire carefully inside the cast-iron monster. Her hands moved almost by themselves, remembering the years past, night after night, doing the same thing under Nandita’s watchful eye. Sometimes Madison’s. The specks of snow that had landed on the outside of the teapot melted quickly as the stove warmed up, and then hissed into steam as it grew even hotter.

“Thirsty?” asked Marcus. He was standing in the doorway from the living room, watching her with tired eyes.

“No,” said Kira blankly. “I just needed something to do.”

Marcus nodded and walked to the counter, staring at the array of herbs. “Let’s see. Mint, chamomile, lemongrass, rose hips, ginger—what sounds good?”

“Whatever.” Kira put another stick in the fire, keeping the heat even. It didn’t really matter, since she was only boiling water, but it was something she was good at. The fire was something she could control. She felt the heat with her hand and watched the pot.

Marcus fiddled with the herbs a bit, pulling out three of the chipped porcelain mugs and a metal mesh ball for each. He sniffed them, making sure they were clean, and dropped a few leaves into each ball as he spoke. “So that was your father.”

“Yep.” Kira didn’t know how to feel about Armin, and so refused to feel anything. She tested the heat again, trying to gauge the perfect temperature for the tea.

“I saw a picture of him once,” said Marcus. “Heron showed it to me.”

Kira looked up at this. “Heron?”

“You remember that Partial assassin who captured you when we went north with Samm? She showed up here one night last year, out of the blue. Showed me a picture of you as a little girl, standing between Nandita and that guy from the hospital. Armin . . . Walker, I guess?”

“Dhurvasula,” said Kira, looking back at the stove. “I couldn’t remember my last name when the soldiers found me after the Break, so they gave me one. I might be Kira Dhurvasula, I don’t know. I don’t know if he legally adopted me or what.”

“If you were an experiment, you might not legally ex—” He stopped. “Never mind.” Marcus finished with the last mesh ball and dropped one into each mug. “Is the water close?”

“Yeah,” said Kira. The teapot had already started to give short, feeble whistles, gearing up for a full boil. They watched in silence, and when it piped loudly she took it off the stove and poured a steaming stream into each thin mug. The aroma of the tea rose up in a cloud, calming her, and she breathed deep. Chamomile.

“Is he going to come after you?” asked Marcus.

It was a question Kira hadn’t allowed herself to think about yet, but now that it was out in the air there was no avoiding it. “Probably.”

“He said you were a new model,” said Marcus. “Some kind of ultimate refinement of the Partial design. If he’s collecting . . . artisanal DNA, or whatever, he’s going to want yours.”

“I used to wonder what I was for,” said Kira. She looked up at him, meeting his eyes for the first time that evening. His face was a warm bronze, almost glowing in the firelight, and his eyes were as black as the clouded, starless sky. “When I found out I was a Partial, I thought that they must have built me for some grand purpose. Something evil, maybe, like I was a bomb carrying a new strain of RM, or a spy just waiting to be activated. I hoped, though, that just maybe I was the key to saving us all, the cure for everything or a hybrid model, or something that could bring the two species together.” She smiled, but it felt sour and forced, the kind of smile that led almost instantly to tears. “Turns out I’m useless, at least as far as saving the world goes.” She wiped her eye. “I don’t carry the cure for RM, and while I don’t think I expire, I can’t do much to keep other Partials from doing so. Now Armin wants me for my DNA, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s all I’m good for. I used to wonder if I was really going to live through this, but now I can’t help but think that maybe . . . I shouldn’t.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I thought I was made for something terrible,” said Kira, “and then I thought I was made for something great, and now it turns out I wasn’t made for anything. I’m just . . . here.”

“You mean like everybody else?” asked Marcus. His eyes were kind, almost smiling, but Kira looked away.

“It’s not like that,” she said.

“It’s exactly like that,” said Marcus. “Nobody has a . . . destiny. I mean, nobody has some kind of inescapable path for their life. This mug was made from clay, and that clay could have been anything at all until somebody made it into a mug. People aren’t mugs, we’re clay. Living, breathing, thinking, feeling clay, and we can shape ourselves into anything we want, and we keep shaping ourselves all our lives, getting better and better at whatever we want to be, and when we want to be something else we just smooth out the clay and start over. Your lack of ‘purpose’ is the single best thing about you, because it means you can be whatever you want.”

She closed her eyes, her chest swelling with hope, her heart crying out to believe him, but she couldn’t. Not yet. “What about the Partial soldiers?” she asked. “They were built for one thing, and one thing only—are they locked in one place? They can’t even disobey orders without working against their own biology. What are they supposed to do now?”

“Believing that they had no choices is the attitude that ended the world,” said Marcus. He paused, staring at the floor, and then spoke again. “I had a friend named Vinci—I suppose after the nuke you might never get the chance to meet him, but he was a good man. He was Partial infantry, a sentry in Trimble’s army, but he was also funny, and clever, and smart enough to see that his world wasn’t working, and brave enough to try to change it. He remade himself as much as any human ever has. Look at Green, or Falin.” He shrugged, and his voice grew distant. “Look at Samm.”

“Samm changed,” said Kira, nodding. “So did Heron.”

“You saw Heron again?”

“We were almost friends,” said Kira, and stared at the swirls of her tea. “Not quite, but almost.”

“She helped you get to Denver?”

Kira nodded. “I came back with Morgan, but Samm and Heron stayed behind to help the survivors. I thought one day I might see them again, but then the snow made travel almost impossible, and now with the bomb, I just . . .” She thought about Samm, and their final moments. Their one and only kiss. She searched for the right words to express feelings she wasn’t even sure of. “I miss them, but I’m glad they’re not here. I’m glad they’re safe. I hope they stay safe, and stay in Denver, and if I’m right about the cures, they can live long, happy lives way after the rest of us all die of cancer or hypothermia or . . . bullets. Or crazy madmen who want to kill us and steal our blood.”

Marcus took a sip of his tea. “You make it sound so dangerous here.”

Kira laughed—not a loud laugh or a strong one, barely a chuckle, but more genuine than anything she’d felt in a long time.

“Dangerous and hopeless,” said Marcus. “But I don’t believe it is. You weren’t ‘designed’ to cure RM, but you did it anyway. You weren’t designed to cross the toxic wasteland, but you did that too, and then you escaped from I don’t know how many bad guys, and crossed through the middle of a war zone, and while every other group of weary, bloodied refugees is getting smaller and smaller, yours is getting bigger. You’re teaching people, and you’re recruiting people, and it’s not because you were built that way, or because you had some kind of glorious destiny to fulfill, but because you’re you. You’re Kira Walker. You’re not going to save the world because you’re the chosen one, you’re going to save it because you want to save it, and nobody in this world works harder for what they want than you do.”

Kira put down her mug. “I’ve really missed you, Marcus.”

He grinned. “I’ll bet you say that to all the guys.”

She had loved him once, but then she’d changed and he hadn’t. Now that she’d found him again . . . “You’re not the man I left.”

“It’s been kind of a busy year.”

“Put down your mug.”

He blinked, surprised, then set his mug on the table just before she stepped into him, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him fiercely. He kissed her back and she pressed him against the counter, holding him tightly, needing him more in this moment than she’d ever needed anything. Outside the storm raged, the mainland burned, and the island cowered in fear. Kira forgot it all and kissed Marcus.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

“They’re coming,” said Falin.

Kira looked up from her pack, fitting in the last bottles of frozen water. “Who?”

“The whole damn Partial army,” said Falin, racing to catch up. He’d been halfway up an office building, scouting behind them while Kira and Marcus and the rest of the refugees foraged for food. “They’re in East Meadow now, but they’re not stopping. They probably already got word that the humans had fled.”

“The entire army?” asked Marcus.

“What’s left of it,” said Falin. He looked at Green. “Can he walk?”

“Not very well,” said Kira. They’d spent five more days in East Meadow, rounding up as many people as they could and all the supplies to sustain them, and now there were only five days left before Green’s expiration. Kira had never seen it happen, so she didn’t know what to expect, but the Partials didn’t seem surprised by Green’s early signs of weakness, growing slow and weak as his body turned its energy against itself.

Kira had hoped that Green’s interaction with the humans of East Meadow would save him, but it wasn’t working; either it needed more time to function, or it didn’t work at all. Watching him grow more frail and damaged caused the entire group’s spirits to sink. They had begun to see her as a savior, but now they were terrified that Kira’s shining promise was just one more false hope. They had gathered nearly four hundred human refugees, and ten more Partial soldiers had joined the group, but without any hope of salvation, Kira didn’t know how long the group could stick together. She prayed that Green would pull out in time, recovering miraculously, but the prospects were bleak. A part of her still feared that this would be her end as well—not expiration, but simply death. Four hundred and twenty people, running through a snowbound hell, chased by nuclear fallout and a vast army of super-soldiers. What chance did they really have?

Kira looked at Tomas, the Partials’ demolitions expert. “You’re ready with the explosives?”

Tomas nodded. “All we have to do is make it across the first bridge.”

Kira looked at the slow train of refugees trudging through the snow, packs of food and ammunition heavy on their shoulders. No one had brought extra clothes; there was enough of that to be found as salvage in the homes they sheltered in, and an entire continent of salvage waiting beyond the water. If we can get there, she reminded herself.

“Tomas, Marcus, Levi, come with me; we’ll push ahead and start setting the explosives, so they’ll be ready to go when the rest of the group reaches the bridge. Falin, keep them moving, and don’t let them panic. Green.” She knelt down in front of the ailing soldier and grasped his hands. “You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m not an invalid,” he said, but his voice was raspier than she’d heard it before, and his eyes looked more sunken.

“I couldn’t have made it this far without you, Green. We’re going to get through this.”

“Then stop yakking and do your job.”

Kira smiled. “That’s the Green I know.” She patted his arm and stood up, looking at her advance team. “Let’s go.”

The brief gaps of sunshine over the last few days had made the snow harder than ever to walk through, softening vast swathes of lightweight powder only to see them refreeze into crusts and chunks of ice when the weather turned dark again. Instead of hip-deep snow they forced their way across the precarious upper layers of an impossible snowbank—sometimes slipping on the ice, sometimes breaking through the brittle crust, sometimes cutting themselves on the razor-sharp edges. The fact that thousands of refugees had already passed this way, leaving jagged footprints and dropped objects frozen into the ice, only made it more treacherous.

There were two long causeways crossing from the main island to the outer beaches, and Kira’s group was on the road toward the western one, Meadowbrook, which leapfrogged across four swampy islands on its way to Long Beach. Their plan was to blow each bridge as they crossed it, leaving the Partial army stranded behind them—it wouldn’t stop their pursuit completely, but it would force them to find a different route. Even the Ivies, they hoped, would be reticent to follow them, deterred by the wide channels of frigid ocean water and ice floes.

Except that my father has a rotor, thought Kira. When he comes, he could come from anywhere.

“Do you think Armin’s still searching for me?” she asked Marcus. “The explosion probably spooked him, just like it spooked all of us, but he’s had days to regroup and he hasn’t come back.”

“He’s probably raiding the rest of the refugees,” said Marcus, nodding toward the road ahead. “Everyone who went before us. With that rotor and his band of Ivies, he’ll have the pick of anyone’s DNA he wants.”

“But he still wants mine,” said Kira. “He’s going to make another play for it eventually, and we won’t have a nuclear bomb to distract him.”

“Have you considered just giving him your blood?” asked Marcus. “Peacefully, I mean—a pint or two, safely drawn, and then he can go on his way and leave us alone.”

“And create another species that will smash the planet to pieces trying to justify its existence?” Kira shook her head. “No more playing God, even for people with godlike powers. When he comes for me, we have to stop him.”

“That makes you sound like bait,” said Marcus warily.

“It makes me feel like bait,” said Kira, and nodded back to the refugees struggling behind them. “I just hope none of the others get caught when the trap goes off.”

They traveled nearly a mile, and Kira felt her toes and face go numb, when Levi called out a warning. “Bridge out!”

“What?” Kira scrambled ahead to join him, and stared openmouthed at the giant gap in the road. “Did it collapse?”

“It looks like someone ahead of us already blew it,” said Tomas, and pointed at the rubble. “That’s a blast pattern, and you can see the blackened marks under the edges of the snow.”

Kira walked farther forward, looking at the rocky shores of the island. “We’ll have to swim across.”

“In this weather?” asked Marcus. “That channel is deep and ice cold—if it weren’t seawater, it’d be frozen solid. Not to mention, we were planning to blow every bridge we crossed—if whoever’s ahead of us did the same, we’ll never make it across every gap. We’d just be stranding ourselves out there.”

Kira cursed, grinding her teeth. “They’ve probably blown the eastern causeway, too.”

“It’s not worth going three miles out of our way to find out,” said Tomas. “We’ll have to go back north, and then west on the mainland.”

Kira shook her head. “The army’s behind us.”

“And now it’ll be closer behind us,” said Levi. “Do we really have a choice?”

“No,” said Kira. She made a fist, growling in frustration, then took a breath and forced herself to think critically. “If we assume they’ve blown all the other bridges, our only access to the landing zone—or what we assume is the landing zone—is overland through Inwood and Rockaway.”

“That’s right,” said Marcus.

She turned and started trudging back up the road. “Come on. We have to get back to the others and turn them around.” She rubbed her hands together, looking at the sky as the clouds slowly closed overhead, heralding another storm. Maybe Marcus is wrong, and I do have a destiny. Maybe we all do.

Maybe it’s our destiny to die.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Kira led her refugees north, around a narrow inlet of the bay that cut deep into the ruined city, and then west along a broad thoroughfare called Merrick Road. It made them easy to find, but with the army so close behind them, they had no hope of hiding. Their only hope was to outpace the army, and Kira drove the group as hard as she could, shouting at them to run long after they had no breath to keep going.

A straggler in the back stumbled and fell, blood welling up from a gunshot wound; seconds later the sound of it reached them, echoing dully through the empty streets.

“Long-range sniper,” said Green. He winced with each step, struggling to keep up even with the slowest humans. Kira opened her mouth to yell, ready to tell the group to scatter into cover, but Green stopped her. “The snowfall’s getting thicker by the second; they won’t get more than a few more shots that good. They’re just trying to slow us down.”

“I don’t want to let anyone die,” said Kira. But she didn’t want to leave the main road, either, and taking cover would only give the army time to catch up. I’d hoped we might be able to talk to them, she thought, but if they’re shooting us on sight, that’s probably not an option. She studied the road and saw an apartment building two blocks ahead that protruded farther out than its neighboring buildings; the upper windows had a commanding view of the entire road behind them. She scrambled across the ice to Levi, half a block ahead of her, and pointed it out. “With a sniper up there, we can bring their pursuit to a halt. They’ll be walking straight into our fire.”

He turned toward the building, ready to carry out the plan, but she stopped him. “No, not you.”

“What?”

“Whoever goes up there might not come down,” she said. “You’re not a hired gun here, you’re one of us.”

“It’s a solid plan,” said Levi. “And I’m a—”

Kira cut him off before he could say it. “Partial, human, it doesn’t matter. We’re all in this together now. I’m not going to send you into that building just because you’re designed for it. We’re working together now, and—”

“Kira.” Levi held up a hand. “I wasn’t going to say ‘I’m a Partial,’ I was going to say ‘I’m a crack shot.’ But I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Oh.” Kira blinked. “Well, I need you with the group. You’re a natural leader. And you’re not the only one who can shoot.” She turned to face the line of human refugees. “How many of you can shoot a rifle?”

A few people tentatively raised their hands, and Kira nodded. “Now: How many of you are trained?”

Two hands stayed up. Kira swallowed her sudden guilt and self-loathing, forcing herself to think of the group, and pointed to the heavier of the two. “What’s your name?”

“Jordan.” The rest of the column shuffled past them, trudging onward through the snow.

“Let me do it,” said Levi. “I’m a better shot.”

“You’ve never seen me shoot,” said Jordan. Levi merely raised his eyebrow.

Kira handed Jordan a rifle and pointed to the window above them. “I want you to go up there, watch behind us, and shoot any pursuers you see.”

Jordan looked back and forth between Kira and Levi, processing the request.

“Accuracy isn’t as important as just keeping them busy,” said Kira. “If you’re as good as you said you were, you’ll be fine.”

“Until they shoot me or capture me,” said Jordan.

Kira clenched her jaw. “Look, I know it’s a lot to ask, but you would be—”

Jordan grabbed the rifle from Kira’s hand. “Hells yeah, I’ll do it.” He checked the sights. “The world’s ending anyway, and if I get to go down taking out a bunch of Partial bastards—” He glanced nervously at Levi. “I mean, enemies. Enemy soldiers. Sorry about that, friend. Old habits.”

Another shot rang out, and a refugee in the back of the line fell down with a strangled cry. Kira shouted for the others to hurry, then looked back at Jordan. “You can save a lot of people.”

Jordan let out a long, nervous breath, then checked the rifle one more time. “I was getting sick of walking anyway. Bad leg.”

“You’re a hero,” said Kira.

“Then do me a favor and keep enough of these people alive to remember me.” Jordan turned and stomped through the snow. Kira ran back toward the fallen refugee, but Green and the human supporting him waved her away.

“He’s dead,” said Green. “Get this line moving faster.”

“You’re the weak link,” Kira shouted back, trying to sound playful but knowing she’d failed miserably.

“I’m going to catch up to you and slap you in the mouth,” said Green, teasing much more successfully than Kira had. She looked at the two sniper victims, facedown and motionless in the snow, fading into the cold gray storm as the group walked on. She pushed forward, encouraging where she could, prodding and cajoling, trying to keep the column moving. Another sharp crack split the air, closer and with a markedly different sound; Jordan had started firing.

The army was getting close.

The snow stung their eyes and clung to their lashes, and the whole city seemed to blur into a pale white limbo. They passed homes and schools and parks and trees, all blended to the same featureless nothing, their steps marked by the sounds of gunfire behind them: single shots that echoed through the storm, amplified and muffled and everywhere and nowhere. The column reached a crossroads, and Marcus led them southwest on Foxhurst Road, still miles away from their destination. The single shots behind them erupted into a cacophony of automatic gunfire, a vicious onslaught that tore through the storm and then just as abruptly fell silent. Jordan’s gone, thought Kira. I hope he bought us enough time.

Night fell, and the pale-white limbo darkened to a deep, black shadow that seemed to shroud the world in danger. The falling snow was even more blinding now, and the refugees begged for rest, but Kira didn’t dare stop moving. More bullets flew out of the darkness, not sniper shots but advance scouts, harassing their flanks while the main army hurried to catch up. Kira assigned a team to hold them off—Levi and three of the humans—and another to explore the city on their sides, looking for Partial forces that might be trying to flank them. Kira tried to think of how she could possibly hail them and convince them of her cause, but the chances of that seemed to fall with every new attack, every new gunshot, every new fleeing victim left bleeding and dead on the side of the nightmare road.

They turned from Foxhurst to Long Beach, and from there to Atlantic Avenue, always pressing west, always trying to stay ahead of the ravenous army behind them. The suburbs slowly melded into a city, and the buildings each held terror in their shadows. A force of Partial soldiers burst out of a side street, guns blazing and the stench of DEATH wafting off them. Refugees screamed and fell, ducking behind the snowed-in hulks of old, wrecked cars and scrambling for their weapons, or simply dying in the blood-spattered snow. Kira returned fire, Marcus and Falin and even Green joining in; Falin died, and nearly fifty of the humans, before they finally fought off the attackers. Kira assumed that one or both of her scouting teams were dead as well. She ordered the humans to drop their packs, abandoning their food and its weight so they could go even faster.

“If they catch us, we’re dead,” said Kira, frost burning at her face and fingers. “If we’re still alive in the morning, we can look for more food then.”

Night closed in tightly around them. Their world was a cave full of cold and death and horror. The smell of the sea was stronger now, but so was the link data of the Partials, and even Kira could feel it coming in from both sides.

“We’re surrounded,” said Kira. She was guarding the rear of the column, sending the rest of the refugees as far ahead as possible.

“What do we do?” asked Marcus. “Scatter? They can’t chase all of us.”

“They can,” said Kira. “They’re everywhere, and there’s more of them, and they’re better at this. They can see better in the dark, they can coordinate through the link while we can barely even find each other in the snow—”

“I’m not giving up,” said Green.

Kira protested. “Neither am I—”

“Then stop talking like you are,” said Green, “and let’s do something.”

Kira nodded, struggling to think. “Tell them to go to ground,” she said. “If the Partial army’s in front of us now, there’s no sense moving forward—send the message for everyone to seek shelter, to stay dark, to stay quiet. We’ll lead the army away.”

“Whoa,” said Marcus. “Who’s ‘we’? You have to stay safe.”

“I have to protect these people,” said Kira. “If that means a blaze of glory, then . . . that’s what it means. I’ll lead them away, I’ll give the army their vengeance, and maybe the others can make it to the coast.”

“I’m coming with you,” said Marcus.

A burst of gunfire roared out of the snow behind them, and they dove for cover. “Get down!” shouted Kira. “Everyone get down!”

She heard a muted echo of unintelligible shouts, and checked her rifle with fingers she could barely feel. She was down to her last magazine. Feet crunched behind her in the snow, and she tried to burrow deeper. Link data drifted in, closer and closer, a chemical confusion she couldn’t sort through. Rifles and handguns fired in the darkness. A row of soldiers loomed over their snowbank, and Kira and Marcus and Green fired up at them, killing them or scaring them back into cover; she couldn’t tell which.

“I’m out,” said Marcus. “That was my last magazine.”

“Mine too,” said Green.

“I have maybe five shots left,” said Kira. She looked at the others, dim shapes in the darkness. “I’m sorry.”

“For having more bullets than us?” asked Marcus. “How dare you?”

“I mean for bringing you here,” said Kira. “I thought we could make it. I wouldn’t let us leave East Meadow without the rest of the refugees, and even before that I’m the one who dragged you both into this—”

“We came because we believed,” said Green. “If we die for something we believe in, that’s . . . more than the rest of my squad could say for themselves.”

A harsh voice drifted through the storm. “This is General Shon, acting leader of the entire Partial species. Those of you who have betrayed your race and joined the human terrorists are complicit in the bombing of White Plains and the death of hundreds of thousands of Partials. Surrender now and you will be forgiven; stay with the humans and we will exterminate you with the rest of the vermin.”

“We have to work together!” shouted Kira, but the only answer was another hail of bullets.

“Give me your rifle,” said Marcus. “You can run for it, and I’ll cover you—”

Another Partial soldier appeared above them, and Kira screamed and fired, desperate to protect her friends even if only for a moment, but more soldiers appeared, and more beside them, and Kira’s rifle was empty but she still kept pulling the trigger, screaming and crying her defiance—

—and the Partial soldiers were cut down by a wave of gunfire.

“Kira!” a voice shouted. “Fall back to our position! We have you covered, fall back!”

The voice was impossible to identify in the midst of the wind and gunfire, but they were desperate for any help they could get. Kira and Marcus scrambled to their feet, dragging Green between them and stumbling through the snow. Bullets howled through the air around them, slamming into snowbanks and ricocheting loudly off the dark hulks of cars, but the vague shapes in the storm kept beckoning them forward. She didn’t know who they were, but they were on the link, and she wondered how a group of friendly Partials had appeared out of nowhere from the west.

She felt something familiar and almost stopped in shock.

“Keep coming!” said the voice. “We can hold them here—fall back behind us!”

She dragged Green and Marcus forward, and then there he was, kneeling behind the protection of a snow-covered car, holding off the enemy.

“Samm?”

“Kira,” he said. “I told you I’d find you.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

“Where did you come from?” Kira demanded.

“West,” said Samm. He kept his eyes on the road to the east and fired another short, controlled burst from his rifle.

“But how?” asked Kira. “Why? What about the Preserve? I thought I’d . . . never see you again.”

“Go ahead and kiss him,” said Marcus, throwing himself down behind the same car for cover. “He saved our lives—if you don’t kiss him, I’m going to.”

“Questions later,” said Samm. “Do you have any ammo left?”

“We’re out,” said Kira.

“I have a pistol in my side holster,” said Samm, firing another quick burst. “Take it, and get your people to safety. I’ll hold this line to give you and Heron more time.”

Kira took the gun. “Heron’s here too?”

“Planting explosives,” said Samm. “There’s a bridge two blocks behind me.”

Kira looked ahead, trying to spot it, but it was impossible to see anything that far through the snowfall. She looked back at Samm. “I won’t leave you here.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” said Samm, and Kira saw now that there were other soldiers with him, dug in across the width of the road. “Get your people to safety, and wait for my signal. Now go. And Kira?”

She looked at him, her heart still twisting at the confusion of seeing him here. “Yes?”

“I’m . . . glad you’re safe,” he said. It was a simple sentence, but the link data that came with it was so powerful it made her hands tremble. She nodded, trying to say the same thing back, but it came out as a confused mumble. She’d thought he was gone for good, trapped on the other side of the wasteland. She’d dealt with it. She glanced from Samm to Marcus and back to Samm again.

She didn’t know what to do now.

“Let’s go,” said Marcus, and Samm gave them another burst of covering fire as they helped Green to his feet and ran forward through the howling storm. Cars and buildings and lampposts loomed like ghosts on the edge of their vision. Bodies lay in the snow, already half-buried by the relentless storm. The close buildings gave way to a wide, empty parking lot, and then they reached the bridge—the ocean inlet it crossed was narrow, barely thirty feet wide at the most, and it wouldn’t hold the army for long. In this weather, though, removing it would buy Kira’s people a few precious hours.

Someone waved them forward to the bridge. “They came out of nowhere,” said the man; he was one of the humans Kira had sent ahead, though she couldn’t remember his name. He gestured to Heron, climbing up from under the bridge with Tomas, the demolitions tech. “She says they know you.”

“They do,” said Kira, looking at Heron’s eyes as she approached. “I’m starting to think I don’t know them, though.”

“Hey, girlfriend,” said Heron, though her tone was hardly playful. “You miss me?”

“You’re lucky I haven’t already shot you for selling me out to Morgan,” said Kira.

“I don’t think it counts as selling if I didn’t accept any payment,” said Heron.

“How am I supposed to trust you? Nothing you do makes sense.”

“Pay better attention,” said Heron, and looked at Tomas. “You ready?”

“Samm said to wait for his signal,” said Marcus. “He covered our retreat.”

“Then let’s shut up and cover his,” said Heron, and pointed back down the road to Samm and his men, dashing from car to car for cover as the Partial army surged forward behind them. Kira fell into position next to Heron, their differences temporarily forgotten as Heron handed her a new magazine and they began firing. Samm turned and raced toward them, his arm around a wounded companion.

“Get clear!” he shouted. “Are the other two set?”

“Ready to go,” said Heron calmly, and then their whole group fell back, racing away from the oncoming swarm of soldiers. Tomas unspooled a long roll of wire as he ran, and they threw themselves to the ground behind a snowbank. Kira felt the final commands race across the link:

CLEAR

READY

NOW

Tomas pressed the detonator, and the bridge exploded in a bright orange ball barely ten feet in front of the leading enemy runners. Kira turned her head away, covering her eyes against the blinding orange fireball, and felt the percussive thump of two more explosions, one and two blocks north on the same ocean inlet.

“That’s it,” said Samm. “Let’s get as much distance between us and here as we can before they cross that canal.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Heron walked in silence, listening to the others speak.

“How did you get here?” Kira demanded, looking completely bewildered. “How did you cross the wasteland?”

“We were better prepared this time,” said Samm. “We knew what to expect, and Phan and Calix have lived in Denver long enough to be experts at finding clean food and water in the poison.”

As if on cue, Phan and Calix emerged from the storm, Calix barely even limping anymore. Heron had to admit she was impressed with the girl—she’d faced the journey without ever complaining; riding the horse, yes, but pulling her weight in other ways, leading them to water sources Heron would never have found on her own. Calix could read the weather in the wasteland’s pastel clouds as easily as if she were reading a book, and she had kept them free from the acid rain. She was a valuable asset.

Heron watched, and listened.

“A child was born healthy,” said Samm. “The pheromone you discovered, the one that cures RM, was already in her system. That’s all it takes, Kira—we lived in the Preserve for weeks, just part of the same community, and it worked. That’s all we have to do. We think it helped the Third Division, too.”

“Who’s that?” asked Kira.

“Vale’s comatose Partials,” said Samm. He gestured at the rugged man trudging through the storm beside them. “This is Ritter; he’s the acting sergeant. He’s twenty-two years old, Kira. He survived his expiration.

Kira peered at Ritter more closely. “Nice to meet you. You look like . . . I’m sorry, you’re not a model I’ve met before: you’re too old for infantry but too young to be an officer or medic.”

“That’s because I’m aging,” said Ritter, and though Heron couldn’t see it, she knew the man was smiling. The Third Division was stupidly proud of their new, human-like attributes. “When we first woke up we thought it was an effect of the muscle atrophy we experienced. Now we’re fully recovered, and I still look almost thirty years old.”

“It was Dr. Vale,” said Kira, and Heron rolled her eyes at the eager thrill in the girl’s voice. “Even with his gene mods he was still human, and it must have been his breath that set the reaction in motion. I thought it would stop expiration, but I didn’t realize it would restart the normal aging process as well. That’s amazing. I wonder if it also cured your sterility?”

“We haven’t exactly tested that yet,” said Ritter, “though Dwain was doing his best before we left.”

“Shut up,” said Dwain.

“It might be the human interaction,” said Samm, “but we’re still not sure.”

Heron moved slightly closer, for this was the key to the whole thing. Now that White Plains was gone, and Morgan with it, Heron had no chance of surviving expiration except this one, small hope.

“It’s possible,” Samm continued, “and even probable, that what happened to the Third Division was a one-time thing—that Vale did something to them, either directly or through Williams, to keep them alive.”

“Vale didn’t do it on purpose,” said Kira. “I spent weeks with him trying to cure expiration, and he was as clueless as I was.”

Heron held her breath, listening to every word, breathing them in.

“I thought I was right before,” said Kira, “but then I confirmed it firsthand. I talked to the man who designed the system, the leader of the Trust. This was his plan all along: If humans and Partials can coexist, they can live.”

Heron breathed again, slow and controlled. She could live. Everything she’d done, every risk she’d taken, every gamble of trust, had led to this moment. She could live.

“It can’t be that easy,” said Samm. “After everything we’ve been through, all the hell and the wars and the end of the world . . .”

“It’s not easy,” said Kira. “It never has been, and it never will be. Look at the hell we’ve gone through just to get this far—just to convince even a tiny portion of each species to work together. It’s always easier to die for your own side than to live for the other one. But that’s what we have to do: to live, day after day, solving every new problem and overcoming every new prejudice and building on every common ground we can find. Waging war was the easy part—making peace will be the hardest thing we’ve ever done.”

One of the East Meadow refugees spoke up; Heron thought she recognized him as the one called Marcus. “As important as it is that we, you know, stand around and breathe on each other, we should probably focus on getting the hell out of here. That little blown bridge isn’t going to hold them forever.”

“The rest of the humans are southwest of here,” said Samm, “on a narrow slip of land called Breezy Point.”

“That’s where we figured they’d go,” said Kira. “Have you talked to them?”

Samm shook his head. “We came in through Brooklyn, and since I didn’t know how else to find you, we went to the closest human stronghold, which was the JFK airport; there were a few stragglers there, and they told us where the humans were gathering. Sounds like most of the island managed to make it there—twenty thousand at least, maybe thirty. They didn’t know anything about you, though, so our plan was to go to East Meadow next, and that’s when we heard the gunfight. I didn’t know it was you until we found the front of your column and asked who was in charge.”

“We were glad to see you,” said Marcus, and Heron caught him glancing uncertainly at Kira. He didn’t sound as glad as he claimed to.

Heron dropped back, ignoring them as their conversation turned to the more mundane topic of what to do next, and how to do it. They had more than three hundred human refugees in Kira’s group, and seventeen miles to go before they could join the rest of the humans at Breezy Point. The Partial army would catch up to them, maybe not immediately, but inevitably. After this midnight chase had failed they were likely to wait before the next assault, gathering their forces and then coming down on the humans with overwhelming force. Kira’s little band was doomed, and every other human on this island, and Heron did not intend to be here when that doom arrived. Thirty thousand humans were impossible to hide, even with a handful of Partials to protect them.

But one Partial, and one human to protect her from expiration, could disappear forever.

Heron looked at the group, wondering who would be the best target. Calix was the obvious choice: she was capable, she was brave, and she could help Heron more than hinder her. She might put up a struggle at first, but she had the same fierce survivor’s instinct, and when all her other options were gone, she’d see the wisdom of their partnership. On the other hand, Samm seemed oddly attached to Calix, like she was a puppy, and if Heron chose her he might come after her, his stupid sense of loyalty overwhelming all his more logical priorities.

Marcus wasn’t an option either, for the same reason, this time thanks to Kira’s attachment, and Calix was attached to Phan. It’s like a web of dependent obsessions, she thought. They’d kill themselves, and maybe everyone else, just to save their friends. What good does it do? There are so many humans, all virtually identical. Why risk so much for one person?

Heron quickened her pace, pressing forward into the long column of humans, looking for one that no one would miss. “Where’s she going?” she heard Kira ask behind her, but Heron ignored them. She looked closely at each human as she passed them, assessing which ones might be best prepared for a journey out into the wilderness—who had food and water, who was dressed for the weather, who was armed and looked like they knew how to use their weapons. None of the beleaguered travelers inspired much confidence, but Heron supposed that was understandable. These were the last stragglers, the ones who hadn’t dared to leave East Meadow until the bomb had actually gone off, and Kira had dragged them from their homes with dire warnings of the end of the world. I might have to wait until we reach the others, she thought. Or simply take Calix and hope Samm’s smart enough not to chase me.

Someone was coming up behind her, and Heron put a hand on her sidearm, ready to pull if it turned out to be an enemy.

“I want to apologize,” said Kira.

Heron slowly lowered her hand and turned to glance at the girl keeping pace with her. “Apologize?”

“I was rude to you,” she said. “You came all this way, and risked your life to help me, and I treated you like . . . well, I’m sorry. You helped me, and I’m grateful.”

“I didn’t risk my life for you,” said Heron, looking forward again as they walked.

“For Samm, then,” said Kira. “The point is—”

“The point is that I didn’t risk my life,” said Heron. “I was always in control, and if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have done it.”

“Why can’t you just accept the apology?” said Kira, and Heron could hear the tension in her voice.

“When have I ever made anything easy for you?” asked Heron.

“Why are you here?”

“I told you to pay better attention—”

“You want to kidnap a human,” said Kira. Heron didn’t respond, and Kira didn’t falter a step. “You came back for the cure, and now that you’re sure it’s in humans, you want to take one and save yourself. I have been paying attention, better than you think, and that’s the only thing that makes sense. All you’ve ever cared about is your own survival—you were helping Morgan because you thought she could save you, and then you helped me for a while because you thought I could. When I failed, you went straight back to Morgan, and now that she’s failed you were completely out of options—until I confirmed the cure.”

“I don’t think you understand me half as well as you think you do,” said Heron. She paused. “But a little better than I’d like you to, at least in this case.”

“Then you know—”

“Did you ever stop to consider,” said Heron, cutting her off, “that getting in my way is a bad idea?”

“I’m trying to save us all,” said Kira. “You know that. Even you, if you’ll let me, but I can’t let you hurt anyone else.”

“In the absolutely best-case scenario,” said Heron, “I kill you, grab one of these humans, and no one ever sees me again. That’s how things will play out if you keep trying to question me. Take it further—put up a fight, try to stop me, call for help—and I’ll end up causing a lot more death and destruction before I, yes, still get away. It’s not worth it. Go to Breezy Point, get on your little boat, and count the minutes until that army finally catches up and kills every last one of you. I will be safe, and whoever goes with me. It’s not worth it to try to stop me.”

Kira put a hand on Heron’s arm; Heron stiffened but didn’t pull away. Kira’s voice was softer than she expected. “Survival is important,” said Kira, “but not if you lose yourself in the process. Surviving just to survive is . . . empty. That’s not a life, it’s a feedback loop.”

Heron expected her to say more, to go on and on, moralizing in classic Kira style, but she let go of Heron’s arm and stepped back into the night, returning to Samm and Marcus and the others. Heron stopped, watching the line of refugees march past her in the snow, and then she turned and walked away into the city.

The buildings were dreamlike in the darkness—dull, black shapes, their outlines softened by snow and dim moonlight. Heron moved through them silently, haunting the world like a living ghost. Her stealth training was so ingrained, her skills so perfectly honed, that she left no footprints as she walked, no signs, no traces whatsoever of her passing.

If she didn’t choose to leave a mark, no one would ever be able to tell that she’d been there at all.

Another shape appeared in the falling snow, low and lean. A wolf or a wild dog, sniffing hungrily through the dim gray void in a desperate search for sustenance. Heron raised her rifle silently, ready to kill it on instinct as a potential threat. Her finger hovered over the trigger. She watched the wolf stop, tense as a spring, and then burst into motion, racing through the street after a tiny white target—a cat or a rabbit, both hunter and hunted kicking up a frenzied spray of snow in their wake. The wolf pounced, shook its head three times, and the rabbit was dead in its jaws. Dark blood dripped down to the snow.

This is life, thought Heron. Not a peace treaty, not an idealistic dream, but a grim dance of death and survival. The strong live on while the weak—the ones too small or too foolish to fight back—die in agony and blood. Kira wants a world of rabbits, safe in their warren, happy and communal and oblivious to reality, but the real world is out here. A hunter in the snow. Life is a lone wolf, scratching out a living with teeth and claws and a heart of stone. The wolf shook its prey again, ensuring the kill, but didn’t stop to feast right there in the street. It looked up, still oblivious to Heron’s ghostly presence, and padded off between the drooping houses and the snow-covered boulders of old, sagging cars. Heron followed it, curious to see where the wolf deemed it safe enough to pause and eat its kill. It slipped through holes in fences, jumped over fallen trees and power lines, and all the while she followed it, watching, waiting. At last it came to its den, a crawl space below a dilapidated house, and crawled through the narrow tunnel it had dug through the snow. Heron crept up behind it, peering in softly.

The wolf laid the rabbit on the floor and watched in maternal silence as four small cubs yipped and snapped at it, eager for a meal. The mother turned toward the entrance, looking straight at Heron, and her dark eyes gleamed green in the dim, reflected light.

Heron watched the children eat, and she cried.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Kira struggled through the snow, clinging to the stretcher they’d rigged to help carry Green. The Partial army was too close, and the night too cold; if they stopped they’d be cut down, or freeze to death, and so they kept walking, step after step, inch after inch, while their feet bled in their shoes and their hands froze in their gloves and the relentless storm howled around them. One mile. Two miles. Five miles. Soon almost everyone was pulling a stretcher, each one cobbled together from whatever they could find in the frozen houses on the side of the road: brooms and mops and shirts and dresses. They draped the stretchers with blankets, trying to keep the injured from freezing, and relied on their own exertion to save themselves.

On the sixth mile after the last blown bridge they were hailed by the first line of defense along the Rockaway peninsula. The land here was barely a thousand feet across from ocean to bay, and the tattered remnants of the Defense Grid were dug into homes and makeshift bunkers, headquartered in an old public school. They brought the refugees there and lit fires to warm them, pulling out all their stock of food and water. Another thirty people had died of hypothermia, and one man’s feet were blackened and dead from frostbite. Kira let the soldiers help and crawled into a corner under a dry blanket to collapse into sleep.

When she woke the next day she was shocked to still be alive.

Despite the early morning light indicating the new day, her exhausted body told her she’d only been asleep a few hours. Kira forced herself up and over to the meager fire, where she held her freezing hands up to the scant heat, wondering if she would ever feel truly warm again, then sought out the leader of the outpost. He was an older man, grizzled and weary, who introduced himself as David.

“Kira Walker,” said Kira, shaking his hand. She saw the shadow of recognition in his eyes and nodded. “Yeah, that one. Has the Partial army caught up to us?”

David shook his head. “We’ve been watching all night for them, and we have snipers and IEDs—improvised explosive devices—along the peninsula, but there’s no sign.”

“They’re probably massing for a major assault,” said Kira.

“Or defending their rear flank,” said David. “Tovar and Mkele are still out there, with whatever’s left of the resistance, and they might still be buying us the time to escape.”

“Tovar’s dead,” said Kira. “I don’t know about Mkele.” She rubbed her eyes, feeling no more rested than when she’d fallen asleep. “Tovar was killed by a man named . . . well, they call him the Blood Man.” She felt a sudden, irrational need to hide his identity, even though nobody knew who he was or that he had any connection to her. “He has a rotor and leads a group of genetically modified Partials, killing people to steal their DNA. You haven’t heard of him?”

“Nothing like that,” said David, shaking his head. “Some of the refugees have talked about a rotor out over Long Beach and Brosewere Bay, but none of the messengers from Breezy Point have said anything. If he’s out there, he’s still east of us.”

“And picking off loners so they can’t spread the tale,” said Kira. “Keep an eye on the skies; if he does decide to come here, it’s going to be trouble.” She rubbed her temples, leaning wearily against a wall for support. “How about the rest of the humans? Do you know how the evacuation’s going?”

“Slow but steady. Another week at least before everyone’s across. This outpost was scheduled to fall back today, but I don’t know if your group can make the journey.”

“You have more outposts like this?”

David nodded. “Two more choke points along the peninsula, one at each bridge into Brooklyn. We’ve kept the bridges open in case more refugees make it across. Our plan for today was to arm our traps, rig our explosives, and fall back seven miles to the Marine Parkway—let the Cross Bay Bridge folks be the front line for a while.”

“Do it,” said Kira, and put up her hands to stop his protest. “We’re pretty beat up, but we can make it at least as far as the next outpost. If we stop moving, we’re as good as dead.”

“Then we’d better get going while there’s still some daylight left,” said David. “Gather your people; I’ll send word to mine. We can be ready in two hours, but you’re welcome to get a head start.”

Kira walked back to the gym full of refugees, wincing with each step. That doesn’t bode well for the day. She picked up a bottle of water to bring to Green, but saw that someone was already talking to him.

It was Heron.

“You’re still here,” said Kira, unscrewing the bottle to take a swig herself.

Heron nodded. “So are you,” she said, “though I suppose that’s not as surprising.”

“I think she was talking about me,” wheezed Green, his voice almost too weak to hear. “She thinks I’m going to die.”

Kira grabbed his hand but didn’t correct him, looking at Heron with tired eyes. “He’s too stubborn to die.”

“I know the feeling,” said Heron.

Kira nodded. “We’re moving out again. They have another outpost, sounds like it’s about three miles away. With a break in the snow and some daylight to walk in, we should be able to make it in just a few hours.”

“Two more frostbite cases this morning,” said Heron, and pointed to Green, “including him. It’s the people on stretchers; we have to make them walk and keep their circulation high, or they’re going to lose more limbs.”

“Think you can convince them?” asked Kira.

Heron smiled wickedly, walked to the nearest stretcher, and overturned it with a grunt, spilling the sleeping occupant out on the floor. He woke up spluttering, still trying to figure out where he was, when Heron tossed his stretcher onto the nearest fire.

“What are you doing?” he cried.

“She’s saving your extremities,” said Kira. “Find something to eat. We’re leaving in an hour.” The man worked his jaw wordlessly, too exhausted to argue, then walked unsteadily to the dwindling pile of emergency rations, rubbing his legs as he went. Kira nodded to Heron, who nodded back before assaulting another stretcher. Kira looked back at Green. “She’s direct.”

“And smoking hot,” wheezed Green. “She attached?”

“You’ve already fought your way through Candlewood and the winter from hell and a nuclear explosion and your own body trying to kill you,” said Kira. “Quit while you’re ahead.”

She patted him on the leg and walked away to spread the word to the rest of the group. Marcus was on one side of the room, discussing something with a refugee, and Samm was on the other talking to his group from the Preserve. Kira stood in the middle of the floor, not knowing who to talk to first, or what she would say, or . . . anything. She took a step toward Marcus, stopped herself, and walked straight instead, rousing the people in a line down the center of the room. She would worry about Samm and Marcus when she wasn’t running for her life.

She snorted and shook her head. If that ever happens.

She had only spoken to a few more people when Samm walked up behind her. She had learned how to use the link through him, and she felt him coming now, his data as familiar to her as his face, and just as comforting. She closed her eyes, savoring it like an old, familiar smell, then wiped the emotion from her face and turned toward him. “Samm.”

“Kira.” He stood silent, not embarrassed or awkward but simply . . . uncertain. She loved these little flashes of vulnerability from him, like cracks in his armor of supreme, quiet confidence. Knowing that he’d led a team from the Preserve and conquered the wasteland and defeated an army to be here, only to see him hesitate, unsure what to say to her, made her heart flutter in her chest.

“I heard you say we’re moving out,” said Samm.

“Yes, I was just coming to tell you.”

“Kira, when you left—”

“I know,” said Kira. “I know . . . and I don’t know.”

“This isn’t what I—” He stopped himself. “This isn’t how I intended to do this. I had months to plan what I would say when I saw you again, but when I found you I wasn’t ready.”

“You made a plan and saved my life before I even knew what was happening,” said Kira. “If that’s not ‘ready,’ I don’t know what is.”

“That kind of thing is easy for me,” said Samm. “This . . .” He paused, straightened his shoulders, and tried to start again, but she stopped him.

“I want to talk to you,” she said, “for hours and days and forever, but we can’t right now. Not here, and not while we’re still in danger.”

“You’re right,” he said, and she felt frustration and relief mingling on the link. “What can I do to help?”

Kira glanced around the room, wondering what to tell him; she saw the refugees trying to dry their clothes by the fire and came to a decision. “Take whoever you can and go to the nearest block of houses. We need all the dry clothes you can find—jackets or coats are ideal, but any shirt or pair of pants will help. We can’t let them go outside all wet like this.”

“Most of them need new shoes as well,” said Samm. “We’ll bring what we can.” He hesitated again, as if unsure whether to salute her or embrace her, then turned and called to his group; they followed him out, even Calix and Phan, and they recruited a few of the sturdier-looking refugees before they left. Kira watched them go, wondering if she’d said the right thing—if not taking him back on the spot meant she’d lost him forever, or if she even wanted him back at all.

Marcus, for his part, was already organizing the refugees into groups, taking stock of who had been lost and who was still there, and what resources they could muster for the next leg of the journey. She walked toward him, trying to think of what to say; now that she’d talked to Samm, she couldn’t leave him out. As she walked she saw Heron, still dumping out stretchers and yelling at everyone to get up, to walk on their own, to get their blood flowing. Kira still didn’t know why the girl had stayed, or if she was still planning to leave or betray them or what. Great, she thought. One more thing to worry about.

Marcus looked up as Kira approached, though he didn’t smile. He nodded toward the door Samm had left through. “They scouting ahead?”

“Getting dry clothes,” said Kira. “How’s our food supply?”

“Grim,” said Marcus, “edging toward ‘disastrous,’ but probably still shy of ‘wanton cannibalism.’ This outpost was on the last of their rations before three hundred refugees showed up; apparently they’re scheduled to evacuate today.”

“They are,” said Kira. “The next outpost will probably be just as strapped when we get there.”

“We can try to scavenge the area around it,” said Marcus, “but you’ve got to remember that every human on the island has passed through here in the last month. Even scavenging, there’s not going to be enough food for everyone.”

Talking to Marcus is so much easier than talking to Samm, thought Kira. Or maybe it only feels easy because we’re talking about easy things. Weights and measures and nuts and bolts. Why can I talk about saving the world, but not about myself?

Screw this, she thought. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it at all. She looked Marcus straight in the eyes. “Marcus, you know I’m in love with you, right?”

His mouth hung open a second, and then he smiled. “I didn’t know if I’d ever hear you say it again.”

“And you also know I’m in love with Samm?”

His mouth hung open a moment longer this time, his eyes clouded. “That’s not what I wanted to hear next, but still . . . thanks, I suppose. Better to hear it straight out.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.”

“So that’s why you kissed me?”

“That’s not why I wanted to kiss you, that’s just why I allowed myself to kiss you.”

Marcus shook his head. “Not sure that makes me feel better.”

“I made a choice because I thought it was the only one I had,” said Kira. “I know that’s horrible, but there it is. When I kissed him, it was for the same reason—I thought I was going to die, and I kissed him, and I told him I loved him. It’s like . . . I can throw away my whole life trying to help somebody else, but I can only do something for me if I know it doesn’t matter.”

“So you’ve kissed him, too,” said Marcus. “This is becoming an intensely confusing and uncomfortable conversation.”

“I’m so sorry, Marcus. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” said Marcus, though he was obviously struggling to find the right words. “We’re both pretty flawless specimens—I can barely choose between us either.”

Kira laughed. “My choices were so much easier to make when I thought the apocalypse was making them for me.”

“The apocalypse is still young,” said Marcus dryly. “Do you honestly think we’re all going to live through the next few days? Maybe you’ll die and I’ll end up with Samm.”

“Better him than Heron,” said Kira. “Whatever you do, stay away from her.”

“Done and done,” said Marcus. “I’ve only met her once, but . . . holy crap. If anyone does die in the next few days, I won’t be surprised if she’s the one pulling the trigger.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

The Partial army didn’t arrive that day, and Kira’s refugees made it to the second outpost at Cross Bay Bridge without trouble. They lit their fires and huddled together through the night, listening for the sound of the Grid’s defensive traps and explosives, but they heard nothing.

“They’re not coming,” said Samm.

“Or they found the traps and disarmed them,” said Heron. She grinned at the nearby humans wolfishly. “Sorry, I’m a bit of an optimist.”

“Whose side are you on?” asked Marcus.

“This close to the end,” said Kira, “we all have to be on everyone’s side. We’re running from them because they’re trying to kill us, but we can’t survive without them. That’s how this works.”

“So how do we reconcile that with the ‘trying to kill us’ part?” asked Calix. “That’s going to make peaceful coexistence pretty impossible, by definition.”

“We’ll talk to them,” said Kira. “But we’ll get everyone to safety first. They’re angry—they think we blew up their home and murdered eighty percent of their species. We’ll get everyone clear—of them and of the fallout—and then when they don’t have anyone left to shoot at, we can talk to them.”

“They can still shoot whoever tries to talk to them,” said Marcus.

Kira nodded. “Here’s hoping that they don’t.”

The next day they loaded up with more dry clothes and walked the four miles to the third outpost. Kira was surprised to find that she’d been there before, on her first trip into Manhattan; they’d gone the long way around to hide, from both the Senate and the Voice, and crossed this bridge into Brooklyn. She hadn’t recognized the city in the snow, but the bridge was unmistakable. Beyond the outpost it was just three miles to the tip of the promontory, to Breezy Point itself, and Kira could already see the vast group of refugees—the entire human population—swarming over the land ahead. It filled her heart to see so many still alive, after living so long alone in the wilderness, but at the same time it chilled her, more profoundly than even the storm.

Every human on the island, she thought. I’ve never seen them all in one place before.

There’s so few of us.

Breezy Point consisted of a short forest, about as narrow as the rest of the peninsula had been, terminating in a more bulbous point that seemed to be covered beach to beach in thousands of houses, packed together with nothing but narrow roads—and sometimes simply narrow sand pathways—between them. The air over the city was a gray pall of smoke from hundreds of chimneys, and the snow beneath was almost black from the ash and churned mud. The southern beach was thronged with people, and the ocean was dotted with a thin line of white sailboats, stretching out toward the distant line of the Jersey shore. Kira could see cook-fire smoke there, too, and she clenched her jaw, grateful. Even if the rest of us die, some of them have already gotten away.

Kira made sure her refugees had food and shelter, then left them in the outpost and struck out the last few miles with Marcus, Samm, and the rest of the group from the Preserve. She wanted to take Green as well, but he was in and out of consciousness, and the best she could do for him at this point was to keep him warm and surrounded by humans. If the interactive cure was going to kick in, this was its last chance. It occurred to her that with less than three days left until the next batch of expirations, that might explain the Partial army’s sudden lack of pursuit. She was caring for one failing soldier with the dim hope that he would recover; they were caring for thousands, with no hope at all.

Will that calm them? she wondered. Force them to slow down and take stock and reevaluate their attack?

Or will it just make them more vengeful?

A pair of men met them on the outskirts of the town, wrapped in ponchos made from blankets and carrying a well-worn ledger. “We didn’t think anyone else was going to make it. I’m Gage.” The leader of the men shook Kira’s hand. “Come on back to the border post; we’ll get you warmed up and figure out where to put you while you wait for a boat.”

“Who’s in charge?” asked Kira. “We need to talk to . . . the Senate, I guess? Is Kessler here? Hobb?”

“Neither have checked in,” said Gage. “Haru Sato’s been organizing everything.”

“Perfect,” said Marcus. “I was hoping we’d get to deal with someone talky and self-important, so this works out great.”

“You know him?” asked Gage.

“We’re old friends,” said Kira. “I’m Kira Walker.” She saw the same glimmer of surprise and recognition, and nodded. Is this going to be a thing now? “Yes,” she said, “that one. Can you take us to Haru?”

“Let me get you squared away first,” said Gage, scanning his ledger as they walked. “Looks like . . . ten of you?”

“With three hundred more in the outpost behind us,” said Kira. “They’ll be arriving tomorrow.”

“Wow.” Gage flipped more pages, studied one for a moment, then gestured to his companion. “Tell Kyle to get the West Twelfth open, we’ll start putting them there.” The man ran ahead, and Gage asked them more questions: how much food they’d brought with them; how many injured; how many who could care for the sick or crew a boat. Kira was reassured to see the evacuation being managed so efficiently, but it didn’t lessen her concerns—efficient wasn’t the same as safe. She walked faster, spurring Gage to hurry, and he led them through the snowy, soot-stained streets to an old construction warehouse in the center of town, which the refugees had converted to a command center. Haru was inside.

“Kira! Marcus!” He ran to them, wrapping them in a hug. “Madison will be so glad you’re alive. She’s already crossed with Arwen—we didn’t want to risk losing our little girl, she’s practically the species mascot at this point.” He looked at Heron and the others, and his voice became more serious. “I don’t know the rest of you, but welcome to Breezy Point. We think we have another good four days before we’re all across, and there are already scouts pushing south and west, looking for the best routes to—don’t move!” He barked the command abruptly, drawing his handgun so fast Kira barely even saw it. Haru was staring at Samm, pointing the gun straight at his chest. “Dammit, Kira, you brought a Partial?”

“I brought several,” said Kira firmly, watching a group of surprised local guards draw their weapons. “Haru, this group has more Partials in it than not—including me.”

He stepped back, giving himself a wider angle on the group as a whole, but his grim face faltered. “I . . . heard as much from Nandita.”

“Nandita’s alive?”

“She was traveling east, before the snow, trying to save Isolde’s baby—”

“Isolde had her baby?” Kira cried. “Where are they?”

“They were headed east, to Plum Island,” said Haru. “Hobb and Kessler and Xochi were with them. Nandita thought she could save the baby, but we haven’t heard anything since. I . . . At this point we have to assume they didn’t make it.”

“Three minutes ago you didn’t think I’d made it either,” said Kira. “They’re resourceful; they’ll make it through.”

“Can we have this conversation when they’re no longer pointing guns at us?” asked Marcus. “I am just as fascinated as you are, but it’s hard to concentrate with a gun in my face.”

“How many of you are Partials?” asked Haru. Samm, Ritter, and the three others raised their hands. Calix stepped forward, directly in the line of Haru’s fire.

“My name is Calix,” she said, “and I can personally vouch that these men have saved my life more times than I can count. They are not a threat; they are probably your biggest asset trying to protect these people.”

“They’re Partials,” said Haru. “Kira grew up human, so I trust her, but these four could be spies, they could be assassins—they could be anything.”

“Then consider for a moment that they could be friends,” said Calix. “It was hard for me at first, too, but I’ve trusted my life to them, and they’ve never let me down.”

Haru stared at the Partials, tightening his grip on the pistol. After a moment he spoke again. “Kira, you saved my daughter’s life—whatever else you’ve done, you did that. If you tell me we can trust these men, I’ll believe you.”

“You can,” said Kira. “And the woman behind you, too.”

Haru lowered his gun. “Who?” He turned around and Heron stepped out of a shadow, lowering her own gun with a blank expression. Haru considered her carefully. “After that, why should I trust you?”

Heron smiled. “Because you’re still alive.”

Haru glowered, but after a moment he reholstered his pistol and waved away the guards. “The world has changed, and I’m not quite used to the new one yet. Kira and Marcus consider you friends, so you’re welcome here.”

“We understand,” said Samm. “I’m glad to hear that your daughter is safe.”

Haru glowered again, clearly conflicted about receiving good wishes from a Partial, but he didn’t say anything out loud. Kira stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Tell me about Isolde and her baby,” she said. “How did—she?—survive the initial symptoms of RM?”

“It’s a boy,” said Haru, “named Mohammad Khan. And the baby never had RM. He’s a hybrid.”

Kira frowned. “What does that mean?”

Haru shook his head. “So you don’t know. Well, we have a lot to talk about.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

“I still can’t believe it,” said Kira. Darkness was falling, and they were sitting in their assigned house: Kira tending the fire while Samm and the Third Division soldiers insulated the windows with couch cushions and mattresses. “Ariel and Isolde are Partials, like me—my sisters are my actual sisters, in some giant, cosmic sense.”

“If they’re still alive,” said Marcus. “I’m not trying to kill the buzz, but the odds are against it.”

“They’re alive,” said Kira. “Screw the snow, screw the nuke, screw the island full of revenge-fueled super-soldiers, they’re alive.”

Marcus held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “Okay, they’re alive.”

“Four more days of ferrying people in boats,” said Calix. “You really think we can do it?”

“You mean get off the island?” asked Kira.

“I mean stay alive for four days.”

Kira poked at the fire. “I hope so. Even if we do, it’s not going to mean anything if we can’t convince the Partial army to join us.”

“There hasn’t been any sign of them,” said Marcus. “None of the explosive traps have gone off, none of the outposts have been attacked, nothing.”

“Rotor,” said Heron, sitting by the wide front window they’d left open for smoke. She was staring outside, and as Kira looked over, Heron pointed up at the sky. “It’s running dark, but you can see its shape blocking out the stars in the background.”

Samm walked over to look, the rest of the group close behind him. “Does the invasion force have rotors? They weren’t using them when they were chasing us.”

“The storm was too strong,” said Ritter. “They wouldn’t have been useful.”

“It’s not the army,” said Kira, “it’s the Blood Man.”

Samm peered at the sky. “You mean your—”

“He’s not my father,” said Kira. “Get your gear. If he’s here, he’ll be looking for ‘donors.’ Phan, run to the command center and warn Haru, tell him to put everyone on alert.” She pulled on her weather-beaten jacket and picked up her rifle, the others already scrambling for their own weapons. “The rest of you get outside, and get up on the rooftops where you can see. We’re going to find where he lands, and we’re going to stop him.”

“There’s no way we can do it while he’s got that rotor,” said Samm. “He can drop, kill, and take off again before we can catch him.”

“We don’t have to catch him,” said Kira, slapping a magazine home in her rifle. “We’re going to get his attention, and he’s going to come for me.”

The group raced outside; Kira was dimly aware that Heron was watching her intently, but she didn’t have time to wonder why. Samm helped Calix onto the roof, and she shouted out directions, sending them running down Twelfth Avenue to Rockaway Point Boulevard, pelting through the dirty snow toward the eastern edge of the town. The night was clear, the first clear night in days, and Kira wondered if that was what had finally lured Armin out of hiding. Maybe they couldn’t fly well in the snow, like Ritter had said? She tried to think of how that could help her now, some way to use that knowledge to stop him, but she couldn’t control the weather. They reached Ocean Avenue, sprinting through the night, when suddenly the black shape in the sky darted south, high over the houses. It was barely visible, but Kira could hear the bass rumble echoing between the buildings. Shouts were already going up from the command center, too early for Phan to have raised the alarm; had they already seen the rotor, or was something else happening? She swerved south, following the rotor’s path, and the rest of her group swerved with her.

“It’s dropping!” yelled Samm, and the black shape swooped down against the field of stars, punching through the cloud of smoke that hung over the village. Kira heard shouts, and the pop of a gun, but she was too far away. A spotlight shone down, probing the ground like the proboscis of a fly, searching. She pushed herself, running faster than she thought she could, but the rotor didn’t land—it simply circled a few times, then turned off its light and surged back up into the darkness.

“He’s looking for me,” said Kira. “We have to make sure he finds me before he gives up and starts taking civilians.”

The streets here were narrow, revealing only a slim strip of stars, so Ritter vaulted to the top of a car, and from there to the top of a house, scanning the sky in a slow, wide circle. He found the rotor and shouted, sending the group west, and Kira took off again, determined to be there when Armin dropped back down for another look.

“He’s going down!” Samm shouted again, too soon for Kira to have run more than a few blocks. She screamed her frustration, stumbling through the snow; Samm steadied her and they ran, breaking out of the narrow street into the wide central square in the middle of town. The command center was in front of them, swarming now with an armed militia, and Haru shouted to Kira as she bolted past.

“The army’s here!” Haru pointed the other way, back east toward the Grid outposts. Kira could barely hear him as she ran away, his voice fading in the background. “The Partial army! They’ve reached the third outpost!”

Kira swore as she ran, tripping on the frozen, sooty drifts. She stopped a moment, listening, and there it was, buried underneath the deep, chopping rhythm of the rotor: distant gunfire. Enough to carry three miles through the wilderness.

“Our group is still there,” she said. “All the refugees we brought out of East Meadow, people we almost died trying to save—all caught now.”

“They won’t kill them,” said Samm.

“Of course they’ll kill them!” said Kira. “You heard what they said—that humans are vermin, and every Partial who works with them. Green’s back there, Samm—they’re going to execute him as a traitor.”

“Not tonight,” said Samm. “We have time to talk to them, to make them see reason.”

“Are you so sure?”

Samm didn’t answer.

“Keep running,” snarled Heron. “He’s back up again.”

Kira looked up, trying to follow the line of Heron’s finger, and spotted the black patch of nothingness streaking slowly above the smoke. “South,” said Kira. “Toward the beach.” She took off again, running through the crowd. The streets south of the command center were the narrowest yet, skinny footpaths between close-packed houses, but Phan had rejoined them now and climbed to the top of the nearest house to shout directions.

“Four rows over!” he shouted. “No, the next one!”

Kira reached the next row and dove left, watching the rotor swoop down over an open lot between houses. The spinning blades in the wings threw up a flurry of ice and mud and shingles, cloaking the landing zone in a deadly maelstrom of debris. Kira covered her face with her arm and surged forward.

DOWN, Heron linked, then followed it by shouting out loud, warning the humans of the same thing. “Get down! Stay inside and get in cover, it’s too dangerous!”

Kira ignored him, desperate to make sure Armin saw her. She gritted her teeth and charged into the swirling cloud of debris, deafened by the noise of the engines. A spotlight flared to life, probing the ground before quickly settling on her. Her arm shielded her face from the glare and the debris, but this was what she was here for. She needed him to see her, to come closer so the others could catch him. She closed her eyes and pulled her arms away, baring her face to the spotlight. Dust and ice swirled around her, stinging her face; her hair whipped frantically in the wind. The rotor hovered in place, the light streaming down, studying her, until suddenly a powerful burst of wind threw her to the ground, and she shielded her eyes as she watched the rotor lift up again into the sky.

He left. . . .

“It’s going south now,” said Heron, helping her to her feet. “Out over the beach.”

“There’s nobody there at night,” said Kira. “They stop the boats at nightfall because they can’t see to navigate—the whole Last Fleet is sunk out there; it’s too treacherous.”

“Maybe he saw the army coming,” said Heron.

“Or he saw the fires across the bay,” said Ritter, watching the sky. “He’s past the beach and still going.”

“He’ll slaughter the survivors who’ve crossed already,” said Kira.

Haru trudged toward them through the snow, flanked by a trio of guards. His face was grim. “The rotor was a distraction,” he said tiredly. “A group of infiltrators sneaked into the eastern edge of the camp on foot and killed seven people. Maybe more—the reports are still coming in.”

“Damn it!” screamed Kira. Armin, you bastard. . . .

Haru closed his eyes, rubbing them in exhaustion. “We’ve roused the camp and put everyone on alert, but there’s not much we can do: Our food’s almost gone, we have ten more cases of hypothermia, and now the Partial army’s barely three miles away. A Blood Man stealing seven people here and there is almost a minor problem, relatively.”

“I also have a hangnail,” said Marcus, holding up his finger. “Just so we can keep the scale of major to minor in perspective.”

Kira nodded, breathing deep, trying to think. “Someone has to talk to the Partial army. To whoever’s leading it.”

“Anyone who tries will be shot on sight,” said Heron.

“Or imprisoned at the very least,” said Haru. “Convincing them they want peace instead of revenge will be virtually impossible.”

“Virtually,” said Kira, “but not completely. Tomorrow morning I’ll go over there, under a flag of truce, and give myself up. It’s the only way.”

“You’ll die,” said Heron.

“Samm didn’t think so,” said Kira.

“Samm is a fool,” said Heron. “The best we can hope for is . . .” She stopped suddenly, looking around at their group: Ritter, Haru, Marcus, Phan. “Where’s Samm?”

Kira scanned the snowy shadows wildly, looking for his face, trying to feel him on the link. He was nowhere. “You don’t think he . . .”

“Damn you,” said Heron. Rage scorched the link, and she turned toward Kira with a terrifying snarl. “You did this!”

“He’s gone to talk to the Partials?” asked Marcus.

“I never told him to do that,” said Kira, “I would never ask him to do that—I was going to go myself—”

“Of course you were going to go yourself!” Heron roared. “That’s all you ever do: You throw yourself right in the path of the nearest, deadliest problem you can find, and he knew you were going to do it, so now he’s gone to do it himself.”

“He’s trying to save us,” said Kira.

“He’s trying to save you,” said Heron. “And he’s going to get himself killed in the process.”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

“Three hundred and seventeen prisoners, General.” Shon’s aide saluted, and Shon acknowledged him wearily.

“And the trucks?” asked Shon. “We’ll need to resupply before the next assault.”

“They should be here tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” said Shon. He blew out a long, slow breath. “Five thousand of our soldiers may be dead by tomorrow, and certainly by the day after.”

“The rest of us will avenge their deaths,” said the aide.

Shon only grunted. He accepted the aide’s written report and sent him away, closing the door behind him. The final outpost of the human army had been entrenched in an old army reserve compound called Fort Tilden, at the base of the Marine Parkway Bridge, and Shon had taken the main building for his army’s temporary headquarters. The building was dilapidated and broken, like every other building on this forsaken island—the fence sagging, the windows broken, the few doors still on their hinges swollen from moisture and sticking in the frames—but it was clean, and it was dry, and, most of all, it was familiar. He had been born in a warehouse, dumped out of a vat by masked technicians, one of thousands in his batch, but he had been raised on a military base, so much like this one that he could close his eyes and almost hear the sounds of home: Jeeps in the street outside, shouts in the yard as a troop ran drills, the distant call of cadence as a sergeant marched his unit home to barracks. There was a baseball field outside, covered in snow and weeds and discernible only by the crumbling wooden bleachers that surrounded it. There was a part of him, a bigger part than he wanted to admit, that wanted nothing more than to go out there in the darkness and sit down in the middle of that field until he froze.

How can I fight when more are still dying? Fight or not, win or lose, five thousand of my soldiers will die tomorrow, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t even have orders to follow. Just my own objective. The only thing left.

Revenge.

He sat down heavily in his chair, staring at the reports in his hand, wondering what to do next. He was shaken from his reverie almost immediately by the sound of pounding feet in the hallway, and the bitter link data of surprise and anger. He opened his door before the messenger even had time to knock on it.

“What’s happened?”

The messenger saluted. “A prisoner, sir. A refugee from the camp.” The guard’s link was laced with hatred. “He’s a Partial, sir.”

Shon looked over the man’s shoulder to see the two guards behind him, walking slowly toward him with a bound, solemn soldier between them. He was dressed in worn, filthy clothes—practically rags—but his bearing was proud, and his link carried no hint of fear. He stopped in front of Shon and bowed his head, unable to salute with his arms cuffed behind him.

“My name is Samm,” said the prisoner. “I need to talk to you.” The man’s resolution was so strong across the link Shon felt himself waking up.

Shon looked at the messenger. “You’ve frisked him?”

“No weapons,” said the soldier. “All he had were the clothes on his back, and this.” He held up a bottle of bourbon.

Shon looked at Samm. “Is that why you’re here? You’re drunk?”

“It’s still sealed,” said Samm. “Call it a peace offering.”

“Are you joking?”

“It’s a sign of goodwill.”

“You’re not really going to talk to him,” said the messenger.

“No, I’m not,” said Shon, staring at the prisoner. “After everything that’s happened, I don’t think I have anything to say to a traitor that a bullet couldn’t say a whole hell of a lot more efficiently. But.” He took a slow breath, sizing him up. Samm’s link data carried the basics of his entire dossier—his rank, his unit, his history, his place in Partial society. He was an infantryman, like Shon; just like Shon, he’d fought in Zuoquan City in the final days of the Isolation War. He’d helped to take Atlanta, and he’d served under Dr. Morgan. This was a man who’d been through hell, who’d done his duty; this was a man who knew exactly what it meant to abandon your army, fight for the other side, and then turn yourself in. Shon shook his head. “No, but I have to admit I’m curious as to what could be important enough to make him throw away his life like this. So even if I don’t talk, I do admit that I am willing to listen.”

The messenger linked his surprise and couldn’t help but link a tiny bit of disapproval, but Shon ignored him and stepped aside, inviting the prisoner into his office. The guards tried to follow, but Shon held up his hand. “Stay out here and put guards outside. They have at least one assassin in their group as well, and I don’t want her climbing through that window halfway through this conversation with a dagger in her teeth.” He plucked the bourbon from the messenger’s hand and closed the door.

Samm stood in the center of the room, shivering slightly in his wet, snowy clothes. Shon held up the bottle. “You realize this is a fairly hollow gesture.”

“I was only trying to be polite.”

“I suppose I can’t fault you for that,” said Shon, and walked to his desk chair. He didn’t offer one to Samm. The old wood creaked when he sat, but it held him well enough. “Is it still good?”

“I don’t know,” said Samm. “I don’t drink. It’s unopened, though, so it’s probably fine.”

Shon examined the bottle, then unscrewed the top. The smell was exactly what he remembered, and he took a small swig straight from the bottle. “I used to drink this all the time back at Benning. Something about the South spoke to me in a way the rest of the country didn’t.” He took another drink. “Did you know that when you brought the bottle?”

“No, sir,” said Samm. “I only had time to raid one empty house before coming out here, and that’s what they happened to have.”

Shon took another small drink, savoring the burn in the back of his throat. “You know what goes well with bourbon? Fried chicken.”

“Are we going to talk about bourbon all night, sir?”

“You came to me,” said Shon. “Do you have something else you want to talk about?”

“I want you to stop this attack,” said Samm.

Shon’s surprise trickled out across the link. “As a thank-you for the drink?”

“I want you to put down your guns and free all your prisoners. And then you and I are going to go talk to the human refugees.”

“About what?”

“About a peace settlement,” said Samm.

Shon shook his head. “This is getting less and less plausible the more you talk. The humans killed our people. You killed our people, at least by association and probably, if I’m reading you right, by actually pulling triggers and killing them. That’s not the kind of people I make peace with.”

“I regret every bullet I’ve had to fire in this war.”

“That doesn’t make my soldiers any less dead.”

“Neither will killing the humans,” said Samm. He didn’t move, but his link data swelled with urgency. “Eighty percent of our people were killed in that nuclear blast, and that was a tragedy we can never make up for. But if you don’t make peace, you’re signing the death warrant of the last twenty percent. The humans aren’t your enemy here, General, expiration is, and killing those humans won’t change that. Attack and everybody dies, on both sides, whether it’s tomorrow or six months down the line. Make peace, and we can save the precious few we have left.”

“You’re saying the humans have a cure for expiration?”

“The humans are the cure for expiration,” said Samm. “Come with me to talk to them and I can prove it to you—I can show it to you, live and in person. Are you familiar with the Third Division?”

Shon nodded. “The Third Division took Denver; it was one of the biggest battles in the revolution.” He felt a sudden weight on his shoulders and took another drink, staring at the window. “They expired two years ago.”

“Most of them.”

“You’re saying some survived?”

Samm pointed toward the human camp. “Three of them, right over there. And six more still in Denver.”

Shon looked back at the bourbon, swirling it again, then capped it tightly and set it down on the desk. “Don’t you dare joke about this.”

Samm voice was firm as granite. “I am completely serious.” His link data practically vibrated with sincerity.

“How did they survive expiration?” asked Shon.

“Human interaction.”

“Are they prisoners?”

“They’re allies,” said Samm. “They’re friends. Some of them are even . . .”

Shon felt the prisoner’s emotion on the link and looked back sharply. “You’re in love with a human.”

“Close enough,” said Samm.

“So is that why you want to save them?” asked Shon, and he felt the bitterness creep back into his link. “’Cause you found a piece of tail?”

“What can I do to convince you I’m sincere?” asked Samm. “I’m not a talker, I’m not a leader, I’m just a guy. Just a soldier from the trenches, trying to do the best he can, but this is not the kind of problem a soldier can solve. I can’t cure expiration by shooting it, and I can’t bring peace between the species just by following orders and marching in formation. If I were a diplomat or a politician or a . . . hell, if I were anything but what I am, maybe I could tell you what this means, how important this is, how much I believe in it. But all I can give you is my word as a soldier that this is the right thing to do. Put down your weapons and make peace.”

Shon stared at him, feeling as if the ground were slipping away beneath his feet, disappearing into an inky black depth desperate to suck him down and drown him. He wasn’t made for this either—he was an infantryman, not an officer; he wasn’t ready for this kind of decision. Certainly not for the impossible task of supporting it after he made it. “Do you realize what will happen if I go out there and tell the army we’re making peace with the humans? The same people who attacked us with a bioweapon? Who destroyed White Plains? You said it yourself: We’re soldiers. We were bred for war; we were designed to fight and to kill. You talk about peace as if it were natural, as if all we had to do was stop fighting and our problems would be solved, but fighting is why we exist. War is our nature, and that makes peace the most . . . unnatural act we could perform. We even fought ourselves when we couldn’t find anyone else. Sometimes I think no matter what I do we’ll be fighting till the last Partial draws breath.”

“I understand that,” said Samm. “I’ve felt the same thing. But I have to believe there’s more to us than that.”

“They built us for war,” Shon repeated.

“They built us to love.”

Shon sat in silence, staring at his desk. He traced the cracks in the wood, dry and brittle under his fingertip. He stopped, tapped the desk, and spoke quietly. “I want to believe you.”

“Then believe me.”

“It’s hard to believe when they keep shooting at us.”

“So be the bigger man and stop first.”

Shon thought about the army waiting outside, the rage that still fueled them from the loss of their home. From the bioweapon. From the years of hatred and slavery and war that dated back decades. Every memory he had of humans was drenched in hate and death and oppression.

He shook his head. That’s a coward’s excuse, he thought. We didn’t rebel so they’d treat us better, we rebelled so we could live our own lives. So we could make our choices.

If this is the best choice, then it doesn’t matter what the humans do.

“What will they do if we offer a truce?” asked Shon. “Will they accept it?”

“I can’t speak for them any more than you can speak for your soldiers,” said Samm. “Less, actually. I’m still an outsider in their camp.”

Shon raised his eyebrow. “Then why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t,” said Samm. “You should trust Kira Walker.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

Kira hadn’t slept, and she couldn’t imagine anyone else had, either, the entire refugee camp terrified about Armin, about the Partial army, about—

About Samm. No one had seen or heard from him since last night. She couldn’t bear to think of what might have happened.

“Of course I’m coming with you,” said Marcus, bundling up in as many jackets and blankets as he could find—though Kira noticed he had given the warmest ones to her, and pulled them on gratefully. The first light was peeking through the curtain of another nascent snowstorm, and they were preparing for the long walk to the Partial army. An old man from the boat lines had built them snowshoes to ease the journey, and Kira stooped to lace them tightly to her feet. If Samm already proposed peace, and the Partials already ignored him, they’re not going to listen to me. She finished the knot on the first shoe and slowly started lacing up the next. But I have to try. Even if I die, I have to—

“Man on the road!” said Phan, breathless in the doorway of the command center. Kira looked up sharply, her heart in her throat, but it was Heron who spoke first.

“Can you see who it is?” she asked.

“Middle-aged,” said Phan, “maybe midforties. Dark-skinned. Probably a human prisoner. He’s too old to be a Partial, but none of the East Meadow guards recognize him.”

“Not Samm,” said Marcus.

“He’s not from the group I came here with,” said Kira. “Maybe one of the guerrillas the Partials captured?”

“He’s probably delivering a message,” said Calix.

Haru nodded. “Let’s go.” He sent runners throughout the camp, warning everyone to be on their guard, and led the group to Rockaway Point Boulevard: a long, straight stretch of road from one town to the other. Human guards watched the road from makeshift bunkers, bundled against the snow in mismatched layers and armed with a loose collection of hunting rifles; the best weapons the refugees had left. Kira watched the distant man approach, and after a moment she recognized him.

“That’s Duna Mkele,” said Kira. “The Senate’s old head of security.”

“I thought it might be him,” said Haru. “I guess his resistance force was finally captured.”

“If he’s a resistance leader, this is a prisoner release,” said Heron. She looked at Kira. “Interesting.”

The guards shouted at Mkele to stop a hundred feet from the bunker, and Phan ran out to check him for explosives or other tricks. “He’s clean,” shouted Phan, and threw a blanket around the man’s shoulders, leading him in. Mkele shook Haru’s hand and nodded solemnly at Kira.

“They want to meet,” he said simply. “Their leaders and ours, at the intersection halfway up the road.” He looked at Kira again. “They specifically requested you.”

“That’s getting to be a theme with them,” said Marcus. “Any threats? Are they going to kill a prisoner every day until she shows up to talk?”

“Not that they mentioned,” said Mkele. “Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you: Our treatment has been brutal, and the Partials have been hell-bent on revenge for Delarosa’s little trick, but . . . here I am.”

Kira nodded, thinking. “Do you have any idea what they want to talk about?”

“Our terms of surrender,” said Haru.

“Maybe,” said Mkele. “He said he’d meet us in an hour, minus the time it took me to cross.”

“About forty minutes left, then,” said Phan. “Enough time to get some scouts out into that forest and make sure this isn’t a trap.”

“We’ll send you and Heron,” said Kira, turning to look for her, but the girl had already disappeared. “I guess she’s already out there.”

“Go carefully,” said Marcus, stopping Phan with a hand on his arm. “Keep your eye open for any signs of a double-cross, but assume they’re doing the same, and don’t make any suspicious moves.” Phan nodded and left.

“I guess this means we’re going?” asked Haru.

“I am,” said Kira. She looked at Mkele. “Did they say how many people we could send?”

Mkele shook his head. “They don’t seem concerned about it. Obviously I’m coming with you as well.”

“What about weapons?” asked Calix.

“They didn’t seem concerned about that either,” said Mkele.

Haru growled. “Arrogant sons of—”

“We’re not taking any weapons,” said Kira. Haru started to protest, and Mkele with him, but Kira silenced them both. “No weapons. This is our first real chance for diplomacy, and it could be our last. If it turns into a fight we’re as good as dead anyway, so let’s try to look as peaceful as possible.”

Haru grumbled but pulled out his handgun and set it on a table. The others piled their weapons in the same place, bundled themselves tightly, and set off down the road, careful of the slick ice hidden beneath the soft layer of snow. It was snowing again, gently at the moment, coating the empty forest in a fresh layer of white and gray. They saw a group of people walk into the far end of the road, coming to meet them; as the Partials neared, Kira saw one of them in chains, and tears sprang into her eyes when she recognized Samm.

We still don’t know what this is about, she reminded herself. Maybe they’ll execute him right in front of us.

The two groups stopped in a small T-intersection, where a third road ran south toward the ocean. Kira, Marcus, Calix, Ritter, Haru, and Mkele stood silently, facing off against five Partial soldiers and the manacled Samm. They stopped at opposite edges of the intersection, waiting.

“You okay, Samm?” Kira called out.

“Yes,” said Samm, and Kira felt a surge of relief to hear his voice—followed almost immediately by frustration. Why does he always have to be so taciturn?

The Partial in the center of the line walked forward, his feet crunching in the snow, and stopped in the middle of the icy road. Kira hesitated a moment, then walked forward to meet him.

“My name is Shon,” said the Partial. “Acting general of the Partial army.”

Kira looked him in the eye. “Kira Walker. I suppose you could say that I’m the closest thing the human race has to a leader right now.”

“I was told I could trust you.”

Kira nodded. “Do you?”

“Samm told me some very interesting things about you and your . . . theories.”

Kira couldn’t help but notice that it wasn’t an answer. She humored him and followed the new line of discussion. “If we work together, we can save both species. See that man behind me, second from the end? His name is Ritter, and he’s from the Third Division.”

“I’ve linked him, yes,” said Shon.

“He’s twenty-two years old,” said Kira. “You can cure us, and we can cure you. Regular contact between the species will propagate a biological particle that—”

“Samm explained it all,” said Shon. “On the other hand, he also introduced me to one of the AWOL Partials we’d already captured, a man named Green. It’s hard to believe your theory when the man with the most human contact is lying on his deathbed.”

Kira felt a pang of despair. “Is he already—?”

“He might as well be,” said Shon. “Some of his batch already expired in the night. When I left Green this morning he could barely breathe, let alone speak or keep his eyes open.”

“I’d like to see him again,” said Kira. “Even if it’s only . . . after.”

“Friendships like yours with Green,” said Shon, “or with Samm, or this other Partial behind you, are inspiring in their way, but that’s not enough. You have to see that.”

“I do.”

“The seeds for the hatred between my people and yours were sown years ago,” said Shon. “Before either of us were born. We tried living together once before, and it failed—my best friend was beaten to death by human supremacists in Chicago, five months before the revolution even started, for having the temerity to take a human girl to see a movie.”

Kira was silent.

“You want peace,” said Shon. “You want it, and I want it, but the two of us can’t speak for everyone. For the tens of thousands of scared, flawed, fallible people who are going to be down there every day, living and working and arguing and being . . . people. They’re going to fight, because that’s our natural state of being, Partials and humans. It’s how we were built.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t try,” said Kira. “Things are different than they were before the Break.”

“You don’t know what it took just to get these other soldiers to agree to this meeting,” said Shon, gesturing behind him. His link data was growing more and more exasperated. “The slightest sign of treachery from you could destroy this peace in seconds, and that’s just us. That’s the people I trust. What if we make an alliance and join together, and then one of your humans cracks a joke about Partial labor, or the old work programs that helped spark the revolution in the first place?”

“Don’t assume the humans will be the ones to ruin this,” Kira insisted, feeling her anger rise. “What happens when one of your Partials calls it the revolution, or says something about winning your freedom, standing next to a human who lost his wife and his children and his parents and everything else he ever loved—” She froze, listening. “Wait.”

“I hear it too,” said Shon, and looked up. The entire Partial line had gone tense, listening intently to the deep, rhythmic hum. Kira didn’t dare to look behind her, too worried Shon would see it as a signal to her companions. The general’s link data flooded out in frustrated confusion.

“That’s a rotor,” said Kira, turning south to scan the sky. The snow had come in more thickly, and she could barely see more than half a mile.

“It’s not ours,” said Shon, and then jabbed a finger toward the clouds. “There!” He backed away, shouting to his men. “Fall back!”

“It’s an ambush!” shouted another Partial, and Kira surged forward, trying to warn them.

“Take cover!” she shouted. She heard Marcus shouting for everyone to get back, to find safe positions, but she knew it was too late for that. She was out in the open, weaponless and defenseless, and there was nothing she could do to stop Armin from killing her. Her only priority was to save the treaty, to keep this from destroying the already-too-fragile peace between the humans and the Partials. Shon and his men were taking cover in the trees, but Samm ran toward her, his chained ankles shuffling painfully across the iced road. Kira shouted to Shon, trying to explain what was happening, when suddenly the rotor burst out of the clouds in front of her, snow swirling through the massive blades in the wings. It banked toward her, swooping low over her head and knocking her and Samm to the ground with the force of its downdraft; it tilted back and dove toward her other friends, sending them sprawling. The craft set down in front of them, cutting off Kira’s retreat, and the side door hissed open. Ivies poured out, rifles up and ready, and behind them came Armin: his carving knife in one hand, an empty jar in the other.

“Kira,” said Armin.

“You can have my blood,” Kira shouted, “but nobody else’s.” She pointed behind her at Shon and his sergeants, watching the scene with obvious shock. “We’re making peace here, Armin. This is the end of the war, and I’m not going to let you ruin it.”

Ritter ran out from behind the rotor, a branch in his fist, ripped from one of the snowy trees on the side of the road, but the Ivies had sensed him coming on the link and turned to fire before he’d even cleared the corner of the aircraft. Kira screamed, incensed by his empty sacrifice, but a moment later she saw the sense behind it: Marcus and the other humans had flanked them, charging around the other side of the rotor, surprising the Ivies from behind and tackling two of them to the frozen ground. The remaining Ivies spun again to meet the new threat, and Kira screamed again as her friends went down, as Marcus went down, blood erupting from their ragged coats in bright red clouds. She ran toward them, still screaming incoherently, Samm struggling to hold her back, when the Partials rose up behind her, drawing weapons of their own and charging toward the fight, firing at the Ivies. The Ivies fired back, and Kira screamed as Samm stepped in front of her, taking a bullet in his arm. Armin stood in the middle of the battle, seemingly unafraid, and stopped the world with a thought.

NO

The command rolled out across the link, freezing Shon and his Partials midstep, binding Samm like a man of stone, stopping even the Ivies. Kira stumbled, overwhelmed by the order, by the word, by the entire concept of NO. It seemed to fill her link, her mind, her entire body. She gritted her teeth and put her hands to her head, as if she could somehow shut it out.

“That’s better,” said Armin. He looked at Kira, walking toward her slowly. “You were right about one thing,” he said. “This is the end. Maybe not of your war—they look to still have some fight left in them—but of the war’s importance. I have all the DNA I need now. The humans and Partials, so desperate to end each other’s existence, can now do so without harming our future.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” said Kira, forcing the words out. “It’s your plan—the one you made all those years ago. It can still happen.”

“For the moment, perhaps,” said Armin. “But eventually they’ll start fighting again. They’ll blame each other for your death, for not saving you or killing me. They might even try to work together to leave this island before it irradiates them all beyond recovery, but it won’t last. Their differences are too great, and the biological peace I tried to force with RM and the Partial DNA wasn’t enough.”

With a herculean effort Samm moved his foot, planting himself in Armin’s path. He stared at the man with clenched teeth, too rigid to speak, but determined to defend her.

Armin stopped in surprise. “Impressive. But it doesn’t matter. Jerry has reset the planet, and I’ll start over with a new species, built as one from the beginning instead of this ham-fisted attempt to make two coexist. They will inherit the Earth, and you will be their mother, and they will go on to greater and more glorious things than any of us could imagine. You don’t understand this yet, and I suppose you never will, but that’s the greatest goal of any parent: to be surpassed by his children.”

“So let me live to surpass you,” said Kira. “It can’t be that hard—I’m already not a psychopath.” She forced her legs backward—first one, then the other, draining every ounce of her will. She didn’t know if she could take another step.

“Shortsighted comments like that are the surest sign that you’re already not worthy of the new world.” He stepped around Samm, holding up his knife, but with a guttural roar the Partial moved again, barring the Blood Man’s way. “Don’t make me kill you, too,” said Armin calmly. “I don’t wish to harm anyone, but I will have her DNA at any cost.”

“If you want a new world, a world that can live in peace, you have to let go,” said Kira. “From the beginning of this whole thing, the creation of the Partials and the formation of the Trust, you’ve been trying to control it, to manage every step of every process. That’s what failed, Armin. Not the biology, but your attempt to control it. We have to be able to choose. We have fallen, and we have to rise up again.”

“Humans have had their chance,” said Armin. “They failed, and they nearly took the entire planet with them. That isn’t going to happen again.”

“Damn straight it won’t,” said a voice. Armin turned in surprise, and Kira forced her head sideways.

Heron was walking slowly out of the trees, playing idly with a handgun.

STOP

Kira felt Armin’s new link data batter at her will, at her very sense of self, but Heron simply smiled and kept coming.

“I see,” said Armin. “One of the Thetas.” He set his glass jar carefully on the ground and straightened up with knife in hand. “This is just what I was talking about, Kira. The Thetas have free will—the others told me I was crazy to make a Partial model that couldn’t be controlled through the link, but I was an idealist. I believed then, as you believe now, that the element of choice was too important to completely cut out of the species. Now I know better. I gave them choice, and all they used it for was disobedience.” He tilted his head, looking at Heron with cold, calculating eyes. “I thought I’d hunted all of you down.”

“You were the one who killed the other spy models?” asked Heron. “Every word out of your mouth is another reason to kick your ass.”

Armin shook his head. “I might not be able to control you, but I have gene mods you can’t imagine. Attacking me would be folly.”

“More and more,” said Heron, reaching a distance about ten feet away from him, and slowly circling to the side. “Kira, sweetie, I’m going to murder your dad.”

Kira tried to answer, but the link still held her locked in place.

“I designed you to be an evolution of the Partial template, Theta, but now I know you’re exactly why we need to start over,” said Armin, and Kira could hear the impatience rising in his voice. “We need a species that dreams of the stars, not one that lurks in the shadows and kills for sport.”

“You want a species without me in it?” asked Heron. “Bite me.” She dashed forward in a blur, firing her pistol; Armin sidestepped the first shot easily, and she sent the next one to his right, missing on purpose, driving him to the left where her other hand was ready with a knife. He saw the feint coming, deflected the knife in a single swift movement, and spun back the other way, leaving her line of fire just as she was bringing the barrel of her gun back toward him; he stepped between the bullets so precisely it looked rehearsed.

“You can’t be controlled through the link, but you still broadcast tactically,” he said. “I know everything you’re going to do before you do it.” She looked unfazed, ignoring him and focusing on the fight. He danced lightly through her next several gunshots, moving so calmly he never looked like he was straining. Heron worked her way closer, sometimes leading him with bullets, sometimes trying for a hit, all the time working her way back into knife range. Kira tried to keep track of the number of shots, wondering when she would run out, when suddenly Heron slashed with her knife, dropping her gun hand and ejecting the ammo clip from the pistol; it slid across the ice, and when Armin stepped back to dodge the blade, his foot landed on the sliding metal clip and he lost his balance, throwing out his arm to keep from falling. Heron took the opening with a vicious grin, leaping forward to slash at the man’s throat, but he turned his pinwheel into a parry, taking her blade on the bone of his arm and slashing back with his own knife. Heron backed up, reassessing the situation.

“That was a good trick,” said Armin, “but you can’t beat me.”

“Probably not,” said Heron. “Doesn’t mean I can’t win.” She paused. “Kira?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me you’re sure about this,” said Heron. “Tell me it’ll work, and everyone will live, and I’m not just wasting my time.”

Kira set her jaw. “I promise.”

“Well then,” said Heron, drawing another knife from her belt. “Let’s end this.”

She dashed forward, a blade in each hand, slashing and stabbing like a tornado of steel. Armin struck at her, a clear feint to drive her to the side, but Heron screamed and took the blade in her chest, catching the weapon with her own body and bearing him backward with the force of her charge. His eyes widened in shock as he tried to draw back his knife, but it was too late; Heron had her opening.

Six lightning-fast slashes from her knives, and she had cut him to ribbons.

Armin teetered on his feet, bleeding from a dozen deep slashes in his neck and chest, and collapsed into the snow.

Heron started to pivot but collapsed beside him, his knife still deep in her heart.

DEATH

Kira felt the tears on her face, hot and freezing at the same time. She forced her foot forward, first one inch, then two. Armin’s overpowering command data faded from the air, and she took another step, then another. Heron’s blood steamed in the frozen road, melting dark red holes in the snow below her.

Two more steps. Three.

Kira uncurled her fingers with a groan, stiff from the cold and the iron grip of Armin’s link. She reached Heron and sank to her knees, checking the girl’s throat. Heron’s pulse was faint and erratic. She put her hands over the wound, but it was a bloody mess, and she knew it was too late.

Heron’s hand reached up and found Kira’s, feebly grasping it with useless fingers. Her voice was a whisper. “If my life had no meaning, there was no reason not to end it.”

Kira gripped the girl’s hand tightly, her heart breaking. “So you ended it?”

“So I gave it meaning.”

Heron’s eyes fluttered and rolled back. Her hand went limp. Kira sobbed and held her, feeling the last of her life fade away.

DEATH

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

General Shon walked slowly up behind her and knelt in the snow at Kira’s side.

“I promised her I’d make this work,” said Kira. “I know it’s not going to be perfect, or easy, and for all I know it’s going to fail, but . . .” She clenched Heron’s hand in her own. “We have to try.”

Shon nudged Armin’s body with his glove. The man was limp and lifeless. “After listening to this bastard tell me it was impossible, I’m inclined to give it a shot just to prove him wrong.”

“There are worse reasons for saving the world,” said Kira.

Samm joined them now, kneeling by Heron’s side. He took her hand in his own, drawn short by the chains on his wrists, and watched her in silence. After a moment he looked to the east, toward the Partial camp. “Someone’s coming to check on you.”

“Must have heard the rotor,” said Shon. “I don’t . . . wait. There’s a whole group.”

Kira stood up, watching more shapes emerge from the snow. The man in the lead was walking stiffly, almost shuffling, as if he were sick. Kira took a few steps toward him and felt a rush of emotion as she recognized his face. “Green!” He waved, and she ran toward him, wrapping him in a hug. “You’re alive!”

“It worked,” he said, looking at his hands and arms as if they were new: strange, wondrous things he’d never seen before. “I . . . got better.” He gripped her by the shoulders. “I’m not a hundred percent, but . . . you saved me, Kira.”

Shon stopped next to him, staring in wonder. “Green?”

Green turned toward him and saluted. “I left the army, sir, but I’m ready to enlist in the new one.”

“What new one?” asked Shon.

“A Partial just survived expiration, and you’ve got twenty thousand more looking for the same treatment.” Green pointed behind him, at the massive wave of Partial soldiers, and grinned happily at Kira. “Is this where we sign up for the human/Partial alliance?”

An Ivie bullet had grazed the side of Marcus’s head, scraping away the skin right down to the bone and knocking him out cold, but he was alive. Kira wrapped the wound and roused him, and he helped with the others—stopping blood wherever they could, stuffing holes with bits of ripped cloth, and then helping everyone back to the camp. Haru was in the worst shape, his gut punctured and his right hand mangled, but he was stable. Six Ivies were still alive as well, and surrendered on the spot with their leader dead. Kira led them back to the human camp, and Shon and Mkele stepped in for Haru, reorganizing the evacuation, slowing the frantic pace while still planning to get everyone clear of the fallout. With the Ivies’ old rotor to help, they could tighten the schedule considerably.

Kira dressed Samm’s wound herself, laying him on a sterilized table in their crowded makeshift medical center and cleaning his shoulder with alcohol before carefully stitching it closed. “This reminds me of being in the lab,” she said, remembering their time in the East Meadow hospital when she’d studied him, talked to him, and ultimately decided to help him. She’d felt a connection to him she hadn’t felt with anyone else, not even Marcus, and she’d worried for a time that it was just the link, traces of it drifting on the fringes of her mind. She looked at the next table in the row, where Marcus was stitching a bullet hole in Calix’s leg—her other leg, now a mirror image of the one Heron had shot months ago.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Kira thought, and looked back at Samm. But I know what I want to do. “I need to talk to you,” she said nervously.

“Are you done with my shoulder?” asked Samm.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“I did,” said Samm, wincing as he raised himself upright and eased gently off the table. “But I need to talk to you, too.”

Marcus looked up from his surgery. “You’re going to do it right here? Just right in front of me?”

“You’re a good man, and a good friend,” Samm said to him. “I apologize for this.” He took Kira’s hands in his and looked into her eyes, and she looked back trembling. “Kira, I love you. I didn’t tell you then, but I loved you in that lab, and I loved you when you broke me out of prison, and I loved you when I said good-bye on the dock, and when I said it again in the Preserve. It tore me apart to see you leave me, both times, like you were taking my heart with you. You’re a part of me now, and I don’t ever want to say good-bye to you again.” He paused. “Everyone left on the planet is going to cross the ocean, and find a new home, and start a new life. I want to start that new life with you.”

Kira was crying, holding his hands so tightly she worried she was hurting him. Around them, the medical center was crowded and buzzing with activity, but his words were the only thing she heard. Samm turned back to Marcus. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how we make this work.”

Marcus’s face was impossible to read, but it finally broke, and he laughed. “You don’t apologize for this, Samm. It’s love, and love doesn’t weigh its options and pick the best one—love just wants things, and it doesn’t know why, and it doesn’t matter why, because love is the only explanation love needs. Looking at Kira right now, I . . . know this is what she wants too. I—” He stopped and looked away sharply. His voice was thick with emotion. “I’m not going to stand in the way.”

“Thank you, Marcus,” Kira whispered, wiping a tear from her eye. She looked at Samm, seeing herself reflected in his eyes. “I love you Samm. I do.” She pulled him close and kissed him.

Marcus wiped his eye, watching them kiss, then turned back to his surgery and sucked in a breath. “Well. Isn’t that just a kick in the teeth.”

“Tell me about it,” said Calix.

Marcus glanced at her, then went back to work on her leg. “You and Samm?”

“Once upon a time . . .” She watched them a moment longer, then looked back at Marcus. “Did you mean all that stuff you said? About love knows what it wants and it doesn’t matter why?”

“Yeah,” said Marcus, “I do. I guess. It sounded right at the time, and I don’t not mean it, but . . . You know how it is. Stop moving.”

“So what are you doing tonight?”

Marcus faltered in surprise, almost stabbing her with his tweezers. “What?”

“I’m single, you’re attractive, and we’re both stuck in this hospital anyway. What do you say?”

“I just lost the love of my life,” said Marcus. “Could you give me some time to . . . breathe, or recover, or something?”

“You lost her years ago.”

“Ouch,” said Marcus, and shook his head. “You know, you’re very direct.”

“To my frequent detriment,” she said, glancing back at Samm.

Marcus laughed dryly. “That sounds like a story I need to hear.”

“Then it’s a date,” said Calix. “Come on: It’s the least you could do after fondling my leg for the last hour.”

“It’s a date,” said Marcus, “but the first order of business is to teach you the difference between fondling and surgery. Mixing those two up could get you into trouble.”

Kira stood on the shore, waiting for a ship to return for the last of the survivors. She’d insisted that she be in the last group off the island, sending everyone else to safety first. Samm stood behind her, his arms wrapped around her in perfect, comforting silence. Before them the sea stretched out, wide and open and limitless. The crumbling remains of an old wooden dock disappeared into the waves, and she longed simply to follow it—straight out and gone, the first step onto a new path and a new horizon. White snow covered the ground like a blank parchment, wiping out the old world and waiting for them to write a new one on its pages.

“Boat!” called the lookout, and the gathered refugees looked toward Sandy Hook, but the boat wasn’t there. “East,” the lookout shouted, and Kira turned her head, peering into the distance. A white boat with a tall sail was hugging the coast, tacking toward them past Jones Beach.

“Did Mkele send for more?” asked Samm.

“We already have more of them than we can sail,” said Kira. “Maybe it’s another fisherman, finally joining the rest of us?”

They watched the boat closely, and soon Kira saw three women standing at the bow, hair whipping in the wind, one more woman behind them at the rudder.

Ariel, Isolde, Xochi, and Nandita.

Kira ran toward them, wading hip deep into the freezing Atlantic and waving to them with tears of joy streaming down her face. “You’re here!” she shouted, over and over, too happy to think of anything else to say. “You’re here! You’re here!”

Ariel turned a sail and slowed the boat, aiming toward the dock. Kira ran back toward it and threw them a line as they bumped against it. Xochi smiled. “Want a lift?”

“I didn’t know you guys could sail,” said Kira.

“I spent a year in a fishing village,” said Ariel. “I’d better be able to sail.”

“You’re alive,” said Kira, so happy she was hugging herself, heedless of the freezing waves. “I love you so much.” She looked at their faces: her sisters and her adopted mother. Armin may have been her father, but this was her family, real and close and wonderful. Samm walked out next to her, taking her hand. She squeezed it tightly before pulling him onto the boat with her, only letting go to hug her sisters. “Let’s go somewhere.”

“It’s a big world,” said Isolde. “We can go anywhere you want.”