by Dan Wells
“You were attacked last time,” said Haru. “I’ve read the reports—you barely made it out alive, and that was with a Partial you trusted. I’d hate to see what happens with a Partial faction you don’t know anything about.”
“We can’t trust all of them,” said Xochi, “but the other thing you must have seen in the reports is that Samm disobeyed his commander to help us. Maybe there are more Partials who share his perspective.”
“If we could really trust them,” said Haru, “we wouldn’t have to rely on the one disobedient outlier to help us. I’ll believe in peace with the Partials as soon as I see them raise a finger to help us.”
“He talks big,” said Madison, “but he wouldn’t trust a Partial even then.”
“If you remembered the Partial War,” said Haru, “you wouldn’t either.”
“So we’re back to the beginning,” said Isolde. “Nobody in charge wants to make peace with them, and nobody in the hospital can make the cure without them, so our only option is war.”
“A small attack,” said Haru. “Just slip in and grab one and they won’t even notice.”
“Which will mean war,” said Marcus, sighing as they dragged him into the argument. “They’re already in a war with each other, and that’s probably the only reason they haven’t attacked us yet. The group we ran into across the sound was studying Kira to try to solve their own plague, their built-in expiration date, and there is clearly a faction of them that believes humans are the key and will stop at nothing to turn us all into experiments. The instant they win their civil war, they’ll come down here with guns blazing and kill or enslave us all.”
“So then war is inevitable,” said Haru.
“Almost as inevitable as you using the word ‘inevitable,’” said Marcus.
Haru ignored the jab. “Then there’s no reason for us to not raid them. In fact, it’s better to do it now, while they’re distracted; we’ll grab a few, extract enough of the cure to last us as long as we’ll need, kill them, and get out of Long Island before they ever have a chance to come after us.”
Sandy frowned. “You mean leave Long Island completely?”
“If the Partials start invading again, we’d be stupid not to run,” said Haru. “If we didn’t need them for the cure, we’d have done it already.”
“Just give us time,” said Marcus. “We’re close, I know we are.”
Marcus expected Haru to argue, but it was Isolde who responded first. “We’ve given you a chance,” she said coldly. “I don’t care if we synthesize it, steal it, form a treaty, or whatever you want, but I’m not going to lose my baby. People are not going to go back to how it used to be, not now that they know there’s a cure. And it doesn’t sound like the Partials are going to wait forever. We’re lucky we’re not looking down the business end of a Partial invasion already.”
“You’re in a race,” said Haru. “Make more of the cure, or war is inevitable.”
“Yeah,” said Marcus, standing up. “You said that. I need some air—the entire future of the human race resting on my shoulders is a little much all of a sudden.” He walked outside, glad that nobody stood up to follow him. He wasn’t mad, at least not at them; the truth was, the future of the human race was resting on his shoulders, on all their shoulders. With barely 35, 000 people left, it wasn’t like there was anybody else to rest it on.
He pushed open the back door and walked into the cool evening air. Twelve years ago, before the Break, there would have been electric lights all over the city, so bright they blotted out the stars, but tonight the sky was filled with twinkling constellations. Marcus looked up at them, breathing deeply, pointing out the few he remembered from school: Orion was the easiest, with his belt and his sword, and there was the Big Dipper. He closed one eye and traced the handle with his finger, looking for the North Star.
“You’re going the wrong way,” said a girl’s voice, and Marcus jerked in surprise.
“I didn’t realize anyone was out here,” said Marcus, hoping he hadn’t looked too stupid when he jumped. He turned to see who it was, wondering suddenly who would be hiding in Xochi’s backyard, and yelped in terror when a woman stepped out of the shadows with an assault rifle. He stumbled backward, trying to find his voice—trying just to process the unexpected appearance—and the woman held her finger to her lips. Marcus backed into the side of the house, steadying himself against the wall. The gesture, and the gleaming gun barrel, caused him to close his mouth.
The girl stepped forward, smiling like a cat. Marcus could see now that she was younger than he’d surmised at first—she was tall and slender, her movements full of power and confidence, but she was probably no more than nineteen or twenty years old. Her features were Asian, and her jet-black hair was pulled back in a tight braid. Marcus smiled back at her nervously, eyeing not only the rifle but the pair of knives he now saw clipped to her belt. Not one knife—a pair of knives. Who needs two knives? How many things does she have to cut at once? He was in no hurry to find out.
“You can talk,” said the girl, “just don’t scream or call for help or anything. I’d prefer to get through the evening without running—or, you know, killing anybody.”
“That’s great news,” said Marcus, swallowing nervously. “If there’s anything I can do to keep you from killing anybody, you just let me know.”
“I’m looking for someone, Marcus.”
“How do you know my name?”
She ignored the question and held out a photo. “Look familiar?”
Marcus peered at the photo—three people standing in front of a building—then held out his hand to take it, looking at the girl for permission. She nodded and held it closer, and he took it from her hand, holding it up to the starlight. “It’s kind of—”
She flicked on a small flashlight, training it on the image. Marcus nodded.
“—dark, thank you.” He looked closer at the photo, uncomfortably aware of the girl’s gun so close beside him. The picture showed three people, a man and a woman with a little girl between them, no more than three or four years old. Behind them was a great glass building, and Marcus realized with a start that the sign on the side of it said PARAGEN. He opened his mouth to comment on this, but realized with another shock that the woman in the picture was someone he’d known for years.
“That’s Nandita.”
“Nandita Merchant,” said the girl. She flicked off the light. “I don’t suppose you know where she is?”
Marcus turned back to face her, still trying to figure out what was going on. “Nobody’s seen Nandita in months,” he said. “This is her house, but . . . she used to go out on salvage runs and stuff all the time, looking for herbs for her garden, and the last time she went out, she never came back.” He looked at the picture again, then back at the girl. “Are you with Mkele? Or forget who you’re with, who are you? How do you know who I am?”
“We’ve met,” she said, “but you don’t remember. I’m very hard to see if I don’t want to be.”
“I’m getting that impression,” said Marcus. “I’m also getting the impression that you’re not exactly the East Meadow police. Why are you looking for her?”
The girl smiled, sly and mischievous. “Because she’s missing.”
“I suppose I walked into that one,” said Marcus, suddenly aware of how attractive this girl was. “Let me rephrase: Why do you need to find her?”
The girl flicked on the flashlight again, first blinding Marcus and then angling it away toward the photo in his hand. He looked at it again.
“Look closely,” said the girl. “Do you recognize her?”
“It’s Nandita Merchant,” said Marcus. “I already—”
“Not her,” said the girl. “The child standing next to her.”
Marcus looked again, holding the image close, peering intently at the little girl in the center. Her skin was light brown, her pigtails dark as coal, her eyes bright and curious. She wore a brightly colored dress, the kind a little girl woul
d wear to a park on a summer day. The kind he hadn’t seen in twelve years. She looked happy, and innocent, and her face was slightly scrunched as she squinted one eye against the sun.
There was something familiar about that squint. . . .
Marcus’s mouth fell open, and he nearly dropped the photo in shock. “That’s Kira.” He looked up at the mystery girl, more confused now than ever. “That’s a picture of Kira from before the Break.” He looked at it again, studying her face; she was young, her round face soft with baby fat, but the features were still there. That was Kira’s nose, Kira’s eyes, and the same way Kira squinted in the sun. He shook his head. “Why is she with Nandita? They didn’t even meet until after the Break.”
“Exactly,” said the girl. “Nandita knew about this, and never told anyone.”
That was a weird way to phrase it, thought Marcus. Not “Nandita knew Kira,” but “Nandita knew about this.” “Knew about what?”
The girl flicked off her flashlight, slipped it into a pocket, and plucked the photo from Marcus’s hand. “Do you know where she is?”
“Kira or Nandita?” asked Marcus. He shrugged helplessly. “The answer’s no to both, so it doesn’t matter. Kira went looking for . . .” Kira was looking for the Partials, and he’d been careful never to tell anybody, but he supposed it didn’t matter in this case. “You’re a Partial, aren’t you?”
“If you talk to Kira, tell her that Heron says hello.”
Marcus nodded. “You’re the one who caught her; the one who took her to Dr. Morgan.”
Heron didn’t respond, tucking the photo away and glancing into the shadows behind her. “Things are going to get very interesting on this island, very soon,” she said. “You’re familiar with the expiration date Samm talked about?”
“You know Samm, too?”
“Kira Walker and Nandita Merchant are vital to the solution of the expiration date, and Dr. Morgan is determined to find them.”
Marcus frowned, confused. “What do they have to do with it?”
“Don’t get distracted by details,” said Heron. “It doesn’t matter why Dr. Morgan wants to find them, just that she does, and she is going to, and Partials have only two ways of doing things: my way, and everybody else’s way.”
“I’m not a big fan of your way,” said Marcus, eyeing the rifle. “Do I even want to know everybody else’s way?”
“You’ve seen it before,” said Heron. “It was called the Partial War.”
“In that case, I like your way better,” said Marcus.
“Then help me,” said Heron. “Find Nandita Merchant. She’s somewhere on this island. I’d do it myself, but I have business elsewhere.”
“Off the island,” said Marcus, and ventured a guess. “You’re looking for Kira.”
Heron smiled again.
“What do I do if I find her?” Marcus asked. “Assuming . . . that I look for her at all, because you’re not the boss of me.”
“Just find her,” said Heron. She took a step backward. “Trust me, you don’t want to do this their way.” She turned and walked into the shadows.
Marcus tried to follow her, but she was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
Kira crouched low in the brush, staring through her new rifle scope at the door of the electronics store. This was the fourth one she’d visited, and every one had been previously scavenged. Normally this wouldn’t have been strange, but the ParaGen offices had made her wary, and her closer investigations had all proven the same thing: The scavenger, whoever he was, had come recently. This was more than just eleven-year-old looting from the end of the world—someone in the wilds of Manhattan had been collecting computers and generators within the last few months or so.
She’d been watching this place for nearly an hour and a half, focusing her energy, trying to be as cautious in tracking the looter as he was being in hiding his tracks. She watched a few minutes more, scanning the storefront, the neighboring storefronts, the four stories of windows above them—nothing. She checked the street again, empty in both directions. No one was here; it was safe to move in. She checked her pack, clutched her assault rifle tightly, and raced across the broken road. The door had been glass, and she leapt through the shattered opening without pausing; she checked her corners, gun up and ready for action, then carefully sighted down each aisle. It was a small store, mostly speakers and stereo systems, and most of that was long gone, thanks to the original looting. The only person here was the skeletal remains of the cashier, holed up behind the counter. Satisfied that it was safe, she slung her rifle over her shoulder and got down to business, examining the floor as carefully as she could. It didn’t take her long to find them: footprints in the dust, clear imprints that could only have been made long after the storefront was destroyed and the building had filled with dirt and debris. The prints here were even clearer than they’d been before, and she measured one with her hand—the same huge shoe size she’d seen before, maybe size fourteen or even fifteen. The prints were also shockingly well preserved: Wind and water would naturally erode the prints over time, especially those in the centers of the aisles, but here there had been almost no erosion at all. Kira dropped to her knees, examining the prints as gently as she could. The others had been made within the last year; these might have been made within the last week.
Whoever was stealing generators was still out there doing it.
Kira turned her attention to the shelves, trying to deduce from their condition, and from the placement of the footprints, exactly what the scavenger had taken. The main concentration of prints was, predictably, in the corner where the generators had been displayed, but the more she looked, the more she saw a deviation in the pattern: He had taken at least two trips to the opposite side of the store, one slow as if he were looking for something, and one firm, the prints deeper, as if he’d been carrying something heavy. She glanced over the shelves, her eyes sliding past dusty plastic phones still tethered to the metal frames, past slim notebook computers and tiny music players like Xochi used to collect. She followed the trail carefully through the rubble on the floor, ending at a low, empty shelf near the back. He’d definitely taken something. Kira bent down to brush away the dirt from the shelf tag, and struggled to decipher the weathered writing: HAM. Ham? No electronics store would sell ham. She peered closer, picking out the faded, filthy word that followed: RADIO. HAM radio, the “ham” all in capital letters. Another acronym, like IT, that she’d never come across before.
Computers, generators, and now radios. Her mysterious scavenger was putting together quite the collection of old-world technology—and he was obviously an expert, as he’d known precisely what the thing on this shelf had been without having to clean up the tag first like she had. More than that, though, he’d taken some very specific equipment from the ParaGen offices, which couldn’t possibly be a coincidence; he wasn’t just grabbing certain kinds of technology, he was grabbing specific pieces of it. He was gathering old computers from ParaGen, and the generators to be able to access them. And now he was gathering radio systems, but who was he trying to call?
Manhattan was a no-man’s-land, empty, an unofficial demilitarized zone between the Partials and the human survivors. No one was supposed to be here, not because it was forbidden but because it was dangerous. If something happened to you out here, either side could get you, and neither side could protect you. It wasn’t even great territory for a spy, since there was nothing interesting to observe and report on—except, she supposed, the ParaGen files. She was looking for them, and this scavenger was doing the same—and he’d gotten there first. Now, thanks to him, there weren’t any generators left for her to take back to the ParaGen offices, and no guarantee that the computers left there would have the information she needed. She’d hoped to find a generator to get the top executive’s desk computer running again, to see if it contained what she was looking for, but this mysterious scavenger was obviously searching for the same things, and he had ignored the executive’s c
omputer completely. Most likely, the scavenger had everything she was looking for. If she wanted to read those records, she’d have to find the scavenger himself.
She had to find out what ParaGen was doing with the Partials, with RM, with her, but there was another reason she was here. Nandita’s last note had told her to find the Trust—the Partial leaders, the high command who gave all the others their orders—and while she wasn’t going to find them here, she might, again, find some clues as to where to start her search. But . . . could she trust Nandita? Kira shook her head, frowning at the ravaged store. She used to trust Nandita more than anyone in the world, but learning that Nandita had known her father before the Break, had known Kira herself, and never once told her . . . Nandita had deceived her, and Kira had no way of knowing what her intentions were in telling Kira what to do next. But it was the only clue she had. She had to keep looking for information about ParaGen, scary mysterious scavenger or not—that was where the answers would be, and this new stranger was where she had to look for them. Whether he was a Partial or a human or double agent or whatever, it didn’t matter, she had to find him and learn what he knew.
Another thought came to her then, the mental image of a column of smoke. She’d seen it last time she was here, with Jayden and Haru and the others: a thin trail of smoke rising up from a chimney or a campfire. They’d gone to investigate it and run into Samm’s group of Partials, and in the rush to get back out, she’d forgotten that they’d never actually learned where the smoke was coming from. She’d assumed it was part of the Partial camp, but her experiences with them later made that seem almost laughably wrong—the Partials were far too clever to leave such an obvious sign of their presence, and far too hardy to need a campfire in the first place. It seemed more likely that the smoke came from a third party, and the Partials had shown up to investigate it the same time the humans did; their two groups had annihilated each other before either could find out what was going on. Maybe. It was a long shot, but it was better than anything else she had to go on. Certainly better than staking out hardware stores in a vain hope the scavenger would hit one while she was watching it.
