by Dan Wells
“Why would their data not be in their own offices?”
“Because the cloud made distance meaningless,” said Afa. Kira heard a bolt slide back, then another, then two more. The door cracked open, but Afa stayed hidden behind it. “Storing digital information in Chicago was the same as storing it in Denver, or Manhattan, or wherever, because you could access it no matter where you were. As IT director, I worked with the Chicago center all the time, setting up permissions and security and making sure nobody could get the data but us. Unless it was all hard copies, I guarantee it’s in the data center.”
“If it’s that easy,” asked Samm, “why haven’t you gone to get it before?”
“It’s seven hundred twelve miles,” said Afa, “more if you can’t fly, which you can’t. I can’t go that far—I have to stay here with my records.”
Kira shot another look at Samm. “But we need you, Afa. We can’t do this without you.”
“I can’t go,” said Afa.
“We don’t need him,” said Heron, speaking loud enough that Afa could hear her—allowing herself to be overheard on purpose, it seemed to Kira. “Data centers run on electricity, obviously, so we’ll have to reactivate the auxiliary generator, which won’t run for very long. That will be hard enough. Then we’ll have to find which servers have the ParaGen files, which ParaGen server has the Trust files, and which Trust files have the information we need, all while navigating the single most powerful security protocols that old-world money could buy.”
“I already know all that,” said Afa. “I could find it, easy.”
Heron smiled.
“So come help us,” said Kira.
“I can’t leave my records.”
“I can do it just fine on my own,” said Heron, grinning maliciously, trying to challenge Afa’s expertise. “We don’t need him.”
“You’ll never do it,” said Afa.
“Once we find the right files,” said Heron, “we’ll have to decode the data and download it to a portable screen, all before our generator dies, and we’ll probably only get one shot at it. It’s going to be a pretty amazing feat—getting a computer file out of a ruined building from a long-lost civilization. It’ll be like hacking the Giza pyramids.”
The door opened slightly wider, and Heron nodded triumphantly.
“You know the wilderness,” said Afa. “You’re scouts, Kira said so. You don’t know computers.”
“I know enough.”
The door opened even wider. “Do you know how to crack a Nostromo-7 firewall?” said Afa, and Kira noticed the difference in his voice—he was waking up, mentally, enlivened by the idea. Kira had thought Heron was trying to goad him into coming, challenging him by claiming to be better, but really she was geeking him out. She was presenting him a challenge so interesting, and so firmly in his area of expertise, he couldn’t help but get excited about it. Kira had done the same with Marcus, more than once, in their medical research.
Samm shook his head, speaking softly. “I don’t like this. It’s not safe to take him.”
“It’s not safe to leave him, either,” said Kira. “Dr. Morgan’s looking for me, too, right? Can you say for sure she’s not going to find this radio station eventually? She’s not going to go easy on the mentally damaged man she finds here.”
“He’s not just mentally damaged,” said Samm, “he’s a paranoid bomber that we can’t control or predict. If we take him out into the wasteland, he’s as likely to kill us as anything is to kill him.”
“What are our other options?” asked Kira. “We can’t just ask Morgan, A because she’s evil, and B because she doesn’t know anything about me or expiration or the Failsafe. If we could find Nandita that’d be great, but the entire Long Island population’s been looking for her for months and she’s nowhere.”
“We could talk to Trimble,” said Samm, “assuming B Company doesn’t kill us on sight.”
“Assuming there’s anything left of B Company at all,” said Heron. “Morgan’s been recruiting them in droves. But Trimble isn’t connected to the pheromones or the Failsafe or the expiration, at least not according to anything in the records you showed us. She won’t know anything more than Morgan.”
Kira’s eyes widened. “You know where Trimble is?”
“She’s in charge of B Company,” said Samm. “She and Morgan have been the main face of the Trust for years—now we know she’s not just a messenger, she’s apparently one of them.”
“B Company hates D Company,” said Heron. “Most of the civil war you’ve seen here on the mainland is a war between them.”
Kira grimaced. “Saving the world would be a lot easier if the people we’re trying to save would stop killing each other.”
Afa’s door opened slightly farther, and he peeked one eye out. “You didn’t say anything about Nostromo-7s, so I assume you don’t know how to get past one. I do.”
Samm looked at him and whispered softly, “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“He’s a good man,” said Kira.
“He’s insane.”
“I know that,” hissed Kira. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but what else are we supposed to do?” She looked at Heron. “Can you actually do any of that stuff you were talking about? Do you even know anyone who can? Afa’s unpredictable, yes, I admit that, but when his mind is working right, he’s positively brilliant.”
“When his mind is working right,” said Samm.
“So we watch him,” said Kira. “We keep him away from weapons, we keep him away from anything that explodes, we do whatever it takes to keep him happy and lucid and friendly.” She paused. “It’s the only way we’re ever going to find the information we need.”
The Partials stared at her. Samm turned to face the street. “We’ll need horses.”
“We can make better time on foot,” said Heron.
“You and I can,” said Samm, “not Kira and definitely not Afa. Listening to him breathe, he’s at least three hundred pounds.”
Kira raised an eyebrow. “You can tell his weight from his breathing?”
“It’s labored and irregular,” said Samm. “He’ll die of a heart attack before we make it halfway.”
“There’s a Partial camp not too far northeast of here,” said Heron, “an A Company lookout post in the Bronx. They’re not exactly friendly with D, but they’re not looking for a fight, either. Samm and I can sneak in, steal their horses, and meet you over there”—she pointed—“on the George Washington Bridge.”
“You’re going to sneak up on a lookout?”
“There are very few people this far south,” she said. “All they’re here for is to keep an eye on your military base across the bay. We’ll be coming from a different angle, and they won’t suspect a thing.”
“It still seems like it’ll be harder than you’re making it out to be,” said Kira. “I mean, yes, you’re Partials, but so are they.”
“But none of them are me,” said Heron. She turned and walked into the street, slinging her rifle over her shoulder. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it. We’ll see you at noon tomorrow on that bridge. Be ready.” She started walking away.
Kira looked at Samm. “You . . .” She didn’t know what to say. “Be safe.” She paused. “Come back.”
“Noon tomorrow,” said Samm. He hesitated, his hand hanging in the air by her arm, then turned and followed Heron.
Kira turned back to Afa, still hidden behind his half-open door. “You hear that?” she asked. “We have a day and a half to get ready for this. We’re really going to do it.”
“Do you think I’m mentally damaged?”
Kira felt a hot flush steal over her face. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t know you could hear us.”
“I hear everything.”
“I think . . .” She stopped, not certain how to say what she felt. “I want us to be realistic, Afa. You’re a brilliant man, and I said that, too.”
“I heard.”
/> “But you’re also . . . inconsistent. Inconsistently capable, I guess. I know that sounds terrible, but—”
“I know what I am,” said Afa. “I do my best. But I know what I am.”
“You’re my friend,” said Kira firmly. “I will do everything in my power to help you.”
He stepped out from behind the door, the brilliant lucidity gone, looking for all the world like a giant child. “This is my backpack,” he said, lifting it onto his shoulders. “I never leave my backpack.”
Kira took him by the arm. “Let’s get back to your place and pack one for me.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Marcus ran from tree to tree down Kira’s old street, eyes searching constantly for anything out of the ordinary—a rustle of leaves, a face or a body, a broken door or window. The Partial army was barely half an hour away, battling what was left of the Grid’s desperate last stand. He needed to leave East Meadow altogether, but there was something he had to do first.
Xochi’s house was closed and shuttered, like all the other houses in the city. He knocked on the door, eyeing the trees suspiciously—this was, after all, the house where Heron had accosted him.
Marcus heard a bolt slide, and Xochi opened the door. “Come in,” she said quickly, bolting it solidly again behind him. The house smelled like basil and nutmeg and coriander, a cacophony of competing aromas. Xochi set down the shotgun she’d been holding, going back to her frenzied packing, and Marcus stood uncomfortably in the middle of the room.
“What brings you here?” asked Xochi, looking up from her half-filled backpack. “I thought you’d be halfway to our safe house by now.” Xochi and Isolde had picked a central point on the island where their group of friends could flee and rendezvous if—or when, really—the Grid defense failed. Marcus didn’t answer right away, still trying to think of how to start—he had so many questions, but was this a topic she’d even want to talk about? Xochi frowned, noticing his indecision, and gestured toward the kitchen. “Do you need anything? Water? I got a bushel of lemons I’m not taking with me, I could whip up some lemonade.”
“That’s okay.”
“It takes like thirty seconds, it’s fine if you want some—”
“No, thank you,” said Marcus. He worked his chin and lips, as if warming up his mouth for the conversation, but it was just a stalling tactic. He still wasn’t sure how to start. He sat down, then stood up nervously and gestured to the couch. “Sit down.”
Xochi sat solemnly. “What’s going on, Marcus? I’ve never seen you like this before.”
“I talked to Kira,” he said. Xochi’s eyes went wide, and Marcus nodded. “Three weeks ago was the first time, when Haru and I were on the front lines. Six, maybe eight times since. I don’t know where she is, but she’s been listening to our radios and the Partial radios and feeding us information—nothing that could win us the war, obviously, but enough to keep Haru and me from getting killed.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s fine,” said Marcus. “Better than we are, at least, though that’ll change pretty quick if they can find her. Dr. Morgan is pouring every resource she has into this.”
Xochi nodded. “That’s what Isolde told me. Apparently this entire invasion is about finding her. Do you know why?”
“I don’t,” said Marcus. “Kira won’t tell me. She’s been acting strange ever since Morgan’s lab, like they did something to her that she doesn’t want to talk about.”
“It was a pretty traumatic experience,” said Xochi.
“I know,” said Marcus quickly, “I know, but I mean . . . Let me ask you this: What’s your earliest memory of Kira?”
Xochi played with the straps of her backpack, rolling them into little cylinders as she spoke. “It was at school, the old one by the hospital. I’d been in the farms with Kessler for a couple of years, but we fought like tigers—even then—and so when I turned eight she sent me into East Meadow for school.”
Marcus almost smiled at the memory. “You beat up Benji Haul on your first day.”
Xochi shrugged. “He had it coming. I spent the afternoon in detention, and Kira was in there for, I can’t remember, starting a fire with all the phosphorus from the lightbulbs or something—one of those crazy brainiac schemes you and Kira were always getting into.”
“What about Nandita?” asked Marcus.
Xochi frowned. “What about Nandita?”
“When was the first time you met her?” asked Marcus. “Soon after that?”
“Not for another year at least,” said Xochi. “I never came here because I was confined to the school—Kessler’s orders—and I never saw Nandita there because I always ran and hid when they did presentations or fairs or whatever. I had enough problems with my own fake mom, I didn’t need to hang out with anybody else’s. Why are you asking about Nandita?”
Marcus leaned closer. “I haven’t told you everything,” he said. “Do you remember the Partial that followed Samm after we left Morgan’s lab? An assassin or something; Samm said she was watching when we got into the boat to come home.”
“I remember that it happened, yeah,” said Xochi. “Why?”
“Because she was here,” said Marcus. “Four or five weeks ago, in this backyard.”
“Here?”
“She was looking for Kira,” said Marcus, “but she was also looking for Nandita. She had a photo of Kira and Nandita together, before the Break, standing in front of the ParaGen building.”
Xochi froze. “Nandita never knew Kira before the Break.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” said Marcus. “Did either of them ever actually say it?”
“She talked about meeting the girls,” Xochi spluttered. “She told these little stories about finding each one of them, one by one—”
“What was the story about Kira?”
Xochi stuck out her lower lip, thinking. “She found her on the mainland,” she said, “in a refugee camp. A big group of soldiers, US or NADI or whatever, marched in one day with a whole ton of survivors they’d picked up, and Nandita saw Kira cussing out one of the guards because he didn’t have any pudding.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow. “Cussing him out?”
Xochi laughed. “Have you met Kira? She’s a fireball now, and she was a fireball then. Nandita used to call her the Little Explosion. Besides, she was five years old and she’d just spent who knows how long with no one to talk to but soldiers; she probably had a monster vocabulary. The soldier kept apologizing about the pudding, and this skinny little girl kept calling his mother into serious moral question, and Nandita swooped in to teach her some manners.” Xochi smiled distantly. “I think she thought the situation was just too adorable to pass up, but she always insisted she did it to teach her.”
“To teach her?”
“That’s all she’s talked about,” said Xochi, “the whole time I’ve known her: She needed to teach her girls. I don’t know what—I’m the one she taught herbology.”
“If Nandita knew Kira before,” said Marcus, “why would she pretend like she didn’t?”
“You said the picture was taken in front of a ParaGen building, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, if she was involved with ParaGen, it’s not all that surprising that she’d keep it a secret,” said Xochi. “Some ParaGen employees got lynched in the first days after the Break, before the Senate got organized and started imposing order. If I’d worked for the company that made the Partials, even as a janitor, I wouldn’t have told anyone.”
“But what does that have to do with Kira?” Marcus asked.
“I’m working on that part,” said Xochi, pursing her lips. “How about this: Nobody who landed on this island had ever met any of the others. The population of the US dropped from four hundred fifty million to forty thousand. That’s like one out of every twelve hundred people—the chances that any of them knew each other were ridiculous, and in the few cases where two survivors did know each other, like Jayden and Madison,
Dr. Skousen and his doctors interviewed the living daylights out of them, trying to find anything that might be a correlating factor of survival. If Nandita waltzed in claiming she and Kira went way back, they would never have rested until they found every possible piece of information. And if one of those pieces said that Nandita worked at ParaGen, she was probably very reasonably afraid of being held prisoner and interrogated, or worse—maybe killed, if the people were angry enough.”
“‘Every possible piece of information,’” said Marcus, half to himself. “I almost wish they’d done it.”
“Killed Nandita?”
“Interrogated her,” said Marcus. He put his finger on the low wooden coffee table, tracing patterns in the grain of the wood. “Every possible piece of information about the two people the Partials are tearing our island apart to find.” He nodded. “Yeah, I kind of wish they’d done it.”
“You need to tell the Senate about Heron,” said Xochi.
“I’ve told Mkele,” said Marcus. “I’m not stupid. Mkele’s looking for Nandita, but I’m not too anxious to tell the Senate that I was in contact with the enemy.” He moved his finger slowly around the whorls of a knot. “I guess we’re still afraid of being lynched,” he said. “Afraid of being caught. Do you know what the others told me?”
Xochi narrowed her eyes. “What others?”
“Your other sisters,” said Marcus, “Madison and Isolde. They got evacuated in the first group, to protect the children, so I talked to them quickly before they left. They said Kira wasn’t the first girl Nandita adopted.”
Xochi cocked her head. “Really? I mean, I never assumed she was until we started talking about that photo, but now it seems kind of weird that she wasn’t.”
“By the time she had Kira, she already had the other one,” said Marcus. “Ariel.”
Xochi nodded, as if this piece of information was especially profound. “Ariel moved out a couple of years ago,” she said, “before I moved in. I didn’t know her well, but she never got along with any of the other girls, and she hated Nandita like you wouldn’t believe.”
