The roomful of Partials stiffened again, harder this time, some jumping to their feet. Samm swung his scope wildly, looking for the colonel, but the tight zoom on the major’s face made him lose his bearings, and he searched helplessly for a few panicked seconds, listening to shouts of “The colonel!” and “It’s time!” Finally Samm pulled back, reset the scope, and zoomed in again from nearly a full mile away. He found the colonel’s bed, in a place of honor at the front of the room, and watched as the old man shook and coughed, flecks of black blood dribbling from the corners of his mouth. He looked like a corpse already, his cells degenerating, his body rotting away almost visibly as Samm and the other soldiers watched. He sputtered, grimaced, hacked, and lay still. The room was silent.
Samm watched, stone-faced, as the soldiers prepared the final death rite: Without speaking a word, the windows were thrown open, the curtains cleared, the fans turned on. Humans met death with crying, with speeches, with wailing and gnashing of teeth. The Partials met it as only Partials could: through the link. Their bodies were designed for the battlefield: When they died, they released a burst of data to warn their fellow soldiers of danger, and when they felt it, those soldiers would release more data of their own to spread the word. The fans churned at the air, blowing that data out into that world so that everyone would link it and know that a great man had died.
Samm waited, tense, feeling the breezes blow back and forth across his face. He wanted it, and he didn’t; it was both connection and pain, community and sadness. It was depressing how often those two came together these days. He watched the leaves flutter on the trees below him in the valley, watched the branches sway gently as the wind brushed past them. The data never came.
He was too far away.
Samm packed up his scope and the directional microphone, stowing them in his pack with their small solar battery. He searched the site twice, making sure he’d left nothing behind—the plastic bag of food was back in his satchel, the earbuds were stowed in his pack, his rifle was slung over his shoulder. Even the marks of the tripod in the dirt he kicked smooth with his boot. There was no evidence he had ever been here.
He looked one last time at his colonel’s funeral, pulled on his gas mask, and slipped back into exile. There was no room in that warehouse for deserters.
CHAPTER TWO
The sun beat down through the gaps in the skyline, mapping out a pattern of ragged yellow triangles on the broken streets below. Kira Walker watched the road carefully, crouched beside a rusted taxi at the bottom of a deep urban canyon. Grass and scrub and saplings stood motionless in the cracked asphalt, untouched by wind. The city was perfectly still.
Yet something had moved.
Kira brought her rifle to her shoulder, hoping for a better view with the telescopic sight, then remembered—for the umpteenth time—that her scope had been broken in the cave-in last week. She cursed and lowered the gun again. As soon as I’m done here, I’m going to find another gun store and replace the stupid thing. She peered down the road, trying to separate shape and shadow, and raised her gun again before cursing under her breath. Old habits die hard. She ducked her head and scuttled to the back end of the taxi; there was a delivery truck a hundred feet down sticking halfway into the street, which should be able to hide her movements from whatever—or whoever—was down there. She peered out, stared for nearly a minute at the unmoving street, then gritted her teeth and ran. No bullets or clatters or roars. The truck did its job. She trotted up behind it, dropped to one knee, and peeked out past the bumper.
An eland moved through the underbrush, long horns curling into the sky, its long tongue picking at shoots and greens growing up through the rubble. Kira stayed still, watching intently, too paranoid to assume that the eland was the same thing she’d seen moving before. A cardinal screeched overhead, joined moments later by another, bright red streaks spinning and diving and chasing each other through the power lines and traffic lights. The eland nibbled at the small green leaves of a maple sapling, peaceful and oblivious. Kira watched until she was certain there was nothing else to see, then watched some more just in case. You could never be too careful in Manhattan—the last time she’d come here she’d been attacked by Partials, and so far on this trip she’d been chased by both a bear and a panther. The memory made her pause, turn, and check behind her. Nothing. She closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to “feel” a nearby Partial, but it didn’t work. It never had, not in any way she could recognize, even when she had spent a week in close contact with Samm. Kira was a Partial, too, but she was different—she appeared to lack the link and some of their other traits, plus she aged and grew like a normal human. She didn’t really know what she was, and she had no one she could turn to for answers. She didn’t even have anyone to talk to about it—only Samm and the mad Partial scientist Dr. Morgan knew what she was. Kira hadn’t even told her boyfriend—her best friend—Marcus.
She shivered uneasily, grimacing at the uncomfortable confusion that always followed her questions about herself. That’s what I’m here to find, she thought. Answers to the questions.
She turned and sat on the broken asphalt, leaning against the truck’s flat tire and pulling out her notebook again, though at this point she had the address memorized: Fifty-fourth and Lexington. It had taken her weeks to find the address, and several more days to make it here through the ruins. Maybe she was being too cautious. . . .
She shook her head. There was no such thing as “too cautious.” The unsettled areas were too dangerous to take any chances, and Manhattan was more dangerous than most. She’d played it safe and she was still alive; she wasn’t going to second-guess a strategy that had proven itself so successful.
She looked at the address again, then up at the weather-beaten street signs. This was definitely the right place. She tucked the notebook back into her pocket and hefted her rifle. Time to go inside.
Time to visit ParaGen.
The office building had once had glass doors and floor-to-ceiling windows, but glass didn’t last long since the Break, and the entire ground floor now stood naked to the elements. It wasn’t the ParaGen headquarters—that was out west somewhere, on the other side of the country—but it was something. A financial branch, located in Manhattan solely to interface with other corporations’ financial branches. It had taken her weeks of searching even to find that the office existed. Kira picked her way through the pellets of shattered safety glass, and the mounds of siding and facade sloughed off from the building’s upper floors. Eleven years of neglect had filled the floor inside with dirt, thick enough that small weeds and grasses were already beginning to sprout through. Low benches, once upholstered in sleek vinyl, had been weakened by sun and rain and torn apart by what looked like cats’ claws. A wide desk that had probably held a receptionist was now weathered and sagging, the epicenter of a loose scattering of yellowed plastic ID tags. A plaque on the wall named dozens of businesses in the building, and Kira browsed the weather-beaten listings until she found ParaGen: the twenty-first floor. Three elevator doors stood in the wall behind the reception desk, though one was hanging crooked in its frame. Kira ignored them and went to the stairway door in the back corner. There was a black panel in the wall next to it, a sensor pad for a magnetic lock, but with no electricity it was meaningless—the hinges would be the biggest problem. Kira leaned against it, pushing gently at first to test it, then harder as the ancient hinges resisted the force. Finally it gave way, and she walked in to look up the towering stairwell.