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Fragments
Here and there Kira spotted a bullet hole in a car or a mailbox, and she knew she was on the right track. They had run through here with a sniper behind them; Jayden had even been shot through the arm. The thought of Jayden sobered her, and she paused to listen: birds. Wind. Two cats yowling in a fight. It was foolish to think that there would be a sniper here now, but she couldn’t help herself. She ducked down behind a crumbling stairway, breathing heavily, telling herself that it was just nerves, but all she could think about was Jayden, shot through the arm—shot through the chest in the East Meadow hospital, bleeding out on the floor where he’d sacrificed himself to save her. He’d been the one to force her through her fear, to tell her to get up when she was too afraid to move. She gritted her teeth and stood up again, moving forward. She could be afraid all she wanted, but she wouldn’t let it stop her.
She reached the apartment complex when the sun was high in the sky: five buildings that had looked like three from her vantage point back in the skyscraper. It was the same place. There was a wide lawn around and between them, now filled with saplings, and she pushed through it carefully as she passed the buildings. This was the one we passed first, and this was the one we went into. . . . She came around the side and looked up, seeing the massive hole they’d blown in the wall three stories up. A vine wound around a dangling floor joist, and a bird perched on a crooked shard of rebar. The violence was gone, and nature was reclaiming it.
They had come here looking for the source of the smoke, and they’d chosen that apartment building because it looked out on what they assumed was the back of the occupied house. Kira kept her rifle up as she walked, rounding the first corner, then the next. This would be the street, and if she’d guessed correctly on her map, the house she was looking for would be six doors down. One, two three, four . . . no. Kira’s jaw dropped, and she stared in shock at the sixth townhouse in the row.
It was an empty crater, blown to pieces.
Skousen stood, and Marcus placed his binder on his lap, ready in case the doctor asked him for anything. Skousen stepped forward, stopped to clear his throat, then paused, thought, and stepped forward again.
“I take it from your hesitance that you don’t have any good news,” said Tovar. “I guess let’s move on to whoever’s ready to not give us the next bad report.”
“Just let him speak,” said Senator Kessler. “We don’t need a joke in every single pause in conversation.”
Tovar raised his eyebrow. “I could make a joke when someone’s talking, but that seems rude.”
Kessler ignored him and turned to Skousen. “Doctor?”
“I’m afraid he’s correct,” said Skousen. “We have no good news. We have no bad news either, aside from the continued lack of progress—” He paused, stammering uncertainly. “We . . . have had no major setbacks, is what I’m saying.”
“So you’re no closer to synthesizing the cure than you were last time,” said Senator Woolf.
“We have eliminated certain possibilities as dead ends,” said Skousen. His face was worn and full of lines, and Marcus heard his voice drop. “It’s not much, as victories go, but it’s all we have.”
“We can’t continue like this,” said Woolf, turning to the other senators. “We saved one child, and almost two months later we’re no closer to saving any more. We’ve lost four more children in the last week alone. Their deaths are tragedies on their own, and I don’t want to gloss over them, but that’s not even our most pressing concern. The people know we have a cure—they know we can save infants, and they know that we’re not. They know the reasons for it, too, but that’s not exactly mollifying anyone. Having the cure so close, but still unattainable, is only making the tensions on this island worse.”
“Then what do you propose we do?” asked Tovar. “Attack the Partials and steal more pheromone? We can’t risk it.”
You might not have a choice soon, Marcus thought. If what Heron said is true . . . He squirmed in his seat, trying not to imagine the devastation of a Partial invasion. He didn’t know where Nandita was, or Kira, and he certainly didn’t want to hand them over to the Partials even if he could, on the other hand . . . a Partial invasion could mean the end of the human race—not a slow fade, dying off because they couldn’t reproduce, but a bloody, brutal genocide. The Partials had proven twelve years ago that they weren’t afraid of war, but genocide? Samm had insisted so fiercely that they weren’t responsible for RM. That they felt guilty for causing, even inadvertently, the horrors of the Break. Had things changed that much? Were they ready to sacrifice an entire species just to save themselves?
They’re asking me to do the same thing, he thought. To sacrifice Kira, or Nandita, to save humanity. If it comes right down to it, would I do it? Should I?
“We could send an ambassador,” said Senator Hobb. “We’ve talked about it, we’ve chosen the team—let’s do it.”
“Send them to who?” asked Kessler. “We’ve had contact with exactly one group of Partials, and they tried to kill the kids who contacted them. We tried to kill the Partial who contacted us. If there’s a peaceful resolution in our future, I sure as hell don’t know how to reach it.”
They were the same arguments, Marcus realized, that he and his friends had bandied around in Xochi’s living room. The same circular proposals, the same obvious responses, the same endless bickering. Are the adults just as lost as the rest of us? Or is there really no solution to this problem?
“From a medical standpoint,” said Dr. Skousen, “I’m afraid I must advocate—against my wishes—the . . .” He paused again. “The retrieval of a fresh sample. Of a new Partial, or at the very least a quantity of their pheromone. We have some remnants of the dose that was used on Arwen Sato, and we have the scans and records of the pheromone’s structure and function, but nothing can replace a fresh sample. We solved this problem last time by going to the source—to the Partials—and I believe that if we intend to solve it again, we will have to solve it the same way. Whether we get it by force or diplomacy doesn’t matter as much as the simple need to obtain it.”
A rush of whispers filled the room, soft mutterings like the rustle of leaves. It wasn’t “we” who solved this problem, Marcus thought, it was Kira, and Dr. Skousen was one of her biggest opponents. Now he was advocating the same action without even crediting her?
“You want us to risk another Partial War,” said Kessler.
“That risk has already been taken,” said Tovar. “The bear, as they say, has already been poked, and it hasn’t eaten us yet.”
“Being lucky is not the same thing as being safe,” said Kessler. “If there’s any way to synthesize this cure without resorting to military action, we have to explore it. If we provoke the Partials any further—”
“We’ve provoked them too much as it is!” said Woolf. “You’ve read the reports—there are boats off the North Shore, Partial boats patrolling our borders—”
Senator Hobb cut him off, while the audience whispered all the more wildly. “This is not the right venue to discuss those reports,” said Hobb.
Marcus felt like he’d been shot in the gut: The Partials were patrolling the sound. The Partials had kept to themselves for eleven years—a quick recon mission here and there, like Heron had done, but always undercover, so much so that the humans hadn’t even known about it. Now they were openly patrolling the border. He realized his mouth was hanging open, and he closed it tightly.
“The people need to know,” said Woolf. “They’re going to find out anyway—if the boats get too much closer, every farmer on the North Shore’s going to see them. For all we know small groups of them have landed already; our watch along that shore is anything but impenetrable.”
“So our cold war’s heated up,” said Skousen. He looked gray and frail, like a corpse from the side of the road. He paused a moment, swallowed, and sat down with a barely controlled thunk.
“If you’ll excuse me,” said Marcus, and realized that he was standing. He looked at the binder in his hands, unsure of what to do with it, then simply closed it and held it in front of him, wishing it was armor. He looked at the Senate, wondering if Heron was right—if one of them, or one of their aides, was a Partial agent. Did he dare to talk? Could he afford not to? “Excuse me,” he said again, starting over, “my name is Marcus Valencio—”
“We know who you are,” said Tovar.
Marcus nodded nervously. “I think I have more experience in Partial territory than anyone in this room—”
“That’s why we know who you are,” said Tovar, making a rolling motion with his hand. “Stop introducing yourself and get to your point.”
Marcus swallowed, suddenly not sure why he’d stood up—he felt like somebody needed to say something, but he didn’t feel at all qualified to say it. He wasn’t even sure what it was. He looked around the room, watching the faces of various gathered experts and politicians, wondering which of them—if any—was a traitor. He thought about Heron, and her search for Nandita, and realized that whatever he was trying to say, he was the only one who knew enough to say it. The only one who’d heard Heron’s warning. I just need to figure out how to phrase it without looking like a traitor myself. “I’m just saying,” he said at last, “that the Partials we encountered were conducting experiments. They have an expiration date—they’re all going to die—and they’re just as invested in curing that as we are in curing RM. More so, maybe, because it’s going to kill them sooner.”
“We know about the expiration date,” said Kessler. “It’s the best news we’ve had in twelve years.”
“Not counting the cure for RM, of course,” said Hobb quickly.
“It’s not good news at all,” said Marcus. “Their expiration date is like pushing us out of the frying pan and into the . . . molten core of the Earth. If they die, we die; we need their pheromone to cure ourselves.”
“That’s why we’re trying to synthesize it,” said Woolf.
“But we can’t synthesize it,” said Marcus, holding up his binder. “We could spend a couple of hours telling you everything we’ve tried, and all the reasons it hasn’t worked, and you wouldn’t understand half the science anyway—no offense—but that’s beside the point, because it hasn’t worked. ‘Why’ it hasn’t worked doesn’t matter.” He dropped the binder on the table behind him and turned back to face the senators. Seeing them again, staring at him silently, made Marcus feel suddenly queasy, and he smiled to cover it up. “Don’t everybody cheer at once, I have some bad news, too.”
Tovar pursed his lips. “I don’t know how you’re going to top the first bit, but I’m excited to hear it.”
Marcus felt the attention of the entire room bearing down on him and bit back the urge to make another wisecrack; he cracked jokes reflexively when he got too nervous, and he was more nervous now than he’d ever been. I shouldn’t be doing this, he thought. I’m a medic, not a public speaker. I’m not a debater, I’m not a leader, I’m not . . .
. . . I’m not Kira. That’s who should be here.
“Mr. Valencio?” asked Senator Woolf.
Marcus nodded, steeling his determination. “Well, you asked for it, so here it is. The leader of the Partial faction we ran into, the one who kidnapped Kira, was some kind of a doctor or a scientist; they called her Dr. Morgan. That was the reason they sent that Partial platoon into Manhattan all those months ago, and they kidnapped Kira because Dr. Morgan thinks the secret to curing Partials is somehow related to RM, which means it’s related to humans. Apparently they’d experimented on humans before, back during the Partial War, and if they think it will save their lives, they’ll kidnap as many more of us as they need, which might just be Kira again, but for all we know it’s all of us. They’re probably having the same meeting right now, on the other side of the sound, trying to decide how they can grab a few of us to experiment on—or if those reports you mentioned are true, they already had their meeting and might very well be putting their plan into motion.”
“That’s classified information,” said Senator Hobb. “We need—”
“If you’ll permit me to recap,” Marcus interrupted, holding up his hand, “there is a group of super-soldiers”—he put down his first finger—“trained specifically in military conquest”—he put down his second finger—“who outnumber us, like, thirty to one”—third finger—“who are desperate enough to try anything”—fourth finger—“and who believe that ‘anything’ in this case means ‘capturing human beings for invasive experimentation.’” He folded down his last finger and held his fist silently in the air. “Senators, the information might be classified, but it’s a pretty good bet the Partials will be unclassifying it a lot sooner than you think.”
The room was quiet, every eye focused on Marcus. Several long, heavy moments later, Tovar finally spoke.
“So you think we need to defend ourselves.”
“I think I’m scared to death, and I need to learn how to stop talking when everyone is staring at me.”
“Defending ourselves is not a viable option,” said Woolf, and the other senators stiffened in surprise. “The Defense Grid is well trained and as well equipped as a human army can possibly be. We have watches on every coast, we have bombs on every remaining bridge, we have ambush sites already mapped and ready to go at every likely invasion point. And yet no matter how well prepared we are, it will barely be a speed bump if a sizeable faction of Partials initiate an invasion. That’s an inescapable fact that cannot possibly be news to anyone in this room. We patrol this island because it’s all we can do, but if the Partials ever actually decide to invade, we will be conquered within days, if not hours.”
“The only remotely good news,” said Marcus, “is that their society is, if you’ll pardon the comparison, even more fractured than ours. The mainland was practically a war zone when we were over there, which could be the only reason they haven’t attacked us already.”
“So they kill each other and our problem solves itself,” said Kessler.
“Except for the RM,” said Hobb.
“Taking everything Mr. Valencio has said into account,” said Woolf, “we only have one real plan that has any hope of success. Step one, we sneak into that mainland war zone, hope nobody notices us, and grab a couple of Partials for Dr. Skousen to experiment on. Step two, we evacuate the entire island and get as far away as possible.”
The room was quiet. Marcus sat down. Leaving the island was crazy—it was their home, it was their only safe haven, that was why they’d come here in the first place—but that wasn’t really true anymore, was it? In the wake of the Partial War, this island had been like a sanctuary; they’d escaped from the Partials, they’d found a new life, and they’d started to rebuild. But that safety didn’t really have anything to do with the island, now that Marcus thought about it. They’d been safe because the Partials had ignored them, and now that the Partials were back—now that there were boats in the sound, and Heron hiding in the shadows, and the vicious Dr. Morgan trying to turn them all into experiments—that illusion of safety had melted away. Nobody had to say it out loud, nobody had to make an official decision, but Marcus knew it was done. He could see it in the faces of everyone in the room. The instant evacuation was broached as a possibility, it became a certainty.
The side door opened, and Marcus caught a glimpse of the Grid soldiers guarding the other side. They stepped aside and a large man stepped in: Duna Mkele, the “intelligence officer.” It occurred to Marcus that he didn’t know who, exactly, Mkele worked for; he seemed to have free access to the Senate, and some measure of authority over the Grid, but as far as Marcus could tell, he didn’t really answer to either group. Regardless of how those relationships worked, Marcus didn’t like the man. His presence was almost always a sign of bad news.
Mkele walked to Senator Woolf and whispered in his ear; Marcus tried to read their lips, or at least judge the reaction on their faces, but they turned their backs on the crowd. A moment later they walked to Tovar and whispered to him. Tovar listened solemnly, then looked at the crowd of people watching him. He turned back to Woolf and spoke in a loud stage voice obviously intended to carry throughout the room.
“They already know the first half; you might as well tell them the rest.”
Marcus saw clearly the stern look that passed over Mkele’s face. Woolf looked back unapologetically, then turned to face the crowd.
“It appears our timetable has been accelerated,” said Woolf. “The Partials have made ground on Long Island, near Mount Sinai Harbor, approximately five minutes ago.”
The meeting hall erupted in noisy conversations, and Marcus felt his stomach lurch with a sudden, terrifying fear. What did it mean—was this the end? Was this an invasion force, or a brazen raid to steal human test subjects? Was this Dr. Morgan’s group, Dr. Morgan’s enemies, or some other faction altogether?
Was Samm with them?
Did this mean Heron’s plan had failed? They couldn’t find Kira and Nandita through stealth and investigation, so it was time for a full invasion? He felt a moment of horrifying guilt, as if the entire invasion was his fault, personally, for failing to heed Heron’s warning. But he hadn’t seen Kira in months and Nandita in over a year; what could he have done? As the crowd roared in fear and confusion, as the reality of the situation sank into him, Marcus realized that it didn’t matter. He wasn’t ready to sacrifice anyone; he’d rather go down fighting than sell his soul for peace.
For the second time that day Marcus felt himself standing, heard his voice calling out. “I volunteer for the force that goes out to meet them,” he said. “You need a medic—I volunteer.”
Senator Tovar looked at him, nodded, then turned back to Mkele and Woolf. The room continued to buzz with fear and speculation. Marcus collapsed back into his chair.
I really need to learn to keep my mouth shut.
The home had definitely been inhabited, and recently. Kira had seen a lot of old-world debris in her life; she had grown up surrounded by it, and it had become familiar: framed photos of long-dead families, little black boxes of media players and game systems, broken vases full of brittle stems. The details varied from house to house, but the feel was the same—forgotten lives of forgotten people. The debris from this home was different, and distinctly modern: stockpiles of canned food, now burst and rotting in the rubble; boarded windows and reinforced doors; guns and ammunition and handmade camouflage. Someone had lived here, long after the world was destroyed, and when someone else—the Partials?—had invaded their privacy, they blew up their own home. The pattern of the destruction was too complete, and too contained, to be an outside attack; an enemy would have used a smaller explosive to breach the wall, or a larger one that would have caught the neighboring houses as well. Whoever had destroyed this home had done their work pragmatically and with devastating thoroughness.
The crater reminded her, the more she thought about it, of a similar explosion she’d seen last year—before the cure, before Samm, before everything. She’d gone on a salvage run with Marcus and Jayden, somewhere on the North Shore of Long Island, and a building had been rigged to explode. It had been a booby trap, much like this one seemed to be—not designed to kill but to destroy evidence. What was the name of that little town? Asharoken; I remember how Jayden made fun of the name. And why were they looking in that building, anyway? It had been flagged by a preliminary salvage crew, and the soldiers had gone back to investigate; they’ d had specialists with them, like a computer guy or something. Something electronic? Her breath caught in her throat as the memory returned: It was a radio station. Someone had set up a radio station on the North Shore, and then blown it up to keep it secret. And now someone had done the same thing here. Was it the same someone?
Kira stepped back reflexively, as if the demolished building could somehow contain another bomb. She stared at the wreckage, summoned her courage, and walked in, placing her feet carefully in the unstable ruins. It didn’t take long to find the first body. A soldier dressed in a gray uniform—a Partial—was lodged under a fallen wall, a fractured corpse in the crumpled remains of composite body armor. His rifle lay beside him, and she pulled it from the rubble with surprising ease; the action moved stiffly, but it moved nonetheless, and the chamber still held a bullet. She popped out the clip and found it full—the soldier hadn’t fired a single round before he died, and his fellow soldiers had neither recovered his gear nor buried his body. That means the bomb took them by surprise, Kira thought, and it killed them all. There was no one left to recover the fallen.
Kira searched further, sifting cautiously through the fallen beams and bricks, and found at last the old familiar sight—the blackened fragments of a radio transceiver, just like in Asharoken. The two situations were too similar to dismiss: A group of scouts investigate something suspicious, find a fortified safe house full of communications equipment, and die in a defensive trap. Kira and the others had assumed the site in Asharoken belonged to the Voice, but Owen Tovar denied it then and now. The next most likely candidates were the Partials, yet here was a group of Partials caught in the same trap. Another Partial faction, then, thought Kira. But which belongs to Dr. Morgan—the spies with the radio, or the scouts that attacked it? Or neither? And how does this connect to ParaGen? Whoever had taken the computers from the offices had also taken the radios from the store, and now here were fragments of both in one place. There had to be a connection. It seemed likely that the faction collecting radios was the same faction that was establishing these radio stations throughout the ruins. But what were they doing? And why would they kill so freely to hide it?
“What I need is a clue,” said Kira, frowning at the devastation. She was talking to herself more and more these days, and she felt foolish to hear her voice ringing out through the empty city. On the other hand, hers was the only voice she’d heard in weeks, and it was oddly soothing every time she spoke. She shook her head. “Gotta talk to somebody, right? Even if it does make me look pathetic.” She bent down, examining the bits of paper sprinkled throughout the rubble. Whoever had made the safe houses and planted the bombs was still out there, and finding them would be all but impossible now that they’d blown up all the evidence. Kira laughed dryly. “But I suppose that’s kind of the point.”
