If only I knew where the horses were, she thought, but there was no time to find them. If she carried the Partial Failsafe, then it could mean the death of Vale’s Partials, the death of the Preserve, and the eventual death of all humans and Partials. Kira was a living bomb, and destroying her before she went off would supersede every other goal he had. He would sacrifice his secrecy, his authority, whatever it took to preserve the human race. She had to escape or die.
She reached the end of the clearing just as a man came around the corner of the nearest building. He stopped in surprise; she clenched her teeth, nearly borne down by Samm’s weight, and forged past him. “Hello,” he said. “Is he okay?”
“He fainted,” said Kira. “He just needs some fresh air.” We just need to get to the gate, she thought, just reach the gate and we’ll be fine.
“You’re the newcomers,” he said, matching pace with her. “Were you in the spire?”
“We’re just out walking,” said Kira, looking ahead. Another clearing loomed before them, and another building, and beyond that the fence and the edge of the city. If we can just get to the city, we can hide . . . but I need to get rid of this guy. “Do you know Calix?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Find her,” said Kira, “and tell her we left a valuable medicine in our bags in her room—a red bottle, wedge-shaped, with a green ring around the lid.” It was an antibiotic, but this man didn’t need to know that; she just needed to draw him away. The man nodded and ran off, and Kira struggled on. She reached the next building, and now there were more people around, adults and children. Just a hundred feet, she thought. We’re almost there. A few of the people asked about Samm, their faces concerned, and Kira did her best to play it off without attracting more attention, but the crowd began to grow.
“What’s wrong?”
“Where are you going?”
“What’s happening?”
And then another voice, in the distance behind them. “Stop them!” The crowd looked up, confused. Kira pushed through them. “Stop them!” the voice cried again, and Kira recognized it as Vale. She kept walking, struggling to keep Samm from falling. A woman in the crowd grabbed her arm.
“Dr. Vale wants you to stop,” she said.
Kira drew her gun, and the woman backed off quickly. “Dr. Vale wants to kill us. Just let us leave.” Only fifty feet.
The woman retreated, hands up, and Kira crept forward, hunched far to the side to keep Samm’s weight centered over her. She clung to him with one hand, dragging him forward and warding off the crowd with her gun. She stole a glance behind her and saw Vale approaching with a group of armed hunters.
Samm groaned, groggy but awake. “Where are we?”
“We’re in bad trouble,” said Kira. “Can you walk?”
“What’s going on?”
“Just trust me. Wake up.”
“Stop them!” shouted Vale again. “They’re spies, come to destroy the Preserve.”
“We’re leaving,” said Kira through clenched teeth, struggling step by step for the open gate. Samm was still leaning on her heavily, trying to walk but too unsteady to do it effectively. The townsfolk hadn’t stepped in to stop her, still wondering what to do. “Just let us go.”
“Let them go and they’ll return with a thousand more like them,” said Vale. “They’re Partials.”
Samm’s speech was slurred. “So the recon trip didn’t go as planned?”
“You’re not helping,” said Kira. “Can you walk yet?”
Samm tried to stand up, reeling slightly, and fell back onto Kira’s shoulder. “Not well.”
“Is it true?” asked a voice. Kira turned to see Phan, and the look of betrayal on his face struck Kira through the heart.
“I’m a person,” she said. “The Partials—”
“The Partials destroyed the world,” said Vale, catching up to them. “And now they’re here, trying to finish the job.”
“You’re lying,” Kira hissed. “You destroyed it, and now you’re living in a fantasy, trying to pretend like the past never happened.”
“Don’t listen to their deceptions,” said Vale.
The crowd moved in on them, the open path to the gate become smaller and smaller as the crowd closed in. Kira swung her gun around wildly, trying to balance Samm with her other arm. “Please, Samm, I need you to wake up.”
“I’m awake,” he said, the crowd now mere feet away from them. “I can walk.”
Kira let go of him, and he stayed steady enough. “We have to—”
Vale fired.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“I apologize for my absence,” said Nandita. “I was trying to save the world.” She stood in the living room of her old house—the one Ariel had run away from so many years ago, and swore she’d never come back to.
Ariel clenched her fists and snapped back. “You lied to us before,” she said. “What makes you think we’ll believe you now?”
“Because you’re adults now,” said Nandita, “or close enough. Children need to be protected from the truth, but teenage girls need to face it.”
Five faces stared back at her, all the women in Ariel’s life: her sisters Madison and Isolde, her friend Xochi Kessler, and Xochi’s mother, the former senator Kessler. Even Arwen was here, the miracle baby. All trapped by the Partial army, brought back here to simmer and worry and die. They’d gathered in Nandita’s house because it was the only home they had left. If they knew how close we were to Kira, Ariel thought, we’d be in even more trouble than we are.
“The Grid’s been searching for you for a year,” said Senator Kessler. “Where the hell have you been, and what are your ties to the Partial army?”
“I created them,” said Nandita.
“What?” Kessler stammered, the first to manage a response. Ariel was too shocked to say anything. “You created the Partials?”
“I was on the team that built their genetic code,” said Nandita, taking off her coat and shawl. Her hands were wrinkled, but missing the calluses Ariel had always seen on her. Wherever she’d been, she hadn’t been working in a garden, or in any kind of manual labor.
Kessler seethed with anger. “You just admit it? Just like that? You created one of the greatest forces for evil this world has ever—”
“I created people,” said Nandita, “like any other mother. And the Partials, like any other children, have the capacity for good or evil. I’m not the one who raised them, and I’m not the one who oppressed them so harshly they were forced to rebel.”
“Forced?” demanded Kessler.
“You’d have done no less in their place,” snapped Nandita. “You’re more eager to fight what you don’t agree with than anyone I know; anyone but Kira, perhaps.”