by Dan Wells
Nandita had been gone longer now than she ever had before, and Kira wandered into the kitchen, suddenly anxious. Everything looked normal enough. She walked to the back of the house, and when she found no one she sped up, taking a full inventory of the house. Nandita wasn’t anywhere.
Did the police take her? Was she attacked while collecting herbs? It was possible she’d simply left, like Kira was doing now, packing her essentials and heading out to a farm or another outlying community, but she never would have left without saying something. This doesn’t feel right.
Marcus came first, nodding to Kira in silence and slowly sweeping her with a digital stethoscope; she looked at it quizzically, but he motioned for her to be patient. Xochi and Isolde came a few minutes later, and Kira kept them silent while they watched Marcus search the rest of the room. The scope beeped softly as he ran it past the speaker hub, and he spoke loudly and clearly.
“Hey, Xochi, is it okay if I listen to some music?”
“Sure,” said Xochi, just as clearly. She glanced at Kira, and Kira could see from the gleam in her eyes that she’d figured out what Marcus was doing. They turned to watch him work.
Marcus went to the hub, pulled out a monogrammed pod—KAYLEIGH, 2052—scanned it fruitlessly, then unplugged the hub unit itself and pulled it from the shelf, turning it over and around and examining it from every angle. He paused, looking at the back of it and motioned for the girls to come and see. He pointed through the black metal grille to a small object hidden inside, and they nodded and stepped back.
“Be careful with that drink,” said Xochi. “Last time you almost ruined my player.”
Kira filled a bucket of water in the kitchen and set it in front of Marcus. He crouched over it with the stereo.
“Thanks. Oh, crap—!” He plunged the stereo into the bucket, bugged speaker first, and held it under for a few seconds. He tried the scope again, found no signal, and smiled. He ran a quick scan of both Xochi and Isolde, found nothing, and nodded to Kira. She connected KAYLEIGH, 2052 to a smaller speaker, cranked it as loud as it would go, and set it in the center of the room.
Marcus held up the digital scope. “I was one of the on-call medics when the bomb went off this morning, and I happened to get this thing a little too close to one of Mkele’s listening devices in your lab. Looks like it makes a pretty good detector.” He dropped it on the couch. “The room’s clear, and anyone listening from outside will have a hard time hearing over this.”
Kira looked at each of her friends in turn. “We’re about to commit treason, so if anyone wants to back out, now’s a really good time to do it.”
Xochi looked at Kira. “Is this what I think it is?”
Kira shrugged. “Do you think it’s a plan to attack the hospital, free the Partial, take him home, and conspire with his people to save the world?”
Xochi’s eyes went wide. “Actually no, I wasn’t really thinking that at all.” She shook her head, a quick jerk as if she was shaking water from her face. “Rescue the Partial? Are you serious?”
“They’ve offered a truce, and the Senate has rejected it.” Kira took a deep breath. “If I can work with them I can cure RM—I know I can. But you’ve got to trust me.”
Xochi’s jaw worked up and down, lost for words. Finally she nodded. “I trust you, Kira. Let’s commit some treason.”
“Rock on,” said Marcus. Isolde nodded as well, but looked pale and nervous.
Kira sat down, speaking softly even with the music blaring, just in case. “The Senate has lost it. They blew up the hospital so they could frame Samm, and now they’re going to kill him in a political power play. Madison’s baby is coming any day now, and we still don’t have a cure, and the Voice is practically champing at the bit to stage a coup.”
Xochi grimaced. “What’s the plan?”
“We’ve got to get Samm out of the hospital and off the island,” said Kira. “Start by packing clothes, camping gear, and weapons, and meet me at the corner of Turnpike and Prospect in an hour. Isolde,” she said, unbuckling the pistol holster, “I’ve still got your gun—”
“I can’t go with you.”
“You said you were in,” said Xochi.
“I’ll do everything I can from here,” said Isolde. “I just can’t leave.”
“We’ll need everyone we can get if things go bad out there,” said Kira.
“I can’t go,” Isolde insisted. “If it were just me, I’d be with you, but I’m…” She paused. “I’m pregnant.”
Kira’s jaw fell open. “You’re what?”
“I’m pregnant,” said Isolde. “I found out this morning. You know I’ll help you, but I… I can’t risk it.” She looked Kira in the eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Kira shook her head, still trying to parse the information. She looked at Isolde’s belly, still supermodel flat, then up at her face. “Was it … artificial?”
Isolde shook her head. “Senator Hobb.”
Kira gasped.
“Was it consensual?” snarled Xochi. “Because if it wasn’t, I’m going to take a detour to the Senate chambers on my way out of town, and I’m going to shoot him first.”
“No,” said Isolde quickly, “there was nothing improper—well, I guess he’s my boss, which is improper, but he didn’t force me. I wanted him to. We were working late, and I—”
“Were you drunk?” asked Marcus.
“That’s Isolde’s business,” said Kira. “She said it was her choice.” She flashed Xochi a hard look. “We can shoot him when we get back. Isolde will stay behind and cover our trail. She did it perfectly last time.”
“What is our trail?” asked Marcus. “Even if we can get him out of the hospital, what then? Down through Brooklyn, like you did before?”
Kira shook her head. “They’ll be watching that route as soon as they figure out what we’re doing. We need to head north, and cross the sound.”
The room fell silent; the very idea was terrifying. None of them knew how to pilot a boat, and Xochi was the only strong swimmer in the group. Plus, the land between here and there was riddled with the Voice.
“She’s right,” said Xochi slowly. “There’s too much Defense Grid between us and Manhattan; north is the best way.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “How helpful is this Partial going to be? Does he know where to find a boat?”
“There are boats all along the North Shore,” said Kira. “We see them all the time on salvage runs. All we have to do is find one with a full tank of gas—the gas’ll be old, so it’ll destroy the engine, but it should get us across before the engine dies.”
“If we can make it there,” said Marcus. “The way things are these days, the Voice are more likely than ever to attack a group from East Meadow.”
“They’re not going to go after a bunch of unarmed kids,” said Xochi.
Kira shook her head. “Oh, we’ll be armed.”
“Still,” said Xochi, “they’re revolutionaries, not murderers.”
“You’re planning too far in advance,” said Isolde. “None of this will matter if you can’t get Samm out of the hospital. Or if you can’t even get into the hospital.”
“That’s the hard part,” Kira admitted. “They’re holding him in a reinforced room on the first floor—I saw it on my way out. It’s swarming with guards. If we can find a way to surprise them—”
“He’s actually not there,” said Marcus. Kira raised her eyebrows, and Marcus leaned forward to whisper. “Mkele’s set up the first-floor room as a decoy. Samm’s being held upstairs in the conference room, with just two guards on the door.”
“How do you know?” asked Xochi.
Marcus smiled and looked at Kira. “You know that new fish guy who works the hospital parking lot? I got one of the guards hooked on his oysters, and he asked me to bring him some for dinner tonight. There’s just two of them up there.” He grinned. “It pays to be nice.”
“That’ll help us get in,” said Xochi, “but as soon as we hit that room they�
��ll call for backup, and we’ll never get out again.”
“How about a diversion?” asked Isolde. “I won’t be with you, so what if I do something to pull all the soldiers’ attention somewhere else?”
“A diversion might work,” said Marcus, “but it’s going to have to be huge—we can’t just distract the guards, we have to put them onto something else and hope to get out in the commotion. But it has to be epic.”
Kira nodded, staring coldly at the floor. If she was in, she needed to be all in.
She spoke slowly. “How about a citywide riot?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Kira stood on the corner of Turnpike and Prospect—a block from the hospital, in the shadow of an old ruined restaurant. Aladdin’s. A kebab place, by the looks of it, but all fallen and overgrown. The coating of kudzu helped her peek around the corner without being seen, watching the hospital. A crowd was already starting to form. Word was spreading.
“Isolde’s doing well,” Kira murmured. “I guess when a known Senate aide starts spreading rumors, people listen.”
“The Senate will know it was her,” said Xochi. “They’ll kill her for this.”
“Even if they trace it back to her, she’ll be fine,” said Kira. “She’s pregnant now. Not even Mkele would risk hurting her.”
“So he can preserve his image?” asked Xochi. “He won’t even have one after this. Killing a baby will be the nicest thing he’s done all week.”
“Isolde will be fine,” Kira insisted. She paced a few steps, testing her leg; it still hurt terribly, and she grimaced at the thought of the grueling workout she was about to give it. She paused, thinking, then pulled off her backpack and opened the medkit.
Xochi watched with a frown as Kira pulled out a syringe and a bottle of Nalox. “Drugs?”
“I can barely walk,” said Kira, prepping the needle. “If I’m going to spend my night running from Grid gunmen, I want some more painkillers.”
Xochi smirked. “Did you bring enough for everybody?”
“Shut up.” Kira pricked her leg, drove in the injection, and slapped a Band-Aid on the tiny bubble of blood that welled up from the hole. Almost immediately she felt the reaction, more in her head than her leg: a buzz in her perception, a slight delay in her movements. The morphine was strong. Did I give myself too much?
“Better?” asked Xochi. Kira nodded, and Xochi shook her head. “Just stay in front of me if we start shooting. I don’t want your drug-addled reflexes getting me shot in the butt.”
“There’s Marcus,” said Kira, and pointed at a large group coming down the street. Marcus’s tall frame walked at the center of it. The crowd was shouting and mumbling and arguing loudly. Kira caught snatches of conversation: “… said a Partial … why wouldn’t they tell … new kind of RM … the Senate knew…”
“If it wasn’t before, the secret’s definitely out now,” said Kira. “It’s going to ruin the Senate’s plan either way.”
The crowd passed by, angrily calling for Kira and the others to join them. Kira picked up her bags and fell in with the back of the group; Xochi followed her, and Marcus hung back to join them.
“Nice night for a vigilante execution,” Marcus whispered.
The crowd in front of the hospital was enormous, shouting and chanting. The front doors were blocked by a wall of armed soldiers, and the crowd moved loosely before them, forward and back like an uncertain tide. Kira felt a surge of doubt: What if the riot led to more deaths? Madison and the other mothers, at least, should be safe—the maternity center was the best-defended spot in the city. It was too late to back out now. She said a silent prayer and kept walking.
“We’re going to have to be very careful getting him out of there,” said Marcus. “If this group finds him, they’ll tear him limb from limb.”
“They don’t know what he looks like,” said Xochi. “We can sneak him out like one of us.”
“They’re just as likely to mistake a human for a Partial as the other way around,” said Kira, scanning the mob nervously. “We may have overdone this a little.”
“We haven’t done anything yet,” said Xochi, pressing forward. “This mob doesn’t do us any good until it gets inside and starts breaking things.” She charged into the crowd, pushing toward the front, shouting loudly as she went. “They’ve been in league with the Partials all along! This is how they do it—new diseases, new deaths, new oppressions. This isn’t the first time!”
Kira and Marcus followed as best they could, jostling violently through the heart of the throbbing crowd. The drug haze in Kira’s head made the crush surreal and terrifying, loud and angry and larger than life. She shook her head, trying to concentrate.
Xochi reached the front and turned around, climbing on the hood of an old, discarded car. “Do you know why they’re doing this? Because they want to control us! Because if we’re terrified, we’ll do anything they tell us to.” The crowd roared in agreement, and Xochi continued. “‘Inform on your friends!’ ‘Don’t leave the city!’ ‘Get pregnant before RM kills us!’” The crowd was louder now, more agitated, roiling around Kira in fierce Brownian motion.
Someone threw a rock at the soldiers, missing the men but cracking loudly against the glass door behind them. More rocks followed, a vicious hail, and Xochi kept shouting as loudly as she could.
“We’re sick of secrets! If the Senate has a Partial in there, bring it out where we can see it!”
The crowd surged forward, a flood of fists and anger. The soldiers fired into the air and the crowd pulled back, but not as far as before; the gap was smaller now than ever.
“They didn’t shoot anyone,” said Kira. “They’re probably under orders not to. We have to rush the doors now, before they’re cleared to use lethal force.”
“They’re firing on their own people!” shouted Xochi, reaching for her own pistol. Kira and Marcus shoved forward in alarm, struggling to reach her before she turned this into a shoot-out.
“They have automatic rifles!” Kira shouted, her voice drowned by the crowd. “Xochi, don’t!”
Xochi turned, pistol in hand, and Marcus grabbed her leg and yanked her down. She fell with a thud on the hood of the car, pistol up, and Kira grabbed it, keeping it pointed at the sky. Xochi choked, fighting for breath, then groaned and coughed when it finally returned.
“Ow,” she gasped.
“You can’t shoot yet,” Kira hissed. “The soldiers will turn this into a massacre.”
“Then we need to make this happen now,” said Marcus, and jumped on the car beside Xochi with a rock in each fist. “Storm the doors!” he shouted, throwing his first rock. It hit a soldier in the arm and he whipped up his rifle, pointing it at the crowd; the officer next to him pulled the soldier’s arm back down, shouting something Kira couldn’t hear. Marcus threw his second rock and hit one of the doors squarely in the center, shattering the safety glass into a pile of tiny cubes. It was like a signal to the crowd, and they surged forward again. Xochi shoved her pistol back into her hip holster, and the trio ran forward with the crowd, slamming to a halt as the front line impacted with the soldiers. Kira felt herself being smashed from both sides, felt her feet being stepped on, felt a painful kick against her burn that almost brought her to her knees. If I go down, I’ll be trampled to death. She fought for air, pushing forward with all her strength.
“The crowd will turn to the right when we break through the doors,” said Marcus, grunting with the exertion. “Go left and head for the stairs.”
The crowd behind was pushing forward too strongly, but there was nowhere to go; Kira’s chest compacted under the pressure, the air slowly squeezed out of her lungs. She saw spots, felt her head go light, and suddenly the dam broke. Rioters surged ahead through the doors, pressing the soldiers back or simply swarming around them. Kira ran forward blindly, carried by the crowd, trying simply to stay upright. She passed through the doors and into the wide foyer, picking up speed as the crowd spread out beyond the bottleneck. She shook
her head, trying to clear it, then remembered the stairs and cut left, weaving through the angry mob, keeping her eyes on the unmarked door to the stairwell. Marcus reached it just as she did, and Xochi just after; they pulled it open and dove through into blessed empty silence.
Kira panted, slowly getting her breath back. Her leg throbbed dully. “Anyone following us?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” said Xochi. “Let’s blaze—we have to go now, before the soldiers regain control.”
“Assuming they even can,” said Marcus, leaping up the stairs two at a time. He turned the corner, and his voice echoed down. “We’ll be lucky if we have an island left to save after this.”
Kira pulled out her pistol and moved up after him, Xochi close behind. Fourth floor, thought Kira, counting each flight of stairs as they passed it. Will the Grid pull guards away from Samm to help downstairs, or will they see what’s happening and add even more?
They reached the fourth floor, and Kira crouched by the door, bracing herself.
“Give me a minute to get out my shotgun,” she said, reaching for her bag. “If we’re starting a firefight with armed soldiers, I don’t want to be stuck with this peashooter—”
She was interrupted by the loud crack of a gunshot on the other side of the door. She looked up in alarm.
“They’re already firing?”
“That wasn’t toward us,” said Xochi. “Somebody’s beat us to the Partial’s room.”
“The other stairwell,” said Kira, and threw open the door. Halfway down the corridor the soldiers were crouched low, facing the other direction, guns trained on the far end of the hall. She gasped: Haru was there, and Jayden, and three other armed rioters, though Kira couldn’t tell who was with who. She dropped to the floor and brought her pistol forward, though at this range it would barely do anything.
“Behind us!” shouted one of the soldiers, turning toward Kira, and in that instant one of the rioters landed a lucky shot on the man’s shoulder. The soldier cried out and fell prone, and Haru swung his rifle around and shot the rioter. The lone remaining soldier pressed himself even farther into the doorway.