by Dan Wells
“Why didn’t the other girls say anything about this?” asked Marcus. “I asked them everything I could about Nandita—everything they could remember, everything they did together. They didn’t say anything about this.”
“I tried talking to them a few times,” said Ariel, “but they never believed me. They never saw the droppers or the clipboard, and they thought the races were just fun games.”
“You’d seen behind the curtain,” said Marcus, “so you saw everything else in a different light.”
“Exactly.”
“But . . .” Marcus paused, phrasing his next words as carefully as he could. “Is it possible—I’m not calling you a liar or anything of the kind, but isn’t it possible—that the things you saw as a tiny little girl were completely innocent, and they just made you . . . paranoid . . . and after that you started seeing something insidious where nothing of the kind was intended?”
“You think I didn’t ask myself that a hundred times a day?” asked Ariel. “A thousand times? I told myself I was crazy, that I was ungrateful, that I was making it all up, but every time I did, I saw something else that set me off again. Everything she did was some crazy, messed-up way to control us, to make us act a certain way or think a certain way or I don’t even know.”
“How can you be sure that was the purpose?”
“Because it said so right on the clipboard,” said Ariel. “It was about Madison, and it was a study of control.”
“What did it say?”
“It said ‘Madison: Control.’ Why is this so hard for you to grasp?”
Marcus shook his head. “I guess it’s just . . . so incongruous from what I saw. Did you tell anybody?”
Ariel snorted. “Have you ever seen an eight-year-old tell an adult that her mom is trying to control her?”
“But at least you tried—”
“Of course I tried,” said Ariel. “I tried everything I could think of, and if I’d known what sexual abuse was, I would have accused her of that, too—anything to get out of that house. But she wasn’t hurting any of us, and my sisters were all happy, and I was just Angry Little Ariel. Nobody believed me, and when even my sisters wouldn’t believe me, I figured maybe the control was already working, and they’d been brainwashed or mind-zapped or worse. I did the only thing I could think of: I destroyed the hothouse.”
Marcus frowned, thinking of the elaborate hothouse in Xochi’s backyard. “She rebuilt that thing herself?”
“You’re thinking of the new one,” said Ariel. “This was at the old house: I smashed it to bits with a crowbar: every piece of glass, every pot, every planter box, every dropper I could find, though I know it wasn’t all of them. Nandita practically exploded when she came home, which I would have loved to see. I ran away to an empty house on the other side of town, and made it almost a month before they found me. I expected Nandita to . . . well, I don’t know what I expected her to do, but I didn’t think she was going to bring me back in. She’d had time to calm down, I guess. She was still as mad as hell, but she brought me back.”
“Because she loved you,” said Marcus, hopefully.
“Because she needed me for whatever insane experiment she was running,” said Ariel. “She couldn’t just start over with somebody new.” She sighed and rapped her knuckles on the wooden steps. “That was winter, and in spring we moved to the new place—she claimed it was water damage, but of course she just needed a new hothouse to grow her herbs. I ran away a few more times, but ‘children are our most precious resource,’ and all that, so they kept bringing me back. The instant it was legal for me to leave, I left, and I’ve never gone back.”
“Maybe the experiments had something to do with RM,” said Marcus. “You lived there until, what, sixteen?”
“Yeah.”
“So she tracked everything, every physical change, up through and including puberty.”
“I assume so.”
“I’m just thinking,” said Marcus. “Madison has the only live baby on the island. Obviously, it’s thanks to Kira finding the cure, but what if it were more than that? It’s at least something of a coincidence. Do you think it might have been something Nandita did? A heightened immune system, or a stronger fetal . . . I don’t know, I’m grasping at straws here. But maybe it was about reproduction.”
“I don’t know,” said Ariel. “I’ve spent years trying not to think about it.”
“And now Nandita’s gone,” said Marcus. “Completely disappeared, right off the face of the planet. And you know what that means.”
Ariel looked up at him. “What?”
“It means she’s not guarding her house,” said Marcus. “And maybe she left some of those notes behind.”
Ariel narrowed her eyes. “That’s in East Meadow—that’s under Partial control.”
Marcus nodded, a hint of his old scheming grin creeping onto his face. “That’s where they’re throwing everyone they catch. Which is going to make it awfully easy for us to get there.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I can’t lose this backpack,” said Afa. “I’m the last human being on the planet.”
“He’s getting worse,” said Samm. Buddy the horse was tamer now, snuffling as Samm patted his neck. Kira was convinced that he and Bobo were brothers, but it might have just been their coloring. They’d been traveling for a week now, and were in the midst of the Appalachian Mountains. Afa had gone through map after map, circling and underlining little roads and towns and peaks, finally insisting on a detour to the top of Camelback Mountain, an imposing giant promising a thousand-foot climb. There was a radio repeater there, he claimed, and with one of his mini Zoble solar panels he could get it up and running again to keep them in contact with the Long Island radios. Heron, to her credit, didn’t object, and they made the trek up a winding road through what looked like an old ski resort. The top, however, brought nothing but disappointment: It wasn’t a mountain at all but the leading edge of a massive plateau stretching west as far as the Partials could see. Heron scrounged the place for usable equipment, while Afa collapsed in a heap of maps and faulty calculations, insisting that this was wrong, that the mountain was here, they were just in the wrong place. It took them nearly two hours to calm him down, and then only when they agreed to stop for the night and rig up the Zoble anyway. Mountain or plateau, there was still a radio repeater, and Kira marveled at the massive latticework of the old metal tower. Afa assured them he’d set everything up correctly, but night had fallen before he finished, and there was no way to know for sure until the morning. The waiting, the inability to do anything productive, made Kira antsy. She decided to brush Bobo’s coat, and Samm joined her.
“I know that we need him,” Samm said, his voice low. “I just don’t know if he’s going to be much use to us at this point.”
“Is that how you think of him?” asked Kira. “Some kind of tool?”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” said Samm. “I’m telling you that I’m worried. We’ve only been out here a week, and there are at least three weeks to go before we make it to Chicago, probably more. By the time we get there, he’ll be a basket case.”
“Then we need to help keep him calm,” said Kira, and as if on cue Afa stood up, waddling to the horses with his backpack clutched in his arms.
“We need to go back,” he said, trying to pick up Oddjob’s saddle with one hand. “All my records—everything we’re looking for. I’ve already found it, we don’t need to go to a data center, we need to go back. It’s right there. It’s safe—”
“Easy, Afa,” said Kira, taking the saddle from him as gently as she could. His agitation was spreading to the horses, and Samm did his best to keep them calm. “Come here,” she said, taking the big man’s hand and leading him back to the fire. “Tell me about your collection.”
“You’ve seen it,” he said, “but you didn’t see all of it. You didn’t see the sound room.”
“I loved the sound room,” she said, keeping her voice soothing
. “That’s where you had all the ParaGen emails.” She kept him talking, hoping the topic would cheer him up, and after nearly half an hour he seemed to calm down. She laid out his bedroll, and he slept with his arms around the backpack like a teddy bear.
“He’s getting worse,” said Samm again.
“Which is impressive,” said Heron, “considering how bad he was to begin with.”
“I’m taking care of him,” said Kira. “He’ll make it to Chicago.”
“You’re talking as if the worst that can happen is he falls apart and turns useless,” said Heron. “I’m expecting him to snap and kill us. Yesterday he thought Samm was trying to steal his backpack; the day before that, he thought you were trying to read his mind. He’s accused me of being a Partial twice today.”
“You are a Partial,” said Samm.
“All the more reason I don’t want him to get violent over it,” said Heron. “There are three different chemicals in this repeater station that could be used to build a bomb, and I guarantee this idiot savant knows how to use all three of them. He’s every bit as brilliant as you said he is, but he is completely broken, and that is not a combination I am comfortable traveling with.”
Kira studied Heron in the firelight, flecks of orange light and deep brown darkness dancing over her. She looked tired, and that by itself made Kira scared. Heron had thus far been invulnerable, more capable than Kira had dared to hope, but if she never slept for fear of a madman’s betrayal . . . Kira whispered softly, “What do you want to do?”
“Me?” asked Heron. “I want to go home and save the Partials. I thought I made that clear.”
“He has a screen in his pack,” said Samm, “and a Tokamin to power it—which might also explain his mental problems, if the radiation’s gotten to him. Anyway, maybe he can show us what we need to do when we get to Chicago, in case he doesn’t make it.”
“I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” said Kira. “He trusts me most.”
“Just stop trying to read his mind,” said Heron. “I hear that bugs him.”
Kira watched the two Partials—the two other Partials, she reminded herself—and wondered. What would happen when they reached Chicago? Would it be infested with Watchdogs, or dragons, or something even worse? Would Afa betray them, or would Heron? No matter how much they bantered, Heron always stayed aloof, always stayed an observer more than a participant. What was she observing? Who was she observing for?
Kira slept against a tree, her back to the fire, her hands on her rifle. In the morning they tested the solar panels, and the radio repeater fired up instantly. Afa had done it all without a hitch. Samm nodded, and though he didn’t say it, Kira got the distinct impression that he was impressed—surprised, almost certainly, but still impressed. Kira patted Afa on the back. “Good job.”
“The Zobles are extremely durable,” he said, though his voice seemed off. “They use a mad cow matrix around doped silicon crystals to increase efficiency.” Kira nodded, unsure how much of his response had been meaningful science, and how much was pure gibberish. His intelligent persona was mingling with his childlike one, which might be good or bad in the long run. Kira was worried that whatever mental scaffolding allowed him to function was starting to break down.
“Let’s test the radio,” she said. He complied, flipping it on and turning the knob carefully, falling into the easy patterns of a technical task he’d done countless times before. He turned, and listened, and turned, and listened, until finally he hit on a man-made—or Partial-made—signal. Kira leaned in closely while Afa fine-tuned the connection.
“. . . retreated. Our sources on the island say it’s only . . .”
“Partials,” said Heron.
“Can you tell which ones?” asked Kira. Afa shushed them, his head cocked toward the speakers.
“. . . killing a new one every day.”
“Northerners,” said Heron. “Trimble’s people, from B Company.”
“What are they talking about?” asked Kira.
Heron narrowed her eyes. “Probably the expiration date.”
“We need to find Marcus,” said Kira, and gently pulled Afa away from the tuning dial. She and Marcus had set up a rotating schedule of frequencies back when they’d been communicating during the invasion, hoping it would make them harder to listen in on. She added the days in her head, calculating which frequency they’d be using today, and hoped he was still listening. She turned the dial and clicked on the microphone. “Flathead, this is Phillips, are you there? Over.” She clicked off the mic and waited for a response.
Heron smirked dismissively. “Flathead and Phillips?”
“That was his nickname in school,” said Kira. “What can I say? He had a kind of a flat head. I started using it to call him couple of weeks ago, because I knew he’d know it was for him, and nobody else would.” She shrugged. “Just another layer of paranoid security. Phillips just seemed like the natural counterpart.”
“Flathead and Phillips are two types of screwdrivers,” said Afa. “Also Frearson and hexhead and clutch and—”
“Yes,” said Samm, touching him reassuringly on the shoulder, “we know.”
“Don’t touch me!” Afa yelled, whirling to his feet. Samm backed off, and Afa yelled again, his face red with fury. “I never said you could touch me!”
“It’s okay, Afa,” said Kira, trying to calm him down. “It’s okay, just hush—I’m going to call again, so we need it to be quiet.” The appeal to technical necessity seemed to work, and Afa sat down again. Kira clicked on the mic. “Flathead, this is Phillips, are you there? Come in, Flathead. Please respond. Over.” She clicked off, and they listened to the static.
“And clutch,” said Afa softly, “and square head, and Pozi, and Mortorq—”
“Phillips, this is Flathead.” Marcus’s voice was garbled and staticky, and Afa’s hand shot forward to tweak the dial. The voice phased in and out. “. . . in very weak, where . . . you in over a week. Over.” Marcus’s voice resolved into a clear signal, and Kira waited for him to finish before smiling and clicking on the mic.
“Sorry about the downtime, Flathead, we’ve been busy. We had to . . .” She paused, considering carefully the best way to tell him where they were without giving everything away to anyone else listening in. “Move. We had to move our base camp; they were too close to finding us. Our communication will be intermittent from now on. Over.”
“That’s good to hear,” said Marcus. “I was worried.” There was a long pause, but he hadn’t said “over,” and Kira wasn’t sure if she should try to speak again or not. Just as she reached for the mic button, Marcus spoke again. “Are you still monitoring radio traffic? Over.”
“We’ve had very intermittent access, like I said,” Kira answered. “What’s up? Over.”
There was another pause, and when Marcus spoke again, his voice was pained. “Dr. Morgan’s taken over the island. She’s conquered the whole thing—not controlling it, not like Delarosa did when she seized power, more like . . . like a zoo, almost. Like a ranch. They’re rounding up everyone they can find, trapping them here in East Meadow, and then killing them. A new one every day.” His voice had faded to a shattered whisper. “Over.”
Kira gasped.
“That’s what we heard that other person talking about,” said Afa, and Kira shushed him with a curt wave of her hand. She clicked the button to talk, already knowing the answer to her question, but compelled to ask it anyway.
“Why are they killing people?” She hesitated before signing off. “Over.”
“They’re looking for Kira Walker,” said Marcus. He was still refusing to give away her identity, but she could hear the pain in his voice, and hoped no one else was listening in on the frequency.
“I warned you it would get bad,” said Heron. She gestured at the radio. “I warned him, too.”
“Shut up,” said Kira.
“You need to turn yourself in,” said Heron.
“I said shut up!” Kira roared. �
�Give me a minute to think.”
“I haven’t told anyone where she is,” said Marcus, still keeping up the ruse. “Not that I even know where she is, but I haven’t told anyone the parts I do know. If she turns herself in . . . it’s up to her. I’m not going to make that decision for her. Over.”
Kira stared at the radio, as if it could crack open and reveal some miraculous answer inside it. She’s killing someone every day, she thought. Every day. It seemed terrifying, horrible, unconscionable, but . . . Was it really any worse than what was already happening to the Partials? Sure, they weren’t being executed, but they were still dying. She had insisted to Heron that this quest was more important than stopping those deaths; it was more important to find ParaGen, to find the Failsafe. To see what answers it held and solve this problem forever, for both sides, not just a Band-Aid but a real, permanent cure. If she was willing to leave the dying Partials behind, she had to be willing to leave the dying humans, too, or it was all an act. It was all lies.
She shuddered, growing weak and nauseated at the thought of so much death.
“I don’t want to be in this position,” she said softly. “I don’t want to be the one who everybody’s hunting, who has to choose who lives and who dies.”
“You can whine about it or you can fix it,” said Heron. “Go back now, and you could save both sides: we have a shot at curing the Partial expiration, and Morgan stops killing humans.”
“It saves them for now,” said Kira. “I want to save them forever.” She paused, still staring at the radio, then turned to Heron. “Why are you here?”
“Because you’re too stubborn to turn around.”
“But you didn’t have to come with us,” said Kira. “You’ve been against this mission from the beginning, but you came anyway. Why?”