“Marcus?” Kira shouted, standing up and edging carefully into the hallway. Green and Colin were both there, in cover positions of their own, linking their confusion. “Marcus Valencio! Is that you?”
There was a long moment of silence, and then she heard him again, his voice shocked and uncertain.
“Kira?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Kira looked up and saw Marcus on an upper balcony, leaning over with wide eyes and his jaw hanging open in abject surprise. He looked like he’d been living in the wilderness for weeks, his bronze skin flushed with sweat and adrenaline.
“Kira!”
“Marcus!”
He ran back toward the escalators, and she did the same, racing to meet him, and he clattered down them and dropped his rifle and flung his arms around her, kissing her joyously and lifting her in the air. She clung to him, laughing and weeping and kissing him back.
“I thought you were dead,” he said, over and over in her ear. “When the messages stopped and the Partials stopped looking, I thought they had you.” She felt his tears on her cheek. “What has it been, a year? A year and a half? How are you even alive?”
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, too happy to let go of him. Marcus, her best friend for years, her boyfriend for some of them. Last time she’d seen him he’d been skinny and pale, a medical intern so focused on his studies he barely left the hospital, and now he was toned and lean, quick and alert, as at home in his weathered combat fatigues as he’d ever been in his scrubs. She kissed him again. “What are you doing here?”
“Quiet down,” said Falin. “Didn’t you say something about an ambush and a murderer?”
“Crap, yes,” said Marcus, and pulled Kira down behind the escalator. “Also: murderess. Don’t be sexist, women can murder people too.”
Falin looked at Kira. “You want to tell us what’s going on here?”
“Marcus is one of my best friends in the entire world,” said Kira. “And he’s here apparently . . .” She looked at him and trailed off, waiting for him to fill in the rest.
“We were trying to find Senator Delarosa,” said Marcus. “I’ll get to that later. While passing through here, we got jumped by two Partials: They got three of us, we got one of them, and then we managed to set up what we thought was a pretty solid trap. A better one than we’d planned, it turns out, since we only hoped to catch one Partial, not . . .” He looked at Kira. “Six.”
Her heart tightened, twisting into a nervous ball. The count of six only worked if Marcus knew her secret: the murderess he’d been hunting, the four Partials Kira was traveling with, and Kira herself. She swallowed nervously. “So you know.”
“Yeah.” He closed his mouth tightly, looking at the floor. “I didn’t know for certain until just this moment, but we had kind of put all the pieces together last year.”
Kira let out a long breath and gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “I guess that saves me the trouble of finding a good way to tell you.”
“Actually I would love for you to find a good way to tell me,” said Marcus. “Knowing that it’s true and actually understanding anything about it are two completely different things, and this . . .”
“I wish I knew what to tell you.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since Morgan captured me,” said Kira. “The first time, when we broke Samm out of prison and crossed over to the mainland. When you rescued me from her, I . . . didn’t know how to tell you. You hated Partials—everyone did.”
“He seems fine enough working with Partials now,” said Falin.
“Meeting one you can work with makes all the difference,” said Marcus. “He’s a buddy of mine, and he’s chasing Delarosa right now, which is something else we need to talk about—”
“Movement!” shouted a gruff, older voice.
Marcus looked up sharply. “Is it the other Partial?”
“Don’t know who else it would be.”
“That’s Commander Woolf,” said Marcus. He grabbed his rifle from where he’d dropped it and shouted a question to the vast, empty mall. “Are we all pretty clear on the issue of friends and enemies? I don’t want anyone getting all excited and shooting the wrong person.”
“A friend of Kira’s is a friend of mine,” called Green.
“And a friend of Marcus has my sympathies,” called Woolf. “But no, I won’t shoot them.”
“She just went off the link,” said Green. “She probably put on a gas mask.”
“Damn,” said Kira. “That’s going to make this a lot harder.” She brought up her rifle and checked the barrel, making sure it was loaded and ready and safe. “You said you had an ambush planned?”
“We have snipers on the upper floor,” said Marcus softly, “bait down there and there.” He pointed along the main hallway, terminating in a clothing-filled department store, and then along a perpendicular hall that led toward a food court. “She took the main hall, probably going after Woolf, since he was the bait in that one, but he’s still talking, so he’s obviously okay. She must have got past him when you showed up and we all started shooting each other.”
“We’ll help you catch her,” said Kira. “We’ve got some questions of our own.” She stood up and jogged down the hall toward the department store, keeping close to the wall with her rifle pointed down. Falin followed close behind her, and she felt the combat coordination flare back to life on the link. Marcus followed behind, running to catch up. “Are there any other exits?” she asked him.
“Two ground-floor doors, but we have people outside both of them.”
“So we won’t go outside,” said Kira. “Let’s keep this among people who’ve already learned not to shoot at us.”
A gunshot rang out from the department store, and Falin muttered, “Tell that to her.”
“Woolf’s in trouble,” said Marcus, and surged forward, but Kira held him back.
“This is the third exit,” she said, pointing to the mouth of the department store. “If we go in there and she gets around us, she’s coming straight back here. Don’t let her past you.”
Marcus nodded. “I’m glad we could have our tearful reunion before I crapped my pants from fear.”
She grinned and slapped him on the back, and he ran to find a good watch position while Kira and the soldiers swarmed into the department store. They walked carefully, watching one another’s backs, clearing each new section and display and rack of clothes before moving on to the next one. The clothes in the store were old, but relatively well preserved; some animals had been in here, and spiders had covered the shelves and corners with gauzy white webbing, but the mannequins still stood, posing proudly, ancient sunglasses perched jauntily on their featureless, yellowed heads.
“Commander Woolf?” Kira called out. “Are you still here?”
There was no answer, and Kira proceeded grimly; the man was either dead or a prisoner. The center of the department store was a tall, open area, three stories of balconies connected by a crisscrossing series of escalators. She caught a flash of movement on the third floor, somebody jostling a rack of suits, and pointed it out to Green. He relayed it silently through the link, and soon the entire group was moving—not toward the escalators, but to the staircase in the back wall.
“The escalators are a death trap,” Green whispered. “They’re long and straight with no cover; she could pick us all off on the first one.” He turned to Jansson. “You stay here and point out any movement you see on the link—our target’s got a gas mask on, so she can’t listen in.” He and Falin and Colin opened the door and moved quickly up the stairs, checking each corner carefully, and Kira followed, still trying to keep up with the rapid link commands. She expected them to bypass the second floor, since the movement had been on the third, but they stopped and did a sweep of that floor as well, leaving Colin to watch the stairs and make sure the shooter didn’t sneak past them on the way down. They were hemming her in, slowly but surely, clearing every possible
hiding place and backing her into a final, inescapable corner. They stayed away from the edges of the balconies, but they could still feel Jansson on the link, watching out for them from below.
MOVEMENT ON THE THIRD FLOOR, came the message. She was still up there.
They moved quickly back to the stairs and went up. Kira felt her trepidation grow and was grateful that she wasn’t broadcasting her fear across the link. She needed to be strong. She followed Green out onto the third floor with her rifle up, crouching low to reduce her profile, watching each corner and shadow with her heart in her throat. The gilled Partial assassin could be anywhere, lying in wait for them, cornered and desperate and deadly.
Kira glanced toward the balcony railing and the wide center shaft beyond, looking for the rack of suits she’d seen earlier. There, she said, locating herself mentally. That means I’m facing left of where I was before, and Jansson is over there—
The suits moved again. She froze in surprise, just for a split second, before dropping to the floor. She wanted to call out to the others that she’d found her, but she didn’t risk it; if the assassin didn’t know she’d been spotted, Kira could sneak up on her. A moment ago she was glad to not be on the link, and now cursed the fact that she was unable to silently communicate what she’d seen. She waved at Green, getting his attention, and pointed at the suits. He nodded, acknowledging that they were the same suits she’d pointed out below, and she shook her head, pointing at them more firmly. He stared back, uncomprehending, and she gritted her teeth in frustration. Right now! she mouthed. She’s there right now!
He stared at her a second longer, then suddenly the link flooded with understanding, and the group of soldiers began maneuvering toward the suit display, converging on the single point with brutal efficiency. Kira followed, but a new doubt was creeping into her mind: Why hadn’t the shooter moved? Why stay in one place for so long? The most obvious answer was that she’d taken up a sniping position, but she didn’t seem to have a good view of anything; the railing was solid, more of a low wall, so she couldn’t shoot or even see through it. That led Kira to the next most obvious answer, and she shouted a warning as soon as she realized what was really going on.
“It’s a trap! She’s trying to draw our attention; it’s a trap.”
The Partials responded immediately, fanning back out, combing over the third floor even more cautiously than before, not taking a single step forward until every step behind them had been checked and secured and cleared. When they finally turned the corner to the far side of the railing, Kira looked at the rack of suits and saw an old man, his arms and legs bound tightly with plastic ties, his mouth gagged, his body lashed to the rack. Each time he moved, the suits shook.
“It’s not a trap,” she growled, “it’s a decoy.” She ran forward and pulled the gag from the man’s mouth. “Where is she?”
“Escalators,” the man gasped. “She crawled down the escalators.”
Kira swore, out loud this time, and stood up to peer over the edge. The escalators were such an obvious death trap that they hadn’t even considered them, and their only pair of eyes watching the center of the room was Jansson, far below, where a body slithering down them would be completely hidden. A sniper up here, in her position by the suit rack, would kill everyone who tried to climb them, but their sniper at the bottom hadn’t seen a thing.
And then the link data wafted up: DEATH.
“Jansson’s down,” said Green. “She’s gotten behind us.”
Kira ran, screaming as she went. “Marcus! Marcus, look out!” A gun fired, and then another, bullets roaring back and forth by the entrance to the mall, and Kira clattered down the escalators as fast as she could, desperate to reach him in time. I just found him, she thought. I can’t lose him again, not now, not like this, I have to help him—
The gunfire stopped, and Kira dropped to the jagged metal steps, rifle at the ready, listening. Was she too late? Was he already dead?
“Somebody better get over here,” said Marcus, and Kira closed her eyes, so relieved she could barely hold her head up. “I think it’s still alive.”
Kira ran down the last few stairs, creeping carefully through the bullet shells strewn on the ground floor until she saw the Partial assassin lying prone on the tiles, her rifle several feet from her hand. There was blood everywhere. Her head was turned to the side, a gas mask obscuring her face, but her pale gills flapped feebly in her neck, opening and closing in a slow, silent gasp for air. Kira approached the downed monster carefully, still terrified of what she could do, half expecting her to leap up and stab her, or bite her, consuming every last bit of life she could before death dragged her screaming down to hell.
Instead the Partial reached up and pulled off her gas mask, panting for air. She was just a girl, Kira’s age, but smaller. Her eyes, dull from blood loss, focused loosely on Kira, and she moved her mouth, trying to speak.
“Who are you?” asked Kira. She kept her rifle trained on the girl, stepping slowly toward her. “Who do you work for?”
“My . . .” The girl’s voice was a ragged whisper, every word a struggle. “My name is Kerri.”
“Who do you work for?” asked Kira again. Her rage was slowly deflating into pity, but she fought to keep it burning hot. “Why are you killing us?”
“You need . . . to be preserved.” The girl moved her finger feebly, her body still flat on the ground, her head resting on the cold, bloody floor. “We don’t want to . . . lose you. When the world ends.”
“The world already ended,” said Kira.
“It’s ending again,” said Kerri, and her finger stopped moving. The life disappeared from her eyes.
Blood seeped out in a widening pool, hot and red and lost forever.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“There’s definitely someone there,” said Ariel, dropping back down behind a tree-lined snowbank. The snow was worse now than it had ever been, a blizzard so thick and windblown they could barely see one another at more than fifty feet. They were north of Riverhead, slogging through wide, flat farmland, and hadn’t heard the noise until it was practically on top of them. “I don’t know who it is, or if they’ve heard us as well.” Ariel shook her head, checking her rifle; it was covered with snow, but it seemed like everything still worked. She wouldn’t know until she tried to fire it. “We need to find better cover if this turns into a fight.”
Xochi scanned the area, though there was little to see. “We passed a farmhouse a ways back, or a church or something. Looked small, wood construction.”
“Not the best defense,” said Isolde. Khan was strapped to her chest, and she covered him protectively with her arms. “We’re on the main road—maybe they’re just passing through. If we get off it, they might not notice us at all.”
“And if they follow us, who knows where we’ll end up?” said Kessler. “You can smell the seawater, even through the storm—too far north and we have our backs against the ocean.”
“I think they’re coming toward us,” said Hobb, running back from his position at the front of the line. “I can take a few shots now, try and get lucky, but that’s only likely to make them mad.”
“We don’t even know if they’re aware of us,” said Nandita. “I can’t feel anything on the link, but who knows how the blizzard’s disrupting that?” She grimaced. “North, then, away from the road. We’ll take shelter in the first suitable structure we find.”
They trudged across the snowy field, Ariel shielding her face with her hands just to be able to see. The world was a white void, unshaped and unmade. Slashing pellets of ice bit into her skin. Slowly the world in front of her grew darker, a patch of gray slowly coalescing to black, and then a building appeared, wraithlike in the snow. It was stone, at least three stories high, with a heavy wooden door flanked by thick stone pillars. It felt unnatural to Ariel, like a castle made real in a realm of dreams, but she ran to the door and heaved against it. It didn’t open. A plaque on the door identified it as the Bluff
Hollow Country Club.
“Over here,” said Xochi, “through the window.” They ran to the side, where a row of tattered red curtains blew fitfully through the empty windowpanes, and crawled through to the faded opulence of the clubhouse. The curtains had done little to keep the wind and weather outside; the floor was scattered with leaves and dirt, and the front edge was mounded with snow. The wooden floor was warped and discolored from long years of water damage, and the once-elegant rugs were molding and frozen.
“I think I saw them following us,” said Kessler, helping Isolde through the window before tumbling in after her. “I’m not sure.”
Ariel looked around the room: overstuffed chairs, embroidered couches, central fireplace, stonework bar. “Through that door,” she said. “There’ll be a restroom or something back there—no windows, no snow, and as soundproof a shelter as we’re likely to get. We don’t want Khan to give us away.”
“What’s our plan?” asked Isolde. Khan was fussing, but feebly. He was too sickly now even to scream, pale and skeletal, and Isolde’s eyes looked equally drained.
“Don’t get shot,” said Xochi. “Or captured, or separated, or anything bad.”
“Does besieged count as bad?” asked Hobb. “If they know we’re in here, the restroom will be the worst place we can hide—we need an exit.”
“The kitchen, then,” said Ariel. She jogged across the room, feeling her muscles protest, and looked through the door behind the bar. “It’s small, but there’s a back door, and a large central counter we can duck behind if anyone starts shooting.”
“If anyone starts shooting, we’re dead,” said Kessler. “A kitchen counter won’t protect us from an armed squad of Partials.” Even so, they all hurried to the back room, crowding in among the old steel bowls and copper pans. Ariel closed the door behind them and checked the door to the back; the view was as ghostly as the one they’d just walked through, and she couldn’t see anything at all past forty feet.