“They built us for war,” Shon repeated.
“They built us to love.”
Shon sat in silence, staring at his desk. He traced the cracks in the wood, dry and brittle under his fingertip. He stopped, tapped the desk, and spoke quietly. “I want to believe you.”
“Then believe me.”
“It’s hard to believe when they keep shooting at us.”
“So be the bigger man and stop first.”
Shon thought about the army waiting outside, the rage that still fueled them from the loss of their home. From the bioweapon. From the years of hatred and slavery and war that dated back decades. Every memory he had of humans was drenched in hate and death and oppression.
He shook his head.
That’s a coward’s excuse,
he thought.
We didn’t rebel so they’d treat us better, we rebelled so we could live our own lives. So we could make our choices.
If this is the best choice, then it doesn’t matter what the humans do.
“What will they do if we offer a truce?” asked Shon. “Will they accept it?”
“I can’t speak for them any more than you can speak for your soldiers,” said Samm. “Less, actually. I’m still an outsider in their camp.”
Shon raised his eyebrow. “Then why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t,” said Samm. “You should trust Kira Walker.”
K
ira hadn’t slept, and she couldn’t imagine anyone else had, either, the entire refugee camp terrified about Armin, about the Partial army, about—
About Samm. No one had seen or heard from him since last night. She couldn’t bear to think of what might have happened.
“Of course I’m coming with you,” said Marcus, bundling up in as many jackets and blankets as he could find—though Kira noticed he had given the warmest ones to her, and pulled them on gratefully. The first light was peeking through the curtain of another nascent snowstorm, and they were preparing for the long walk to the Partial army. An old man from the boat lines had built them snowshoes to ease the journey, and Kira stooped to lace them tightly to her feet.
If Samm already proposed peace, and the Partials already ignored him, they’re not going to listen to me.
She finished the knot on the first shoe and slowly started lacing up the next.
But I have to try. Even if I die, I have to—
“Man on the road!” said Phan, breathless in the doorway of the command center. Kira looked up sharply, her heart in her throat, but it was Heron who spoke first.
“Can you see who it is?” she asked.
“Middle-aged,” said Phan, “maybe midforties. Dark-skinned. Probably a human prisoner. He’s too old to be a Partial, but none of the East Meadow guards recognize him.”
“Not Samm,” said Marcus.
“He’s not from the group I came here with,” said Kira. “Maybe one of the guerrillas the Partials captured?”
“He’s probably delivering a message,” said Calix.
Haru nodded. “Let’s go.” He sent runners throughout the camp, warning everyone to be on their guard, and led the group to Rockaway Point Boulevard: a long, straight stretch of road from one town to the other. Human guards watched the road from makeshift bunkers, bundled against the snow in mismatched layers and armed with a loose collection of hunting rifles; the best weapons the refugees had left. Kira watched the distant man approach, and after a moment she recognized him.
“That’s Duna Mkele,” said Kira. “The Senate’s old head of security.”
“I thought it might be him,” said Haru. “I guess his resistance force was finally captured.”
“If he’s a resistance leader, this is a prisoner release,” said Heron. She looked at Kira. “Interesting.”
The guards shouted at Mkele to stop a hundred feet from the bunker, and Phan ran out to check him for explosives or other tricks. “He’s clean,” shouted Phan, and threw a blanket around the man’s shoulders, leading him in. Mkele shook Haru’s hand and nodded solemnly at Kira.
“They want to meet,” he said simply. “Their leaders and ours, at the intersection halfway up the road.” He looked at Kira again. “They specifically requested you.”
“That’s getting to be a theme with them,” said Marcus. “Any threats? Are they going to kill a prisoner every day until she shows up to talk?”
“Not that they mentioned,” said Mkele. “Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you: Our treatment has been brutal, and the Partials have been hell-bent on revenge for Delarosa’s little trick, but . . . here I am.”
Kira nodded, thinking. “Do you have any idea what they want to talk about?”
“Our terms of surrender,” said Haru.
“Maybe,” said Mkele. “He said he’d meet us in an hour, minus the time it took me to cross.”
“About forty minutes left, then,” said Phan. “Enough time to get some scouts out into that forest and make sure this isn’t a trap.”
“We’ll send you and Heron,” said Kira, turning to look for her, but the girl had already disappeared. “I guess she’s already out there.”
“Go carefully,” said Marcus, stopping Phan with a hand on his arm. “Keep your eye open for any signs of a double-cross, but assume they’re doing the same, and don’t make any suspicious moves.” Phan nodded and left.
“I guess this means we’re going?” asked Haru.
“I am,” said Kira. She looked at Mkele. “Did they say how many people we could send?”
Mkele shook his head. “They don’t seem concerned about it. Obviously I’m coming with you as well.”
“What about weapons?” asked Calix.
“They didn’t seem concerned about that either,” said Mkele.
Haru growled. “Arrogant sons of—”
“We’re not taking any weapons,” said Kira. Haru started to protest, and Mkele with him, but Kira silenced them both. “No weapons. This is our first real chance for diplomacy, and it could be our last. If it turns into a fight we’re as good as dead anyway, so let’s try to look as peaceful as possible.”
Haru grumbled but pulled out his handgun and set it on a table. The others piled their weapons in the same place, bundled themselves tightly, and set off down the road, careful of the slick ice hidden beneath the soft layer of snow. It was snowing again, gently at the moment, coating the empty forest in a fresh layer of white and gray. They saw a group of people walk into the far end of the road, coming to meet them; as the Partials neared, Kira saw one of them in chains, and tears sprang into her eyes when she recognized Samm.
We still don’t know what this is about
, she reminded herself.
Maybe they’ll execute him right in front of us.
The two groups stopped in a small T-intersection, where a third road ran south toward the ocean. Kira, Marcus, Calix, Ritter, Haru, and Mkele stood silently, facing off against five Partial soldiers and the manacled Samm. They stopped at opposite edges of the intersection, waiting.
“You okay, Samm?” Kira called out.
“Yes,” said Samm, and Kira felt a surge of relief to hear his voice—followed almost immediately by frustration.
Why does he always have to be so taciturn?
The Partial in the center of the line walked forward, his feet crunching in the snow, and stopped in the middle of the icy road. Kira hesitated a moment, then walked forward to meet him.
“My name is Shon,” said the Partial. “Acting general of the Partial army.”
Kira looked him in the eye. “Kira Walker. I suppose you could say that I’m the closest thing the human race has to a leader right now.”
“I was told I could trust you.”
Kira nodded. “Do you?”
“Samm told me some very interesting things about you and your . . . theories.”
Kira couldn’t help but notice that it wasn’t an answer. She humored him and followed the new line of discussion. “If we work together, we can save both species. See that man behind me, second from the end? His name is Ritter, and he’s from the Third Division.”
“I’ve linked him, yes,” said Shon.
“He’s twenty-two years old,” said Kira. “You can cure us, and we can cure you. Regular contact between the species will propagate a biological particle that—”
“Samm explained it all,” said Shon. “On the other hand, he also introduced me to one of the AWOL Partials we’d already captured, a man named Green. It’s hard to believe your theory when the man with the most human contact is lying on his deathbed.”
Kira felt a pang of despair. “Is he already—?”
“He might as well be,” said Shon. “Some of his batch already expired in the night. When I left Green this morning he could barely breathe, let alone speak or keep his eyes open.”
“I’d like to see him again,” said Kira. “Even if it’s only . . . after.”
“Friendships like yours with Green,” said Shon, “or with Samm, or this other Partial behind you, are inspiring in their way, but that’s not enough. You have to see that.”
“I do.”
“The seeds for the hatred between my people and yours were sown years ago,” said Shon. “Before either of us were born. We tried living together once before, and it failed—my best friend was beaten to death by human supremacists in Chicago, five months before the revolution even started, for having the temerity to take a human girl to see a movie.”
Kira was silent.
“You want peace,” said Shon. “You want it, and I want it, but the two of us can’t speak for everyone. For the tens of thousands of scared, flawed, fallible people who are going to be down there every day, living and working and arguing and being . . . people. They’re going to fight, because that’s our natural state of being, Partials and humans. It’s how we were built.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t try,” said Kira. “Things are different than they were before the Break.”
“You don’t know what it took just to get these other soldiers to agree to this meeting,” said Shon, gesturing behind him. His link data was growing more and more exasperated. “The slightest sign of treachery from you could destroy this peace in seconds, and that’s just us. That’s the people I trust. What if we make an alliance and join together, and then one of your humans cracks a joke about Partial labor, or the old work programs that helped spark the revolution in the first place?”
“Don’t assume the humans will be the ones to ruin this,” Kira insisted, feeling her anger rise. “What happens when one of your Partials calls it the revolution, or says something about winning your freedom, standing next to a human who lost his wife and his children and his parents and everything else he ever loved—” She froze, listening. “Wait.”
“I hear it too,” said Shon, and looked up. The entire Partial line had gone tense, listening intently to the deep, rhythmic hum. Kira didn’t dare to look behind her, too worried Shon would see it as a signal to her companions. The general’s link data flooded out in frustrated confusion.
“That’s a rotor,” said Kira, turning south to scan the sky. The snow had come in more thickly, and she could barely see more than half a mile.
“It’s not ours,” said Shon, and then jabbed a finger toward the clouds. “There!” He backed away, shouting to his men. “Fall back!”
“It’s an ambush!” shouted another Partial, and Kira surged forward, trying to warn them.
“Take cover!” she shouted. She heard Marcus shouting for everyone to get back, to find safe positions, but she knew it was too late for that. She was out in the open, weaponless and defenseless, and there was nothing she could do to stop Armin from killing her. Her only priority was to save the treaty, to keep this from destroying the already-too-fragile peace between the humans and the Partials. Shon and his men were taking cover in the trees, but Samm ran toward her, his chained ankles shuffling painfully across the iced road. Kira shouted to Shon, trying to explain what was happening, when suddenly the rotor burst out of the clouds in front of her, snow swirling through the massive blades in the wings. It banked toward her, swooping low over her head and knocking her and Samm to the ground with the force of its downdraft; it tilted back and dove toward her other friends, sending them sprawling. The craft set down in front of them, cutting off Kira’s retreat, and the side door hissed open. Ivies poured out, rifles up and ready, and behind them came Armin: his carving knife in one hand, an empty jar in the other.
“Kira,” said Armin.
“You can have my blood,” Kira shouted, “but nobody else’s.” She pointed behind her at Shon and his sergeants, watching the scene with obvious shock. “We’re making peace here, Armin. This is the end of the war, and I’m not going to let you ruin it.”
Ritter ran out from behind the rotor, a branch in his fist, ripped from one of the snowy trees on the side of the road, but the Ivies had sensed him coming on the link and turned to fire before he’d even cleared the corner of the aircraft. Kira screamed, incensed by his empty sacrifice, but a moment later she saw the sense behind it: Marcus and the other humans had flanked them, charging around the other side of the rotor, surprising the Ivies from behind and tackling two of them to the frozen ground. The remaining Ivies spun again to meet the new threat, and Kira screamed again as her friends went down, as Marcus went down, blood erupting from their ragged coats in bright red clouds. She ran toward them, still screaming incoherently, Samm struggling to hold her back, when the Partials rose up behind her, drawing weapons of their own and charging toward the fight, firing at the Ivies. The Ivies fired back, and Kira screamed as Samm stepped in front of her, taking a bullet in his arm. Armin stood in the middle of the battle, seemingly unafraid, and stopped the world with a thought.
NO
The command rolled out across the link, freezing Shon and his Partials midstep, binding Samm like a man of stone, stopping even the Ivies. Kira stumbled, overwhelmed by the order, by the word, by the entire concept of
NO
. It seemed to fill her link, her mind, her entire body. She gritted her teeth and put her hands to her head, as if she could somehow shut it out.
“That’s better,” said Armin. He looked at Kira, walking toward her slowly. “You were right about one thing,” he said. “This is the end. Maybe not of your war—they look to still have some fight left in them—but of the war’s importance. I have all the DNA I need now. The humans and Partials, so desperate to end each other’s existence, can now do so without harming our future.”