“It doesn’t have to be that way,” said Kira, forcing the words out. “It’s your plan—the one you made all those years ago. It can still happen.”
“For the moment, perhaps,” said Armin. “But eventually they’ll start fighting again. They’ll blame each other for your death, for not saving you or killing me. They might even try to work together to leave this island before it irradiates them all beyond recovery, but it won’t last. Their differences are too great, and the biological peace I tried to force with RM and the Partial DNA wasn’t enough.”
With a herculean effort Samm moved his foot, planting himself in Armin’s path. He stared at the man with clenched teeth, too rigid to speak, but determined to defend her.
Armin stopped in surprise. “Impressive. But it doesn’t matter. Jerry has reset the planet, and I’ll start over with a new species, built as one from the beginning instead of this ham-fisted attempt to make two coexist. They will inherit the Earth, and you will be their mother, and they will go on to greater and more glorious things than any of us could imagine. You don’t understand this yet, and I suppose you never will, but that’s the greatest goal of any parent: to be surpassed by his children.”
“So let me live to surpass you,” said Kira. “It can’t be that hard—I’m already not a psychopath.” She forced her legs backward—first one, then the other, draining every ounce of her will. She didn’t know if she could take another step.
“Shortsighted comments like that are the surest sign that you’re already not worthy of the new world.” He stepped around Samm, holding up his knife, but with a guttural roar the Partial moved again, barring the Blood Man’s way. “Don’t make me kill you, too,” said Armin calmly. “I don’t wish to harm anyone, but I will have her DNA at any cost.”
“If you want a new world, a world that can live in peace, you have to
let go
,” said Kira. “From the beginning of this whole thing, the creation of the Partials and the formation of the Trust, you’ve been trying to control it, to manage every step of every process. That’s what failed, Armin. Not the biology, but your attempt to control it. We have to be able to choose. We have fallen, and we have to rise up again.”
“Humans have had their chance,” said Armin. “They failed, and they nearly took the entire planet with them. That isn’t going to happen again.”
“Damn straight it won’t,” said a voice. Armin turned in surprise, and Kira forced her head sideways.
Heron was walking slowly out of the trees, playing idly with a handgun.
STOP
Kira felt Armin’s new link data batter at her will, at her very sense of self, but Heron simply smiled and kept coming.
“I see,” said Armin. “One of the Thetas.” He set his glass jar carefully on the ground and straightened up with knife in hand. “This is just what I was talking about, Kira. The Thetas have free will—the others told me I was crazy to make a Partial model that couldn’t be controlled through the link, but I was an idealist. I believed then, as you believe now, that the element of choice was too important to completely cut out of the species. Now I know better. I gave them choice, and all they used it for was disobedience.” He tilted his head, looking at Heron with cold, calculating eyes. “I thought I’d hunted all of you down.”
“You were the one who killed the other spy models?” asked Heron. “Every word out of your mouth is another reason to kick your ass.”
Armin shook his head. “I might not be able to control you, but I have gene mods you can’t imagine. Attacking me would be folly.”
“More and more,” said Heron, reaching a distance about ten feet away from him, and slowly circling to the side. “Kira, sweetie, I’m going to murder your dad.”
Kira tried to answer, but the link still held her locked in place.
“I designed you to be an evolution of the Partial template, Theta, but now I know you’re exactly why we need to start over,” said Armin, and Kira could hear the impatience rising in his voice. “We need a species that dreams of the stars, not one that lurks in the shadows and kills for sport.”
“You want a species without me in it?” asked Heron. “Bite me.” She dashed forward in a blur, firing her pistol; Armin sidestepped the first shot easily, and she sent the next one to his right, missing on purpose, driving him to the left where her other hand was ready with a knife. He saw the feint coming, deflected the knife in a single swift movement, and spun back the other way, leaving her line of fire just as she was bringing the barrel of her gun back toward him; he stepped between the bullets so precisely it looked rehearsed.
“You can’t be controlled through the link, but you still broadcast tactically,” he said. “I know everything you’re going to do before you do it.” She looked unfazed, ignoring him and focusing on the fight. He danced lightly through her next several gunshots, moving so calmly he never looked like he was straining. Heron worked her way closer, sometimes leading him with bullets, sometimes trying for a hit, all the time working her way back into knife range. Kira tried to keep track of the number of shots, wondering when she would run out, when suddenly Heron slashed with her knife, dropping her gun hand and ejecting the ammo clip from the pistol; it slid across the ice, and when Armin stepped back to dodge the blade, his foot landed on the sliding metal clip and he lost his balance, throwing out his arm to keep from falling. Heron took the opening with a vicious grin, leaping forward to slash at the man’s throat, but he turned his pinwheel into a parry, taking her blade on the bone of his arm and slashing back with his own knife. Heron backed up, reassessing the situation.
“That was a good trick,” said Armin, “but you can’t beat me.”
“Probably not,” said Heron. “Doesn’t mean I can’t win.” She paused. “Kira?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me you’re sure about this,” said Heron. “Tell me it’ll work, and everyone will live, and I’m not just wasting my time.”
Kira set her jaw. “I promise.”
“Well then,” said Heron, drawing another knife from her belt. “Let’s end this.”
She dashed forward, a blade in each hand, slashing and stabbing like a tornado of steel. Armin struck at her, a clear feint to drive her to the side, but Heron screamed and took the blade in her chest, catching the weapon with her own body and bearing him backward with the force of her charge. His eyes widened in shock as he tried to draw back his knife, but it was too late; Heron had her opening.
Six lightning-fast slashes from her knives, and she had cut him to ribbons.
Armin teetered on his feet, bleeding from a dozen deep slashes in his neck and chest, and collapsed into the snow.
Heron started to pivot but collapsed beside him, his knife still deep in her heart.
DEATH
Kira felt the tears on her face, hot and freezing at the same time. She forced her foot forward, first one inch, then two. Armin’s overpowering command data faded from the air, and she took another step, then another. Heron’s blood steamed in the frozen road, melting dark red holes in the snow below her.
Two more steps. Three.
Kira uncurled her fingers with a groan, stiff from the cold and the iron grip of Armin’s link. She reached Heron and sank to her knees, checking the girl’s throat. Heron’s pulse was faint and erratic. She put her hands over the wound, but it was a bloody mess, and she knew it was too late.
Heron’s hand reached up and found Kira’s, feebly grasping it with useless fingers. Her voice was a whisper. “If my life had no meaning, there was no reason not to end it.”
Kira gripped the girl’s hand tightly, her heart breaking. “So you ended it?”
“So I gave it meaning.”
Heron’s eyes fluttered and rolled back. Her hand went limp. Kira sobbed and held her, feeling the last of her life fade away.
DEATH
G
eneral Shon walked slowly up behind her and knelt in the snow at Kira’s side.
“I promised her I’d make this work,” said Kira. “I know it’s not going to be perfect, or easy, and for all I know it’s going to fail, but . . .” She clenched Heron’s hand in her own. “We have to try.”
Shon nudged Armin’s body with his glove. The man was limp and lifeless. “After listening to this bastard tell me it was impossible, I’m inclined to give it a shot just to prove him wrong.”
“There are worse reasons for saving the world,” said Kira.
Samm joined them now, kneeling by Heron’s side. He took her hand in his own, drawn short by the chains on his wrists, and watched her in silence. After a moment he looked to the east, toward the Partial camp. “Someone’s coming to check on you.”
“Must have heard the rotor,” said Shon. “I don’t . . . wait. There’s a whole group.”
Kira stood up, watching more shapes emerge from the snow. The man in the lead was walking stiffly, almost shuffling, as if he were sick. Kira took a few steps toward him and felt a rush of emotion as she recognized his face. “Green!” He waved, and she ran toward him, wrapping him in a hug. “You’re alive!”
“It worked,” he said, looking at his hands and arms as if they were new: strange, wondrous things he’d never seen before. “I . . . got better.” He gripped her by the shoulders. “I’m not a hundred percent, but . . . you saved me, Kira.”
Shon stopped next to him, staring in wonder. “Green?”
Green turned toward him and saluted. “I left the army, sir, but I’m ready to enlist in the new one.”
“What new one?” asked Shon.
“A Partial just survived expiration, and you’ve got twenty thousand more looking for the same treatment.” Green pointed behind him, at the massive wave of Partial soldiers, and grinned happily at Kira. “Is this where we sign up for the human/Partial alliance?”
An Ivie bullet had grazed the side of Marcus’s head, scraping away the skin right down to the bone and knocking him out cold, but he was alive. Kira wrapped the wound and roused him, and he helped with the others—stopping blood wherever they could, stuffing holes with bits of ripped cloth, and then helping everyone back to the camp. Haru was in the worst shape, his gut punctured and his right hand mangled, but he was stable. Six Ivies were still alive as well, and surrendered on the spot with their leader dead. Kira led them back to the human camp, and Shon and Mkele stepped in for Haru, reorganizing the evacuation, slowing the frantic pace while still planning to get everyone clear of the fallout. With the Ivies’ old rotor to help, they could tighten the schedule considerably.
Kira dressed Samm’s wound herself, laying him on a sterilized table in their crowded makeshift medical center and cleaning his shoulder with alcohol before carefully stitching it closed. “This reminds me of being in the lab,” she said, remembering their time in the East Meadow hospital when she’d studied him, talked to him, and ultimately decided to help him. She’d felt a connection to him she hadn’t felt with anyone else, not even Marcus, and she’d worried for a time that it was just the link, traces of it drifting on the fringes of her mind. She looked at the next table in the row, where Marcus was stitching a bullet hole in Calix’s leg—her other leg, now a mirror image of the one Heron had shot months ago.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,
Kira thought, and looked back at Samm.
But I know what I want to do.
“I need to talk to you,” she said nervously.
“Are you done with my shoulder?” asked Samm.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“I did,” said Samm, wincing as he raised himself upright and eased gently off the table. “But I need to talk to you, too.”
Marcus looked up from his surgery. “You’re going to do it right here? Just right in front of me?”
“You’re a good man, and a good friend,” Samm said to him. “I apologize for this.” He took Kira’s hands in his and looked into her eyes, and she looked back trembling. “Kira, I love you. I didn’t tell you then, but I loved you in that lab, and I loved you when you broke me out of prison, and I loved you when I said good-bye on the dock, and when I said it again in the Preserve. It tore me apart to see you leave me, both times, like you were taking my heart with you. You’re a part of me now, and I don’t ever want to say good-bye to you again.” He paused. “Everyone left on the planet is going to cross the ocean, and find a new home, and start a new life. I want to start that new life with you.”
Kira was crying, holding his hands so tightly she worried she was hurting him. Around them, the medical center was crowded and buzzing with activity, but his words were the only thing she heard. Samm turned back to Marcus. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how we make this work.”
Marcus’s face was impossible to read, but it finally broke, and he laughed. “You don’t apologize for this, Samm. It’s love, and love doesn’t weigh its options and pick the best one—love just wants things, and it doesn’t know why, and it doesn’t matter why, because love is the only explanation love needs. Looking at Kira right now, I . . . know this is what she wants too. I—” He stopped and looked away sharply. His voice was thick with emotion. “I’m not going to stand in the way.”
“Thank you, Marcus,” Kira whispered, wiping a tear from her eye. She looked at Samm, seeing herself reflected in his eyes. “I love you Samm. I do.” She pulled him close and kissed him.
Marcus wiped his eye, watching them kiss, then turned back to his surgery and sucked in a breath. “Well. Isn’t that just a kick in the teeth.”
“Tell me about it,” said Calix.
Marcus glanced at her, then went back to work on her leg. “You and Samm?”
“Once upon a time . . .” She watched them a moment longer, then looked back at Marcus. “Did you mean all that stuff you said? About love knows what it wants and it doesn’t matter why?”
“Yeah,” said Marcus, “I do. I guess. It sounded right at the time, and I don’t
not
mean it, but . . . You know how it is. Stop moving.”
“So what are you doing tonight?”
Marcus faltered in surprise, almost stabbing her with his tweezers. “What?”
“I’m single, you’re attractive, and we’re both stuck in this hospital anyway. What do you say?”