Partials

The bay they had left was long and thin, and they didn’t dare to try the boat’s motor until the shores on either side fell away and the dark blue sound opened up around them. It worked fitfully, but it worked, and they headed north as straight as they could until the sky began to lighten and the featureless horizon became tinged with the green and brown of the mainland. They angled toward it, curving west. Kira hoped the motor would last until they got there; she was far too tired to row.

“Mamaroneck?” asked Jayden. “That might actually be a sillier name than Asharoken.”

“Mamaroneck is a good spot,” said Samm. “It’s a little farther south than I’d like to be, but nobody’s stationed there. We should be able to land without being seen.”

“How important is it that we aren’t seen?” asked Marcus. “These different factions—are we talking about differing movie opinions or full-scale holy war opinions?”

“If they see us, they’ll attack us,” said Samm. “I’ll be imprisoned and used for leverage in one dispute or another, and I don’t know what they’ll do to you.”

Kira looked up at the stars. “I take it not all the factions are as friendly as yours.”

“Mine isn’t especially friendly either,” he said quickly. “Just because they sent a peace proposal doesn’t mean they’ll open their arms to any human that walks in. Our disagreements with the other factions are … heated, and that’s made us cautious, and over time that’s made us suspicious. We still have to approach carefully.”

“How can we tell the factions apart?” asked Xochi. “Do you have different uniforms, or… I don’t know, different-colored hats?”

“I don’t know if you can without the link,” said Samm. “My faction is called D Company, and most of us still wear that insignia, but honestly by the time you’re that close it’s probably too late. We’re talking about a war zone.”

The motor cut out again, sputtering to a stop. Jayden stood up, yanking on the pull cord a few useless times, then hit it with a wrench and yanked again. The motor came back on with a sound even feebler than before.

“Old gas,” said Jayden, throwing the wrench back into the bottom of the boat. “It’s either killing the engine or running out. Either way we’re going to end up rowing the last mile or two.”

“Who are we going to run into?” asked Kira, looking at Samm. “How much of a war zone are we talking about?”

“The main group of rebels is north,” said Samm, “in a place called White Plains, and beyond that in Indian Point. They’re the ones who run the reactor.”

“Whoa,” said Xochi, “a nuclear reactor?”

“Of course,” said Samm. “How else would we get our energy?”

“Solar panels,” said Xochi simply. “That’s what we use.”

“And it’s probably sufficient for your needs,” said Samm. “The nuclear plant in Indian Point used to power hundreds of millions of homes before the war—now that there’s not much more than a million of us left, it generates more than enough for anything we could ever need. The rebels maintain it. D Company found a way to tap into it a few years ago, and they still haven’t noticed.”

“But nuclear power is dangerous,” said Xochi. “What if something happens? What if it leaks or melts down or whatever?”

“A lot of them did,” said Samm. “When RM hit and the humans started dying—when you really started to disappear, and we knew there was nothing we could do to stop it—we found as many nuclear plants as we could and then shut them down safely. There’s another one in Connecticut, just sixty miles away from you guys across the sound.” He pointed to the northeast. “If that had gone into meltdown, you’d probably all be dead.”

“Right,” said Jayden derisively. “The noble Partials trying to save mankind.”

Samm nodded. “Haven’t you ever wondered why the world isn’t more messed up than it is? Why the cities aren’t burning, why the air isn’t black with nuclear fallout? You died too quickly—some of you had time to shut off the power plants and the factories before you disappeared, but not everyone, and all it takes is one unattended reactor to cause a lethal meltdown. Even when we realized what was happening, we couldn’t shut them all down; we lost one in New Jersey, and another in Philadelphia, and more and more as you move west across the continent. That’s why we tend to stay east of the Hudson. Other parts of the world had even more reactors than we did, but without an army of Partials to step in and stop them, we think a lot more of them may have gone critical. Maybe as many as half.”

Nobody spoke. The coughing buzz of the motor filled the boat. We always wondered if there were more survivors, thought Kira. The RM immunity would have left the same percentage alive in other countries that it left in ours.

Is it really possible that everyone else is dead?