Partials

“If they’re smart, they’ll head inland, looking for anything that can tell them where they are. We can go up around the bay and find them.”

“We can find another boat and row over there—”

“No we can’t,” said Samm firmly. “This is close to Greenwich, but it’s south, and that means rebel territory. They watch these waters, looking for D Company—the only reason they didn’t see us come in was the storm concealing us. If we row out across the bay, we’ll be spotted for sure.”

“Then won’t they be spotted as well?”

“Not if they wise up and get out of the open,” said Samm. “They’re actually safer here than we are—I’ll automatically link to any other Partials in range, but you humans are effectively invisible. No one expects to find humans on the mainland, so we don’t look for them; we rely too heavily on the link. If those three stay smart, they can move through the entire area without being caught.”

“Great for them,” said Kira, still watching her friends through the binoculars. “How are we going to get past the rebels?”

Samm held up a waterlogged blanket, one of the ones they’d found in the old yacht, and started ripping it into strips. “The link data is transmitted primarily through our breath. If I cover my mouth and nose tight enough, I should be able to mask my presence. A little.” He frowned.

“Are you going to be able to breathe?”

“That’s why this isn’t a perfect solution,” he said. “A gas mask isn’t perfect, but it’s much better. I don’t know how much the rebels know about the mission we launched in Manhattan, but it’s conceivable that things have escalated, and if so, that’s what their scouts will be wearing. They’re the ones we’ll have to be careful of, because I won’t know they’re coming until it’s too late.” He wrapped the wet black cloth around his face, covering his mouth and nose and tying the ripped blanket tightly behind his head. He took a deep breath, trying it out, then tied another strip over the first to give it more grip.

“This should work for a while.” His words were muffled, only barely discernible. Kira nodded and followed him back through the grounds of an old manor house, wishing she’d managed to keep hold of her guns in the shipwreck. She didn’t like the prospect of meeting other Partials without them.

The manor house turned out to be on a small, rounded promontory, connected back to land by a series of narrow asphalt lanes. They crossed each one at a run, crouching low and then ducking behind the nearest spray of foliage, looking for signs that they’d been spotted. If there were other Partials watching, they kept themselves hidden. Kira looked back across the harbor whenever she could, hoping to catch a glimpse of her lost friends, but they were hidden as well. She doubled her pace, desperate to round the harbor and find them before they wandered too far away.

Samm led her through a small shipyard, full of dry, cracking boats and rusted tracks leading down into the water. Beyond that was an old park, overgrown with trees and kudzu, yet originally big enough, Kira estimated, to have made for a series of good-size cornfields. It surprised her that the Partials hadn’t planted it, but she supposed a war zone wasn’t the best place, and this was, as she understood it, the outskirts of the Partial civilization. Perhaps all their farms were farther north? Or did they get food by some other means she couldn’t guess at? It bothered her, suddenly, how little she really knew about the Partials: Here she was, in unknown territory, trusting the enemy she’d been raised to hate. The reason she was an orphan. The reason she’d learned to fire a gun at eight years old.

Do I really know what I’m doing?

Samm led her away from the water’s edge, into the wooded park where they’d be harder to see. He moved quickly but carefully, his eyes darting back and forth, examining not only their flanks but the ground and the trees above them. Kira fell into rhythm beside him, watching for ambush, avoiding fallen branches. They passed a funeral home, and she studied it solemnly. Death seemed to hover in the air.

Beyond the trees they came to a highway, flanked on the far side by another row of thick trees. It cut through the forest like a hallway, and Samm peered down it in both directions—flat to the west, and climbing a small hill to the east. “We’ll make better time on this than next to it,” he said. “It doesn’t take us through the town, just around the edge, so there might not be anybody watching.”

“Will it take us to Marcus and the others?”

“They’ll have to cross it, too.” Samm nodded. He pointed toward a curve in the road, far to the east. “That’s the end of the peninsula, if I’m remembering correctly. If they haven’t already crossed, we can catch them there.”