Partials

Kira stared at the hospital, willing herself to find something, anything, that she could use to get in. I’m a wanted criminal with a face well-known by every single person in that building. If I get in, it will be because I’m in chains. She shook her head, forcing herself to think it through. I am stronger than my trials, she thought. I can use my trials to help me; I can make them serve my own ends. Don’t say, “I’ll never do it,” say, “How can I turn this situation in my favor?” She studied the building more closely, counting the guards she could see, estimating the number of guards she couldn’t, drawing a detailed mental picture of the inner hallways to guess where each soldier would be stationed. She counted the windows, determining the exact location of every good entrance point, and found to her dismay that each one had been blocked by cars or reinforced with sheets of metal and planks of wood. It’s too well defended. They’ve thought of everything—they’ve anticipated every plan we could use.

She glanced up at the snipers on the roof, commanding a matchless view of the land around the hospital. Partial or not, they could still shoot me down no matter how fast I try to run—

She paused, her eyes caught by a gleam of light from a window. That’s the fourth floor—the only people who use that floor are the Senators. Are they meeting right now? Is there any way that could help me?

“Even if we get in,” said Jayden, “I don’t know how we’d ever get out again—not with Madison. They barely let her out of her bed, they’d never let her out of the hospital, and we don’t even have the jeep to hide her in.”

“You are just a little ray of sunshine,” said Marcus. He stood up. “This is fantastic—we can’t get to the hospital, we can’t get out, we probably can’t even get out of East Meadow. Our uniforms don’t even help us anymore—we have literally nothing.”

“That’s not true,” said Kira, looking back at the hospital. There was definitely light on the fourth floor. “You have me.”

“You’ll excuse me for not jumping with joy,” said Farad.

“See that light?” she asked, pointing at the lit upper windows. “That’s the Senate, and you’re going to bring them the one thing they want more than anything in the entire world: me.”

“No, we’re not,” said Marcus hotly, echoed by all three of the others.

“Yes, you are,” said Kira. “Our plan is destroyed, we can’t get Madison out, but we can still give her the shot—if we can get inside. You don’t need me to be there when you do it, and I was serious about giving my life for this. If Arwen lives, I don’t care what the Senate does to me.”

“We’re not going to give you up,” said Xochi.

“Yes, you will,” said Kira. “You pull down your hat brims, march up to the door, and tell them you caught me trying to sneak across the border. It’s the most believable story we could possibly come up with, because any soldier smart enough to be listening to his radio will know people have been hitting the border all day. They won’t even ask for ID, because why would Voice spies turn in one of their own?”

“Good question,” said Xochi. “Why would we? That doesn’t gain us anything.”

“It gets you inside the hospital,” said Kira. “Just hand me off to the guards inside, they’ll take me up to the Senate, and you head to maternity.”

“We don’t have to hand you off,” said Marcus, “once we’re in we could just … make a break for it.”

“And set off every alarm in the building,” said Kira. “If you turn me over, you can work in peace.” She took Marcus’s hand. “If this cure works, humanity has a future; that’s the only thing we’ve ever wanted.”

Marcus’s voice cracked when he spoke. “I wanted it with you.”

“They might not kill me outright,” said Kira, smiling weakly. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Marcus laughed, his eyes wet with tears. “Yeah, our luck’s been awesome so far.”

“We’ll need to call ahead,” said Farad, hefting the radio, “just like we did with the checkpoint. If they hear us before they see us, we stand a much better chance of making this work.”

“We can’t risk the same trick twice,” said Jayden. “Someone who knows exactly how many patrols there are, and where they’ve been assigned, is going to be listening. It won’t take long to figure out we’re lying.”

“We can’t just show up without calling in first,” said Farad. “How suspicious would that look?”