Ruins

“Destroy White Plains and the Partial population drops to whatever’s on Long Island,” said Delarosa. “We’ll be back on even footing again, give or take. The Partial leadership will be dead, and the ones left will stop waiting for orders that are never going to come. Maybe they’ll make a treaty with the humans, I don’t know, but even if they attack, the humans will be able to fight back. They’ll have the courage to fight back. They’ll have a chance.”

Vale nodded, thinking, staring at the bomb. “The situation I spoke of earlier wasn’t just smoke,” he said softly. “It’s real. Kira Walker discovered the biological mechanisms, and since then I’ve had the chance to study it out, to dig down into the science of it, and it’s real. It could save everyone.”

“Do you think anyone will go along with it?”

“I thought so,” Vale said, closing his eyes. “A long time ago. But then the Break happened and . . . No, I don’t. I told Kira that if Dr. Morgan found out about the cure for expiration, she’d enslave the entire human population. It took four soldiers less than three minutes to propose two different versions of that worst-case scenario.” He tapped the bomb, listening to the metallic clang. “I had to choose once before, you know. Humans or Partials. I chose to save a group of humans, and enslaved ten Partials to do it. It was the only way.” He sighed. “What else can I do?”

Delarosa furrowed her brow. “What are you saying?”

Vale took the cap off the warhead and looked at the jury-rigged switches. “I’m saying that I still think the end of all this is a choice between the species.”

“Are you serious?”

Vale flipped a switch. “There’s a combination, I assume?”

Delarosa took a deep breath, her voice almost reverent. “Yes.” She hesitated. “Okay. On, off, on, off. Right to left.”

Vale raised his eyebrow. “That’s the secret password?”

“It kept it from going off accidentally,” said Delarosa. “Beyond that, the simpler the better. I figured if I made it easy enough, even if you caught me someone might trigger it accidentally.”

Vale looked at the switches, flipping the first three in turn. “On, off, on.” He looked up. “Any last words?”

“My shoulder hurts,” said Delarosa. There was steel in her voice. “Get it over with.”

Vale closed his eyes, speaking not to her but to the entire world. “I’m sorry.”

Off.

PART 3

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The hospital shook, and Kira stumbled. “What was that?”

The noise continued, a distant rumble, deep in the bones of the earth.

Green raised his rifle at Armin, and one of the Ivies saw the move, perhaps even anticipated it, raising his own rifle at Green. Armin leapt through a side door and out of sight. The entire exchange was so fast Kira barely even registered it.

“Holy—” Marcus spluttered, but that was all Kira heard before Green fired a long, loud burst into the hallway, scattering the Ivies, and pulled him and Kira back into the stairwell. The Ivies took cover and returned fire, but the three companions were already diving down the first flight of stairs, throwing themselves to the floor. Bullets riddled the door above them, tearing through the wood in a furious hail of splinters and shredding the drywall on either side, only to ping and ricochet off the thick concrete steps. At the first break in the shooting Green fired back, and urged the other two farther down the stairs. The rumble they had felt hadn’t gone away; instead it was gathering in intensity.

“We can’t leave,” Kira shouted. “That’s my father!”

“Your father wants to kill you,” said Green.

“I have to talk to him,” Kira insisted, trying to get back up. “I have to stop him.”

Green threw her back down, shouting to get through to her. “We’ve lost the advantage up there—they have the numbers, they have the high ground, and they have cover. Put your head above those stairs and they will shoot it off.”

“But they have a rotor on the roof,” Kira snarled, trying to wrench free of him. “They’re not trying to occupy the floor, they’re trying to get away!”

Another storm of bullets ripped through the air, and the three crouched down, covering their heads. Marcus crawled to Kira’s side and shouted in her ear, barely audible above the gunfire.

“There’re stairs at the other end of the hall!”

Kira nodded, and they crawled down out of the line of fire. “Each floor is a long T shape,” Kira explained to Green. “We’re on one branch of the T, but there’s another staircase on the end of the other branch, where we can get up behind them.”

“You don’t think they’re watching it?”