Ruins

“It makes me feel like bait,” said Kira, and nodded back to the refugees struggling behind them. “I just hope none of the others get caught when the trap goes off.”

They traveled nearly a mile, and Kira felt her toes and face go numb, when Levi called out a warning. “Bridge out!”

“What?” Kira scrambled ahead to join him, and stared openmouthed at the giant gap in the road. “Did it collapse?”

“It looks like someone ahead of us already blew it,” said Tomas, and pointed at the rubble. “That’s a blast pattern, and you can see the blackened marks under the edges of the snow.”

Kira walked farther forward, looking at the rocky shores of the island. “We’ll have to swim across.”

“In this weather?” asked Marcus. “That channel is deep and ice cold—if it weren’t seawater, it’d be frozen solid. Not to mention, we were planning to blow every bridge we crossed—if whoever’s ahead of us did the same, we’ll never make it across every gap. We’d just be stranding ourselves out there.”

Kira cursed, grinding her teeth. “They’ve probably blown the eastern causeway, too.”

“It’s not worth going three miles out of our way to find out,” said Tomas. “We’ll have to go back north, and then west on the mainland.”

Kira shook her head. “The army’s behind us.”

“And now it’ll be closer behind us,” said Levi. “Do we really have a choice?”

“No,” said Kira. She made a fist, growling in frustration, then took a breath and forced herself to think critically. “If we assume they’ve blown all the other bridges, our only access to the landing zone—or what we assume is the landing zone—is overland through Inwood and Rockaway.”

“That’s right,” said Marcus.

She turned and started trudging back up the road. “Come on. We have to get back to the others and turn them around.” She rubbed her hands together, looking at the sky as the clouds slowly closed overhead, heralding another storm. Maybe Marcus is wrong, and I do have a destiny. Maybe we all do.

Maybe it’s our destiny to die.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Kira led her refugees north, around a narrow inlet of the bay that cut deep into the ruined city, and then west along a broad thoroughfare called Merrick Road. It made them easy to find, but with the army so close behind them, they had no hope of hiding. Their only hope was to outpace the army, and Kira drove the group as hard as she could, shouting at them to run long after they had no breath to keep going.

A straggler in the back stumbled and fell, blood welling up from a gunshot wound; seconds later the sound of it reached them, echoing dully through the empty streets.

“Long-range sniper,” said Green. He winced with each step, struggling to keep up even with the slowest humans. Kira opened her mouth to yell, ready to tell the group to scatter into cover, but Green stopped her. “The snowfall’s getting thicker by the second; they won’t get more than a few more shots that good. They’re just trying to slow us down.”

“I don’t want to let anyone die,” said Kira. But she didn’t want to leave the main road, either, and taking cover would only give the army time to catch up. I’d hoped we might be able to talk to them, she thought, but if they’re shooting us on sight, that’s probably not an option. She studied the road and saw an apartment building two blocks ahead that protruded farther out than its neighboring buildings; the upper windows had a commanding view of the entire road behind them. She scrambled across the ice to Levi, half a block ahead of her, and pointed it out. “With a sniper up there, we can bring their pursuit to a halt. They’ll be walking straight into our fire.”

He turned toward the building, ready to carry out the plan, but she stopped him. “No, not you.”

“What?”

“Whoever goes up there might not come down,” she said. “You’re not a hired gun here, you’re one of us.”

“It’s a solid plan,” said Levi. “And I’m a—”

Kira cut him off before he could say it. “Partial, human, it doesn’t matter. We’re all in this together now. I’m not going to send you into that building just because you’re designed for it. We’re working together now, and—”

“Kira.” Levi held up a hand. “I wasn’t going to say ‘I’m a Partial,’ I was going to say ‘I’m a crack shot.’ But I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Oh.” Kira blinked. “Well, I need you with the group. You’re a natural leader. And you’re not the only one who can shoot.” She turned to face the line of human refugees. “How many of you can shoot a rifle?”

A few people tentatively raised their hands, and Kira nodded. “Now: How many of you are trained?”

Two hands stayed up. Kira swallowed her sudden guilt and self-loathing, forcing herself to think of the group, and pointed to the heavier of the two. “What’s your name?”

“Jordan.” The rest of the column shuffled past them, trudging onward through the snow.