Ruins

“Tell the others,” it said, and straightened to leave. Cedric fired a single shot from his rifle, hitting the thing’s leg. Ariel couldn’t tell if it did any damage. The creature stooped back down in the doorway, its pace measured and deliberate, and Ariel saw some kind of flaps flare open on its shoulders, like giant nostrils. The two Partials dropped unconscious, and Ariel felt a moment of wooziness, like she was about to pass out. She grabbed Xochi for stability, struggling to keep her eyes open, and noted with numb interest that Isolde and Nandita seemed just as unstable. The creature watched them for a moment, as if waiting to see whether they’d fall, then spoke again. “Don’t follow me,” it said. “I already know. You have to tell the others.” It paused a moment, and Ariel got the sudden and unmistakable impression that the thing was surprised. Its surprise washed over her like a thick, viscous wave, and it was all she could do not to yelp in reflected terror.

“Nandita,” said the creature. Ariel didn’t know where its surprise ended and her own began.

“Who are you?” Nandita demanded.

“It’s almost here,” said the creature. “I’m fixing it, and it’s almost done.”

“What are you fixing?” demanded Nandita. “Who are you?”

“I’m me,” said the creature. “The world will be fixed. There will be snow again.”

It turned and walked away.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Samm stood in the center of the hospital cafeteria, watching the Partials react to their latest bit of news. All nine were awake now, gathered here in wheelchairs and hospital beds, most of them still too weak to walk and some of them far worse. Number Eight, a soldier named Gorman, was still on oxygen, his lungs too atrophied to function completely on their own. None of them were officers, but they’d served together before the Break, and they all looked to Gorman as their leader.

“Twelve years,” said Gorman. His face was gaunt, his eyes watery and sagging. He was physically eighteen, like every Partial infantryman, but he was so sickly he looked decades older. “That’s . . .” He paused, lost for words. “Twelve years.”

“Almost thirteen,” said Samm. “I don’t know exactly when you were sedated, but it’s 2078 now.” He glanced at Heron, silent in her corner, and then at the door—it didn’t lock, but Calix had promised to keep everyone out so they could have some privacy. So far she’d done her job well, and the meeting had remained Partials-only.

“The rebellion started in 2065,” said a soldier in a wheelchair. “We might be a month or two off, but that’s close enough to thirteen to make no difference either way.” Samm had learned his name was Dwain.

“The last thing I remember was coming here,” said Gorman. He gestured feebly at the complex in general. “It was when RM was in full swing, when the brass finally decided the humans weren’t coming back from it. We’d been assigned to search the ParaGen compound, to see if there was something we could do about the plague, and then . . . well. Here I am.”

“You don’t remember who sedated you?” asked Samm.

“There was no ‘who,’” said a soldier named Ritter. “I was in full gear when it happened—I don’t remember exactly, but it must have been on a patrol. I think it was . . .” He flashed a burst of frustration across the link. “I don’t remember. In one of the lab buildings, maybe this one, for all I know. It was like a chemical attack.”

The other Partials linked their agreement, and Samm nodded. “The same man who imprisoned you had one other, a soldier named Williams, who he modified to produce a targeted Partial sedative in his breath. We . . . have no way to change him back.”

Everyone shifted uncomfortably.

“The world you woke up in is not the world you left,” Samm continued. “I’ve already told you about the Break, and RM, and the Preserve. What happened to you was done out of a fear of extinction, and while that doesn’t make it excusable, it at least makes it understandable. Outside of the Preserve, the world is empty. The only other settlements on the continent—and as far as we can tell, the entire world—are back east: the humans have gathered on Long Island, in a town called East Meadow, where there’s approximately thirty-five thousand of them.”

The room filled with surprised link data, followed almost immediately by a crashing wave of confusion as the full implications of the Break finally hit home. Dwain was the first to speak.

“Only thirty-five thousand humans? As in, anywhere?”

“That’s the entire world population of the species,” said Samm. “There may be small pockets here and there, but within the next hundred years, at the most, they’ll be extinct.”

“So where are the Partials?” asked Gorman. “We were immune to RM, and there’s no way a group of thirty-five thousand could subdue all million of us in the army.”