Ruins

“ParaGen was bombed pretty heavily in the Partial War,” said Kessler.

“I know,” said Nandita icily. “I was there. But it was a rugged facility, and something may have survived. ParaGen had the equipment to make a creature like that—though in the old days we would have made the changes more subtly, more human-like—and also to do whatever else the creature was talking about. Fixing the world, the climate.”

Ariel sneered. “How could ParaGen ‘fix’ the climate? You were a genetics company—you can’t just gene-mod the wind.”

“You can use genetics to fix anything, given enough time and energy,” said Nandita. “Genetic engineering is the most powerful force on the planet. The ParaGen facility was built on an old radioactive materials site, and we built bugs designed to absorb the radiation and neutralize it; we made other bugs to nourish the soil and plants. By the time of the Break, it had become a paradise. I’m not saying this is what happened, because I don’t know, but someone with the time and the means could alter the climate by engineering bacteria designed to radiate or absorb heat, or to unlock water tied up in certain areas or aquifers. On a large enough scale you could change the weather patterns, and eventually the seasons themselves, but it would require an unbelievable amount of energy to create and distribute that kind of bacteria on anything less than a geologic time frame. ParaGen’s old facility might still have power, but they don’t have that much.”

“So somebody made a bunch of germs to alter the weather,” said Isolde, “and a creepy monster thing to tell us about it. The fact that that sentence explains anything says a lot about how little sense the world makes right now.”

“That doesn’t explain how it recognized Nandita,” said Ariel. “This wasn’t some random vat-born monster; it knew you. It had seen you before, and the way it talked, it was expecting you to recognize it.”

“What if it was gene mods?” asked Xochi. “Not a new creature, but someone you used to know . . . modded up and . . . weirdified. You know what I mean.”

“That many gene mods would drive a person mad,” said Nandita. “We’ve seen it happen before, and on a much smaller scale. Something that drastic would break the subject’s mind in half.”

“That might actually explain it,” said Ariel. “Do you know who it might be?”

“There’s the expressway,” said Kessler. They’d been following a trail at the base of some telephone poles, cutting a thin forest path between the homes and businesses on either side, but the trail had run out. The few telephone wires still attached stretched out over a wide gully, filled with asphalt and cars—Ariel shoved her way through the undergrowth to get a good look and counted ten lanes, plus four open shoulders separating them from the edges of the road. “Two hundred feet across, minimum,” said Kessler, “and not enough vehicles to provide any meaningful cover. If we go for this, we have to go fast and lucky.”

“Last time we crossed this expressway, we went under it,” said Isolde. “I liked that better.”

“There’s nowhere like that anywhere around here,” said Kessler. “Just bridges over it, like that one, which has no sides and leaves us probably more exposed than just running across here.”

“I’ve done this before,” said Xochi. “We made it just fine.”

“What do we get into if we stay on this side?” asked Madison. “Is crossing it really worth the risk?”

“Partial patrols are more likely on this side,” said Kessler. She took Xochi’s map and held it open for the group to see. “On top of that, in another mile or two we’ll hit this interchange, and beyond that this entire area is a commercial district: wide roads next to wide parking lots. We’ll be more exposed there. If we cross now, though, we can lose ourselves in a string of residential areas, and camp for the night in this community college campus—it has some open areas, but they’re lawns instead of parking lots, so they’ll likely have plenty of foliage to hide us, and we never used them for farming, so there shouldn’t be any settlements or Partials in the area.”

“The odds anyone will be watching this exact stretch of road at this exact time are low,” said Xochi. “Not as low as we’d like, but low. If we just go for it, all out, we can do this.”

“Then let’s do it,” said Isolde. “Khan’s going to wake up soon; when he does, we’ll want to be as far away from Partial patrols as we can.”

Ariel nodded, glancing at the sleeping baby—the sedated baby, really, as his constant screaming had led Nandita to start administering low levels of drugs for safety. But the sedatives wouldn’t last forever, and they needed to be well hidden by the time he got noisy again. The group shoved their way through the trees—heavier here, it seemed, than in the wooded track they’d just passed through—and worked their way down to the edge of the wide-open expressway.

“Everybody ready?” Ariel whispered. She listened carefully as each other woman in the group said yes. She took a deep breath. “Go.”