Ruins

“This one’s mine,” said Isolde. Her eyes were sunken, and her voice dripped with fatigue. “Nearly a month old.”

“Then this is about to get real interesting,” said Haru.

Madison frowned. “What’s wrong?”

Haru’s companions burst through the foliage, with Senator Hobb in the lead.

“We need to hide,” said Hobb. “Can you get that kid to shut up?”

“Congratulations,” said Haru dryly. “You’re a father.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Isolde stared at Senator Hobb in shock. “What are you doing here?”

“Isolde?” Hobb looked half-surprised and half-terrified.

“We can’t stay here,” said Ariel, pushing past them through the trees. “A Partial patrol could be here any minute; we have to keep moving.”

“Is that . . .” Hobb stared at the screaming infant, too stunned to move. “My . . . child?”

“We can talk about it while we run,” said Nandita. She looked at Haru. “Did you come from the north or south?”

“South,” said Haru. “We haven’t seen any Partials in two days.”

“Then we keep heading south,” said Nandita. “Xochi, find us a place to hide for the night.”

“We saw a good place not far from here,” said Hobb. “It was a middle school, straight down this road, maybe four blocks—”

“Thank you,” said Nandita crisply, “but we can find our own hiding places. The infants require us to use a very specific kind of camp, and a school won’t do.”

The men fell in line with the women, Xochi and Kessler leading the way. Haru’s shooters from the bridge joined them a minute later, taking up rearguard positions at the back of the column, so Ariel jogged forward to catch up with Isolde. There were six men in total, an even match for the six women.

“Is it a boy or girl?” asked Hobb.

“Boy,” said Isolde, not even deigning to glance at him.

Hobb’s voice was reverent. “I have a son.”

“You made it very clear you had no interest in me or the baby after you knocked me up,” said Isolde. “That means I have a son, and all you have is a memory of something you’ll never have again.”

“You act like I turned you away,” said Hobb. “I’m a busy man. You can’t think I hate you just because I didn’t have time for a heartfelt conversation every day.”

“I worked in your office,” said Isolde. “You didn’t even have time for ‘Good morning, Isolde,’ which seems to me like a pretty strong hint.”

“We were working under the Hope Act,” said Hobb indignantly. “Getting you pregnant was our civic duty—yours and mine—but I never expected the child to live. They never live. If I’d known—”

Isolde cut him off. “Do you honestly think that anything you’re saying is working in your favor?”

“But I—”

“I think it’s time for you to shut up now,” said Ariel, stepping between them. “We can talk about this later.”

“Or never,” said Isolde.

“Never’s good too,” said Ariel. Hobb scowled but stayed quiet.

Xochi led them off the main road at the first good cross street, winding through a series of narrow, tree-lined roads before finally finding a house tucked back behind the others, surrounded on three sides by thick woods. The group trekked around to the back, entering through a wide broken window so the door looked undisturbed, and slipped into the basement. It was dank and musty, but they closed the basement doors and pulled up mattresses to stand against them, blocking as much sound as they could. Arwen got down to play, excited to see her daddy and babbling wordlessly as she sat on the mildewed carpet. Isolde pulled Khan from his sling and tried to nurse, but the screaming baby was too bothered to suck, and Isolde worked instead to calm him down. Ariel thought his blisters looked worse than usual, but it was hard to tell.

Hobb stared at the boy in alarm. “What’s wrong with him? He’s sick!”

“He was born with it,” said Nandita. “We have some painkillers and fever reducers to help keep him comfortable, but it’s the best we can do for now.”

“You know what that looks like,” said Hobb, peering in closely.

“It’s the bioweapon,” said Haru, leaning forward as he noticed the same thing. “The symptoms look identical.”

“What bioweapon?” asked Isolde.

“We don’t know exactly,” said Haru. “The Partials are getting sick—we used to think it was part of their expiration, but everything we’ve managed to overhear says otherwise. They’re calling it a bioweapon, and they think it’s us fighting back.”

“The two we ran into outside Plainview said the same thing,” said Ariel. “Why do they think it’s a bioweapon and not just a plague?”

“Because it targets very specific areas,” said Haru. “We got the full story from two victims of it, also near Plainview; they were scouts, I think, who contracted it on a mission and never made it back to base. When we found them they were too sick to fight back, so we got as much info as we could in exchange for a merciful death.”

Madison paled. “They asked you to kill them?”