Ruins

“Don’t move.”

Another shadow, facing the first. Neither seemed to be holding a gun; either could be wearing a helmet. She moved her rifle back and forth, locked in indecision. Which one is Green?

“Don’t shoot me.”

“Where is the other?”

“I don’t know, she ran ahead.”

“She is in the house.”

“I said I don’t know.”

Kira brought the rifle to her cheek, holding it tightly, focusing her aim. She only had one shot—she had to pick the right target, and she had to hit it. The curtains billowed again, and she realized with shock that she didn’t even know where the men were standing; depending on where the moon was, those shadows could be cast from anywhere. She stepped backward quietly, retreating to the hall. She had to find another vantage point. She stood a moment at the top of the stairs leading down to the first floor, but backed away from those as well; she didn’t want to give up the high ground. But she didn’t want to give the last soldier an open path to the boat, either, so she crept back up the hall toward the third-floor stairs. Stepping around the dead Partial, linking once again to the powerful DEATH particles, she remembered the link data she’d felt on the border marker two days before. It had completely overpowered her, the liquid pheromone so concentrated she’d barely been able to function until the smell of it cleared from her nose. A real Partial, with a more sensitive link mechanism, would be even more affected. She glanced behind her, set aside the rifle, and pulled the dead soldier into the little girl’s bedroom.

“I’m very sorry about this,” she whispered. She pulled off her shirt and wrapped it tightly around her face, already gagging from the body odor and mildew, but hoping desperately that they’d be enough to protect her. The face is too mangled, she thought. I’ll have to go in another way if I want to find the right spot. She pulled the soldier’s combat knife from the sheath on his belt and thought back to her medical training, picturing the diagram of the nasal cavity and calculating the approximate location of the pheromonal glands. She placed the knife gently in the corpse’s mouth, lined up the tip against the center of the soft palate, and shoved.

FEARBETRAYALDEATHBLOODRUNHIDEDEATHSCREAMFEARBLOOD

The link data overwhelmed her, a rush of thoughts and feelings and even memories that threatened to drown her in a dead man’s mind. She held her breath, trying to control her own brain, focusing on her own thoughts, her own movements. She pulled the knife out of the soldier and found it covered with liquid—blood and lymph and dark brown data, the liquid form of a dozen different pheromones jumbled chaotically together. The air seemed to vibrate, shapes and colors and smells and voices flickering madly across through the darkened room. She staggered to her feet and back down the hall.

“What’s that?”

The voices were closer now, but they weren’t the only one in the house, not anymore—

The bombs were falling now, she was back on the beaches of the Isolation War—she was sleeping in the water, looking up at the moon melting shapelessly on the surface of the lake.

DEATH

RUN

HELP ME

She heard a gun clatter to the floor. The hallway laughed at her, shadows twisting into faces telling her to RUN HELP STOP GO KILL. Voices screamed, but she couldn’t tell if they were from the present or the past; real or hallucinations. She stumbled into the master bedroom and saw them, the gilled Partial and Green, clutching their heads and sobbing and shouting and there was her father between them, his hands dripping blood, and she blinked and he was gone.

“Garrett,” sobbed the Partial. Link data slid from her dagger in dark drops of liquid thought, so thick in the air she could hardly see. She walked forward, pushing aside the haze of nerve gas from a Shanghai bunker, the artillery smoke from an assault on Atlanta, the bloody mist from the White Plains coup. She wanted to cower behind the trees, to hide behind the wall, to dive back into the cold, dark lake where she could be safe.

I am Kira Walker, she told herself. Identities ran through her mind like streams, rushing and blending and thundering together. She looked at the two men, now writhing on the floor, and couldn’t tell which was the enemy. I am Kira Walker, she thought again. I will not lose myself. Green is my friend. She found the other Partial, gills flapping wildly on his pale, wet neck, and drove the knife home through the gap in his body armor right beneath his arm. The linked declaration of DEATH barely registered in the haze of super-concentrated madness. Kira fell to the floor, crawling toward Green, and dragged him out the door to the balcony. Fresh air rushed in like a healing angel, and she felt her mind begin to clear. Wooden stairs led down from the balcony; they wouldn’t have to go back inside.