Ruins

“Tell me if it gets stronger,” said Kira, and pressed forward. The path led up from the dock through a wooded backyard, a former lawn now thickly overgrown with weeds and vines and saplings. The home there was large, old and once luxurious, now sagging and decrepit but obviously used by the Ivies; the windows were boarded over, and the footpath through the underbrush led straight to the door. Green didn’t alert her to any Partials hiding inside, and she could sense none herself but chose not to enter, just in case. They were clear now; their best plan was to put as much distance between them and the lake as they could before the Ivies realized they were gone.

They left the trail to give the house a wide berth and broke through the trees onto a cracked asphalt road that wound north through a parade of faded lakeside homes. By silent agreement they broke into a run, the only sound their shoes slapping wetly against the road. They ran half a mile before Green risked speaking.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“Sort of.”

“That’s good enough?”

“I had a map before I was captured,” said Kira. “There’s a causeway up here—if we’re on the right island.”

“And if we’re not?”

“Then we have to cross the water again,” said Kira. “So let’s hope we’re on the right island.”

They ran in silence for a moment, and then Green asked another question. His voice was dark and worried. “What happened back there?”

“In the house?”

“I thought I was back in China again. Like, I literally thought I was there, in the middle of the Isolation War, in one of the subway tunnels we used to take their larger cities, except . . . I never had to fight in those tunnels. Other units did, but not mine.”

“I got the drop on the first guard because they didn’t know I was there,” said Kira. “The only way to get the second was to use the link against him.”

“I thought you weren’t on the link.”

“It wasn’t my data,” said Kira. She hesitated. “I borrowed it from the other dead Partial.”

He shot her a probing look. “Borrowed?”

“Extracted via combat knife,” said Kira. He looked horrified, and she felt queasy at the memory. “Look, I wish I didn’t have to do it, but it was the only way. Normally you don’t link the data until it’s out in the air, diffused, but inside the pheromonal glands it’s still liquid, and intensely concentrated.” She shrugged helplessly. “Apparently his unit did fight in the subway tunnels, and we remembered it through his link data.”

“Who—” said Green, stopping abruptly. Kira checked her steps, almost tripping, and looked back at him. He peered at her in confusion. “Did you just say ‘we’ remembered it?”

Crap, thought Kira. It wasn’t that she desperately needed to keep her nature secret, it was just that she hadn’t told him before, and she didn’t want it to look like she’d been withholding something from him. She cleared her throat.

“You’re not on the link,” Green insisted. He walked toward her, furrowing his brow. “Maybe it’s the concentrated data, like you said—when it’s that strong, maybe humans can sense it too?”

This could be a way into recruiting Green to my cause, she thought. If he thinks humans can sense link data, even only in a case like this, he could see a stronger connection between the species. He might be more open to helping me, helping the humans.

Except it’s not true. If we’re going to work together—the two of us, or the two species—we have to trust each other. We can’t start that relationship with a lie.

She shook her head. “I’m not a human.”

“You said you were.”

“I thought I was,” said Kira, “for my whole life. I grew up with them. I still feel human. But I’m a Partial.”

“Partials link,” he said simply. “Partials don’t age. You don’t look like any Partial model I’ve ever seen.”

“I was a new model,” said Kira. “A prototype for a new line, after the war. That’s why Dr. Morgan wanted to study me, because she thought my DNA would help her cure expiration. But it didn’t work. I don’t have any of your heightened abilities—none of the strength, none of the reflexes, maybe some slightly accelerated healing. And I can link, sort of, but only one way.”

Green looked shocked. “You mean you can . . .” His mouth hung open, and he covered his mouth and nose with his hands, almost like he was protecting his breath. “You mean you can link me but I can’t link you? You can feel everything I do, without giving anything back?”