Ruins

“Maybe this is the central location,” said Green. “Doesn’t hurt to check.” They walked around the side and back, finding a parking lot but no toolshed. Behind the building there was a baseball field, but this, too, had no tools or gloves or anywhere to store them. They made their way back to the main road, ready to press on and look for another park or a school, but Kira stopped in front of a house. Green shook his head. “Too fancy; they didn’t do any of their yard work themselves.”

“Not yard work,” said Kira, “but look at the sign. ‘Home Theater Design and Installation.’ I don’t know what a home theater is, but I bet they used gloves to install them.”

They started their search in the front room, moving quickly through the building; it had been converted from a home to a business and was mostly empty. The back room held a lost fortune in holovid projectors, but those were useless now. She’d have traded the entire thing for a single pair of gloves. Finally in the back parking lot they found a rusted white van, weeds growing up around the flat, deformed tires, with the company’s logo faded and peeling off the side. Kira wrenched the door open and found the back full of power cords and old projector parts, and four pairs of canvas work gloves in the top drawer of a tool chest. They pulled on two pairs each and jogged back to the main road to make up for lost time. The sky was darker now, far darker than it should have been for the time of day, and the wind was practically howling.

“We need to find shelter,” said Kira.

“We need to find a boat,” said Green. “I told you before, the instant this clears up we need to get on the water.”

“Are you afraid it’s going to start up again?”

“I’m afraid that we’re running out of time.”

“Look,” said Kira, “I’m every bit as anxious about this as you are, but we’re not going to do any good if we’re dead of exposure. It feels like it’s dropped another five degrees in the last few hours—this weather is well below freezing, and Partials or not, we’re in a very real danger of hypothermia.”

“We don’t have time to sit around waiting,” Green snapped, and picked up his pace.

“We’ll live a lot longer if we get inside—”

“Really?” said Green.

Kira stopped, trying to figure out what he meant, and the answer hit her like a fist to the gut. She wrapped her arms tightly over her freezing chest and ran to catch up with him.

“How long do you have?”

His voice was emotionless—all the more eerie considering his words. “It just now occurred to you to ask?”

“I’m sorry,” said Kira. “I’ve been focused on expiration as a concept, as an enemy to overcome. . . . You left Morgan’s army. Does that mean you didn’t think she was going to cure it fast enough to matter?”

Green walked silently, head down.

“The youngest batch has seven months left,” said Kira. Samm’s batch, she thought. She swallowed nervously, feeling tears creep up behind her eyes. “Do you have half that?” Green didn’t answer, and she felt her heart sink. “Two months?”

“One,” said Green. “I’ll be dead by the end of the year.”

“That might be enough time to help you,” said Kira quickly, practically racing through the words. “The sooner we get across and find humans, the sooner we can—”

“Then stop arguing with me and look for a boat.”

Kira fell silent, trying to imagine what it would feel like to know you were going to die in one month—and worse, that you knew there was nothing you could do about it. But we can, she thought. This plan will work.

I think.

Green stopped suddenly, putting up his hand to stop her too. “Do you feel that?”

Kira concentrated on the link but felt nothing. “What is it?”

“I have no idea,” said Green. “Something big—like a whole squad’s worth of link data, that kind of signal strength. It’s just that . . . it feels like a single person.” He turned his head slowly, as if trying to pinpoint the exact source of the data. “This way, come on.”

Kira ran a few steps to catch up with him. “Wait, you’re going to look for it?”

“Of course.”

“But we’re in a hurry,” said Kira. “We don’t have time to stop and maybe get captured by a patrol squad.”

“I’m telling you, it’s one Partial,” said Green, still walking.

“But you’re dying,” said Kira. “What changed?”

“Don’t you see? We have to find it because . . .” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head. “Because we have to. Because he has something to tell us.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“How can it not make sense?” Green sounded almost frustrated, as if he were explaining that that water was wet to someone too thick to understand.

Kira shook her head. “Green, listen to me. This is the link—whatever you’re sensing right now is luring you in, on purpose.”

“Maybe. We can handle it.”