Ruins

“No, we can’t,” said Kira. She thought about Morgan’s arrival in the Preserve, when she and Vale had used their own fierce control over the link to force the nearby Partials to obey them. “I’ve seen this kind of intensity in the link before, and it only comes from a member of the Trust. The people who made the Partials. There are two of them in this area—Dr. Morgan and Dr. Vale—and we don’t want to meet either one of them.” She planted herself in front of him. “If you keep going, we’ll be caught and imprisoned, maybe executed. You do not want to do this.”

He pushed past her and started running.

“Green, wait!”

She took off after him, but he was running at full speed now, arms pumping at his sides, and she struggled to keep up. Kira had something of a Partial’s physical prowess, but she wasn’t trained like he was. She sucked in breaths of freezing air, feeling her arms and chest grow sweaty with effort, and shivering almost immediately after as the sweat cooled and evaporated.

They approached an underpass and Green swerved right, scaling a stepped stone wall and then pelting onto the railroad tracks above. Kira followed, desperate to reach him and stop him, until a gust of wind brought the link data rushing into her lungs, coursing through her brain, stronger than she’d ever imagined, and then she was racing not after him but with him, convinced above all else that she needed to go now, to find this person, to hear his message. They ran along the tracks and then swerved off, down a hill and through a parking lot, crossing streets and jumping fences, until at last a vast field opened up before them. An ancient park, trees shaking in the freezing wind, and beyond it the roiling gray sea. They ran past benches and bushes and old baseball diamonds, barely visible in the new growth that had reclaimed the park. Beyond the field was another road, and beyond that a strip of sand rimmed with rocks and crashing waves. They’d run nearly a mile from where Green first felt the command. Others had apparently felt the same, for a ten-man squad of Partials sat scattered on the rocks, their expressions blank, their link data as stunned as Green’s.

At the front of the group, staring out at the ocean, sat a giant creature, dark red, with skin like rhinoceros hide. Kira slowed to a stop, the sight a shock to her senses, momentarily giving her clarity as her brain fought to determine which feelings were her own and which were coming from the link. It was a clarity that she alone experienced; the rest of the Partials stood in rapt attention.

“You’re just in time.” The thing’s voice rumbled. “It’s starting now.”

Green staggered forward, rubbing his chest to keep warm, taking up a position in the same loose semicircle as the other ten Partials. Kira walked forward as well, not stopping in the circle but pressing through it, approaching the creature directly.

“Who are you?”

“I’ve called you here to warn you,” said the creature. She couldn’t see its mouth move, but felt its voice rumbling powerfully in her chest. “I warned the people on the island, and the Partials in White Plains, but they did not heed me.”

“You’ve been to White Plains?” asked Kira. “You’ve seen Dr. Morgan?”

“It was not a happy reunion,” said the thing, and looked down at its chest. Kira followed its gaze and found that the creature’s chest was riddled with bullet holes. One arm hung uselessly at its side, and the other clutched a gaping wound in its gut. “This body can regenerate most of the damage it takes, but not this much all at once. I am dying.” It turned to look at her, and Kira saw a pair of nearly human eyes buried deep in the thing’s monstrous face. “But I have delivered my warning.”

Kira stepped forward, trying to see the wounds better. “What warning?”

“I have repaired the climate,” said the creature. “I’ve fixed the planet we broke so long ago. Now the world can heal again.”

Kira shook her head, barely understanding what he was trying to say. “You’re saying you’re the one who made it cold?”

“I cleansed the air, the water, the atmosphere. Earth’s protective layers. Undid all the damage from our weapons in the old war. I’ve restored balance. We’ll have seasons again. The first winter will be hard, and none of the people are ready. I warned them to help them survive.”

“You’re one of the Trust,” said Kira. She ran through her mental list, cataloguing every member she knew and which ones she didn’t, to puzzle out who this might be. There were only two unaccounted for, and one was her father, Armin Dhurvasula. Her mind reeled at the thought that this impossible creature—so altered by gene mods that he’d lost his humanity completely—might be her father.

She tried to speak, but her voice was lost. She coughed, shivering in the cold spray of the ocean sound, and tried again. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

“No one has used my name in . . . thirteen years.”

She stared at the wounds, at the dark blood seeping out onto the cold gray rocks below. She barely dared to speak it. “Armin?”