Ruins

“His name is Owen Tovar,” said Kira. “He was a member of the group that rebelled against our government a couple of years ago, and then a senator after his rebellion was successful. I didn’t know him well, but . . .” She shook her head. “I liked him. He was a good man.”

“He’s missing three fingers,” said Falin, clearing away the snow from his hands. “And it looks like the kill shot was in the gut. No reason for a Partial to have done any of that.”

“No reason for a human, either,” said Kira.

“What I’m saying is that a Partial’s more accurate,” said Falin. “We would have hit him up here, in the chest or the head—”

“There’s no exit wound,” said Green. He was crouching on the other side, by the body’s back, and Kira stepped over to look. “That looks like a gunshot in his stomach, but whatever it was didn’t come out the back. I don’t even know what would make a wound like this. The entry hole’s too big for a knife.”

“Oh no,” said Kira, and tried to roll him over to see the wound; he was frozen to the ground, so she scrambled back around to examine it more fully. She felt her heart sink. “Oh no.”

Kira could sense their alarm on the link; they were already fanning into defensive positions, cued by her words that something was wrong. Green crouched next to her. “What is it?”

“I’ve seen this kind of wound before,” she said. “Once. On your squad mate I found on the dock back at Candlewood.”

Green held her gaze for a second, his mind adding up the ramifications, and he came to the same conclusion she had. “The Blood Man.”

“I’m not saying it is,” said Kira, standing up. “It could be a coincidence.”

“Who’s the Blood Man?” asked Falin.

“We don’t know,” said Kira. “Some kind of . . . murderer? Collector? We escaped from a group of modified Partials that seemed to take orders from him, but we never saw him. He killed a bunch of Partials and drained their blood, and the last Green heard he was headed south to do the same to humans. We don’t know why.”

“Modified Partials?” asked one of Falin’s soldiers.

Green placed his hands on either side of his neck, and flapped them up and down. “Gills.”

“There are only two good reasons to collect blood,” said Falin. “One is you’re crazy, and two, you need it for a transfusion or something. Maybe he’s dying.”

Kira shook her head. “If all he needs is a transfusion, he wouldn’t hop around taking a pint or two each from a dozen different people. He’s definitely collecting it, almost like he’s curating it, trying to get a variety of different samples. In Candlewood he took at least one each of the three Partial models he had access to.” She looked up. “I’ve done a lot of blood tests in my work as a medic, and experiments and all kinds of things. Maybe he needs it for that?”

“Whatever’s he’s doing, and for whatever reason he’s doing it, we need to get out of the open,” said Green. He waved them toward the sidewalk, out of the snow-covered road. “Stick to the storefronts, and keep your eyes open for trouble.”

“We can’t just leave him here,” said Kira. “I knew this man.”

“He’s frozen to the street,” said Green, “and we don’t have time.”

Kira struggled to move him again, but he was as solid as ice. When she finally managed to budge his arm, it was only by leaving a patch of torn skin frozen to the pavement below him. She winced and let go.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, touching his frozen hair. “I’ll come back.” She looked up, feeling a dark foreboding. “I’ll try to come back.”

They ran down the street, leapfrogging from one secure position to the next, and several blocks later found the rubble of a recent explosion, now soothed by a blanket of snow. “Somebody hit a Partial emplacement,” said Falin, examining the debris around the site. He picked up the barrel of a Partial-issued rifle, torn and twisted by the blast. “Maybe your friend back there.”

“Probably,” Kira admitted. She looked down the road, past a storefront with a faded yellow duck, and another that looked like a castle. “There’re tire tracks in the snow,” she said, pointing. “Not fresh, but they were made since the snow began. Whoever made those tracks might have stayed to clean up and not left until after the storm started.”

“Then it’s time for us to make a decision,” said Green. “If Kira’s right, we’re only a few hours behind a platoon of Partials, which looks like it’s headed east; that means they’re not going home, likely because they’re chasing a group of human rebels. We could follow them, or we could stay on course for East Meadow and meet up with them there.”

“East Meadow will be safer,” said Falin. “Humans and Partials who are actively shooting each other at the time might be a bit less receptive to our plan of reconciliation.”

“The Blood Man’s probably headed to East Meadow as well,” said Kira. “If he’s really after a wide range of human samples, that’s where he’s going to find them.”

“Then we go,” said Green. “Move out.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE