LITMIR.BIZ

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doesn’t seem to be much damage below,” he said, “though the structure’s getting weak on the west end. If Haru’s still alive, he’s above us.”

      Kira nodded, and they worked their way to a stairwell on the eastern, more stable half of the building. Two floors up they heard a faint voice and followed it all the way back to the far side. Light was shining through a wide hole where the outer wall had been blown away, and Haru was clinging to an exposed pipe, his elbow wrapped around it; his other hand clung to the backpack strap of a dangling, unconscious Partial.

      “It’s alive,” said Haru through clenched teeth, obviously straining not to lose it. “I caught it just as the wall gave way.”

      “Then drop it,” said Jayden, frowning as he struggled to identify a safe path toward Haru around the gaping hole in the floor. “We’ll save you and get its arm or something down on the ground.”

      “Not a chance,” said Haru. He grunted and adjusted his grip on the strap. “I want this thing alive, so I can beat the hell out of it back at home.”

      Kira shook her head. “We’re not taking it home, we just need blood and tissue to study.”

      “We’re taking it, and we’re interrogating it. Our people don’t even know where we are, and somehow the Partials were here, waiting for us? I want to know why they’re here, I want to know what they’re doing, and I want to know if our scouts are Partial agents.”

      “He’s got a point,” said Yoon. “Nick and Steve set half the traps in Brooklyn—if one of them’s a Partial, our entire defense perimeter could be useless. And if the Partials are planning something, like an attack . . .” She trailed off.

      Jayden frowned. “Kira, you still have your medkit?”

      She shook her head. “Just the belt pouch; the main kit got lost in the rubble.”

      “Sedatives?”

      Kira checked and nodded. “A painkiller that will do the same job, if we give it enough.” She looked at the body swinging from Haru’s arm. “And if its biology works the same as ours.”

      “I don’t mean to be a burden,” Haru grunted, “but this thing’s a lot heavier than it looks.” Jayden slowly picked his way around the periphery of the room to reach him. Kira studied the destruction, found a solid wall, and carefully climbed down to the next level. Yoon followed her, and together they grabbed the swinging Partial through the window and pulled it in. Jayden retrieved Haru, his arm hanging uselessly at his side.

      Kira and Yoon laid the Partial down on a stable bit of floor. Kira pulled off the Partial’s helmet and stopped, staring. She had expected them to look human—of course they looked human, that was the whole point—but even so, seeing one for the first time was . . . She couldn’t put it into words.

      A human face. A human mouth and nose. Human eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. A young man, handsome, with short, dark-brown hair and the beginning of a bruise on its jaw. The greatest enemy mankind had ever faced, the vicious monster that had ended the world.

      It couldn’t have been more than nineteen years old.

      “It’s weird, isn’t it?” said Yoon. “All this talk about how they look like us, and then they just . . . look like us.”

      Kira nodded. “I don’t know if that makes it less scary, or more.”

      Yoon drew the semiautomatic she got off Jayden and pointed it at the Partial. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast.”

      Kira pulled out a bottle of Nalox.

      “Best-case scenario, this keeps it down,” she said, glancing at Yoon.

      “Worst case it dies?”

      “Worst case, it wakes up.” Kira prepped the shot and held it over its neck. “We have no idea how these nanoparticles will react to its physiology. As far as I’m concerned, its death is very close to the ‘best case’ end of the scale.”

      She stabbed the needle into its neck, pushed in the plunger, and stowed the syringe. “It’s done,” she called out. Jayden was helping Haru climb down into the room. “But there’re still one Partial we haven’t accounted for.”

      Haru raised an eyebrow. “Not two?”

      “Yoon killed one,” said Kira, and Haru’s eyes went wide. Kira laughed dryly. “I’m totally serious. Practically took its head off. Of course, that was after it got buried alive twice, caught a couch with its face, chased me through two stories of rubble, and almost killed me.”

      Jayden nodded. “And the explosion got the other one—I found enough pieces of it when I was upstairs that there’s no way it’s still a threat. Must have been right on top of the bomb when it blew. So we should be good.”

      They hefted the unconscious Partial between them and carried it carefully out of the building, through the multistory crater and down the stairs to the outer doors. Jayden stopped them.

      “Wait—I spoke too soon,” he said, scanning the overgrown apartment grounds. “There is at least one enemy unaccounted for: One or both of our scouts are still out there, and we still don’t know whose side they’re on. Plus, there could be more of these things that didn’t assault the apartment.”

      Kira watched the grounds, saw the saplings waving in the breeze; they’d provide some cover, but it was essentially open ground. “We’ll have to run for those buildings,” she said, “but we can’t move very fast with this deadweight between us.”

      Haru rubbed his left arm, the one he’d been hanging from, trying to force some feeling back into it. “Nothing to do but do it.”

      Jayden lifted the Partial, taking the full weight across his shoulders. “Sorry, ladies, I’m going to be selfish and keep the meat shield for myself. Now run!”

      They dashed out through the vines and saplings, running full tilt for the next building. They reached it, rounded the corner, and kept running, between the cars and across the street to another building beyond. Just as Kira thought they were safe, a bullet ricocheted off the car beside her, inches from her head, and she ducked for cover.

      “Don’t stop running, Kira, move!” Jayden ran past with his load, and Kira took a deep breath and jumped back to her feet, expecting at any moment that a bullet would slam into her spine. Another bullet whipped past, several feet to the side. They reached the next road, a wide thoroughfare lined with high trees and battered storefronts. Yoon cut left and the group followed, using the cover to charge across the street and take shelter in a crumbling delicatessen.

      “It’s single shots, spaced out,” said Jayden, gasping for breath. “That probably means it’s not a group, just one sniper.”

      “Skinny or Scruffy,” said Kira, “whichever one’s the traitor. Nice going, Haru.”

      “We don’t know if it’s one of them,” Haru snarled, but Kira could tell he had the same fears she did. Yoon was watching by the front windows, all but invisible behind a screen of overturned tables.

      “We can’t stay,” said Kira.

      “We’ll head out the side window and down this little street,” said Jayden. “We need to cut back and forth between the streets—the sniper’s not as dangerous without a straight path and the time to line up a shot.”

      “The park you saw before is just a few blocks west,” said Haru. “We can follow it most of the way back, and we won’t lose time running back and forth.”

      “Agreed,” said Jayden. “Let’s go.”

      They slipped out the side, moving the captured Partial carefully over the broken glass. Yoon ran to catch up.

      “I still don’t see anything.”

      “What about the scout who didn’t turn on us?” asked Kira, struggling to catch her

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