LITMIR.BIZ

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probably no darker than her own; it was hard to tell in the faint light of a cloudy moon. He opened the front door cautiously, lifted a small cart through the door and down the stairs, and carefully locked the door behind him. The cart was full of jugs, and Kira guessed he was off to retrieve water. He wore a heavy pack full of something she couldn’t identify, and she couldn’t see his weapon. Safer to assume the worst, then, she thought, as there could easily be a high-caliber handgun or submachine gun hidden in the folds of his loose-fitting trench coat.

      Kira grabbed her things quietly, packing in the dark, and stole down the stairs to follow him. He was already at the corner when she reached the street, and she waited until he rounded it before slipping out after him, stepping as lightly as she could through the rubble in the street. She peered around the corner and saw him walking slowly, pulling the cart behind him. He moved strangely, almost like a waddle, and Kira wondered if it was just his bulk or some other factor. He reached the end of the block and stepped into the street without pausing, as if completely unconcerned that he would be seen or, worse, eaten. How had he survived this long without running into that nocturnal monster? He disappeared around a low wall, and Kira crept after him.

      He stood at the mouth of a subway tunnel, filling his plastic jugs with a long-tubed pump similar to her own. He huffed as he worked, as if the exertion was too much for him, but the rest of his mannerisms spoke of long familiarity and expertise. He’d done this often enough to be very good at it.

      Was he a Partial? Kira stayed motionless in the shadows observing him, trying to . . . not to listen, not to smell, but to feel him, in the way that she’d been able to feel Samm. The link. It was more emotional than informational; if she linked with this man at all, it would be through feeling the things he felt. She examined her emotions closely: She was curious; she was tired; she was sure of her purpose. Did any of that come from him? What would he be feeling? He was muttering to himself, not angrily but simply talking, the way she had started talking to herself. She couldn’t hear the words.

      The more she watched him, methodically filling the jugs, the more she realized that his size suggested he was human. The Partials had been engineered not just as soldiers but as specific soldiers: the infantry were all young men, the generals were all older men, and Samm had said that their doctors were women and their pilots were petite girls designed to fit easily into small vehicles and tight cockpits. The military contractors had saved billions of dollars building undersized jets. Obviously there were exceptions—Kira had no idea what role Heron was intended to fill, the tall, leggy supermodel who’d captured her for Dr. Morgan—but did one of the templates include this man? He was huge, especially now that she saw him from ground level. Some kind of super-soldier among super-soldiers? A heavy-weapons specialist, maybe, or a close-combat expert? Samm hadn’t mentioned anyone like that, but there had been a lot of things he’d never mentioned. Kira concentrated as hard as she could, willing herself to detect this giant through whatever version of the link she possessed, but she felt nothing.

      Aside from his size was the simple fact that he was winded. He’d walked only a couple of blocks, and yet he was huffing like he’d just run a marathon. That didn’t make sense for a physically perfect super-soldier, but it was perfect for an overweight human.

      He was illuminated fairly well, thanks to a large moon and a cloudless sky, and Kira quietly pulled out her binoculars to look at him more closely. She was barely thirty yards away, crouched behind a rusting car, but she wanted to confirm his weaponry at the very least. There was nothing on his legs or hips, no holsters or knives, and there seemed to be nothing in the cart but plastic jugs. He finished filling a jug and lifted it, turning toward her as he placed it in the cart, and for just a moment his coat fell open and she saw his chest and sides: He had no weapons in there either, no shoulder holsters or bandoliers or anything. Kira frowned. No one would travel in the wilderness unarmed, so his weapon must be concealed, but why conceal it if you thought you were alone—

      In a flash Kira realized that she had walked into a trap: This man, big and slow and unarmed, had been sent outside as bait, while the others circled around to cut off her escape. She dropped to the ground, lowering her profile in case anyone tried to shoot her right there, and looked around wildly for the attackers. The city was too dark; there could be snipers in a hundred different windows and doorways and shadows around her, but she couldn’t see deep enough into any of them. Her only hope was to run, just like with the monster in the plaza. The building behind had some kind of storefront, maybe an old pizza place; there would be a back room at the very least, probably a basement, and if she was lucky a stairwell that accessed the rest of the building. She could slip in, find another exit, and slip out before they had a chance to close their trap.

      The man by the subway stairs was stretching, his backpack lying gently on the ground beside him. Was he prepping for a strike? She had to go now. Kira scrambled to her feet and bolted toward the storefront, bracing herself for the impact of bullets in her back. Behind her she heard a yelp, like a cry of fear, but she didn’t turn around. At the back of the old pizza place was a thin wooden door, and beyond it an office; Kira dove through and slammed it closed behind her, switching on her light to look for another exit. There was none.

      She was trapped.

      

ira swept her arm across the metal desk in the center of the room, clearing away decades-old dust and thick stacks of papers. Last was a thin computer monitor, which she knocked aside on her backswing before flipping the desk on its side, diving behind it for an extra layer of shielding. She crouched low behind the barrier, her rifle tucked into the side of her face, the barrel trained squarely on the door; if the knob so much as twitched, she could put a whole clip into whoever stood beyond it. She waited, barely daring to breathe.

      She waited.

      A minute went by. Five minutes. Ten minutes. She imagined another gunman on the far side of the door, lying in wait as carefully as she was. Which one of them would break first? There were more of them, and they had the advantage; they had more room to maneuver, and more people to do it with. But she wasn’t going to give up that easily. If they wanted her, they had to come in and get her.

      Ten more minutes went by, and Kira shifted her weight painfully from one leg to the other. She blinked sweat from her eyes, feeling them red and raw, but still she refused to move. Another ten minutes. Her throat was parched and painful, her fingers cramped around the handgrip of her gun. Nothing moved. No sound disturbed the night.

      Kira’s flashlight flickered, sick and yellow as the batteries started to fail. They’d been weak for a few days, and she hadn’t found any replacements yet. Ten minutes later the light winked out for good, and Kira closed her eyes uselessly against the utter blackness, listening with every ounce of her focus: for the doorknob, for the creak of floorboards or the squeak of shoes, for the click of a gun as it readied to fire. Ten more minutes. Twenty. An hour. Were they really this patient?

      Or was there nobody there?

      Kira rubbed her eyes, thinking back on the attack. She had assumed there was a trap—it was the most logical explanation— but she hadn’t actually seen anyone. Was it really possible that the man outside, unarmed and alone in a dead city full of monsters, was really the only one? It was extremely unlikely, but yes, it was possible. Was she ready to bet her life on that possibility?

      She lowered her gun, whimpering silently at the ache in her stiff shoulders. She moved as quietly as she could to the side of the room, out of the line of fire that would come through the door, and listened again. All was quiet. She reached out with one hand, hugging the wall tightly, and touched the doorknob. Nobody shot her. She took a breath, gripped the knob tightly, and threw it open as fast as she could, yanking her hand back and rolling away from the opening. No gunfire, no shouts, no noise at all but the creak of the door. She stared at the dark black doorway, trying to work up the courage to go through it, and decided to try one more thing; she picked up the monitor she’d knocked off the desk, found a good stance, and heaved

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