LITMIR.BIZ

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he can preserve his image?” asked Xochi. “He won’t even have one after this. Killing a baby will be the nicest thing he’s done all week.”

      “Isolde will be fine,” Kira insisted. She paced a few steps, testing her leg; it still hurt terribly, and she grimaced at the thought of the grueling workout she was about to give it. She paused, thinking, then pulled off her backpack and opened the medkit.

      Xochi watched with a frown as Kira pulled out a syringe and a bottle of Nalox. “Drugs?”

      “I can barely walk,” said Kira, prepping the needle. “If I’m going to spend my night running from Grid gunmen, I want some more painkillers.”

      Xochi smirked. “Did you bring enough for everybody?”

      “Shut up.” Kira pricked her leg, drove in the injection, and slapped a Band-Aid on the tiny bubble of blood that welled up from the hole. Almost immediately she felt the reaction, more in her head than her leg: a buzz in her perception, a slight delay in her movements. The morphine was strong. Did I give myself too much?

      “Better?” asked Xochi. Kira nodded, and Xochi shook her head. “Just stay in front of me if we start shooting. I don’t want your drug-addled reflexes getting me shot in the butt.”

      “There’s Marcus,” said Kira, and pointed at a large group coming down the street. Marcus’s tall frame walked at the center of it. The crowd was shouting and mumbling and arguing loudly. Kira caught snatches of conversation: “. . . said a Partial . . . why wouldn’t they tell . . . new kind of RM . . . the Senate knew . . .”

      “If it wasn’t before, the secret’s definitely out now,” said Kira. “It’s going to ruin the Senate’s plan either way.”

      The crowd passed by, angrily calling for Kira and the others to join them. Kira picked up her bags and fell in with the back of the group; Xochi followed her, and Marcus hung back to join them.

      “Nice night for a vigilante execution,” Marcus whispered.

      The crowd in front of the hospital was enormous, shouting and chanting. The front doors were blocked by a wall of armed soldiers, and the crowd moved loosely before them, forward and back like an uncertain tide. Kira felt a surge of doubt: What if the riot led to more deaths? Madison and the other mothers, at least, should be safe—the maternity center was the best-defended spot in the city. It was too late to back out now. She said a silent prayer and kept walking.

      “We’re going to have to be very careful getting him out of there,” said Marcus. “If this group finds him, they’ll tear him limb from limb.”

      “They don’t know what he looks like,” said Xochi. “We can sneak him out like one of us.”

      “They’re just as likely to mistake a human for a Partial as the other way around,” said Kira, scanning the mob nervously. “We may have overdone this a little.”

      “We haven’t done anything yet,” said Xochi, pressing forward. “This mob doesn’t do us any good until it gets inside and starts breaking things.” She charged into the crowd, pushing toward the front, shouting loudly as she went. “They’ve been in league with the Partials all along! This is how they do it—new diseases, new deaths, new oppressions. This isn’t the first time!”

      Kira and Marcus followed as best they could, jostling violently through the heart of the throbbing crowd. The drug haze in Kira’s head made the crush surreal and terrifying, loud and angry and larger than life. She shook her head, trying to concentrate.

      Xochi reached the front and turned around, climbing on the hood of an old, discarded car. “Do you know why they’re doing this? Because they want to control us! Because if we’re terrified, we’ll do anything they tell us to.” The crowd roared in agreement, and Xochi continued. “‘Inform on your friends!’ ‘Don’t leave the city!’ ‘Get pregnant before RM kills us!’” The crowd was louder now, more agitated, roiling around Kira in fierce Brownian motion.

      Someone threw a rock at the soldiers, missing the men but cracking loudly against the glass door behind them. More rocks followed, a vicious hail, and Xochi kept shouting as loudly as she could.

      “We’re sick of secrets! If the Senate has a Partial in there, bring it out where we can see it!”

      The crowd surged forward, a flood of fists and anger. The soldiers fired into the air and the crowd pulled back, but not as far as before; the gap was smaller now than ever.

      “They didn’t shoot anyone,” said Kira. “They’re probably under orders not to. We have to rush the doors now, before they’re cleared to use lethal force.”

      “They’re firing on their own people!” shouted Xochi, reaching for her own pistol. Kira and Marcus shoved forward in alarm, struggling to reach her before she turned this into a shoot-out.

      “They have automatic rifles!” Kira shouted, her voice drowned by the crowd. “Xochi, don’t!”

      Xochi turned, pistol in hand, and Marcus grabbed her leg and yanked her down. She fell with a thud on the hood of the car, pistol up, and Kira grabbed it, keeping it pointed at the sky. Xochi choked, fighting for breath, then groaned and coughed when it finally returned.

      “Ow,” she gasped.

      “You can’t shoot yet,” Kira hissed. “The soldiers will turn this into a massacre.”

      “Then we need to make this happen now,” said Marcus, and jumped on the car beside Xochi with a rock in each fist. “Storm the doors!” he shouted, throwing his first rock. It hit a soldier in the arm and he whipped up his rifle, pointing it at the crowd; the officer next to him pulled the soldier’s arm back down, shouting something Kira couldn’t hear. Marcus threw his second rock and hit one of the doors squarely in the center, shattering the safety glass into a pile of tiny cubes. It was like a signal to the crowd, and they surged forward again. Xochi shoved her pistol back into her hip holster, and the trio ran forward with the crowd, slamming to a halt as the front line impacted with the soldiers. Kira felt herself being smashed from both sides, felt her feet being stepped on, felt a painful kick against her burn that almost brought her to her knees. If I go down, I’ll be trampled to death. She fought for air, pushing forward with all her strength.

      “The crowd will turn to the right when we break through the doors,” said Marcus, grunting with the exertion. “Go left and head for the stairs.”

      The crowd behind was pushing forward too strongly, but there was nowhere to go; Kira’s chest compacted under the pressure, the air slowly squeezed out of her lungs. She saw spots, felt her head go light, and suddenly the dam broke. Rioters surged ahead through the doors, pressing the soldiers back or simply swarming around them. Kira ran forward blindly, carried by the crowd, trying simply to stay upright. She passed through the doors and into the wide foyer, picking up speed as the crowd spread out beyond the bottleneck. She shook her head, trying to clear it, then remembered the stairs and cut left, weaving through the angry mob, keeping her eyes on the unmarked door to the stairwell. Marcus reached it just as she did, and Xochi just after; they pulled it open and dove through into blessed empty silence.

      Kira panted, slowly getting her breath back. Her leg throbbed dully. “Anyone following us?”

      “Doesn’t look like it,” said Xochi. “Let’s blaze—we have to go now, before the soldiers regain control.”

      “Assuming they even can,” said Marcus, leaping up the stairs two at a time. He turned the corner, and his voice echoed down. “We’ll be lucky if we have an island left to save after this.”

      Kira pulled out her pistol and moved up after him, Xochi close behind. Fourth floor, thought Kira, counting each flight of stairs as they passed it. Will the Grid pull guards away from Samm to help downstairs, or will they see what’s happening and add even more?

      They reached the fourth floor, and Kira crouched by the door, bracing herself.

      “Give me a minute to get out my shotgun,”

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