Fragments (34 page)

“That seems to confirm what you were just saying,” said Samm.

“Right,” she said. “We know the Trust built RM into the Partial genome, and this email
tells us the board knew that part of it. But we also know the Trust built the cure
into them as well, but they did it secretly. It never gets mentioned in any of the
email discussions between the Trust and their bosses, and this email from the CEO
implies that they knew the Trust was trying to undermine the Failsafe, but didn’t
know how. That ‘undermining’ must be the cure. It only gets mentioned between Trust
members a couple of times, and only under powerful encryption. Without Afa to break
it for us, we would never have been able to read them.”

Afa perked up. “They used a Paolo-Scalini level six crawler with Dynamic—”

“We don’t actually care,” said Heron. “The point is that it’s secret, which is weird.
They didn’t want their bosses to know they were building a Failsafe to the big scary
Failsafe they wanted.”

“Which seems like proof that the first Failsafe was designed to attack humans on purpose,”
said Samm. “If it was a mutation, the preconstructed cure wouldn’t be able to stop
it.”

“Absolutely,” said Kira, nodding in agreement. “The pieces all fit together a little
too well to be an accident.”

“What about expiration?” asked Heron. “That’s ostensibly the other reason we’re out
here, right? Does it say how to stop it?”

“That’s another thing that seems to have been a secret,” said Kira. “Encrypted emails
and everything. Some of the Trust knew about it; others, such as Morgan, apparently
didn’t. Without reading weeks of emailed conversations between the members of the
Trust, I can’t say why.”

“Probably because some of them objected,” said Samm. “You said there were arguments
about the Failsafe, right? So I assume there were people who opposed it?”

Kira nodded. “There were. My father, for example, thought it was unconscionable to
create new life forms with kill switches.” She couldn’t help but smile at this bit
of goodness from her father, knowing that he opposed something she hated so strongly.
Even knowing that she had no biological connection to him, or perhaps because she
knew it, these other connections carried so much more weight.

Afa nodded, almost compulsively, drawing pictures on the floor with his finger as
he talked. “So the Trust had a plan they didn’t tell ParaGen, but between them they
still disagreed, or they each had their own plan and they didn’t tell each other.
Maybe both, or maybe somewhere in the middle.”

“Right,” said Kira. “There was a plan—at least one.”

“But what about the expiration date?” asked Heron again. “You said there was something
there—what was it?”

“Just theories and projections,” said Kira. She held out the screen. “You can read
them for yourself if you want: long talks about the need for a Partial expiration
date, and how long the shelf life should be, and how it should work, and who was going
to build. On and on and on. But no formulas, no genetic codes, no medical details
of any kind.”

“Just like the virus,” said Samm. “I thought this data center had all of ParaGen’s
files?”

Afa kept doodling with his finger. “So did I.”

“Then where’s the rest of it?” asked Kira. “Another tower? I don’t know if we’re going
to get that generator running again.”

“I looked through their entire directory,” said Afa. “Everything from ParaGen was
on that tower.”

“But it’s obviously not,” said Heron, “so where’s the rest?”

“I don’t know,” said Afa.

“Maybe we need to check the directory again,” said Samm, but Kira shook her head.

“It’s clear they didn’t want the most important pieces of their plan in the cloud,
as Afa calls it. The rest of the files are exactly where we thought they were.” She
sucked in a breath, dreading the next part: “And we’re going there.”

Heron shook her head. “You don’t mean Denver.”

“Of course I mean Denver.”

“We’re not going to Denver,” said Heron. “We gave this a shot and it didn’t pan out,
now it’s time to be reasonable and go back home.”

“There’s nothing for us back home,” said Kira.

“There’s life!” said Heron. “There’s salvation, there’s rational thought. We talked
about this before—”

“And we decided to go to Denver,” said Kira. “That was our plan from the beginning.
We thought we could get what we needed out of this place, but we couldn’t—we tried
and we couldn’t. Now we have to keep going.”

“My leg is broken,” said Afa.

“I know.”

“The bullet hit the shinbone—”

“I know,” said Kira. “I know, and I’m sorry. What else can we do? Just turn around
and give up because the long shot didn’t pan out?”

“Denver was the long shot,” said Heron. “Chicago was the only sensible part of the
plan.”

“We came out here to find the Trust,” said Kira. “To find ParaGen, to find their plans,
to find their formulas, all so we could cure these diseases—”

“We can cure them by going back,” said Heron.

“No, we can’t,” said Kira. “We can delay them, we can work around them; maybe if Dr.
Morgan gets really lucky studying me, there’ll be something she can do about the expiration
date. But RM will still be there, and babies will still die, and there is still nothing
we can do about it.”

Heron’s voice was as cold as ice. “So if you can’t save both, you’re going to let
both die.”

“I can save both,” said Kira. “We can save both, together, by going to Denver and
finding their files.”

Heron shook her head. “And if they’re not there?”

“They’re there.”

“Where next?” asked Heron. “All the way to the coast? Across the ocean?”

“They’re there,” Kira said again.

“But what if they’re not?”

“Then we keep going!” Kira shouted. “Because they’re out there somewhere, I know it.”

“You don’t know anything! It’s just what your desperate, messed-up psyche wants to
believe.”

“It’s the only explanation that connects everything we’ve found so far. I’m not giving
up and I’m not turning back.”

The room was silent. Kira and Heron stared at each other, fierce as lions.

“I don’t want to go to hell,” said Afa.

“You’re going to get us killed,” said Heron.

“You don’t have to come.”

“Then you’ll still get yourself killed,” said Heron, “and if you’re the key to correcting
the expiration date, that amounts to the same thing.”

“Then come with us,” said Kira. “We can do this, Heron, I swear to you. Everything
the Trust did, every formula they used, every genome they ever created, is all there
just waiting for us to find it. We will find it, and we’ll take it back, and we’ll
save everyone. Both sides.”

“‘Both,’” said Heron. She took a deep breath. “Us or the humans. You’d better do your
damnedest, then, because if it comes down to one or the other, I assure you: It will
be us.” She turned and stalked out of the room. “If we’re going, let’s go, every minute
we waste is another death back home.”

Kira took a breath of her own, adrenaline still coursing through her. Afa watched
Heron leave and then spoke too loudly. “I don’t like her very much.”

“That’s the least of her problems,” said Kira. She looked at Samm. “You were awfully
quiet that whole time.”

“You know where I stand,” said Samm. “I trust you.”

Kira felt a rush of tears and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Why?” She sniffed.
“I’m wrong a lot.”

“But if there’s any earthly way for you to succeed, you’ll move mountains to make
it happen.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

Samm held her gaze. “Simple isn’t easy.”

“We should call home first,” said Afa. “That guy you keep talking to—we need to let
him know we’re gonna be late.”

“No,” said Samm, standing up. “We just got attacked—I don’t know if they were a guard
post or if they followed us, but either way, we’re in more danger than we realized.
We can’t let anyone even know we’re alive, let alone where we’re going.”

“We don’t have to say where,” said Afa, “we could use a code name. Like Mortorq—that’s
a screwdriver.”

“No,” said Kira. “Anything we say is too much of a clue. We go, and we go in secret.”
She looked at the screen in her hand, then shoved it in her backpack. “And we go now.”

T
he ruins of the JFK airport were surrounded by a wide ring of flat, featureless runway,
forcing any attackers to approach through the open. A dedicated assault with armored
vehicles could take it easily, but there were few of those left in the world, and
Dr. Morgan’s guerrilla army had none of them. The Voice had held it against the Grid
with just a handful of spotters and snipers, and now the outlaws and the Grid together
were prepared to hold it against the Partials. Marcus crossed the open runways uneasily,
praying that the defenders recognized him as a human. And that they bothered trying
to recognize him at all.

The JFK expressway leading into the airport had been bombed out, along with most of
Terminal 8, to give an advancing force less cover to hide behind. Marcus headed instead
to Terminal 7, and as he drew close he saw snipers in the shadows, tracking him slowly
with their rifles. “Stop there,” a voice called out. Marcus stopped. “Drop your weapons.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Then drop everything else.”

Marcus wasn’t carrying much, just a backpack full of rock-hard candy and a couple
of liters of water. He set it down on the ground and stepped away, stretching out
his arms to show that there was nothing in them.

“Turn around,” said the voice, and Marcus did as he was told.

“Just a skinny little Mexican kid,” said Marcus. “Oh wait! I forgot.” He reached into
the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a folded paper and stubby pencil. He held them
up for inspection, then set them carefully on the ground.

“Are you making fun of us?” asked the voice.

“Yes.”

There was a long silence, until at last he saw a man in a doorway wave him in. He
jogged to the open door to find Grid soldiers waiting with machine guns. He looked
at them nervously. “You guys are human, right?”

“Every Partial-killing cell of me,” said the soldier. “You one of Delarosa’s?”

“What?”

“Senator Delarosa,” said the soldier. “Are you working for her? Do you have a message?”

Marcus frowned. “Wait, is she still . . .” He remembered meeting Delarosa in the forest,
when he and Haru were retreating from the first Partial attack. She’d been hiding
in the woods and attacking patrols. “Is she still fighting Partials?”

“With the full support of the Grid,” said the soldier. “She’s damn good at it, too.”

Marcus pondered this, remembering her more as a terrorist than a freedom fighter.
I guess you hit a point where they all blend together,
he thought.
When things get desperate enough, anything goes—

No, it doesn’t,
he thought firmly.
At the end of the war, we have to be as good as we were when we started it.

“I’m just a guy,” said Marcus. “No message or special delivery or anything.”

“Refugee area is downstairs,” said the first soldier. “Try not to eat much; we don’t
have a lot left.”

“Don’t worry,” said Marcus, “I won’t be staying long. I don’t suppose I could talk
to Senator Tovar?”

The soldiers looked at one another, then the first looked back at Marcus. “Mr. Mkele
likes to debrief anyone new anyway. You can talk to him first.” They led Marcus down
through the airport, leaving the surface almost immediately in favor of the vast subterranean
tunnels crisscrossing the entire complex. Marcus was surprised to find an entire refugee
camp in the basements; he was apparently not the first person to think of retreating
here.

“Do the Partials not know you’re here?” asked Marcus. “They’d kill to get their hands
on this place.”

“They’ve sent a couple of patrols,” said the soldier. “So far we’ve been able to make
ourselves more trouble than we’re worth.”

“That’s not going to last long,” said Marcus.

“They’re getting attacked on the flanks by Delarosa,” he said, “and by another Partial
faction. That’s keeping their main force too busy to bother with us.”

Marcus nodded. “That’s exactly why I’m here.”

The soldier led him to a small office and knocked on the door. Marcus recognized Mkele’s
voice when he told them to come in. The soldier pushed the door open. “New refugee.
He says he wants to talk to the Senate.”

Mkele looked up, and Marcus felt a twang of mischievous pride at the surprise in the
security expert’s eyes. “Marcus Valencio?” Surprising a man who prided himself on
knowing things was an impressive feat indeed.

The pride was followed almost instantly by a wave of despair. Seeing Mkele not in
control was somehow the most disturbing sign of just how much things had fallen apart.

“Hi,” said Marcus, stepping in. “I’ve got a . . . request. A proposal, I suppose.”

Mkele glanced at the soldier, his eyes uncertain, then looked back at Marcus and gestured
to a chair. “Have a seat.” The soldier left, closing the door, and Marcus took a deep
breath to calm his nerves.

“We need to go to the mainland,” said Marcus.

Mkele’s eyes widened, and Marcus had the same feeling of uncomfortable triumph knowing
that he’d surprised the man again. After a quick moment Mkele nodded, as if he understood.
“You want to look for Kira Walker.”

“I wouldn’t mind finding her,” said Marcus, “but she’s not the goal. We need to send
a group north to a city called White Plains, to talk to the Partials who are attacking
Dr. Morgan.”

Mkele didn’t respond.

“I don’t know for sure which faction is there,” said Marcus, “but I know that they
oppose Dr. Morgan’s. A group of them raided the hospital Kira was trapped in a few
months back, which is how we were able to get her out while they killed each other.
Now they’re attacking Morgan’s forces again—they followed them all the way across
the sound, which is a good indication they’re trying to stop this invasion.”