Fragments (7 page)

“Kira Walker and Nandita Merchant are vital to the solution of the expiration date,
and Dr. Morgan is determined to find them.”

Marcus frowned, confused. “What do they have to do with it?”

“Don’t get distracted by details,” said Heron. “It doesn’t matter
why
Dr. Morgan wants to find them, just that she does, and she is going to, and Partials
have only two ways of doing things: my way, and everybody else’s way.”

“I’m not a big fan of your way,” said Marcus, eyeing the rifle. “Do I even want to
know everybody else’s way?”

“You’ve seen it before,” said Heron. “It was called the Partial War.”

“In that case, I like your way better,” said Marcus.

“Then help me,” said Heron. “Find Nandita Merchant. She’s somewhere on this island.
I’d do it myself, but I have business elsewhere.”

“Off the island,” said Marcus, and ventured a guess. “You’re looking for Kira.”

Heron smiled again.

“What do I do if I find her?” Marcus asked. “Assuming . . . that I look for her at
all, because you’re not the boss of me.”

“Just find her,” said Heron. She took a step backward. “Trust me, you don’t want to
do this their way.” She turned and walked into the shadows.

Marcus tried to follow her, but she was gone.

K
ira crouched low in the brush, staring through her new rifle scope at the door of
the electronics store. This was the fourth one she’d visited, and every one had been
previously scavenged. Normally this wouldn’t have been strange, but the ParaGen offices
had made her wary, and her closer investigations had all proven the same thing: The
scavenger, whoever he was, had come recently. This was more than just eleven-year-old
looting from the end of the world—someone in the wilds of Manhattan had been collecting
computers and generators within the last few months or so.

She’d been watching this place for nearly an hour and a half, focusing her energy,
trying to be as cautious in tracking the looter as he was being in hiding his tracks.
She watched a few minutes more, scanning the storefront, the neighboring storefronts,
the four stories of windows above them—nothing. She checked the street again, empty
in both directions. No one was here; it was safe to move in. She checked her pack,
clutched her assault rifle tightly, and raced across the broken road. The door had
been glass, and she leapt through the shattered opening without pausing; she checked
her corners, gun up and ready for action, then carefully sighted down each aisle.
It was a small store, mostly speakers and stereo systems, and most of that was long
gone, thanks to the original looting. The only person here was the skeletal remains
of the cashier, holed up behind the counter. Satisfied that it was safe, she slung
her rifle over her shoulder and got down to business, examining the floor as carefully
as she could. It didn’t take her long to find them: footprints in the dust, clear
imprints that could only have been made long after the storefront was destroyed and
the building had filled with dirt and debris. The prints here were even clearer than
they’d been before, and she measured one with her hand—the same huge shoe size she’d
seen before, maybe size fourteen or even fifteen. The prints were also shockingly
well preserved: Wind and water would naturally erode the prints over time, especially
those in the centers of the aisles, but here there had been almost no erosion at all.
Kira dropped to her knees, examining the prints as gently as she could. The others
had been made within the last year; these might have been made within the last week.

Whoever was stealing generators was still out there doing it.

Kira turned her attention to the shelves, trying to deduce from their condition, and
from the placement of the footprints, exactly what the scavenger had taken. The main
concentration of prints was, predictably, in the corner where the generators had been
displayed, but the more she looked, the more she saw a deviation in the pattern: He
had taken at least two trips to the opposite side of the store, one slow as if he
were looking for something, and one firm, the prints deeper, as if he’d been carrying
something heavy. She glanced over the shelves, her eyes sliding past dusty plastic
phones still tethered to the metal frames, past slim notebook computers and tiny music
players like Xochi used to collect. She followed the trail carefully through the rubble
on the floor, ending at a low, empty shelf near the back. He’d definitely taken something.
Kira bent down to brush away the dirt from the shelf tag, and struggled to decipher
the weathered writing:
HAM
. Ham? No electronics store would sell ham. She peered closer, picking out the faded,
filthy word that followed:
RADIO
. HAM radio, the “ham” all in capital letters. Another acronym, like IT, that she’d
never come across before.

Computers, generators, and now radios. Her mysterious scavenger was putting together
quite the collection of old-world technology—and he was obviously an expert, as he’d
known precisely what the thing on this shelf had been without having to clean up the
tag first like she had. More than that, though, he’d taken some very specific equipment
from the ParaGen offices, which couldn’t possibly be a coincidence; he wasn’t just
grabbing certain kinds of technology, he was grabbing specific pieces of it. He was
gathering old computers from ParaGen, and the generators to be able to access them.
And now he was gathering radio systems, but who was he trying to call?

Manhattan was a no-man’s-land, empty, an unofficial demilitarized zone between the
Partials and the human survivors. No one was supposed to be here, not because it was
forbidden but because it was dangerous. If something happened to you out here, either
side could get you, and neither side could protect you. It wasn’t even great territory
for a spy, since there was nothing interesting to observe and report on—except, she
supposed, the ParaGen files. She was looking for them, and this scavenger was doing
the same—and he’d gotten there first. Now, thanks to him, there weren’t any generators
left for her to take back to the ParaGen offices, and no guarantee that the computers
left there would have the information she needed. She’d hoped to find a generator
to get the top executive’s desk computer running again, to see if it contained what
she was looking for, but this mysterious scavenger was obviously searching for the
same things, and he had ignored the executive’s computer completely. Most likely,
the scavenger had everything she was looking for. If she wanted to read those records,
she’d have to find the scavenger himself.

She had to find out what ParaGen was doing with the Partials, with RM, with her, but
there was another reason she was here. Nandita’s last note had told her to find the
Trust—the Partial leaders, the high command who gave all the others their orders—and
while she wasn’t going to find them here, she might, again, find some clues as to
where to start her search. But . . . could she trust Nandita? Kira shook her head,
frowning at the ravaged store. She used to trust Nandita more than anyone in the world,
but learning that Nandita had known her father before the Break, had known Kira herself,
and never once told her . . . Nandita had deceived her, and Kira had no way of knowing
what her intentions were in telling Kira what to do next. But it was the only clue
she had. She had to keep looking for information about ParaGen, scary mysterious scavenger
or not—that was where the answers would be, and this new stranger was where she had
to look for them. Whether he was a Partial or a human or double agent or whatever,
it didn’t matter, she had to find him and learn what he knew.

Another thought came to her then, the mental image of a column of smoke. She’d seen
it last time she was here, with Jayden and Haru and the others: a thin trail of smoke
rising up from a chimney or a campfire. They’d gone to investigate it and run into
Samm’s group of Partials, and in the rush to get back out, she’d forgotten that they’d
never actually learned where the smoke was coming from. She’d assumed it was part
of the Partial camp, but her experiences with them later made that seem almost laughably
wrong—the Partials were far too clever to leave such an obvious sign of their presence,
and far too hardy to need a campfire in the first place. It seemed more likely that
the smoke came from a third party, and the Partials had shown up to investigate it
the same time the humans did; their two groups had annihilated each other before either
could find out what was going on.
Maybe.
It was a long shot, but it was better than anything else she had to go on. Certainly
better than staking out hardware stores in a vain hope the scavenger would hit one
while she was watching it.

She’d start with the same neighborhood they’d been investigating back then, and if
he’d moved on—which seemed likely, after the massive firefight they’d held just a
few blocks away—she’d look for more clues about where he might have headed next. There
was somebody in this city, and she was determined to find him.

Finding the source of the smoke plume was harder than Kira had planned. It wasn’t
there anymore, for one thing, so she had to go by memory, and the city was so big
and confusing that she couldn’t remember clearly enough without jogging her memory
visually. She had to go back, all the way south to the bridge they’d crossed on, and
find the same building, and look out the same window. There, at long last, the landscape
looked familiar—she could see the long strip of trees, the three apartment buildings,
all the signs that had led her to the Partial attack those many months ago. That was
where she’d first met Samm—well, not “met him” so much as “knocked him unconscious
and captured him.” It was strange how much things had changed since then. If she had
Samm here, now . . . Well, things would be a lot easier, for one thing.

But even as she thought it, she knew it was more than that. Staring out the window
over the leafy city, she wondered again, for the hundredth time, if the connection
she had felt between them had been the Partial link or something deeper. Was there
any way to know? Did it even matter? A connection was a connection, and she had precious
few of those these days.

But this wasn’t the time to think about Samm. Kira studied the cityscape, trying to
fix in her mind exactly where the smoke had been coming from, and how to retrace her
steps to find it. She went so far as to pull out her notebook and sketch out a map,
but without a clear sense of how many streets there were, and what they were called,
she didn’t know how useful the map would be. The buildings here were so tall, and
the streets so narrow, the city was almost like a labyrinth, a maze of brick-and-metal
canyons. Last time they’d had scouts to lead the way, but on her own Kira worried
that she’d get lost and never find anything.

She finished her map as best she could, noting key landmarks that might help her navigate,
then descended the long stairway and set out through the city. The streets were rough,
filled with jumbled cars and spindly trees, their leaves fluttering in the soft wind.
She passed an ancient car accident, a dozen or more vehicles piled together in a desperate
bid to flee the plague-ridden city; she didn’t remember passing the pileup before,
which made her nervous that she was following the wrong path, but soon she turned
a corner and spotted one of her landmarks, and continued up the road more confidently.
The center of each street was the easiest to travel in, less filled with debris than
edges and sidewalks, but they were also the most visible, and Kira was too paranoid
to leave the thicker cover. She hugged the walls and fences, stepping carefully through
heaps of shifting rubble fallen down from the towering buildings. It was slow going,
but it was safer, or at least that was what Kira told herself.

Here and there Kira spotted a bullet hole in a car or a mailbox, and she knew she
was on the right track. They had run through here with a sniper behind them; Jayden
had even been shot through the arm. The thought of Jayden sobered her, and she paused
to listen: birds. Wind. Two cats yowling in a fight. It was foolish to think that
there would be a sniper here now, but she couldn’t help herself. She ducked down behind
a crumbling stairway, breathing heavily, telling herself that it was just nerves,
but all she could think about was Jayden, shot through the arm—shot through the chest
in the East Meadow hospital, bleeding out on the floor where he’d sacrificed himself
to save her. He’d been the one to force her through her fear, to tell her to get up
when she was too afraid to move. She gritted her teeth and stood up again, moving
forward. She could be afraid all she wanted, but she wouldn’t let it stop her.

She reached the apartment complex when the sun was high in the sky: five buildings
that had looked like three from her vantage point back in the skyscraper. It was the
same place. There was a wide lawn around and between them, now filled with saplings,
and she pushed through it carefully as she passed the buildings.
This was the one we passed first, and this was the one we went into. . . .
She came around the side and looked up, seeing the massive hole they’d blown in the
wall three stories up. A vine wound around a dangling floor joist, and a bird perched
on a crooked shard of rebar. The violence was gone, and nature was reclaiming it.

They had come here looking for the source of the smoke, and they’d chosen that apartment
building because it looked out on what they assumed was the back of the occupied house.
Kira kept her rifle up as she walked, rounding the first corner, then the next. This
would be the street, and if she’d guessed correctly on her map, the house she was
looking for would be six doors down. One, two three, four . . . no. Kira’s jaw dropped,
and she stared in shock at the sixth townhouse in the row.