Partials

Farad pulled on his uniform cap and stepped carefully out of the back door. Kira watched through a tiny gap in the crumbling wall.

“We checked this whole area,” he said. “They haven’t come through.”

“What do you mean they haven’t come through?” asked the soldier. “We chased them right down this alley.”

“I’ve got men in half of these houses,” said Farad, gesturing around him, “and none of them have seen anything.”

“How could you let them get past you?”

“Listen, soldier,” said Farad, “you’re the ones who let them get past the border — we’re trying to clean up your mess here, not ours. Now spread out. We’ll check these houses, you check those, and don’t forget to leave someone here to guard this alley. The last thing we need is more of them crossing your checkpoint.”

The other soldiers muttered a bit, and Kira heard them tromp away to the next house. She exhaled, then continued checking herself for a bullet hole. Finally finding it — in her backpack. She hadn’t been hurt, but her equipment was destroyed.

Farad stepped back inside, whistling lowly in relief. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I can’t believe that worked,” said Xochi.

“It won’t work for very long,” said Jayden. “They’re going to search Gianna eventually, and they’re going to see she’s wearing a Grid uniform. We’ve got about sixty seconds to disappear.”

They worked their way to the front of the house and slipped from there into the next yard, then the next, moving deeper into East Meadow and as far from the infiltration site as they could. As they walked, the city became more populated, the houses better tended, and at last Kira saw the glint of window glass. I’m home. And yet even as the city looked familiar, it looked wrong; the houses were occupied, but the doors were all closed and the glassed-in windows were all curtained or even boarded up. On a nice summer night like this, even after sunset, the streets should be full of people talking, chatting, enjoying themselves, but now the few people who walked the streets did so quickly, eager to get back inside again, avoiding eye contact with everyone else. Groups of Grid soldiers and Mkele’s special police patrolled the city at regular intervals, and Kira saw more than one of the scared, furtive citizens stopped and questioned in the streets. They’re looking for us, she thought, but they’re punishing the wrong people.

They reached the Turnpike and took shelter in a ruined storefront, looking across at the hospital that had practically become a fortress. There were guards on the doors, but more important there was a perimeter of guards all around the grounds. The rear door they’d been planning to use was probably still available, but without their Grid jeep they couldn’t get to it safely, let alone get out again with Madison.

“This is going to be interesting,” said Xochi.

“No kidding,” said Jayden. Farad merely shook his head.

“Bad news,” said Marcus, and motioned them over to the radio. They clustered around him, and Kira heard a staticky voice shouting an urgent warning: “… I repeat, the Voice has Defense Grid uniforms. They are already inside the city, and there may be more coming. Full identification checks are now mandatory for all encounters, code protocol Sigma.” The message repeated, and Marcus shook his head. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

“I don’t know code protocol Sigma,” said Farad, pacing nervously in the ruined building. “Some of it, maybe, but not enough. We won’t get past anyone now.”

Kira stared at the hospital, willing herself to find something, anything, that she could use to get in. I’m a wanted criminal with a face well-known by every single person in that building. If I get in, it will be because I’m in chains. She shook her head, forcing herself to think it through. I am stronger than my trials, she thought. I can use my trials to help me; I can make them serve my own ends. Don’t say, “I’ll never do it,” say, “How can I turn this situation in my favor?” She studied the building more closely, counting the guards she could see, estimating the number of guards she couldn’t, drawing a detailed mental picture of the inner hallways to guess where each soldier would be stationed. She counted the windows, determining the exact location of every good entrance point, and found to her dismay that each one had been blocked by cars or reinforced with sheets of metal and planks of wood. It’s too well defended. They’ve thought of everything — they’ve anticipated every plan we could use.

She glanced up at the snipers on the roof, commanding a matchless view of the land around the hospital. Partial or not, they could still shoot me down no matter how fast I try to run—

She paused, her eyes caught by a gleam of light from a window. That’s the fourth floor — the only people who use that floor are the Senators. Are they meeting right now? Is there any way that could help me?

“Even if we get in,” said Jayden, “I don’t know how we’d ever get out again — not with Madison. They barely let her out of her bed, they’d never let her out of the hospital, and we don’t even have the jeep to hide her in.”

“You are just a little ray of sunshine,” said Marcus. He stood up. “This is fantastic — we can’t get to the hospital, we can’t get out, we probably can’t even get out of East Meadow. Our uniforms don’t even help us anymore — we have literally nothing.”

“That’s not true,” said Kira, looking back at the hospital. There was definitely light on the fourth floor. “You have me.”

“You’ll excuse me for not jumping with joy,” said Farad.

“See that light?” she asked, pointing at the lit upper windows. “That’s the Senate, and you’re going to bring them the one thing they want more than anything in the entire world: me.”

“No, we’re not,” said Marcus hotly, echoed by all three of the others.

“Yes, you are,” said Kira. “Our plan is destroyed, we can’t get Madison out, but we can still give her the shot — if we can get inside. You don’t need me to be there when you do it, and I was serious about giving my life for this. If Arwen lives, I don’t care what the Senate does to me.”

“We’re not going to give you up,” said Xochi.

“Yes, you will,” said Kira. “You pull down your hat brims, march up to the door, and tell them you caught me trying to sneak across the border. It’s the most believable story we could possibly come up with, because any soldier smart enough to be listening to his radio will know people have been hitting the border all day. They won’t even ask for ID, because why would Voice spies turn in one of their own?”

“Good question,” said Xochi. “Why would we? That doesn’t gain us anything.”

“It gets you inside the hospital,” said Kira. “Just hand me off to the guards inside, they’ll take me up to the Senate, and you head to maternity.”

“We don’t have to hand you off,” said Marcus, “once we’re in we could just … make a break for it.”

“And set off every alarm in the building,” said Kira. “If you turn me over, you can work in peace.” She took Marcus’s hand. “If this cure works, humanity has a future; that’s the only thing we’ve ever wanted.”

Marcus’s voice cracked when he spoke. “I wanted it with you.”

“They might not kill me outright,” said Kira, smiling weakly. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Marcus laughed, his eyes wet with tears. “Yeah, our luck’s been awesome so far.”

“We’ll need to call ahead,” said Farad, hefting the radio, “just like we did with the checkpoint. If they hear us before they see us, we stand a much better chance of making this work.”

“We can’t risk the same trick twice,” said Jayden. “Someone who knows exactly how many patrols there are, and where they’ve been assigned, is going to be listening. It won’t take long to figure out we’re lying.”

“We can’t just show up without calling in first,” said Farad. “How suspicious would that look?”

Xochi drew her pistol, screwed on a silencer, and shot the radio squarely in the center; Kira and the others leaped back with a chorus of startled yelps. “Problem solved,” said Xochi, holstering her weapon again. “The evil terrorist Kira Walker shot our radio during the fight. Now: Kira is my best friend in the world, but she’s right. Her plan is the best, fastest way to get us inside that hospital, so take her weapons away and let’s do this.”

Kira pulled out her weapons and other gear, stripping herself of almost every piece of equipment she had; the men in the group eventually started helping, resigned to the fact that the decision had been made. Marcus wasn’t happy about it, but he wasn’t doing anything to stop it, either. The last piece of equipment was the syringe, wrapped tightly and padded with old shirts, tied firmly to an extra belt inside every other layer of clothing. She took it off, held it a moment, and handed it to Marcus.

“Take care of this,” she whispered.