Fragments. Dan Wells

Haru through a living room so filled with vines and brush it was almost indistinguishable from the world outside. He dodged a sapling sprouting up through the floorboards, and cringed as another Partial bullet whooshed past his ear and shattered the glass in a picture frame not ten feet in front of him. Haru turned down a sagging hallway, dropping a live grenade just around the corner, and Marcus’s eyes went wide in terror as he leapt over it, putting on an extra burst of speed he didn’t know he had. He tumbled out the far side of the house just as it exploded. Haru hauled him to his feet again with an urgent grunt.

      “If they’re as close behind as I think they are, that got at least one of them,” said Haru, puffing as he ran. “Either way it’s going to slow down anyone who followed us into the house, and it’s going to make them think twice about following us into the next one.”

      “Sato, you all right?” A woman’s voice cut sharply through the trees, and Marcus recognized it as Grant, the sergeant of this squad of Grid soldiers. Haru ran a little faster to catch up, and Marcus snarled with exhaustion as he struggled to keep up.

      “Just dropped a frag in that last house,” said Haru. “Medic and I are fine.”

      “Grenades are fun, but you’re gonna miss ’em when they’re gone,” said Grant.

      “It didn’t go to waste,” Haru insisted. Another soldier beside them twisted and fell in midstride, claimed by another bullet, and Marcus ducked involuntarily before sprinting forward again. They’d been running like this for nearly an hour, and the forest had become a nightmare of death unmoored from the familiar rules of cause and effect. Bullets came from nowhere, people lived one second and died the next, and all they could do was run.

      “We need to make a stand,” said Haru. He was in better shape than Marcus, but fatigue was more than evident in his voice.

      Grant shook her head almost imperceptibly, conserving her energy as they ran. “We tried that, remember? We lost half the squad.”

      “We didn’t have a good ambush point,” said Haru. “If we can find a good spot, or if we can regroup with more soldiers, we might have a chance. The one thing we did accomplish was to get a good look at their forces, and they’re not very big. We outnumber them, and we know the terrain better—there’s got to be a way to make this work.”

      Another bullet flew past, and Marcus stifled a scream. “You have an absolutely heartwarming level of optimism.”

      “There’s a work farm near here,” said Grant, “on the grounds of an old golf course. We can make a stand there.”

      They redoubled their efforts, discarding grenades here and there as they ran, hoping the erratic explosions would deter their pursuers enough to buy a few precious extra seconds. Marcus saw a sign for a golf course and marveled at Grant’s presence of mind—he was too scared and frantic even to notice their environment, let alone recognize it. A voice from the trees called out for them to halt, but they barreled forward as Grant shouted back, “Partials behind us! Hold your positions and fire!” Marcus followed the soldiers past the line of cars that marked the edge of the parking lot, and dove to the ground behind the largest truck he could find.

      A man in rough farming clothes crouched next to them, clutching a shotgun. “We heard the reports on the radio. Is it true?” His eyes were wild with fear. “Are they invading?”

      Grant readied her assault rifle as she answered, checking the clip for ammo and then slapping it back into place. “Full-scale. The Grid base in Queens is gone, and the watch posts on the North Shore are reporting Partial landing craft from there all the way out to Wildwood.”

      “Mother of mercy,” the farmer muttered.

      “Incoming!” shouted another soldier, and Grant and Haru and the rest reared up, bracing themselves behind the line of cars and firing furiously into the trees. Ten or so farmers, already gathered by the radio reports, joined them with grim looks. Marcus threw his hands over his head and ducked lower, knowing he should help but too terrified to move. The Partials returned fire, and the cars shook with the staccato rhythm of bullet impacts. Grant shouted more directions, but she stopped mid-word with a sickening gurgle, falling to the ground in a red mist of blood. Marcus moved to help her, but she was dead before she even landed.

      “Fall back,” Haru hissed.

      “She’s dead,” said Marcus.

      “I know she’s dead, fall back!” Haru emptied his ammo clip into the forest, then dropped behind cover to reload. He glared at Marcus fiercely. “The farm’s back there somewhere, and anyone left in it is not a fighter—if they were, they’d be out here. Find them and get them out of here.”

      “And go where?” asked Marcus. “Grant said the Partials are everywhere.”

      “Go south,” said Haru. “We’ll try to catch up, but get the civilians moving now. You’ll need all the time you can get.”

      “Going ‘south’ won’t be enough,” said Marcus. “This isn’t a raid, it’s an invasion. Even if we make it to East Meadow, they’ll be right on our heels.”

      “You want to stay here then?” asked Haru. “I don’t know if they’re here to capture us or kill us, but neither one sounds pleasant.”

      “I know,” said Marcus, “I know.” He glanced toward the farmhouse, trying to work up his courage to run. Haru rose, turned, and fired again into the trees.

      “This is what I get for volunteering,” said Marcus, and ran for the farm.

      

fa slept on a king-size bed on the seventh floor of the building, in what looked like it used to be a dressing room. Kira tucked him in like a child before searching for a room of her own, eventually finding a vast, dark studio with stadium seats on one side and half of a stylized living room on the other. A talk show set, she guessed, though the logo on the back wall didn’t spark any memories. She knew that talk shows existed, because someone had watched one in her house—her nanny, maybe— but she doubted she could recognize even that one’s logo. Afa had filled the chairs with boxes, each carefully labeled, but the talk show couch was empty, and she checked it for spiders before laying down her bedroll and going to sleep. She dreamed of Marcus, and then of Samm, and wondered if she’d ever see either of them again.

      There was no natural light in the building, thanks to Afa’s logical insistence on blackout curtains, and even less light in the studio, but Kira had been fending for herself for too long, and jerked awake at the same time as always. She found her way to a window and peeked out, seeing the same familiar sight that greet her every morning: ruined buildings laced with green, and tinged with blue light as the dark sky turned pale in the sunrise.

      It didn’t sound like Afa was awake yet, and Kira took the opportunity to skim through some of his files, starting with the boxes in the studio. They were numbered 138 through 427, one box per chair with more ringing the walls, back-to-back around the entire perimeter of the room. She started with the nearest box, number 221, and pulled out the page on top, a folded printout with a faded military letterhead.

      “‘To whom it may concern,’” she read. “‘My name is Master Sergeant Corey Church, and I was part of the Seventeenth Armored Cavalry in the Second Nihon Invasion.’” The First Nihon Invasion was one of the early major defeats for the NADI forces in the Isolation War, the world’s failed attempt to take back Japan from a suddenly hostile China. She remembered learning about it in school in East Meadow, but didn’t remember much of the details. The Second Nihon Invasion was the one that worked—the one where they went back with two hundred thousand Partial soldiers and drove the Isolationists back to the mainland, kicking off the long campaign that finally ended the war. It was the reason the rest of the Partials had been built. Kira read more of the