Ruins. Dan Wells

of hardened skin. Isolde seemed to swallow a scream and nodded to Ariel as mechanically as she could. “Thank you.”

      Ariel walked toward the kitchen, but Chas barked a sudden order.

      “Stop.”

      Ariel froze. She could just see Xochi from the corner of her eye, edging toward the curio cabinet where she’d hidden her handgun.

      “No one’s allowed to leave the room,” Chas continued, his voice grim and serious. “You all stay exactly where you are, where we can see you.”

      Ariel looked the other way, still frozen in place, and counted the steps to her own rifle’s hiding place. Three steps, and cover when I get there.

       It still won’t be enough.

      If they started a fight, Senator Kessler would be here in seconds, surprising the Partials and, if they were lucky, taking one out of the fight. If the fight went long enough, Nandita would expose herself as well, using her power over the Partials to stop it—she didn’t like to use her control out of fear that it would attract too much attention from the rest of the Partial army, bringing out forces they couldn’t hope to deal with, but for a situation like this she might step in. But Xochi or Isolde or both might already be dead by the time Nandita came out, and maybe even Ariel herself.

      At last Chas turned away.

      “Let’s go.”

      He walked to the door, and that was it—no warnings, no parting words, no acknowledgment of Khan’s illness or Isolde’s desperate cries for help. They were looking for Arwen, and this wasn’t Arwen, so they left. Isolde clutched her baby close to her chest, and Xochi closed the door the soldiers had left hanging open.

      Ariel grabbed her rifle, checked the barrel, and tried to slow her breathing.

      “We’ve got to get out of town tonight,” said Kessler, stepping into the room with her own rifle gripped tightly in her hands. “That was too close.”

      “I think we handled it pretty damn well,” Xochi snapped.

      Kessler growled, rolling her eyes. “I never said you didn’t.”

      “Be quiet or you’ll make him start crying again,” said Isolde, and hurried out of the room. Ariel slowly peeled her fingers off the rifle, though she still couldn’t take her eyes off the locked door, or the windows they’d so carefully blocked to keep from being spied on. Xochi and Kessler pulled the bags out of the cupboards in the kitchen, running last-minute checks to make sure everything was ready. Ariel set her rifle on the table beside her but couldn’t bring herself to take her hand off it.

      “You may have saved their lives, Ariel,” said Nandita, so close behind her that she almost jumped when she heard the old woman’s voice. She shot her a dark glance over her shoulder, then walked into the kitchen to help with the bags.

      “The other girls froze,” Nandita continued. “You didn’t. I thank you for that.”

      Kessler glared at Xochi, but neither of them spoke.

      “You still haven’t told us where we’re going,” said Ariel.

      “Does it matter?” asked Madison, walking in with Arwen on her hip. “We need to get out, I don’t care where.”

      “Where this group goes matters more than almost anything else in the world,” said Kessler. She had a soft Irish lilt in her voice; Xochi, her adopted daughter, was Mexican by birth, but had lived with Kessler so long that the same lilt crept into her voice when she was angry.

      It was fully evident now. “You know that’s not what she meant, Erin.”

      “Yes, we have to get the children away from the Partials—” said Madison, but fell abruptly silent almost before she could even finish speaking. Ariel felt everyone’s eyes on her but said nothing. “The Partial soldiers,” said Madison, correcting herself. “We had the perfect cover today, and it still almost fell apart.”

      “I’m not suggesting we stay,” said Kessler. “I’m just agreeing with Ariel. We need to know where we’re going.”

      “To the same lab where I spent most of the last year,” said Nandita.

      “That doesn’t tell us anything,” said Ariel.

      Nandita sighed. “And what if one of you is captured? They could torture you, and get the location, and cut the rest of us off before we even arrive.”

      “What are you expecting this trip to be like?” asked Ariel. “Two infants, an old woman, and barely enough survival training to go around. We’re sticking together just to stay alive, and if they find one of us, they find us all.”

      Nandita glared back at her, but after a moment of silence she spoke. “Before the Break there was a government laboratory on a tiny island off the eastern tip of this one, the Plum Island Disease Research Center. Being separated from the rest of the continent made it the only safe place to study the most contagious organisms, but it turns out that same isolation saved it when the rest of the world fell apart. It has its own power source, its own air and water recycling system, and a hermetically sealed interior—it hasn’t fallen apart the way everything else has. That’s where I made this.” She held up the hand-sized leather bag that hung around her neck, containing the small glass vial with a chemical trigger; the trigger that would release … something inside Ariel’s and Isolde’s bodies. Nandita had thought it was the cure for RM, but given everything unexpected that had happened with Khan, they could only wonder. “If there’s any facility in the world where I can study and cure Khan’s illness, it’s there.”

      Ariel found herself instinctually assuming that Nandita must have other motives as well, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it. Isolde entered the room, and Khan, in a rare moment of surrender, was passed out from fatigue, asleep on her chest. Isolde looked just as exhausted.

      Ariel looked back at Nandita, fixing her with her stare. “Can you actually save him?”

      “I will stop at nothing.”

      They stared at each other, sizing each other up. Ariel wondered what the old woman was thinking, what she was reading in Ariel’s face and attitude.

      “If you can really help him,” said Ariel, “then I’ll stop at nothing to help you do it.”

       And as soon as he’s safe, I’ll kill you.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      General Shon, leader of the Partial invasion force, climbed down from his horse in the yard outside the Dogwood outpost. He handed the reins to his assistant, Mattson. The human Defense Grid had used Dogwood to patrol East Meadow, keeping threats at bay, and Shon now used it for the opposite purpose of keeping the humans contained inside the city. As the most remote outpost, it was also a handy place to keep certain things he didn’t want anyone, human or Partial, to find. The link data in the yard crackled with anxiety—Shon could feel edginess and uncertainty in the soldiers, just like the rest of the army, but here they were outright terrified, and with good reason.

      The humans, it seemed, had released a biological weapon, and Dogwood was where Shon had been keeping the corpses of his Partial brethren who’d died from the disease.

      “Are you sure it’s safe here, sir?” asked Mattson.

      “I wouldn’t have anyone here if it wasn’t,” said Shon. “Let’s go inside.” He tried to project as much strength and certainty as he could, hoping his example would bolster the soldiers. Ideally it would be a real general here, not Shon—he was just another infantryman, like them, created to be a sergeant at the most—but he was the one Dr. Morgan had promoted when the other officers expired. Authority was more than just rank for the Partials, it was a biological fact: A general could command those under him through link data