“Ariel,” she shouted, “I’ll cover you! Catch up!”
Nandita jumped nimbly over the barrier, then paused to help Isolde clamber over with Khan still strapped to her chest. Ariel heard the baby scream, probably woken by the shooting. She reached the barrier just as Isolde cleared it, and leaped over without pausing.
A voice called out from the bridge during the brief moment of quiet. “Don’t shoot!”
“The hell we won’t,” snarled Ariel, running past Kessler to take cover behind a faded white sedan skewed sideways in the road. A skeleton slumped over the wheel. Ariel drew a bead on the bridge and shouted for Kessler to move up. “Get into the trees!” She fired another burst. “We can lose them in the houses on the other side!”
“There’s a chain-link fence!” Xochi called back. “You’ve got to buy us more time to knock it down!”
Ariel gritted her teeth and fired again. “Come on, you little bastards, stick your heads out.” She fired again. “Come on, I dare you.”
“Don’t shoot!” shouted the figures on the bridge. “Madison!”
Ariel frowned in confusion. Madison whipped around. “Did it just say my name?”
“How do all these things keep knowing our names?” Kessler demanded, reaching the far side and throwing her weight against the fence.
“Madison,” the voice shouted, “it’s me! Madison, we’ve found you!”
Madison ran back into the street. “That’s Haru!”
“It’s not Haru,” Ariel snarled, “it’s just a trick. Get your head down before you get shot!”
“We’re through the fence!” shouted Xochi.
“Madison, tell them not to shoot.” The voice echoed through the tree-lined gully. “It’s me, I’m standing up!”
“Don’t shoot him,” hissed Madison, “that’s my husband.”
“It can’t be,” said Isolde.
A figure stood up on the bridge, and beside him another, then another. They were more than a hundred yards away, and hard to distinguish, but Ariel could tell they weren’t wearing Partial uniforms.
“That’s him!” Madison fell to her knees, racked with sobs. “That’s him, he’s alive.”
“Meet us on the far side,” said Haru, and ran south across the bridge. A few other figures joined him, while some hung back, dropping down to take up firing positions and cover the women’s final push across the street. Ariel didn’t know what to think and stayed crouched in cover, aiming right back at them.
“Come on,” said Isolde. “If they were bad guys, they would have shot us.”
“Unless they want us alive,” said Ariel.
“That’s Haru,” Isolde insisted. “You don’t know him like we do—I recognize his voice.”
“Get off the road,” Kessler yelled. “No matter who it is, we have to get out of the open.”
Ariel growled in frustration but realized Kessler was right. She took one last look at the shooters on the bridge before jumping up and running to the trees. Xochi and the others had knocked down enough of the fence that they could scramble over it, and Kessler and Nandita were helping Isolde. Khan was screaming piteously, awakened again to his life of endless pain. Isolde cleared the fence, with Kessler and Nandita close behind. They hadn’t even pushed through to the service road at the top of the hill when Haru came crashing through the underbrush, screaming Madison’s name. She called back and ran to him, rushing into his arms with Arwen pressed between them: the first reunion of a real family in thirteen years. Ariel saw Isolde and Xochi crying; even Kessler’s eyes were wet. Ariel wanted to cry too, but the tears didn’t come. Nandita was as emotionless as ever.
“I found you,” said Haru, “I found you. I found you.”
“I thought you were dead,” said Madison.
“We have to go to ground,” said Haru. “We’ve made too much noise already. Every Partial on the island can hear us, and—” He stopped abruptly, looking back and forth between Arwen and Khan. “The screaming baby’s not Arwen? There are two babies?”
“This one’s mine,” said Isolde. Her eyes were sunken, and her voice dripped with fatigue. “Nearly a month old.”
“Then this is about to get real interesting,” said Haru.
Madison frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Haru’s companions burst through the foliage, with Senator Hobb in the lead.
“We need to hide,” said Hobb. “Can you get that kid to shut up?”
“Congratulations,” said Haru dryly. “You’re a father.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Isolde stared at Senator Hobb in shock. “What are you doing here?”
“Isolde?” Hobb looked half-surprised and half-terrified.
“We can’t stay here,” said Ariel, pushing past them through the trees. “A Partial patrol could be here any minute; we have to keep moving.”
“Is that . . .” Hobb stared at the screaming infant, too stunned to move. “My . . . child?”
“We can talk about it while we run,” said Nandita. She looked at Haru. “Did you come from the north or south?”
“South,” said Haru. “We haven’t seen any Partials in two days.”
“Then we keep heading south,” said Nandita. “Xochi, find us a place to hide for the night.”
“We saw a good place not far from here,” said Hobb. “It was a middle school, straight down this road, maybe four blocks—”
“Thank you,” said Nandita crisply, “but we can find our own hiding places. The infants require us to use a very specific kind of camp, and a school won’t do.”
The men fell in line with the women, Xochi and Kessler leading the way. Haru’s shooters from the bridge joined them a minute later, taking up rearguard positions at the back of the column, so Ariel jogged forward to catch up with Isolde. There were six men in total, an even match for the six women.
“Is it a boy or girl?” asked Hobb.
“Boy,” said Isolde, not even deigning to glance at him.
Hobb’s voice was reverent. “I have a son.”
“You made it very clear you had no interest in me or the baby after you knocked me up,” said Isolde. “That means I have a son, and all you have is a memory of something you’ll never have again.”
“You act like I turned you away,” said Hobb. “I’m a busy man. You can’t think I hate you just because I didn’t have time for a heartfelt conversation every day.”
“I worked in your office,” said Isolde. “You didn’t even have time for ‘Good morning, Isolde,’ which seems to me like a pretty strong hint.”
“We were working under the Hope Act,” said Hobb indignantly. “Getting you pregnant was our civic duty—yours and mine—but I never expected the child to live. They never live. If I’d known—”
Isolde cut him off. “Do you honestly think that anything you’re saying is working in your favor?”
“But I—”
“I think it’s time for you to shut up now,” said Ariel, stepping between them. “We can talk about this later.”
“Or never,” said Isolde.
“Never’s good too,” said Ariel. Hobb scowled but stayed quiet.
Xochi led them off the main road at the first good cross street, winding through a series of narrow, tree-lined roads before finally finding a house tucked back behind the others, surrounded on three sides by thick woods. The group trekked around to the back, entering through a wide broken window so the door looked undisturbed, and slipped into the basement. It was dank and musty, but they closed the basement doors and pulled up mattresses to stand against them, blocking as much sound as they could. Arwen got down to play, excited to see her daddy and babbling wordlessly as she sat on the mildewed carpet. Isolde pulled Khan from his sling and tried to nurse, but the screaming baby was too bothered to suck, and Isolde worked instead to calm him down. Ariel thought his blisters looked worse than usual, but it was hard to tell.
Hobb stared at the boy in alarm. “What’s wrong with him? He’s sick!”
“He was born with it,” said Nandita. “We have some painkillers and fever reducers to help keep him comfortable, but it’s the best we can do for now.”
“You know what that looks like,” said Hobb, peering in closely.
“It’s the bioweapon,” said Haru, leaning forward as he noticed the same thing. “The symptoms look identical.”
“What bioweapon?” asked Isolde.
“We don’t know exactly,” said Haru. “The Partials are getting sick—we used to think it was part of their expiration, but everything we’ve managed to overhear says otherwise. They’re calling it a bioweapon, and they think it’s us fighting back.”
“The two we ran into outside Plainview said the same thing,” said Ariel. “Why do they think it’s a bioweapon and not just a plague?”
“Because it targets very specific areas,” said Haru. “We got the full story from two victims of it, also near Plainview; they were scouts, I think, who contracted it on a mission and never made it back to base. When we found them they were too sick to fight back, so we got as much info as we could in exchange for a merciful death.”
Madison paled. “They asked you to kill them?”
“It’s apparently very painful,” said Haru. “They think the bioweapon was deployed in East Meadow, in the district by Nandita’s old house, and then whoever had it moved east along a path the Partials haven’t been able to decipher yet. The symptoms look like more or less the same thing your child has—scaly skin, yellow blisters, high fever, plus the two we talked to were obviously hallucinating. They kept talking about a giant monster, and snow—”
“No way,” said Ariel. She was staring at Isolde, who was staring right back with the same stunned expression. Ariel looked at the other women, her heart sinking as she saw that each of them had apparently come to the same conclusion.
“This is a very scary sudden silence,” said Haru. “What’s going on?”
“It can’t be him,” said Isolde.
“It absolutely can be,” said Kessler. “Everywhere we’ve gone—”
“I know,” growled Isolde. “I know that it’s probably Khan. I just don’t want it to be.”
“That’s what you named him?” asked Hobb. “Khan?”
“It doesn’t make sense that Khan would catch it, too,” said Haru. “It’s designed to target Partials—”
“He is a Partial,” Isolde snapped. “So am I.” She gestured to Ariel. “We both are—ask Nandita.”
Then men looked at Ariel, then at Nandita. “What?” asked Hobb.
“It’s a long story,” said Ariel, “and Nandita’s really bad at telling it. Here are the bullet points: Nandita was a geneticist at ParaGen. They made the Partials and loaded them up with a bunch of weird diseases, including RM and an alternate disease that kills Partials. When the Partials rebelled, the wrong one got released, because the Partial-killer was only inside a handful of certain late-model Partials designed to mimic a regular human life cycle. Me, Isolde, and Kira.”
Hobb stared at her blankly. “What?” he said again.
Haru shook his head. “I think you mean ‘What the bloody hell?’”
“Ariel left out the reasons behind our actions,” said Nandita, “but the basics are all there. Isolde’s DNA is coded with the blueprints for a Partial-killing plague, and when that DNA mixed with Hobb’s to conceive Khan, it looks like it may have . . . gotten loose.”
“Gotten loose?” asked Hobb. “My son is dying of a plague you built, and all you say is that it ‘got loose’?”
“I might be able to cure him,” said Nandita. “His human half seems to be keeping him alive, and if I can get to the lab on Plum Island, they have genetics equipment that could remove the disease altogether.”
Isolde was holding Khan tightly now, rocking him gently, her eyes filled with tears.
Hobb’s face was still aghast. “You’re a Partial?”
“You need to get past that part,” said Ariel. “None of us knew until a few weeks ago.”
“Let’s take a step back to think about this,” said Kessler. “We were headed to Plum Island—and we should still go there eventually—but if he’s a bioweapon . . .”
“No,” said Isolde.
“If he killed those two soldiers outside Plainview that fast,” Kessler continued, “think what he could do if we got him into the middle of the Partial army.”
“Not a chance,” Isolde hissed. “He’s a baby, not a bomb!”
“The Partials have ruined everything we ever loved,” said Kessler. “We could end it all right now—the war, the occupation, even the hunt to find us—”
Ariel scoffed. “You want to end their hunt by just turning ourselves over?”
“We’d be in custody for a couple of days at the most,” said Kessler, “then everyone hunting us would be dead, and everyone they worked with, and we could race to Plum Island without having to stop and hide every few hours. We might be able to cure him sooner.”
“You are not using my son as a weapon!” said Isolde.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” said Haru. “That’s why we’ve been following your trail all over the island—we have to get off now. There’s no time to attack the Partials and definitely no time to visit some lab.”
“If we don’t get there, he’ll die,” said Nandita.
“If we don’t head south as fast as we possibly can, he’ll die anyway,” said Haru. “You heard about the rocket attack in Plainview?”
Ariel nodded. “The soldiers thought we did it.”
“Wrong place at the wrong time,” said Haru. “That was the first strike of a military campaign designed to distract the Partial army and lead them north, away from East Meadow and everything south of it. We’re evacuating every human we can: out of East Meadow, off the island, and then down the coast as far as we can get.”
“We can’t run away from the Partials,” said Xochi. “We need their pheromones to cure RM.”
“I’m sure some of them will follow us,” said Haru. “There’s not going to be anywhere else to go.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Ariel. “What’s going to happen?”
“Former senator Marisol Delarosa is carrying a nuclear device to White Plains,” said Haru. “The radius of the fallout will include a lot of Long Island—we don’t know how much, or where, so it’s safer to just be gone. Traveling north and east toward your lab is just following the wind, and taking you farther into trouble.”
“How on earth did she get a nuke?” asked Kessler.
“Does it really matter how?” asked Xochi. She looked at Haru. “How long do we have?”
“We don’t know that, either,” said Haru. “She’s probably traveling slowly to stay hidden. I don’t know how big a nuclear warhead is, but I can’t imagine it’s easy to haul around. That said, your group is traveling even slower because of the children. If you want to get to a safe area, you have to start now.”
“We can’t just leave,” said Isolde. “If we’re caught in the fallout, Khan might die, but if we don’t get to that lab, he will die. I’ll take my chances in the fallout.”
“I . . .” Madison’s voice trailed off, soft and guilty. “I can’t take Arwen into danger.”
The room was silent. Ariel looked from one mother to the other, feeling trapped in a vise.
“You know I’d follow you to the ends of the earth if I could,” said Madison. She looked up at Isolde, her eyes wet with tears. “I’d do anything to help your baby, but I can’t just think about myself anymore. I have to save Arwen, and if that means . . .” She closed her eyes. “I think we need to split up.”
“We can’t do that,” said Haru.
Madison fumed. “I won’t drag Arwen into danger—”
“I’m not saying that we should,” said Haru. “I’m saying we need to get out of danger, all of us, together.” Isolde started to protest, but Haru shouted her down. “I know you want to help your son, but your plan to do that is a long shot anyway. I
f you can make it through the Partial army, and if you can find this lab, and if Nandita can find a way to fix him—that’s too many ifs. It’s completely unfeasible. Come south with us, get clear of the blast, and we’ll find another way to help him—”
“If we wait that long, he’ll die!” shouted Ariel.
“Not too loud,” said Xochi. “We’re trying to stay hidden.”
“We’ll never find another lab like the one on Plum Island,” said Isolde. “It’s self-sustaining, it’s self-powered, and it was designed to work with diseases. If we’re going to save his life, we do it there.”
“We should split up,” said Senator Hobb. His face was solemn, and Ariel saw in him a spark of the old Hobb, the charismatic leader who led the island through the worst days of its civil war. He looked at Haru. “You take your wife and child, and anyone who wants to go south with you. Meet up with the other refugees and get off the island. I’ll take Isolde and Nandita to their lab, and we’ll catch up with you as soon as we can.”
“You’ll die,” said Haru.
“Then I’ll die protecting my son,” said Hobb. “It will be more than worth it.”
“I’m staying with Isolde,” said Ariel.
Xochi nodded. “Me too.”
“That means I’m staying as well,” said Kessler, and looked at Xochi. “I’m a mother too, you know.”
“That’s not the same,” said Xochi, but Kessler shook her head.
“Just because I don’t like you very much doesn’t mean I don’t love you,” said Kessler. “I raised you for ten years; you’re my daughter whether you like it or not.”
“I’m so sorry, Isolde,” said Madison, wiping tears from her eyes. “I wish I could go with you.”
“Protect Arwen,” said Isolde. “You’re doing exactly what I’d do in the same situation. It’s okay.”
“I love you, Isolde,” said Madison, and wrapped her adopted sister in a mournful hug.
Isolde hugged her back. “I love you too, Mads.”
“I won’t make anyone else come with us,” said Hobb, addressing the four Defense Grid soldiers in their group. “These girls have handled themselves just fine this far; you can do more good following Haru back south, rounding up as many humans as you can.”