CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Marcus sat as still as he could, trying not to pull against the handcuffs tied around his wrists to a metal bar behind him—he’d struggled a lot the first night, hoping to get out of them, and rubbed his skin raw in the process. Now any movement at all brought lances of pain so sharp they made him bite the inside of his cheek. Woolf, Galen, and Vinci were tied up next to him, sitting silently against a wall in the back room of an old supermarket, but none of them seemed to be in quite as much pain. Marcus wondered if they were better at masking it, or if they’d just been smarter about their wrists in the first place. Either way he felt stupid.
Which was to be expected, he decided, when you found yourself tied up by a terrorist you went looking for in the first place.
“This is what we get for trusting her,” said Marcus.
“She was our only option,” said Galen.
“She is also a convicted criminal,” said Marcus. He looked at the others with as bemused a grin as he could muster. “I kind of feel like we should have given that point more weight when we made our plan to find her.”
“She was working with the Senate and Defense Grid,” said Woolf. “Since the start of the invasion she hadn’t done anything suspicious or illegal—that we knew about,” he added.
Marcus closed his mouth, swallowing his snarky comment.
Woolf shook his head. “Obviously if we’d known she’d managed to round up a nuclear warhead, we would have thought twice about it.”
“If we’d known she had a nuclear bomb, we would have done exactly the same thing,” said Vinci. “We just would have handled the meeting a little differently. Infiltrating her army would have been the best bet.”
“I suppose it’s too late for that now?” asked Marcus, looking at the guard on the other side of the room.
The guard nodded. “Yes, it is.”
“Bummer,” said Marcus. “Thought we had something there.”
“Why is she doing this?” asked Vinci. “A bomb big enough to destroy the invading Partial army would kill almost every human on the island in the same instant. Ninety percent of both groups are in East Meadow—she can’t possibly consider that an acceptable loss.”
“She won’t set it off on Long Island,” said Woolf. “She’ll take it north to White Plains, or as close as she can get it, and detonate it there. Even out the numbers, like she said.”
“It’s genocide,” said Vinci.
“You mean like RM?” asked the guard. “You mean like exactly what you did to us thirteen years ago?”
“The Partials had nothing to do with RM,” said Vinci, his voice calm and matter-of-fact. He wasn’t arguing, Marcus realized, simply explaining. A quick glance at the seething guard showed just how unlikely he was to listen to reason.
“You’re talking to a man ready to set off a nuclear device fifty miles from the last human survivors,” said Marcus. “Let’s just assume he doesn’t believe you and move on.”
“The Partials need to be destroyed,” said the guard, lifting his rifle. “Every one of them. I can’t believe she hasn’t let us execute you yet.” He stood up, his face hard as stone, and Marcus pressed as far back against the wall as he could.
“See?” said Marcus, trying to keep his voice from cracking with fear. “I told you this would be more fun.” The guard’s eyes were red with fury, and Marcus half expected him to shoot all four of them in one long burst of bullets.
The door to their back room opened, revealing Delarosa flanked by Yoon and another guerrilla. Marcus breathed an audible sigh of relief. “You have awesome timing.”
“Unless she wants us dead as well,” said Vinci.
“Still good timing,” said Marcus. “It’d be a bummer if this guy shot us and she didn’t get to see it.”
“No one’s going to shoot you,” said Delarosa. She stepped forward into the room and looked down at them, not arrogant or angry, but businesslike. “We’re not monsters.”
“And we’re more valuable to you alive,” said Marcus.
Delarosa cocked her head to the side. “How?”
“Because, um . . .” Marcus grimaced. “I don’t actually know, I just assumed because that’s what people typically say at this point.”
“You’ve seen too many movies,” said Delarosa.
“I’ve never seen any,” said Marcus, shrugging. “Plague baby. But I’ve read a lot of spy novels: They don’t need batteries.”
“Either way,” said Delarosa. “We have no reason to keep you alive but our own human decency, and nothing to gain from killing you but convenience.”
“Is that a phrase?” asked Vinci. “‘Human decency’?”
“You find it insulting?” asked Delarosa.
“I find it confusing,” said Vinci. “Especially considering your plan.”
“I’m not happy about it,” said Delarosa. “I’ve lost a lot of sleep trying to think of an alternative. The Partials are all dying—can I just wait a year and let them die, and free ourselves without lifting a finger?”
“I vote we try it,” said Marcus. “Are we voting? Hands up, everybody, don’t leave me hanging here.” He moved his hands to raise them, and winced at the sudden stab of pain in his wrists.
“That plan won’t work,” said Delarosa. “The occupying army in East Meadow is killing too many humans, and now they might not die at all because they’ve found Kira—”
“Holy crap,” said Marcus, “they found Kira?”
“They stopped the broadcasts,” said Delarosa. “The hostage scenario is over. The most likely explanation is that they got what they wanted.”
“We need to go get her,” said Marcus.
“The Partials think they can use Kira to cure their expiration date,” said Delarosa. “I don’t know how she’ll help them do that, but there it is. The longer we wait, the less likely it becomes that this situation will ever end—if we want to get rid of the Partials, we have to strike now, and with overwhelming force. We don’t have the army for it, so a nuclear weapon is our only choice; it can be delivered by a single person, under their radar, and finish them off in a single blow.”
“The invading army will still be here,” said Galen. “A bomb on the mainland won’t end the occupation here.”
“Vinci,” said Delarosa, “what will the Partial army do when White Plains goes up in a fireball?”
“They’ll go back there,” said Vinci calmly. “They’ll try to find as many survivors on the mainland as possible.”
“Even if they don’t leave, they’ll die a few months later,” said Marcus. “Any research they’ve done on a cure for expiration will be destroyed in the explosion, along with anyone skilled enough to continue it.”
“It has to happen,” said Delarosa, “and it has to happen now. We upset the balance of nature when we created the Partials, and now we have to put it right.”
“You can’t trigger that warhead remotely,” said Woolf. “Which of these brainwashed saps have you tricked into setting it off for you?”
“I’m not a monster,” Delarosa said again. “This is my plan, and my responsibility.”
“You’re going to do it yourself?” asked Marcus.
“I came to say good-bye,” said Delarosa. “I don’t want to kill you, but we can’t transport you effectively without attracting too much attention. I’m leaving tonight, and I’m leaving Yoon Bak in charge of this outpost, with explicit orders that you not be harmed.”
“Tell this guy, too,” said Marcus, nodding at the guard. “You heard her, right? No harm.”
Vinci studied her. “Why are you leaving me alive if you’re just going to murder my entire species?”
“Because it’s not about murder,” said Delarosa, “it’s about necessity.”
“That doesn’t make it not murder,” said Marcus.
“Why, Marcus,” said Delarosa coldly. “I thought all you did was tell jokes.”
She turned and left, and Yoon stared fiercely at the guard with the rifle until he grudgingly sat down.
“You’re alive,” said Yoon, “but you’re still considered enemy combatants. We’ll keep you in here, under guard.”
“Until we die of old age?” asked Woolf.
“Until you’re not a threat,” said Yoon. “Or until it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“You can’t agree with this insane plan,” said Marcus. “You don’t want this nuke to go off any more than we do.”
“There’s a lot of things I don’t want,” said Yoon. “Sometimes we have to accept them to get the things we do.”
Marcus pleaded with her. “If getting what you want means killing a ton of people, is that really worth it?”
“I don’t know,” said Yoon. She glanced at Vinci. “Is it?”
“I’m not ashamed of what we did,” said Vinci. “But eradicating your species was never part of our plan.”
“You Partials keep saying that,” said Yoon, turning to look right at him. “Considering where we are now, do you think maybe it should have been?”
Vinci was silent. Yoon stood and left the room.