CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ariel planted herself in front of Nandita, refusing to budge an inch. “Tell us what that was.”
“I told you,” said Nandita, “I don’t know.”
“It knew you.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life,” said Nandita. “Not here, not before, not anywhere.”
“Something like that would have to have come from ParaGen,” said Kessler. “You made all kinds of genetic freaks before the Break—Watchdogs and dragons and who knows what else. And you’ve told us that all you people in the Trust gene-modded yourself to hell. Longer life, sharper brainpower, increased physical abilities. That twisted abomination sure looks like your handiwork to me.”
Ariel considered Xochi and Kessler, who were usually fighting tooth and nail but at the moment were completely unified. They even stood alike, expressing their anger with the same fierce gestures and posture. They did everything they could to be different, yet here they were. Do Nandita and I look like this? Ariel wondered. For all my hatred, how much of me is just a reflection of her? She raised me for eleven years—more than twice as long as my real parents.
Except they were never my real parents. I have nothing left that’s truly my own.
Not even my anger.
“I assure you,” said Nandita, “if I’d worked on a project like that, or even seen one, I’d remember it.”
“You told us before that some of the Trust didn’t trust the others,” said Isolde. “You worked on projects without telling each other. What if it’s something like that?”
“Some kind of proto-Partial?” asked Nandita. “A model one of the others miraculously kept secret for thirty-odd years? Impossible.”
“Then somebody else,” said Madison. “Another genetics company, making their own version of the same technology?”
“Then it wouldn’t know Nandita,” said Ariel. “This did, which means it came from ParaGen, which means she knows something she’s not telling us.”
Nandita sighed, looking behind them. “If I talk while we walk, can we at least keep moving? We’re too exposed here.”
“We have to cut south now,” said Kessler. “We’re coming into Commack, and we had two old farms in this region. We have to assume the Partials have a presence here, even if it’s just a few scouts.”
“That means crossing the Long Island Expressway,” said Xochi, looking at her map. “If you don’t like how exposed we are now, that’s really going to get you.”
“If we have to, we have to,” said Ariel, jogging to catch up with Nandita. “Now talk.”
“That creature was almost definitely ParaGen,” said Nandita. “But I don’t recognize it, and I truly don’t know who had the skill to make anything like it. Furthermore, the fact that I don’t recognize it almost guarantees that it was created after the Break.”
“Who has that kind of technology?” asked Ariel.
“I didn’t think anyone did,” said Nandita, “but finding the facility at Plum Island has forced me to reevaluate. If that lab could continue, there may be other labs as well, remnants of the old green movement, designed to run entirely on self-sustaining power. The obvious first guess is the ParaGen facility itself.”
“ParaGen was bombed pretty heavily in the Partial War,” said Kessler.
“I know,” said Nandita icily. “I was there. But it was a rugged facility, and something may have survived. ParaGen had the equipment to make a creature like that—though in the old days we would have made the changes more subtly, more human-like—and also to do whatever else the creature was talking about. Fixing the world, the climate.”
Ariel sneered. “How could ParaGen ‘fix’ the climate? You were a genetics company—you can’t just gene-mod the wind.”
“You can use genetics to fix anything, given enough time and energy,” said Nandita. “Genetic engineering is the most powerful force on the planet. The ParaGen facility was built on an old radioactive materials site, and we built bugs designed to absorb the radiation and neutralize it; we made other bugs to nourish the soil and plants. By the time of the Break, it had become a paradise. I’m not saying this is what happened, because I don’t know, but someone with the time and the means could alter the climate by engineering bacteria designed to radiate or absorb heat, or to unlock water tied up in certain areas or aquifers. On a large enough scale you could change the weather patterns, and eventually the seasons themselves, but it would require an unbelievable amount of energy to create and distribute that kind of bacteria on anything less than a geologic time frame. ParaGen’s old facility might still have power, but they don’t have that much.”
“So somebody made a bunch of germs to alter the weather,” said Isolde, “and a creepy monster thing to tell us about it. The fact that that sentence explains anything says a lot about how little sense the world makes right now.”
“That doesn’t explain how it recognized Nandita,” said Ariel. “This wasn’t some random vat-born monster; it knew you. It had seen you before, and the way it talked, it was expecting you to recognize it.”
“What if it was gene mods?” asked Xochi. “Not a new creature, but someone you used to know . . . modded up and . . . weirdified. You know what I mean.”
“That many gene mods would drive a person mad,” said Nandita. “We’ve seen it happen before, and on a much smaller scale. Something that drastic would break the subject’s mind in half.”
“That might actually explain it,” said Ariel. “Do you know who it might be?”
“There’s the expressway,” said Kessler. They’d been following a trail at the base of some telephone poles, cutting a thin forest path between the homes and businesses on either side, but the trail had run out. The few telephone wires still attached stretched out over a wide gully, filled with asphalt and cars—Ariel shoved her way through the undergrowth to get a good look and counted ten lanes, plus four open shoulders separating them from the edges of the road. “Two hundred feet across, minimum,” said Kessler, “and not enough vehicles to provide any meaningful cover. If we go for this, we have to go fast and lucky.”
“Last time we crossed this expressway, we went under it,” said Isolde. “I liked that better.”
“There’s nowhere like that anywhere around here,” said Kessler. “Just bridges over it, like that one, which has no sides and leaves us probably more exposed than just running across here.”
“I’ve done this before,” said Xochi. “We made it just fine.”
“What do we get into if we stay on this side?” asked Madison. “Is crossing it really worth the risk?”
“Partial patrols are more likely on this side,” said Kessler. She took Xochi’s map and held it open for the group to see. “On top of that, in another mile or two we’ll hit this interchange, and beyond that this entire area is a commercial district: wide roads next to wide parking lots. We’ll be more exposed there. If we cross now, though, we can lose ourselves in a string of residential areas, and camp for the night in this community college campus—it has some open areas, but they’re lawns instead of parking lots, so they’ll likely have plenty of foliage to hide us, and we never used them for farming, so there shouldn’t be any settlements or Partials in the area.”
“The odds anyone will be watching this exact stretch of road at this exact time are low,” said Xochi. “Not as low as we’d like, but low. If we just go for it, all out, we can do this.”
“Then let’s do it,” said Isolde. “Khan’s going to wake up soon; when he does, we’ll want to be as far away from Partial patrols as we can.”
Ariel nodded, glancing at the sleeping baby—the sedated baby, really, as his constant screaming had led Nandita to start administering low levels of drugs for safety. But the sedatives wouldn’t last forever, and they needed to be well hidden by the time he got noisy again. The group shoved their way through the trees—heavier here, it seemed, than in the wooded track they’d just passed through—and worked their way down to the edge of the wide-open expressway.
“Everybody ready?” Ariel whispered. She listened carefully as each other woman in the group said yes. She took a deep breath. “Go.”
The group dashed out, backpacks slamming up and down against their spines, their feet slapping furiously across the asphalt. The edge of the road was cracked and broken, as the plants struggled to reclaim their ancient territory, but the road was so wide that the center remained smooth—covered with dead leaves and windblown dirt, but still one piece. They ran behind a delivery van, and then in front of a pickup. Three lanes across. Four lanes. Ariel was almost to the center barrier when she heard a shout, and looked up to see figures on the nearby bridge.
“Partials!” she screamed. “Keep running!” She crouched down by the rusted hulk of an old SUV and started firing, trying to force the soldiers into cover. The figures disappeared, but Ariel kept her eyes on the bridge, ready to fire at the first head that popped up. “Just keep going!” she called. “We have to move south!”
Xochi reached the barrier first and launched herself over it, then reached back to hold Arwen as Madison passed her over. Both girls ran for the southern trees, while Kessler, close on their heels, found more cover in the lee of a moving van and laid down another burst of fire.
“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.”