CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Mohammad Khan died at 8:34 p.m., in a small house on the North Shore. The disease had brought him to the brink of death; add the pressure the winter conditions had put on his body, and it was simply too much for a weeks-old baby to handle. Isolde was in the basement, holding him and crying, completely inconsolable. Ariel stood by the back windows, overlooking a steep, rocky bluff above the sound, and looked west to the mainland. To the mushroom cloud.
The Partials were gone.
They were her enemy, but they were also her people. The only real, biological link she had in the world, behind all the lies and deceptions, and she’d never even known them. There were still Partials on the island, of course, though she figured the group that had killed Senator Kessler was gone now. Dead of the same plague that killed Khan, she thought, but the thought gave her no joy, no vindictive triumph at the parity of their deaths. Nobody needed to die in that building, and yet six people did, and three more were wounded, and now Khan’s gone and White Plains is gone and . . . everything’s gone. Xochi had taken a bullet in the hip, and another in her hand; Hobb had taken two in his back, which Nandita said had pierced his lung and liver. As poorly as Hobb was doing, Ariel wondered if Isolde might be the next to die. She was physically unharmed, but her soul was destroyed.
Nandita herself had been clipped in the shoulder, the lightest of the wounds, but her gene mods had accelerated her healing so dramatically that the hole was already starting to close.
Ariel played with the gun in her hands, flicking the safety on and off. On and off.
Even if we could travel, we don’t have anywhere to go. That child was the entire purpose of our journey—protecting him, getting him to safety, curing his disease. He gave us a direction and a reason to hope. A reason to stay together. Now that he’s gone, what do we do next?
On and off. On and off.
Ariel knew exactly what to do next; she’d been planning it since the day Khan was born. Help Nandita save him, and then . . .
She turned and walked downstairs.
It was warmer down there, the windows blocked with old clothes and couch cushions, and a broken nightstand burning slowly on the bare cement floor of the laundry room. The house was barely half a mile from the country club, but still farther than Xochi or Hobb could have traveled on their own. Ariel had dragged them here, sliding them over the snow on a makeshift sled while the Partials, terrified of the infant bioweapon, had fled just as quickly in the other direction. For all Ariel knew, they’d gotten back to Riverhead before they died, and given the disease to everyone else. She looked at Hobb, bandaged like a ragged mummy and sedated on the floor, still completely unaware that his son was dead. He’d risked his life to save the child, which Ariel had never expected. She crept past him, past Xochi, past the wailing form of Isolde, to the last room in the narrow hallway. Nandita was sitting in the dark.
“The mushroom cloud is gone,” said Ariel. “No sign of anyone chasing us.”
“I imagine they’re somewhat preoccupied,” said Nandita. “Under the circumstances.”
Ariel sat across from her. Nandita had to see the gun in her hand, in silhouette at the very least, but she said nothing about it.
On. Off.
“You think Hobb’s going to last the night?”
“I don’t know,” said Nandita.
“I can’t help but think it’ll be easier for him if he dies,” said Ariel. “He sacrificed himself to save his son, and now he has to wake up and hear that his sacrifice didn’t mean anything.”
“His child did not survive,” said Nandita. “That doesn’t mean his sacrifice didn’t mean anything.”
The fire spit and crackled behind them.
On. Off.
Ariel wanted to shoot her now, to raise her hand and fire, but she didn’t. She wanted to rage and scream and yell and make this woman pay for the hell she’d put her through—for the hand she’d had in this entire, world-ending calamity. She didn’t do that either. She watched the orange lights from the fire dancing weakly on the wall, just out of reach of the room’s dark shadow. “I saw what you did with the chemical trigger,” said Ariel at last. “The night you dumped it in the fire, after Erin Kessler said she wanted to use it.”
“I didn’t want her to try anything stupid,” said Nandita.
“Looks like we didn’t do enough to stop her,” said Ariel.
“Looks like.”
On. Off.
“Why did you do it?” asked Ariel.
“Create the Partials?” asked Nandita. “End the world? Destroy your childhood? My list of crimes is long, child. I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”
“Why did you let them shoot us?” asked Ariel. She gripped her gun more tightly, though she still hadn’t pointed it anywhere but the floor. “You can control Partial soldiers with a thought—you could have stopped that gunfight before a single shot was fired. And yet you didn’t.”
“I . . .” Nandita stopped, a motionless form in the darkness. “I guess I decided that if I couldn’t stop Erin, I shouldn’t be able to stop the Partials.”
“You didn’t want to control them?”
“I did not.”
Ariel felt her voice rising. “You’d rather let them kill us all?”
“It was an inconvenient time for a moral revelation,” said Nandita. “You don’t have to tell me. But these things happen; I was ready to do it, and then I wasn’t. The moment happened, and then it was past.”
“So you think you made the right choice, then? That letting people get shot in the name of your moral revelation was worth it?”
“We didn’t get killed.”
“You had no way of knowing we wouldn’t.”
“I believe,” said Nandita, “that that is precisely the point.”
On. Off.
“I came down here to kill you,” said Ariel.
“I know.”
“I was always going to do it,” said Ariel. “That was the whole reason I came. You were the only one who could save Khan, and so I was going to wait until you had done that, and as soon as you did, blam.” She gestured with the gun. “No more lying, no more schemes, no more control. I figured the world would be better off.”
“I can hardly disagree with you.”
“Now here I am, and all I want to do is kill you, and . . .” She paused, waiting for Nandita to speak, but the woman said nothing. “You’re not the person I thought you were.”
“I can say the same about you,” said Nandita.
“Who did you think I was?”
“I thought you were a child,” said Nandita. She shook her head. “I was mistaken.”
Ariel stood up, pointed the gun at Nandita’s head . . .
. . . and stood there.
“Khan deserved to live,” said Ariel. “Maybe Hobb does, too. Or maybe he, and you, and all those Partials in that explosion, all deserved to die. I don’t know. Now here we are, and I’m the one with the control, with the power, with the ability to let you live or die with a thought. If I’m going to have any inconvenient moral revelations, now would be the time.”
She lowered the gun and turned away. “I’m going to go look for water.”