CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
General Shon walked slowly up behind her and knelt in the snow at Kira’s side.
“I promised her I’d make this work,” said Kira. “I know it’s not going to be perfect, or easy, and for all I know it’s going to fail, but . . .” She clenched Heron’s hand in her own. “We have to try.”
Shon nudged Armin’s body with his glove. The man was limp and lifeless. “After listening to this bastard tell me it was impossible, I’m inclined to give it a shot just to prove him wrong.”
“There are worse reasons for saving the world,” said Kira.
Samm joined them now, kneeling by Heron’s side. He took her hand in his own, drawn short by the chains on his wrists, and watched her in silence. After a moment he looked to the east, toward the Partial camp. “Someone’s coming to check on you.”
“Must have heard the rotor,” said Shon. “I don’t . . . wait. There’s a whole group.”
Kira stood up, watching more shapes emerge from the snow. The man in the lead was walking stiffly, almost shuffling, as if he were sick. Kira took a few steps toward him and felt a rush of emotion as she recognized his face. “Green!” He waved, and she ran toward him, wrapping him in a hug. “You’re alive!”
“It worked,” he said, looking at his hands and arms as if they were new: strange, wondrous things he’d never seen before. “I . . . got better.” He gripped her by the shoulders. “I’m not a hundred percent, but . . . you saved me, Kira.”
Shon stopped next to him, staring in wonder. “Green?”
Green turned toward him and saluted. “I left the army, sir, but I’m ready to enlist in the new one.”
“What new one?” asked Shon.
“A Partial just survived expiration, and you’ve got twenty thousand more looking for the same treatment.” Green pointed behind him, at the massive wave of Partial soldiers, and grinned happily at Kira. “Is this where we sign up for the human/Partial alliance?”
An Ivie bullet had grazed the side of Marcus’s head, scraping away the skin right down to the bone and knocking him out cold, but he was alive. Kira wrapped the wound and roused him, and he helped with the others—stopping blood wherever they could, stuffing holes with bits of ripped cloth, and then helping everyone back to the camp. Haru was in the worst shape, his gut punctured and his right hand mangled, but he was stable. Six Ivies were still alive as well, and surrendered on the spot with their leader dead. Kira led them back to the human camp, and Shon and Mkele stepped in for Haru, reorganizing the evacuation, slowing the frantic pace while still planning to get everyone clear of the fallout. With the Ivies’ old rotor to help, they could tighten the schedule considerably.
Kira dressed Samm’s wound herself, laying him on a sterilized table in their crowded makeshift medical center and cleaning his shoulder with alcohol before carefully stitching it closed. “This reminds me of being in the lab,” she said, remembering their time in the East Meadow hospital when she’d studied him, talked to him, and ultimately decided to help him. She’d felt a connection to him she hadn’t felt with anyone else, not even Marcus, and she’d worried for a time that it was just the link, traces of it drifting on the fringes of her mind. She looked at the next table in the row, where Marcus was stitching a bullet hole in Calix’s leg—her other leg, now a mirror image of the one Heron had shot months ago.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Kira thought, and looked back at Samm. But I know what I want to do. “I need to talk to you,” she said nervously.
“Are you done with my shoulder?” asked Samm.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“I did,” said Samm, wincing as he raised himself upright and eased gently off the table. “But I need to talk to you, too.”
Marcus looked up from his surgery. “You’re going to do it right here? Just right in front of me?”
“You’re a good man, and a good friend,” Samm said to him. “I apologize for this.” He took Kira’s hands in his and looked into her eyes, and she looked back trembling. “Kira, I love you. I didn’t tell you then, but I loved you in that lab, and I loved you when you broke me out of prison, and I loved you when I said good-bye on the dock, and when I said it again in the Preserve. It tore me apart to see you leave me, both times, like you were taking my heart with you. You’re a part of me now, and I don’t ever want to say good-bye to you again.” He paused. “Everyone left on the planet is going to cross the ocean, and find a new home, and start a new life. I want to start that new life with you.”
Kira was crying, holding his hands so tightly she worried she was hurting him. Around them, the medical center was crowded and buzzing with activity, but his words were the only thing she heard. Samm turned back to Marcus. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how we make this work.”
Marcus’s face was impossible to read, but it finally broke, and he laughed. “You don’t apologize for this, Samm. It’s love, and love doesn’t weigh its options and pick the best one—love just wants things, and it doesn’t know why, and it doesn’t matter why, because love is the only explanation love needs. Looking at Kira right now, I . . . know this is what she wants too. I—” He stopped and looked away sharply. His voice was thick with emotion. “I’m not going to stand in the way.”
“Thank you, Marcus,” Kira whispered, wiping a tear from her eye. She looked at Samm, seeing herself reflected in his eyes. “I love you Samm. I do.” She pulled him close and kissed him.
Marcus wiped his eye, watching them kiss, then turned back to his surgery and sucked in a breath. “Well. Isn’t that just a kick in the teeth.”
“Tell me about it,” said Calix.
Marcus glanced at her, then went back to work on her leg. “You and Samm?”
“Once upon a time . . .” She watched them a moment longer, then looked back at Marcus. “Did you mean all that stuff you said? About love knows what it wants and it doesn’t matter why?”
“Yeah,” said Marcus, “I do. I guess. It sounded right at the time, and I don’t not mean it, but . . . You know how it is. Stop moving.”
“So what are you doing tonight?”
Marcus faltered in surprise, almost stabbing her with his tweezers. “What?”
“I’m single, you’re attractive, and we’re both stuck in this hospital anyway. What do you say?”
“I just lost the love of my life,” said Marcus. “Could you give me some time to . . . breathe, or recover, or something?”
“You lost her years ago.”
“Ouch,” said Marcus, and shook his head. “You know, you’re very direct.”
“To my frequent detriment,” she said, glancing back at Samm.
Marcus laughed dryly. “That sounds like a story I need to hear.”
“Then it’s a date,” said Calix. “Come on: It’s the least you could do after fondling my leg for the last hour.”
“It’s a date,” said Marcus, “but the first order of business is to teach you the difference between fondling and surgery. Mixing those two up could get you into trouble.”
Kira stood on the shore, waiting for a ship to return for the last of the survivors. She’d insisted that she be in the last group off the island, sending everyone else to safety first. Samm stood behind her, his arms wrapped around her in perfect, comforting silence. Before them the sea stretched out, wide and open and limitless. The crumbling remains of an old wooden dock disappeared into the waves, and she longed simply to follow it—straight out and gone, the first step onto a new path and a new horizon. White snow covered the ground like a blank parchment, wiping out the old world and waiting for them to write a new one on its pages.
“Boat!” called the lookout, and the gathered refugees looked toward Sandy Hook, but the boat wasn’t there. “East,” the lookout shouted, and Kira turned her head, peering into the distance. A white boat with a tall sail was hugging the coast, tacking toward them past Jones Beach.
“Did Mkele send for more?” asked Samm.
“We already have more of them than we can sail,” said Kira. “Maybe it’s another fisherman, finally joining the rest of us?”
They watched the boat closely, and soon Kira saw three women standing at the bow, hair whipping in the wind, one more woman behind them at the rudder.
Ariel, Isolde, Xochi, and Nandita.
Kira ran toward them, wading hip deep into the freezing Atlantic and waving to them with tears of joy streaming down her face. “You’re here!” she shouted, over and over, too happy to think of anything else to say. “You’re here! You’re here!”
Ariel turned a sail and slowed the boat, aiming toward the dock. Kira ran back toward it and threw them a line as they bumped against it. Xochi smiled. “Want a lift?”
“I didn’t know you guys could sail,” said Kira.
“I spent a year in a fishing village,” said Ariel. “I’d better be able to sail.”
“You’re alive,” said Kira, so happy she was hugging herself, heedless of the freezing waves. “I love you so much.” She looked at their faces: her sisters and her adopted mother. Armin may have been her father, but this was her family, real and close and wonderful. Samm walked out next to her, taking her hand. She squeezed it tightly before pulling him onto the boat with her, only letting go to hug her sisters. “Let’s go somewhere.”
“It’s a big world,” said Isolde. “We can go anywhere you want.”