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Fragments
She pulled one of the papers from the debris at her feet; it was a fragment of old-world newspaper, wrinkled and yellow, and the headline was just barely legible. DETROIT PROTEST TURNS VIOLENT, she read. The smaller words in the body of the article were only barely legible, but Kira deciphered the words “police” and “factory,” and several references to Partials. “So the faction collecting radios is also collecting articles about the Partial rebellion?” She frowned at the paper, then rolled her eyes and dropped it back to the ground. “Either that, or every newspaper from right before the Break talked about Partials, and this means nothing.” She shook her head. “I need something concrete. You know, aside from all the actual chunks of concrete.” She kicked a piece of rubble, and it skittered away across the crater, bouncing off the fallen radio antenna with a clang.
She walked over to the examine the antenna; it was large, probably several yards tall when it was still straight, but as thin as cable. It must have been pretty sturdy to have stood up straight, but the explosion and the fall had twisted it into tight creases and curls. Kira pulled on it, trying to drag it out from the fallen bricks and Sheetrock that held it half-buried. It moved about three feet before catching on something; she strained against it, but it refused to budge any further. She dropped the antenna, panting with exertion, and looked for more . . . anything. She found more news clippings, three more decaying Partial bodies, and a nest of garter snakes curled under the shelf of a fallen solar panel, but nothing that told her where the bombers had gone, or if they might have another radio station elsewhere in the city. She sat down beside another solar panel to rest, pulling out a canteen of water, when suddenly it occurred to her:
Why were there two banks of solar panels?
This type of solar panel was called a Zoble, and Kira knew them well; Xochi had installed one on their roof at home to run her music players, and there were several more at the hospital. They could draw a lot of power and transfer it very efficiently, and they were incredibly rare. Xochi had only been able to afford hers through her “mother” and her connections to the farms and the fresh food market. To find one in Manhattan wasn’t necessarily bizarre—demand was less, after all, with no other scavengers to compete with—but to find two, rigged to the same building, spoke of abnormally high power needs. She scoured the crater again, on her hands and knees this time, searching for the capacitor that stored all this energy, and found instead the broken shards of a third Zoble panel.
“Three Zobles,” whispered Kira. “Why do you need all that juice? For the radio? Can they possibly need that much?” She’d used walkie-talkies back home that fit snugly in the palm of her hand, running off tiny rechargeables. What kind of radio needed three Zoble panels and a five-meter antenna? It didn’t make sense.
Unless they were powering more than just a radio. Unless they were powering, say, a collection of stolen ParaGen computers.
Kira looked around, not at the crater but at the street behind her and the cold, lifeless buildings beyond. She felt exposed, as if a spotlight had just been pointed at her, and she stepped into the shadow of a fallen wall. If there were really something valuable under here, she thought, whoever was protecting this place would have come to dig it up by now. The extra juice was here to power the radio and the computers, and whoever I found collecting radios and computers was doing it in the last few months—long after this building exploded. They’re still out there, and they’re up to something weird.
She looked up at the roofline, and the darkening sky beyond it. And all I have to do to find them is to find what they need: a giant antenna and enough solar panels to run their radio. If there are other such sites in the city, I won’t be able to see them from down here.
“Time to go up.”
Kira’s plan was simple: climb the tallest building she could find, get a good view of the city, and watch. If she was lucky she’d see another smoke trail, though she had to assume her targets had learned their lesson after the last time; more likely, she’d just have to study the skyline as closely as she could, in all directions and in all angles of sunlight, hoping to catch a glimpse of a giant antenna and a bank—or banks—of solar panels.
“Then I just have to keep notes, find them on my map, and check them out in person,” said Kira, talking to herself as she climbed another flight of stairs. “And hope I don’t get blown up, like everyone else has so far.”
The building she’d chosen was relatively close to the ParaGen building, maybe a mile southwest—a massive granite skyscraper proudly proclaiming itself the Empire State Building. The outer walls were overgrown with vines and moss, like most of the city, but the inner structure seemed stable enough, and she’d only had to shoot one lock to get into the main stairway. She was on the 32nd floor now, slowly rounding the railing to the 33rd; according to the signs in the lobby, she had fifty-three to go. “I’ve got three liters of water,” she told herself, reciting her supplies as she climbed, “six cans of tuna, two cans of beans, and one last MRE from that army supply store on Seventh Avenue. I need to find another one of those.” She reached the landing of the 34th floor, stuck out her tongue, and kept climbing. “That food had better last me a while, because I don’t want to make this climb any more often than I have to.”
What felt like hours later she collapsed on the 86th floor with a gasp, pausing to drink more water before checking out the alleged “observatory.” It had a great view, but the walls were mostly windows, and almost all had been shattered, leaving the entire floor drafty and frigid. She trudged back to the stairway and ended up on the 102nd floor, at the base of a giant spire that continued up another two or three hundred feet. A plaque at the door congratulated her for climbing 1,860 individual stairs, and she nodded as she caught her breath. “Just my luck,” she gasped. “I’m going to have the best glutes left on the planet, and there’s nobody here to see them.”
While the 86th floor had been wide and square, with a slim balcony around the perimeter of the building, the 102nd floor was small and round, almost like a lighthouse. The only protection between observers and the street below was a circle of windows, mostly intact, but Kira couldn’t help but lean out one of the broken ones, feeling the rush of the wind and the insane thrill of the mind-numbing height. It was the kind of view she’d always imagined the old-world people had seen from their airplanes, so high up the world itself seemed distant and small. More importantly, it gave her an amazing view of the city—there were other buildings that were taller, but only a few, and their view wouldn’t be any better than this one. Kira dropped her bags and pulled out her binoculars, starting with the southern view and scanning the skyline for radio antennas. There were far more than she expected. She blew out a long, slow breath, shaking her head and wondering how she’d ever be able to find the one building she needed out of the thousands that filled the island. She closed her eyes.
“The only way to do it,” she said softly, “is to do it.” She plucked her notebook from the back of her bag, found the closest antenna to the south, and starting taking notes.
The closest antenna was the giant spire on top of her own building, but there was no one in the building with her. Well— she didn’t think there was anyone else in the building with her who could be using it, but it was an awfully big building. “Maybe I’m being paranoid,” she told herself, climbing up to check the antenna. She stopped and corrected herself. “Maybe I’m being too paranoid. A little bit is probably pretty healthy.” The antenna turned out to be completely unpowered, and she was surprised at how relieved she felt. She studied the city, taking notes on each new antenna she found, and watched as the setting sun revealed new solar panels one by one, winking slyly as the fading light hit just the right angle, then sliding again into darkness. At night she slipped down a few floors to find an enclosed room, and bundled herself warmly in her sleeping bag. This high in the sky the buildings were remarkably clean—no windswept dirt, no budding shoots, no paw prints in the dust. It reminded her of home, of the buildings she and others had worked so hard to keep clean: her house, the hospital, the school. She wondered, not for the first time, if she would ever see any of them again.
On the fourth day her water ran dry, and she made the long climb down to street level looking for more. A park at the end of a long city block drew her attention, and she found what she was looking for—not a pool or puddle but a subway entrance, dark water lapping at the steps. In the old world the subway had been for transportation, but somehow it had flooded; the tunnels were now an underground river, slow but still flowing. Kira brought out her purifier and pumped three more liters, refilling her plastic bottles, always keeping a wary eye on the city around her. She found a grocery store and stocked up on several cans of vegetables, but stopped and grimaced when she found one that had swollen and burst—these cans were now more than eleven years old, and that was getting close to the shelf life of most canned foods. If some of these were already spoiling, she was better off not risking any of them. She sighed and put them back, wondering if she had the time to hunt live game.
“At least some snares,” she decided, and set a few simple rope traps near the top of the subway entrance. There were prints around the mouth of it, and she figured some of the local elands and rabbits were using it as a watering hole. She climbed back up to her observatory, set a few more snares for birds, and got back to work. Two nights later she had goose for dinner, roasted over a smokeless survival stove and turned on a spit made of old wire hangers. It was the best she’d eaten in weeks.
Five days and three water trips later she found her first big break—a gleam of light in a window, a tiny speck dancing redly for just a second, and then it was gone. Was it a signal? Had she only imagined it? She sat up straighter, watching the spot intently through her binoculars. A minute went by. Five minutes. Just as she was about to give up, she saw it again: a movement, a fire, and a closing door. Someone was letting out smoke; maybe their cook fire had gotten out of hand. She scrambled to identify the building before night fell too completely, and saw the dancing flame three more times in the next half hour. When the moon rose she looked for smoke, but there was nothing; they had dispersed it, or the wind had, too effectively to be seen.
Kira stood up, still staring toward the building now invisible in the darkness. It was one of the many she’d identified as a likely target—its roof was covered with solar panels, ringing a central antenna so large she thought it must have been an actual radio station. If someone had gotten that old equipment running again, they’d have a more powerful radio than either of the two she’d seen blown up.
“Do I go now, or wait for morning?” Staring into the darkness, she realized she still wasn’t sure what her plan was—knowing where the bad guys were hiding wouldn’t do her any good if she triggered a bomb as soon as she stepped inside. She could try to catch one of them, maybe in a larger version of her rabbit snares, and ask questions, or she could try to slip in when the bomb wasn’t armed—which, she supposed, was only when the mysterious bombers themselves were inside. That didn’t sound safe at all.
“The best thing to do,” she whispered, crouching lower in the window, “is exactly what I’m doing now—watch and wait and hope I can learn something useful.” She sighed. “It’s gotten me this far.”
But the question remained: Should she go tonight or wait for morning? A journey through the city would be more dangerous in the dark, but her targets had proven to be incredibly cautious—if they knew a flash of light and a trail of smoke had given away their position, they might move to a new location, leaving another booby trap in their wake, and Kira would lose them. Had the fire been an accident? Would it make them nervous enough to run? Kira had no way of knowing, and the uncertainty made her nervous in turn. This was one situation where the slow, cautious approach was too risky—she’d already lost five days; better to go now, she decided, than to take the chance of losing her only good lead. She packed her things, checked her rifle, and began the long descent through the pitch-dark bowels of the stairwell.
Feral cats prowled the lower levels, searching for food with bright, nocturnal eyes. Kira heard them moving in the shadows, waiting and watching and pouncing; the hiss of predators and the struggling of prey.
Kira scanned the street carefully before leaving the building, then moved softly from car to car, keeping to cover as much as possible. The building with the campfire was about three miles north, uncomfortably close to the giant forest of Central Park. Wild animals lived throughout the city, but the park was home to most of the big ones. Kira traveled as quickly as she dared, keeping her flashlight off and using the moon to see. The pale light made shadows deeper and more ominous; it also made the ground look smoother than it really was, and Kira stumbled on the rough terrain anytime she tried to move too fast. She skirted the west side of the park, watching for animals, but there were none out in the open. This was bad news: If there were deer out, it would at least give the predators something better to hunt than her. Feral house cats were hardly the most dangerous predators in the city.
A shadow shifted in her peripheral vision, and Kira whirled around to look. Nothing. She paused to listen . . . yes . . . there it was. A deep thrum, almost too low to hear. Something very big was breathing nearby, not just breathing but purring, almost growling. Something very good at hiding.
Kira was being hunted.
Before her was a large plaza, the concrete cracked and buckled and dotted with tufts of tall, dark weeds; the center statue stood solemn and unmoving. Cars circled the edge, their tires long ago turned flat and deflated. Kira backed slowly against a wall, cutting off the predator’s lines of attack, holding her breath to listen. The deep breathing was there, a bass rumble of giant lungs filling and exhaling. She couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
There are panthers in the city, she thought. I’ve seen them during the day—panthers and lions and once, I swear, I saw a tiger. Refugees from a zoo or a circus, well fed by the herds of wild deer and horses that roam Central Park. There are even elephants—I heard them last year. Do they feed on those, too?
Focus, she told herself. They’re going to feed on you if you don’t find a way out of this. Lions or panthers or worse.
Panthers. A terrifying thought occurred to her: Panthers are supposed to hunt at night, but I’ve only ever seen them in the day. Do they hunt in both now, or is this thing in the darkness something worse—something so dangerous the panthers had to change their habits to avoid it? Am I being hunted by a nocturnal panther, or are the panthers hiding, scared in their dens, to escape the creature that’s hunting me? Memories of the ParaGen brochure leapt unbidden to her mind—dragons and intelligent dogs, engineered lions and who only knew what else they’d done. They’d designed the Partials as the ultimate soldiers—had they designed an ultimate predator as well?
Kira stole a glance back down the street where she’d come, shaking her head at the long string of derelict cars and delivery vans; this creature could be hiding behind any one of them, waiting for her to pass by. It was the same with the plaza in front of her. Her best bet lay across the street, in the lobby of what might once have been a shopping mall: fallen mannequins, faded posters of bodies and faces, rack upon rack of ragged clothes. The beast could be in there, too—for all she knew the cluttered hallways could be its den—but there were doors as well, human-size and closed, and if she could get inside one and close it again behind her, she would be safe. Safe until it went away, safe until morning if it took that long. She heard the same rumbling growl, closer now than ever, and set her jaw fiercely.
“It’s now or never.” She leapt to her feet, charging across the broken street to the mall beyond, dodging around the corner of a car as a rush of air tore past behind her. She imagined giant claws swiping inches from her back, and struggled to regain her footing as she raced in through the shattered glass facade of the building. Debris clattered in her wake, far more than she could ever dislodge by herself, but she didn’t dare look back; she raised her gun over her shoulder, firing wildly behind her, turning again as she reached a cracking pillar. The interior of the mall was bigger than she’d expected, glistening metal stairways climbing up and down in pairs, a vast courtyard yawning wide in the center of the floor below her. It was too dark to see the bottom or the top; too dark to see much of anything. The door she’d been aiming for was on the other side; she turned to the right, skirting the pit, and brought her gun back in front of her, switching on the light. The thing seemed to be scrabbling on the slick floor; Kira found the first door she could and sprinted straight toward it.
The light beam jerked wildly as she ran, up and down, back and forth, shining back from the tiled floor and the metal stairs and the mirrored plates across the walls. In a flash of reflected light the wall before her showed her own image, a massive black shape bearing down from behind, and then the beam jerked again and the scene was gone, a strobing nightmare of light and darkness and fear. She fixed her eyes on the doorway, running like she’d never run before, and moments before she got there she lowered her rifle, sighted on the doorknob, and fired a semiautomatic burst. The lock blew clear, the door fell open, and Kira dove through without a pause, slamming her hand against the left wall to help propel her toward the right and another open door. She grabbed at this one as she passed, slamming it closed behind her, and leaned against it just as something hit it from the other side, cracking it loudly; still, though, it held, and Kira braced herself tightly against it as the thing came back for another hit.
She looked around wildly, aiming the rifle awkwardly with one hand to shine its light on the room, and saw a large wood desk. Claws scraped across the other side of the door—it was pawing at the barrier now, not smashing it, and she took the risk, jumping over the desk and heaving against it, pushing it back to block the door. The scratching turned to thumping; the door shook, and suddenly Kira was deafened by a massive roar. She lost her footing, dropped her rifle, and threw herself against the desk again, slamming it up against the door just as the thing on the other side slammed it again, shaking the room. The desk held. Kira fell back, reaching for the rifle’s light, and brought it up to illuminate the top half of the door, riven with cracks and splintered away from the frame. Something moved beyond it, nearly as tall as the ceiling; the light reflected against a huge amber eye, narrowing to a slit as the light blinded it. Kira reeled at the sheer size of it, scooting away almost involuntarily. A massive paw clawed at the gap in the door, giant claws gleaming silver in the halogen beam, and Kira fired a burst from her rifle, clipping it in the toe. The creature roared again, but this time Kira roared back, cornered and furious. She climbed on the desk, sighted straight through the broken doorway, and fired at the wall of fur and muscle before her. It howled in rage and pain, thrashing wildly at the door, and Kira ejected the spent clip, slapped in another one, and fired again. The creature turned and fled, disappearing into the darkness.
Kira stood frozen in the doorway, her knuckles white as bone as they clutched the rifle. A second became a minute; a minute became two. The monster didn’t return. The adrenaline rush wore off and Kira began to shake, subtly at first and then harder, faster, shaking uncontrollably. She climbed down from the desk, nearly falling to the floor, and collapsed in the corner, sobbing.
The dawn light didn’t reach through the maze of walls and doorways, but Kira could hear the sounds of morning: birds singing to greet the sun, bees buzzing through the flowers in the asphalt, and yes, even the distant trumpet of an elephant. Kira stood up slowly, peering through the cracked doorway. Her light was still on, though the batteries were failing; the room beyond was covered in sprays and smears of blood, but the creature itself was gone. She pulled back the desk, carefully opening the door; it was lighter out here, and she saw a beam of sunlight on the cluttered floor of the mall. Red-brown footprints led out to the street and into the plaza, but Kira didn’t bother following them. She took a drink from her canteen, sloshing the cold water on her face. It had been stupid to go out at night, she knew, and she promised herself she would never do it again.
She shook her head, working out the kinks in her back and arms and fingers. The men she was chasing were probably too far away to have heard the gunfire last night, but if she was unlucky with the echoes, who was to say what could have happened? It didn’t change her plan—she had already been in a rush to find their building, and it was only more urgent now. She pulled her map from her backpack, locating herself and her quarry and planning out the best route to take. With a sigh and another sip of water, she set off through the city.
Kira traveled cautiously, wary now not only of Partial patrols but of giant hairy claw monsters; she saw movement in every shadow, and had to force herself to stay calm and levelheaded. When she arrived at the right neighborhood, it took her a few hours to positively identify the building with the antenna, though most of that was her fear of being seen. She ended up climbing another building’s staircase to get a bird’s-eye view, and from there spotted the antenna easily. The buildings here were shorter, only three or four stories for most of them. Knowing what she was looking for, it was easy to spot some of the more subtle clues that the building was inhabited—many of the windows were boarded over, especially on the third floor, and faint tracks in the built-up dirt showed that someone had recently used the front steps.
This was the tricky part. She didn’t dare to move in until she knew who lived there, where they were, and whether the bombs were set to explode. The most likely scenario, at least to her, was that this was some kind of outpost for a faction of Partials—and not a faction friendly to Dr. Morgan, since their last meeting at the other outpost had gone so destructively. That didn’t automatically mean that these Partials were friendly to humans, though, and Kira didn’t want to walk into a trap. She would watch, and wait, and see what happened.
Nothing happened.
Kira watched the building all day and night, holed up in the apartment across the street. She ate cold cans of beans and huddled under a moth-eaten blanket to avoid starting a fire. Nobody went in and nobody went out, and when night fell there were no fires in the windows, no smoke rising up through a crack in the boards. Nothing happened the second day either, and Kira was beginning to get nervous—they must have left before she got there, or slipped out a back way. She crept down to the street and did a quick perimeter check, searching for other entrances and exits, but nothing looked used, either generally or recently. If they’d left at all, they’d done it through the front door. She settled back in to watch it.
