Fragments

CHAPTER FIVE

Kira crouched low in the brush, staring through her new rifle scope at the door of the electronics store. This was the fourth one she’d visited, and every one had been previously scavenged. Normally this wouldn’t have been strange, but the ParaGen offices had made her wary, and her closer investigations had all proven the same thing: The scavenger, whoever he was, had come recently. This was more than just eleven-year-old looting from the end of the world—someone in the wilds of Manhattan had been collecting computers and generators within the last few months or so.

She’d been watching this place for nearly an hour and a half, focusing her energy, trying to be as cautious in tracking the looter as he was being in hiding his tracks. She watched a few minutes more, scanning the storefront, the neighboring storefronts, the four stories of windows above them—nothing. She checked the street again, empty in both directions. No one was here; it was safe to move in. She checked her pack, clutched her assault rifle tightly, and raced across the broken road. The door had been glass, and she leapt through the shattered opening without pausing; she checked her corners, gun up and ready for action, then carefully sighted down each aisle. It was a small store, mostly speakers and stereo systems, and most of that was long gone, thanks to the original looting. The only person here was the skeletal remains of the cashier, holed up behind the counter. Satisfied that it was safe, she slung her rifle over her shoulder and got down to business, examining the floor as carefully as she could. It didn’t take her long to find them: footprints in the dust, clear imprints that could only have been made long after the storefront was destroyed and the building had filled with dirt and debris. The prints here were even clearer than they’d been before, and she measured one with her hand—the same huge shoe size she’d seen before, maybe size fourteen or even fifteen. The prints were also shockingly well preserved: Wind and water would naturally erode the prints over time, especially those in the centers of the aisles, but here there had been almost no erosion at all. Kira dropped to her knees, examining the prints as gently as she could. The others had been made within the last year; these might have been made within the last week.

Whoever was stealing generators was still out there doing it.

Kira turned her attention to the shelves, trying to deduce from their condition, and from the placement of the footprints, exactly what the scavenger had taken. The main concentration of prints was, predictably, in the corner where the generators had been displayed, but the more she looked, the more she saw a deviation in the pattern: He had taken at least two trips to the opposite side of the store, one slow as if he were looking for something, and one firm, the prints deeper, as if he’d been carrying something heavy. She glanced over the shelves, her eyes sliding past dusty plastic phones still tethered to the metal frames, past slim notebook computers and tiny music players like Xochi used to collect. She followed the trail carefully through the rubble on the floor, ending at a low, empty shelf near the back. He’d definitely taken something. Kira bent down to brush away the dirt from the shelf tag, and struggled to decipher the weathered writing: HAM. Ham? No electronics store would sell ham. She peered closer, picking out the faded, filthy word that followed: RADIO. HAM radio, the “ham” all in capital letters. Another acronym, like IT, that she’d never come across before.

Computers, generators, and now radios. Her mysterious scavenger was putting together quite the collection of old-world technology—and he was obviously an expert, as he’d known precisely what the thing on this shelf had been without having to clean up the tag first like she had. More than that, though, he’d taken some very specific equipment from the ParaGen offices, which couldn’t possibly be a coincidence; he wasn’t just grabbing certain kinds of technology, he was grabbing specific pieces of it. He was gathering old computers from ParaGen, and the generators to be able to access them. And now he was gathering radio systems, but who was he trying to call?

Manhattan was a no-man’s-land, empty, an unofficial demilitarized zone between the Partials and the human survivors. No one was supposed to be here, not because it was forbidden but because it was dangerous. If something happened to you out here, either side could get you, and neither side could protect you. It wasn’t even great territory for a spy, since there was nothing interesting to observe and report on—except, she supposed, the ParaGen files. She was looking for them, and this scavenger was doing the same—and he’d gotten there first. Now, thanks to him, there weren’t any generators left for her to take back to the ParaGen offices, and no guarantee that the computers left there would have the information she needed. She’d hoped to find a generator to get the top executive’s desk computer running again, to see if it contained what she was looking for, but this mysterious scavenger was obviously searching for the same things, and he had ignored the executive’s computer completely. Most likely, the scavenger had everything she was looking for. If she wanted to read those records, she’d have to find the scavenger himself.

She had to find out what ParaGen was doing with the Partials, with RM, with her, but there was another reason she was here. Nandita’s last note had told her to find the Trust—the Partial leaders, the high command who gave all the others their orders—and while she wasn’t going to find them here, she might, again, find some clues as to where to start her search. But . . . could she trust Nandita? Kira shook her head, frowning at the ravaged store. She used to trust Nandita more than anyone in the world, but learning that Nandita had known her father before the Break, had known Kira herself, and never once told her . . . Nandita had deceived her, and Kira had no way of knowing what her intentions were in telling Kira what to do next. But it was the only clue she had. She had to keep looking for information about ParaGen, scary mysterious scavenger or not—that was where the answers would be, and this new stranger was where she had to look for them. Whether he was a Partial or a human or double agent or whatever, it didn’t matter, she had to find him and learn what he knew.

Another thought came to her then, the mental image of a column of smoke. She’d seen it last time she was here, with Jayden and Haru and the others: a thin trail of smoke rising up from a chimney or a campfire. They’d gone to investigate it and run into Samm’s group of Partials, and in the rush to get back out, she’d forgotten that they’d never actually learned where the smoke was coming from. She’d assumed it was part of the Partial camp, but her experiences with them later made that seem almost laughably wrong—the Partials were far too clever to leave such an obvious sign of their presence, and far too hardy to need a campfire in the first place. It seemed more likely that the smoke came from a third party, and the Partials had shown up to investigate it the same time the humans did; their two groups had annihilated each other before either could find out what was going on. Maybe. It was a long shot, but it was better than anything else she had to go on. Certainly better than staking out hardware stores in a vain hope the scavenger would hit one while she was watching it.

She’d start with the same neighborhood they’d been investigating back then, and if he’d moved on—which seemed likely, after the massive firefight they’d held just a few blocks away—she’d look for more clues about where he might have headed next. There was somebody in this city, and she was determined to find him.

Finding the source of the smoke plume was harder than Kira had planned. It wasn’t there anymore, for one thing, so she had to go by memory, and the city was so big and confusing that she couldn’t remember clearly enough without jogging her memory visually. She had to go back, all the way south to the bridge they’d crossed on, and find the same building, and look out the same window. There, at long last, the landscape looked familiar—she could see the long strip of trees, the three apartment buildings, all the signs that had led her to the Partial attack those many months ago. That was where she’d first met Samm—well, not “met him” so much as “knocked him unconscious and captured him.” It was strange how much things had changed since then. If she had Samm here, now . . . Well, things would be a lot easier, for one thing.

But even as she thought it, she knew it was more than that. Staring out the window over the leafy city, she wondered again, for the hundredth time, if the connection she had felt between them had been the Partial link or something deeper. Was there any way to know? Did it even matter? A connection was a connection, and she had precious few of those these days.

But this wasn’t the time to think about Samm. Kira studied the cityscape, trying to fix in her mind exactly where the smoke had been coming from, and how to retrace her steps to find it. She went so far as to pull out her notebook and sketch out a map, but without a clear sense of how many streets there were, and what they were called, she didn’t know how useful the map would be. The buildings here were so tall, and the streets so narrow, the city was almost like a labyrinth, a maze of brick-and-metal canyons. Last time they’d had scouts to lead the way, but on her own Kira worried that she’d get lost and never find anything.

She finished her map as best she could, noting key landmarks that might help her navigate, then descended the long stairway and set out through the city. The streets were rough, filled with jumbled cars and spindly trees, their leaves fluttering in the soft wind. She passed an ancient car accident, a dozen or more vehicles piled together in a desperate bid to flee the plague-ridden city; she didn’t remember passing the pileup before, which made her nervous that she was following the wrong path, but soon she turned a corner and spotted one of her landmarks, and continued up the road more confidently. The center of each street was the easiest to travel in, less filled with debris than edges and sidewalks, but they were also the most visible, and Kira was too paranoid to leave the thicker cover. She hugged the walls and fences, stepping carefully through heaps of shifting rubble fallen down from the towering buildings. It was slow going, but it was safer, or at least that was what Kira told herself.

Here and there Kira spotted a bullet hole in a car or a mailbox, and she knew she was on the right track. They had run through here with a sniper behind them; Jayden had even been shot through the arm. The thought of Jayden sobered her, and she paused to listen: birds. Wind. Two cats yowling in a fight. It was foolish to think that there would be a sniper here now, but she couldn’t help herself. She ducked down behind a crumbling stairway, breathing heavily, telling herself that it was just nerves, but all she could think about was Jayden, shot through the arm—shot through the chest in the East Meadow hospital, bleeding out on the floor where he’d sacrificed himself to save her. He’d been the one to force her through her fear, to tell her to get up when she was too afraid to move. She gritted her teeth and stood up again, moving forward. She could be afraid all she wanted, but she wouldn’t let it stop her.

She reached the apartment complex when the sun was high in the sky: five buildings that had looked like three from her vantage point back in the skyscraper. It was the same place. There was a wide lawn around and between them, now filled with saplings, and she pushed through it carefully as she passed the buildings. This was the one we passed first, and this was the one we went into. . . . She came around the side and looked up, seeing the massive hole they’d blown in the wall three stories up. A vine wound around a dangling floor joist, and a bird perched on a crooked shard of rebar. The violence was gone, and nature was reclaiming it.

They had come here looking for the source of the smoke, and they’d chosen that apartment building because it looked out on what they assumed was the back of the occupied house. Kira kept her rifle up as she walked, rounding the first corner, then the next. This would be the street, and if she’d guessed correctly on her map, the house she was looking for would be six doors down. One, two three, four . . . no. Kira’s jaw dropped, and she stared in shock at the sixth townhouse in the row.

It was an empty crater, blown to pieces.