Fragments

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Heron found Afa in a nearby drugstore, holed up in the back in a mini safe house he’d obviously prepared years earlier. He refused to come out, insisting, variously, that he was the last human being on the planet, and that he couldn’t ever leave his backpack. Heron came back for Kira—probably because beating him unconscious would require dragging him home, and she didn’t want to bother with the effort—and Kira tried to calmly talk him out. The last thing they needed was another explosion.

“We need your help,” said Kira. It was a small drugstore set back into a larger building, the shelves picked clean of anything edible. The floor was scattered with dirt and animal tracks. Afa was in the back room, the door closed, and from the looks of it something heavy had been shoved in front of the door on the other side. Kira couldn’t see any explosives, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. “These are my friends, and they need your help. You have to tell us how to get to Denver.”

“Denver’s gone,” said Afa, and Kira recognized the distant lilt to his voice, the half-absent slur that meant he’d retreated into his protective stupor, perhaps deeper now than she’d ever seen him before. The assault on his building had shocked him profoundly. “I’m the last human being on the planet.”

“The people are gone,” said Kira, “but the city’s still there. The records are still there. We want to help you finish your work—to fill in all the missing pieces about the Trust, and the Partials, and the Failsafe. Don’t you want to learn all that?”

Afa paused. “I have everything in my backpack,” he said at last. “I never leave my backpack.”

“You have almost everything,” said Kira. “You don’t have the Trust—not their plans, not their formulas, not their secrets or their reasons or anything. We need that information, Afa, it might be the only way to save any of us, humans and Partials.”

“Too dangerous,” Afa muttered. “You’ll burn up. You’ll be poisoned.”

Kira glanced at Samm, then turned back to Afa’s door. “We’ll be as safe as possible,” she said. “My friends are the best wilderness scouts I know, and I’m pretty handy myself. We can cover ourselves, we can carry our water, we can defend ourselves from wild animals—we can make it. Trust me, Afa, we can get you the records you’ve been looking for.”

“I think you might be overselling us a little,” whispered Heron. “The wasteland is going to be hell no matter how well we prepare.”

“He doesn’t have to know that,” Kira whispered back.

The drugstore was silent, everyone listening quietly while Afa thought. Birds wheeled between the broken buildings outside, watched closely by a feral cat perched high in a windowsill. The morning sun turned the rusted cars into fuzzy shadows on the road.

“You could go to Chicago,” said Afa.

Kira snapped back to look at the bunker door. “What?”

“ParaGen was in Denver, but their data center was in Chicago,” said Afa. His voice was clearer now, more lucid and confident. “Remember what I told you about the cloud? All the information in the cloud was stored somewhere, on a physical computer, and most of that physical storage was in huge central locations called data centers. ParaGen’s was in Chicago.”

“Why would their data not be in their own offices?”

“Because the cloud made distance meaningless,” said Afa. Kira heard a bolt slide back, then another, then two more. The door cracked open, but Afa stayed hidden behind it. “Storing digital information in Chicago was the same as storing it in Denver, or Manhattan, or wherever, because you could access it no matter where you were. As IT director, I worked with the Chicago center all the time, setting up permissions and security and making sure nobody could get the data but us. Unless it was all hard copies, I guarantee it’s in the data center.”

“If it’s that easy,” asked Samm, “why haven’t you gone to get it before?”

“It’s seven hundred twelve miles,” said Afa, “more if you can’t fly, which you can’t. I can’t go that far—I have to stay here with my records.”

Kira shot another look at Samm. “But we need you, Afa. We can’t do this without you.”

“I can’t go,” said Afa.

“We don’t need him,” said Heron, speaking loud enough that Afa could hear her—allowing herself to be overheard on purpose, it seemed to Kira. “Data centers run on electricity, obviously, so we’ll have to reactivate the auxiliary generator, which won’t run for very long. That will be hard enough. Then we’ll have to find which servers have the ParaGen files, which ParaGen server has the Trust files, and which Trust files have the information we need, all while navigating the single most powerful security protocols that old-world money could buy.”

“I already know all that,” said Afa. “I could find it, easy.”

Heron smiled.

“So come help us,” said Kira.

“I can’t leave my records.”

“I can do it just fine on my own,” said Heron, grinning maliciously, trying to challenge Afa’s expertise. “We don’t need him.”

“You’ll never do it,” said Afa.

“Once we find the right files,” said Heron, “we’ll have to decode the data and download it to a portable screen, all before our generator dies, and we’ll probably only get one shot at it. It’s going to be a pretty amazing feat—getting a computer file out of a ruined building from a long-lost civilization. It’ll be like hacking the Giza pyramids.”

The door opened slightly wider, and Heron nodded triumphantly.

“You know the wilderness,” said Afa. “You’re scouts, Kira said so. You don’t know computers.”

“I know enough.”

The door opened even wider. “Do you know how to crack a Nostromo-7 firewall?” said Afa, and Kira noticed the difference in his voice—he was waking up, mentally, enlivened by the idea. Kira had thought Heron was trying to goad him into coming, challenging him by claiming to be better, but really she was geeking him out. She was presenting him a challenge so interesting, and so firmly in his area of expertise, he couldn’t help but get excited about it. Kira had done the same with Marcus, more than once, in their medical research.

Samm shook his head, speaking softly. “I don’t like this. It’s not safe to take him.”

“It’s not safe to leave him, either,” said Kira. “Dr. Morgan’s looking for me, too, right? Can you say for sure she’s not going to find this radio station eventually? She’s not going to go easy on the mentally damaged man she finds here.”

“He’s not just mentally damaged,” said Samm, “he’s a paranoid bomber that we can’t control or predict. If we take him out into the wasteland, he’s as likely to kill us as anything is to kill him.”

“What are our other options?” asked Kira. “We can’t just ask Morgan, A because she’s evil, and B because she doesn’t know anything about me or expiration or the Failsafe. If we could find Nandita that’d be great, but the entire Long Island population’s been looking for her for months and she’s nowhere.”

“We could talk to Trimble,” said Samm, “assuming B Company doesn’t kill us on sight.”

“Assuming there’s anything left of B Company at all,” said Heron. “Morgan’s been recruiting them in droves. But Trimble isn’t connected to the pheromones or the Failsafe or the expiration, at least not according to anything in the records you showed us. She won’t know anything more than Morgan.”

Kira’s eyes widened. “You know where Trimble is?”

“She’s in charge of B Company,” said Samm. “She and Morgan have been the main face of the Trust for years—now we know she’s not just a messenger, she’s apparently one of them.”

“B Company hates D Company,” said Heron. “Most of the civil war you’ve seen here on the mainland is a war between them.”

Kira grimaced. “Saving the world would be a lot easier if the people we’re trying to save would stop killing each other.”

Afa’s door opened slightly farther, and he peeked one eye out. “You didn’t say anything about Nostromo-7s, so I assume you don’t know how to get past one. I do.”

Samm looked at him and whispered softly, “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“He’s a good man,” said Kira.

“He’s insane.”

“I know that,” hissed Kira. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but what else are we supposed to do?” She looked at Heron. “Can you actually do any of that stuff you were talking about? Do you even know anyone who can? Afa’s unpredictable, yes, I admit that, but when his mind is working right, he’s positively brilliant.”

“When his mind is working right,” said Samm.

“So we watch him,” said Kira. “We keep him away from weapons, we keep him away from anything that explodes, we do whatever it takes to keep him happy and lucid and friendly.” She paused. “It’s the only way we’re ever going to find the information we need.”

The Partials stared at her. Samm turned to face the street. “We’ll need horses.”

“We can make better time on foot,” said Heron.

“You and I can,” said Samm, “not Kira and definitely not Afa. Listening to him breathe, he’s at least three hundred pounds.”

Kira raised an eyebrow. “You can tell his weight from his breathing?”

“It’s labored and irregular,” said Samm. “He’ll die of a heart attack before we make it halfway.”

“There’s a Partial camp not too far northeast of here,” said Heron, “an A Company lookout post in the Bronx. They’re not exactly friendly with D, but they’re not looking for a fight, either. Samm and I can sneak in, steal their horses, and meet you over there”—she pointed—“on the George Washington Bridge.”

“You’re going to sneak up on a lookout?”

“There are very few people this far south,” she said. “All they’re here for is to keep an eye on your military base across the bay. We’ll be coming from a different angle, and they won’t suspect a thing.”

“It still seems like it’ll be harder than you’re making it out to be,” said Kira. “I mean, yes, you’re Partials, but so are they.”

“But none of them are me,” said Heron. She turned and walked into the street, slinging her rifle over her shoulder. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it. We’ll see you at noon tomorrow on that bridge. Be ready.” She started walking away.

Kira looked at Samm. “You . . .” She didn’t know what to say. “Be safe.” She paused. “Come back.”

“Noon tomorrow,” said Samm. He hesitated, his hand hanging in the air by her arm, then turned and followed Heron.

Kira turned back to Afa, still hidden behind his half-open door. “You hear that?” she asked. “We have a day and a half to get ready for this. We’re really going to do it.”

“Do you think I’m mentally damaged?”

Kira felt a hot flush steal over her face. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t know you could hear us.”

“I hear everything.”

“I think . . .” She stopped, not certain how to say what she felt. “I want us to be realistic, Afa. You’re a brilliant man, and I said that, too.”

“I heard.”

“But you’re also . . . inconsistent. Inconsistently capable, I guess. I know that sounds terrible, but—”

“I know what I am,” said Afa. “I do my best. But I know what I am.”

“You’re my friend,” said Kira firmly. “I will do everything in my power to help you.”

He stepped out from behind the door, the brilliant lucidity gone, looking for all the world like a giant child. “This is my backpack,” he said, lifting it onto his shoulders. “I never leave my backpack.”

Kira took him by the arm. “Let’s get back to your place and pack one for me.”