Fragments (16 page)

The Partials had invaded Long Island.

The human radio transmissions had a desperate, frightened quality that had confused
her at first, chopped up as they were into tiny fragments devoid of sense or context.
The people on Long Island were tense and terrified, but she couldn’t tell why. Soon
she began to hear gunfire in the background, all-too-familiar pops and cracks as bullets
flew back and forth behind the speakers. Was it the Voice again? Another civil war?
The more she listened, the more obvious it became: It was the Partials. They had begun
to mention landmarks she knew, cities she’d visited on Long Island, and the order
in which they mentioned them suggested a relentless progress from the North Shore
toward East Meadow.

And all Kira could do was listen.

She thought about Afa again, and what she might do to bring him back to normal. In
hindsight, his occasional retreats from reality made a lot of sense: He’d been alone
for twelve straight years since the break, and pretending to still be alone again
might be the only way he could calm down. She laughed now at the irony of it: a man
who knew exactly what she needed to know, but so lost, so crazy, he couldn’t even
talk about it. The voices ebbed and flowed around her.

“. . . more room, get back to the . . .”

“. . . the farm last night, we haven’t counted . . .”

“. . . backup. Get me Sato’s . . .”

Kira’s eyes snapped open, the name shocking her out of her reverie.
Sato? Are they talking about Haru?
When she’d left East Meadow, he was still on work release, dishonorably discharged
from the Grid for his role in kidnapping Samm. Had he been reinstated? Were they talking
about a different Sato?
Please,
she thought,
don’t let it be Madison. Don’t let it be Arwen. If they’re in trouble . . .
She didn’t even want to think about it.

She looked at the control console, not really a single piece but a hodgepodge of salvaged
transceivers, all cobbled together with wire and cable and duct tape. There was an
old radio station here, underneath it all, but Afa had apparently rebuilt it almost
from scratch. It was too dark to see everything clearly, and Kira tried her pocket
flashlight before getting frustrated and going to the windows. Afa had walled them
all off with cardboard and plywood, and Kira ripped one of the panels away, flooding
the room with daylight. She ran back to the radio console and studied it carefully,
trying to figure out which of the many speakers the message had come through.
Who said “Sato”?

There was no way to tell for sure, but she narrowed it down to two. The controls seemed
to be more or less grouped around the speaker they pertained to, and she searched
the knobs for anything that looked familiar. She’d used radios before, of course,
small walkie-talkies while out on salvage runs, but those were very simple: a volume
and a tuner. Whatever else this had, it had to have those, too, right? She found what
she thought was a tuner, on the speaker she thought had mentioned Sato, and turned
it gingerly. The white noise poured through unchanged, broken here and there by the
snippets from the other radios; she leaned in closer to the speaker, concentrating
on its sound and ignoring everything else.

“. . . not crossed yet, repeat, the third . . .”

Partials.
She let go of the tuning knob and moved to the next speaker, searching for the signal.
A radio signal was a delicate thing, a soundless, invisible voice in the sky. To hear
it clearly she had to tune her radio to the exact frequency, with enough power, under
perfect atmospheric conditions, and she had to hope that the radio sending the signal
had enough power as well. Even the size and shape of the antenna could play a part.
Finding that lone, weak signal in the midst of all this chatter was—

“. . . Sergeant, get to the top of that hill immediately, we need covering fire on
the right flank. Over.”

“Yes sir, moving out. Over.” It was Haru’s voice.

“Yes!” Kira shouted, pumping her fist in the air. The signal was still weak—they were
probably using handhelds, like the little ones she’d learned on, and they didn’t have
the wattage to send a clear signal this far from the island.
They must be close,
she thought,
somewhere on the west side of Long Island. The Grid base in Brooklyn? Had the Partials
attacked it first?
She tried to remember what she’d learned about Partial tactics from her history classes,
wondering what an assault like that would signify. If they were raiding the North
Shore that was one thing, but if they were taking out the Grid headquarters, it was
in preparation for a full-scale assault. Cut down the defenses, and then secure the
island unimpeded. She listened closely to everything Haru’s team was saying, then
continued to scan the airwaves, listening to pieces of Partial broadcasts, until one
caught her attention.

“. . . to the top of the hill. Snipers at the ready.”

Kira swore. That was a Partial communication, coming in on a different speaker. All
the Partial messages had been on different speakers, even the ones from the same voice
in the same battle. They were changing their frequencies on the fly to make sure no
one could eavesdrop, but they hadn’t been counting on Afa’s paranoid, overproduced
workshop; Kira could hear everything. They knew where Haru’s unit was headed and that
the Partials were ready with an ambush. And she was the only one who knew about it.

Kira reached for a microphone, but there was nothing—no handhelds, no ceiling mics,
nothing. She looked under the console, then raced around to look behind it.
Nothing again.
It was as if Afa had removed them all on purpose, which, she reflected furiously,
he probably had. He wasn’t trying to communicate with anyone, just to listen. To collect
information.

“. . . nearing the top, coast is clear here . . .” Haru’s voice again. Kira cursed
loudly, half a scream and half a grunt of frustration, and dove to her knees by a
stack of boxes in the corner, tearing them open in search of a microphone. The first
was empty, and she threw it aside. The second was filled with cables, and she tore
them out, a giant nest of thick rubber cords, and as soon as she determined it had
no mic she threw it behind her, still caught in the web of cables.
I have to warn him.
The third box was speakers and plugs and manuals; the fourth and fifth were old transceivers,
half-empty and cannibalized for parts. The speakers behind her erupted in gunfire
and screaming and bursts of deafening static, and Kira cried as she dug through the
last box and found nothing but more cables.

“. . . taking fire!” Haru screamed. “We are taking fire on the hilltop! I’ve lost
Murtry and—” The signal died with a pop and a howl of static, and Kira collapsed on
the floor.

“Sato! Sergeant Sato! Do you read me?” The human commander’s voice rang through the
radio room, buzzy from the fading signal.

Kira shook her head, imagining Madison and Arwen, now husbandless and fatherless.
It was nothing new, really—everyone in East Meadow was fatherless, and had been for
over a decade—but that was exactly the problem. The Satos had been unique, the first
of a new generation: a real family again, after eleven long years. They had been hope.
To have lost that—to have heard it happen—broke Kira’s heart. She sobbed on the floor,
clutching the coils of discarded cabling as if they could comfort her, or protect
her, or something. She sniffed and wiped her nose.

I don’t have time for this.

Kira was still trying to figure out what to do with the information she had found
so far. One thing was clear: She was going to have to gather more information from
Afa’s records before she could formulate her next move. But now there was a new threat
to everything she was trying to save. If the Partials and humans wiped each other
out before she could find her answers . . .

She dragged herself to her feet, shrugging off the rubber cables. The radio console
was chaotic, but not indecipherable. She could tell which knobs went where, and which
controls connected to which speaker. Somewhere on the roof was a bank of antennas,
charged and ready, the dozens of transceivers below each tuned to a different frequency.
With this equipment she could hear any radio in a thousand-mile radius—more, if Afa
had as much power as he said he did. And once she found a microphone—not if, but when—she
could communicate back. There would be something in the building, left over from the
old days, and if Afa had somehow destroyed them all, then there would be something
in the city, in the electronics shops and the stereo stores. Somewhere there would
be a mic.

Kira would find it. And she would use it.

“I need a microphone.”

Afa wasn’t ready for another confrontation, but Kira didn’t have time—there were people
dying, and she needed to help them. The big man shuffled through his food supplies,
peering myopically at shelves of cans. “I don’t talk to people,” he said, “I just
listen.”

“I know you don’t,” said Kira, “but I do. The Partials have invaded Long Island, and
I have friends there. I need to help them.”

“I don’t help the Partials—”

“I’m trying to help the humans,” she insisted. She ran her hand through her hair,
already tired and worn. She felt torn, even on this seemingly simple issue—she didn’t
want the humans to die, but she didn’t want the Partials to die, either. She wanted
to save both, but now that they were engaged in open war, what could she do? “With
a mic and your radio station I can feed them information, keep them running circles
around each other. At least until I can think of something better.”

Afa found a can of refried beans and waddled to the door. “You can’t help humans.
I’m the only one left—”

“No, you’re not,” she said loudly, blocking his path. He was head and shoulders taller
than she was, and more than three times her weight, but he shrank back from her like
a deflating balloon, eyes down, chin tucked in, shoulders hunched and ready for a
blow. She softened her voice but kept her stance firm. “There are thirty-five thousand
people on Long Island, Afa, thirty-five thousand humans. They need our help—they need
your knowledge. Everything you’ve collected here, they can use that. They’re trying
to cure RM, and they know nothing about it, but you know so much. For all I know,
you have the key to manufacturing the cure somewhere in here, to solving the mystery
of the Partials’ expiration dates, to averting another war. There’s a whole human
society left, Afa, and they need your knowledge.” She stared at him firmly. “They
need you.”

Afa shuffled his feet, then turned abruptly and waddled back into the storage room,
rounding a stack of cans and coming back along the next aisle. Kira sighed and stepped
over, blocking that one as well. “Where are the microphones?”

Afa stopped again, looking nervously at the floor, then turned and retreated again.
Kira stayed by the door, knowing he’d have to come past her eventually. “You can’t
hide forever,” she said, “and I’m not just talking about this room, I mean the whole
world. You have to move on, or go back, or do
something
. You’ve collected all this information so you could show it to somebody: Let’s go
show it to somebody.”

“There’s nobody to show it to,” he said, turning uncertainly in the maze of stacked
cans and boxes. “I’m the only human being left alive.”

“You know what I think,” said Kira, softening her voice even further. “I think the
reason you insist you’re the last one left is because you’re afraid to go meet anyone.
If all the humans are dead, then there’s no one to talk to, and no one to help, and
no one to risk disappointing.”

He was in the back of the room now, shrouded in shadow. “I’m the last one left.”

“You’re the last IT director,” said Kira. “At least the last that I know of. With
everything you know about computers and networks and radios and solar panels—I mean,
seriously, Afa, you’re like a genius. You
are
a genius. You’ve been alone for so long, but you don’t have to be. You’re helping
me, right? You’re talking to me, and I’m not scary.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not trying to be. But you have to face this. What are
you hiding from, Afa? What are you afraid of?”

Afa stared in silence before whispering his answer, and his voice was scarred by years
of pain and fear. “The end of the world.”

“The world already ended,” said Kira. “That monster’s come and gone.” She stepped
forward slowly, inching toward him. “In East Meadow we celebrate it—not the end, but
the beginning. The rebuilding. The old world is dead and gone, and I know that’s so
much harder for you than for me. I barely even knew that world.” She stepped closer.
“But this world is right here. It has so much to give us, and it needs so much of
our help. Let the old world go, and help us build a new one.”

His face was lost in shadow. “That’s what they said in their emails.”

“Who?”

“The Trust.” His voice was different now, not the halting mush of confusion or the
clear window of intelligence, but a distant, almost haunted whisper, as if the old
world itself was speaking through him. “Dhurvasula and Ryssdal and Trimble and everyone:
They knew they were building a new world, and they knew they were destroying the old
one to do it. They did it on purpose.”

“But why?” Kira pressed. “Why kill everyone? Why put the only cure in the Partials?
Why link humans to the Partials at all? Why leave us with so many questions?”

“I don’t know,” he said softly. “I tried to know, but I don’t.”

“Then let’s figure it out,” she said, “together. But first we have to help them.”
She paused, remembering the words of Mr. Mkele, words that seemed so unconscionable
when he said them. She repeated them now to Afa, bewildered to find how her situation
had turned. “Humanity needs a future, and we need to fight for it, but we can’t do
that unless we save it in the present.” She put a hand on his arm. “Help me find a
microphone, so we can make sure there’s somebody left to give all these answers to.”