How far has the other one gotten? This is the service stairwell, but the other hall leads to the main stairwell. Has the Partial reached it yet? Did it go upstairs? Did Afa get away? She hoped that Afa had been smart enough to run, that he wasn’t sitting in the hallway with his finger on the trigger of the bomb, ready in his paranoia to destroy his entire life’s work—and he and Kira with it—just to keep it from the Partials. I need to get back up there, she thought, and I need to stay here, and I need to run away. I don’t know what to—

And then she knew, as firmly and as strongly as if she’d seen it with her own eyes, that there was a Partial creeping toward her on the third floor.

The third-floor doorway, like the second, had been cannibalized for Afa’s bunker. The door was open, and the Partial would have a clear shot at her as soon as it came around the corner. It’s the link, she thought, it’s the only way I could know this so clearly. It’s broadcasting everything we’re doing. I don’t have the full complement of sensors that Samm described, but apparently I have enough to sense where they are—and maybe enough to give myself away. She patted her jacket, wishing she had something she could throw—a grenade or even a rock to distract them with—but all she had was the rifle, and by the time she had a clear shot with that, it would be too late. She had to move. She shifted to the balls of her feet, ready to race down the stairwell to the first floor, when she got a second impression, as clear as the first, that there was another Partial in the stairwell below her. They hadn’t paused inside the doorway, waiting, they’d jumped ahead and completely encircled her. There was nowhere to go but into the second floor, still rigged with one last trap. She jumped to her feet and ran.