“It’s because I care about people and don’t want them to die!”

“There are Partials dying every day,” said Heron. “Do you care about them?”

“I told you, I’m trying to save everyone—”

“And what if you can’t?” asked Heron. “A journey across the continent is incredibly dangerous—what if we don’t make it? What if we get there and can’t find any answers? What if it takes us so long the Partials all die before we get back? I don’t want to risk their lives just because you couldn’t pick a side!”

Heron’s eyes were practically flaring with anger, but Kira met them fearlessly and stared straight back. “I’ve picked a side,” she said darkly. “And everyone’s on it. And that’s exactly who I’m going to save.”

Heron glared at her, practically snarling. Samm spoke with his typical stone-faced demeanor. “If we’re going to go, we need to go now—the sooner we leave, the sooner we get back.” He looked at Heron. “And we’ll need you, or we’ll never make it.”

Kira looked at them both, steeling her courage. “If we do this, we have to do it right. Any records we find will be stored on computers, under heavy encryption: Do either of you know how to get past that kind of security?”

Samm shook his head; Heron only glared.

Kira blew out a long, low breath. “Then we need to find Afa.”

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.”