“You can’t,” said Samm, and searched the pile fiercely, finally pulling a brick of C4 from a pack full of food. He brandished it at Heron. “See? This is what we’re getting ourselves into.”

“So check the rest and make sure you have it all,” said Heron, taking the brick and throwing it over the side of the bridge. They were still over the city, not the water, and it fell silently through the air before splatting on the pavement below.

Samm searched everything they’d brought, including Afa’s backpack, and when he was finally satisfied, they mounted up and rode west, across the bridge and into the untamed mainland beyond: what used to be New Jersey. Kira looked back at the boxes of extra records, forlorn by the side of the road.

“Boxes of old ParaGen emails,” she said. “That’s going to be a weird surprise for anyone who finds them.”

“If someone finds them,” said Heron, “then we’ve done a very poor job of slipping away unnoticed.”

Kira had been riding horses for years, mostly on salvage runs in and out of East Meadow, so the first days of the trip were easy for her; Heron and Samm proved to be accomplished riders as well. Afa, to no one’s surprise, was not, which made their progress slow starting out. He also made strange, disjointed conversation as they rode, talking here about cats and there about internet firewall subroutines. Kira listened casually, ignoring most of it, having learned over the last three weeks that all Afa really wanted to do was say things out loud; he’d been alone too long to expect a response, and she’d started to suspect that he would talk to himself just as much if there were no one around to hear him. Samm and Heron scanned the horizon, watching the road ahead and the buildings on the side for signs of an ambush. It was unlikely out here—as far as they knew, nobody lived on this side of the city, or indeed anywhere else on the continent—but it was better to be safe than sorry. The road curved north, then south, then north again, winding lazily through the dense suburbs of New Jersey. When night fell they were still in urban terrain, office buildings and stores and apartments on every side. They slept for the night in an auto parts store, the horses tethered to tall racks of rubber tires. Heron took the first turn at watch, and Kira couldn’t help but notice that she was watching her and Afa as much as anything that might be approaching from the outside.

Kira woke again in the middle of the night, momentarily disoriented, but as her eyes adjusted and she remembered where she was, she saw Samm was now on watch, perched on a desk in the corner of the room. Kira sat up, hugging her knees in the cold.

“Hey,” she whispered.