Afa’s answer was lost as he walked around the corner of the building, and Kira and the Partials hurried to catch up. “. . . breaks apart the resin,” he said. “It’s not an effective long-term solution, because the fumes it puts out are toxic, but it’ll get that motor running better than it has in twelve years.” He was back in lucid mode again, perhaps more lucid and eager than she had ever seen him—here, in his element, he was all genius with none of the child to slow him down. It made Kira, in contrast, feel like the slow one.

“What are you talking about?” asked Kira, tapping the ground ahead nervously with her stick as she raced to keep up.

“That,” said Afa, rounding the back corner of the building. Behind the data center was a series of power poles, cables, and giant metal blocks, once painted gray but now mottled with rust. He splashed up to the gate and wrestled with the locks. “We need to get these started, at least one of them, and the best way is with paint thinner.”

“Let me do it,” said Heron, pulling a pair of thin metal prods from somewhere on her belt. She inserted them in the lock on the fence, twisted them slightly, and the lock popped open. Afa raced in, nearly losing his balance in the water. The metal blocks were marked with various icons and labels and warnings. Even looking at them, Kira wasn’t sure what they were for.

“This place was one of the biggest data centers in the world,” said Afa. “If it lost power, half the planet lost their data. It pulled power from the overall power grid like everybody else, but it had all these as backups—if anything happened to the main grid, or even to one of these generators, there were ten other generators on site to pick up the slack. They’re diesel-powered, so we just need to find the . . . I don’t understand.” He sloshed off in another direction, and Kira read the labels on the nearest metal block.

“These aren’t power generators,” she said, “they’re . . . cold generators?”

“It’s a cooling system for the data center,” Afa shouted. He splashed back, nearly falling as he came. “I’ve never seen one this big. But where are the generators?”