Kira rose to her feet, her back pressed tightly against the computer tower. She glanced up and down the row she was in, seeing nothing, and slipped forward to the next one as lightly as she could. Her bare feet made no sound on the concrete floor, but she felt cold drips on her legs and looked down in frustration; her boots had been left behind, but her pants were still soaked from the flood below, and she was leaving a dim trail of water showing exactly where she was. She heard another squelch, behind and to her right. Someone was getting closer. She slid to the floor and wrung her pants dry, twisting the legs as tightly as she could to get rid of the excess water. It was nearly impossible with her legs still in them. The squelch came closer—she guessed he was three rows away. She gritted her teeth, wringing out her second pant leg, trying to make them as dry as possible. Another squelch. She rose again, her pants cold against her legs but not dripping, and slipped lightly to the next row down. She left no trail this time. She moved another row, then another, slipping to the side, trying to put as much distance between her and the attacker as she could, in the direction he least expected.

The room erupted in noise again, shouts and automatic weapons and the harsh metallic rips of bullets tearing through computer towers. Two bodies slumped this time, and Kira felt again the faint of whiff of prescience from the link: sleep, pain, and victory. Her final companion was down but had taken at least one of the attackers down in the process. Kira was alone, and she had no idea how many enemies were left.

She heard a footfall, but she couldn’t tell where it had come from. A voice, too soft to understand. A sudden sense of determined pragmatism: to find the last target and complete the mission. Had that come from her, or from the enemy? Kira was frustrated that she still wasn’t adept enough to tell. She took a deep breath, crouching low in the darkness, sorting through her limited information: If that last impression was link data, then the enemy were definitely Partials, and at least one had removed his gas mask. The Partials worked in two-man hunting teams—she’d heard them constantly on the radio in the raid of Long Island—but they used larger teams as well, depending on the job. She might be facing a single combatant or a dozen. The reigning silence in the data center suggested that only a very small team had infiltrated; if there were more, they were waiting outside.