“They taught us right from wrong, and then put us into an incredibly wrong situation,” said Samm. “The rebellion was the most human of all our actions, I think. You have to understand—think about your own life, as the best example. You’re completely driven, at every moment, to do what’s right—you see people in trouble and you have to help them. You had to help me, even though everyone, including you, thought I was the irredeemable enemy. We weren’t just designed with a conscience, Kira, we were designed with an overactive one, a heightened sense of empathy that would kick in to save lives and right wrongs and help the downtrodden. And then we became the downtrodden, and how else were we supposed to react?”

Kira nodded again, but as the implications dawned on her, she turned to stare at him in shock. “They gave you an acute empathy response, and then they sent you into war?”

Samm looked away, staring across the river. “Not really any different from having humans fight. Which was, I suppose, the point.”

Heron walked up and dropped a pack of supplies on the ground between them. “This is the last of it—canned chicken and tuna, freeze-dried vegetables, and a new water purifier. It was still sealed, and the filter looks pristine.”

“Perfect,” said Samm. “Time to go.”

They shoved their packs into plastic garbage bags from the grocery store, double and triple thick for maximum protection, and used more duct tape to seal it all as tightly as they could. They lifted Afa back into Oddjob’s saddle, tied him down, and loaded their gear onto Buddy and Bobo’s backs. The water was cold, but relatively slow, and the crossing was blessedly uneventful. The grass on the far shore was green and healthy, nourished by the clean river, but barely twenty feet up the bank they found more yellow, sickly weeds. The buildings on this side were as scoured by the chemicals as the buildings behind them. Kira checked Afa’s waterproofed wrapping, determined that it was still sealed, and decided to leave it for now.

The clouds were gathering, and Kira worried about rain. They made it a couple of hours out of town, still on Highway 34, when the first drop fell.

It hissed against the pavement.

It was Kira’s turn to walk, and she bent down to feel the heat coming off the asphalt. There was none. It was getting toward evening, and the overcast day had kept the ground relatively cool. Another drop fell and hissed, as if burning at the contact. “It’s not hot,” she said, straightening up. “The hiss isn’t from steam.”

Another drop fell, then another.

“It’s not steam,” said Heron, “it’s acid.”