“You have to stop this,” said Marcus, pushing forward. He fumbled with a bandage from the medkit as he walked, trying to wrap his arm wound and stanch the bleeding. “Don’t run away, just do something. Send out orders, coordinate the war, do . . . something!” He stopped in front of her, and her eyes half focused on his. She seemed dazed, or maybe half-asleep. “These people have stuck with you for years, waiting for you to lead them. That’s a kind of dedication I’ve never even imagined—if they were humans, they’d have thrown you out on your ear years ago, but they’re Partials, and Partials are loyal to the chain of command. To, apparently, stupidly ridiculous extremes, which is where we are now. They will follow you anywhere, but only if you lead them.”

Her head shifted slightly, and Marcus realized he now had her full attention, intense and vague at once.

“I’ve destroyed the world once already,” she said. “I won’t condone a course of action that will destroy it again.”

“Failing to act is no less a crime than acting incorrectly,” said Woolf, but the second half of his sentence was lost in a sudden boom as the locked door behind them exploded. Partials poured through the opening, taking positions with trained precision. Vinci raised his rifle to fire, and a dozen rifles zeroed in to fire back. Marcus dropped to the ground, his entire life literally flashing before his eyes: his job at the hospital. Kira. The school. The Break. His parents, more clear in his mind now than in all the years before.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. “I guess I’m going to see you soon.”

The rebel Partials screamed a death sentence on Trimble. Vinci moved to block her with his body. Woolf and Galen raised their handguns.

Trimble rose to her feet, turned to the Partial invaders, and spoke a single word:

“Stop.”

It looked to Marcus as if an invisible wave had struck them, rippling across the crowd and freezing them in their tracks. Where before they’d been still, now they were rigid, so motionless they looked like statues. Even Vinci was rooted to his spot, as if her word had turned him to stone.

The link, thought Marcus. I’ve never seen it this powerful.

“I have a Rotor in the room upstairs,” said Trimble, turning to Marcus. “Can you fly it?”

“I can,” said Woolf.

“Then go,” said Trimble. “It’s short range, but it should get you to Manhattan at least.” She tapped a code onto the glowing screen closest to her hand. “No one will follow you.”

“What will happen to you?” asked Marcus.

Trimble nodded to the frozen Partials. “They will kill me.”

“They can’t even move.”

“I had hoped to guide them,” said Trimble, “but all I’ve done is hold them back. Now holding them back is all I can do. Go now.”