“Don’t call out,” he said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Just my guards.”

“I went AWOL last night,” said Haru. “I couldn’t risk him raising an alarm.” He laid the man gently in the corner. “Just give me five minutes.”

Mkele’s office was full of papers—not cluttered, as if he simply failed to throw anything away, but full, and from the looks of it very efficiently organized. This was a man who used his office not for show or for storage, but for long hours of work and study. Mkele was sitting behind his desk with a map of Long Island spread out before him, marked here and there with the sites of Partial attacks, Grid counterattacks, and—Haru couldn’t help but notice—some of Haru’s own allegedly secret activities with Delarosa and her warriors. I guess I’m not as good at keeping secrets as I thought. Maybe he already knows.

No, thought Haru. If he knew what Delarosa was planning, he wouldn’t be nearly this calm.

“You’re turning yourself in,” said Mkele.

“If you want to look at it that way,” said Haru. “I’m delivering intel, and if some of that intel reflects poorly on me, I’m prepared to face the consequences.”

“It must be very important intel.”

“What did you do before?” Haru asked. “Before the Break?”

Mkele stared at him a moment, as if deciding how to answer, then gestured at the map before him. “This.”

“Intelligence?”

“Mapmaking,” said Mkele. He smiled faintly. “In the wake of apocalypse, we must find new areas of endeavor.”

Haru nodded. “Were you familiar with the Last Fleet? I don’t know its real name, I was seven when it happened. The fleet that sailed into New York Harbor and got bombed to hell and back by the Partial air force. They call it the Last Fleet because it was our last chance to defend ourselves against the Partials, and when it was gone, the war was over.”

“I know it,” said Mkele. His face was calm—intent without appearing nervous. Haru pressed forward.

“Do you know why the Partials destroyed it?”

“We were at war.”

“That’s why they attacked it,” said Haru. “Do you know why they attacked it with such overwhelming force that they sank every ship in the fleet and killed every sailor onboard? They’d never done that with any other attack or counterattack in the war. I’ve heard the stories a thousand times from the older guys in the Defense Grid—how the Partials who had typically been much more interested in pacification and occupation, suddenly decided to obliterate an entire fleet. They say it was a message, the Partials’ way of saying, ‘Stop fighting now or we’ll make you regret it.’ That always seemed pretty reasonable to me, so I didn’t question it. Yesterday I learned the truth.”

“From who?”