“We did,” said Laura. “I told you, we found every single person we could find, young and old, everyone who wasn’t already dead from the war or the virus. We scoured the city for weeks, and we sent drivers out in every direction. We brought back everyone we found, but there weren’t many left alive at that point. I wasn’t lying to you, Kira, we honestly thought we were the only humans left in the world.”

“We all went east,” said Kira. “The last bits of the army gathered us all in one place.”

Laura shook her head. “Apparently they missed a few.”

“And what made you think all the Partials were dead?” asked Samm. His voice was typically emotionless, but Kira could tell something was bothering him, and had been since they’d arrived in the Preserve. She strained to pick up his feelings on the link, but without the heightened awareness of combat, her senses were too weak.

“Why wouldn’t they be dead?” asked Laura. “RM killed them the same as us.”

“Wait, what?” asked Kira. This was news—not just news but an outright shock. “RM doesn’t affect Partials,” said Kira. “They’re immune to it. That’s . . . that’s the whole point of it.” She felt a moment of panic—if this part of the world had a mutant, Partial-killing strain of RM, they were in terrible danger.

But if that was so, then they were already exposed. Better to stay calm and learn what they could.

“That’s all true,” said Laura, “but then the virus mutated. It happened here, in Denver—a new strain that appeared out of nowhere and burned through the Partial army like wildfire.”

Kira couldn’t help but glance at Samm, looking for a sign of recognition on his face, but he was as impassive as ever. He was listening so intently that Kira thought this must be the first time he’d ever heard the story, but she couldn’t be sure, and she couldn’t just ask him here in front of everybody. She filed it away to bring up later.

Kira turned back to Laura. “If a new strain hit in Denver, they must have quarantined those forces and kept it from spreading. Back east, no one’s even heard of an RM strain that targets Partials.”

Calix ran into the firelight, breathless and pointing back deeper into the Preserve. “Dr. Vale’s awake,” she said between breaths. “He wants to see you.”