Kira leapt to her feet. If this Dr. Vale had cured RM, maybe he knew more about Partial and human physiology than she did; maybe he’d already found the records they were looking for, and he could tell them more about the Trust, and the expiration date, and maybe even about who and what Kira was. She practically ran ahead of Calix as the girl led them through the village—a sprawling campus of office buildings that had long ago been converted to apartments. There were people here who hadn’t been at the bonfire, but apparently word had spread, and Kira found herself watched by hundreds of curious eyes, standing in doorways and leaning out of windows and clustering at the street corners. They stared at Kira and Samm with the same wonder Kira had felt on first seeing them, and she couldn’t help but wave as she passed. There were more people, and they had a cure, and they lived in a paradise. It was the single brightest hope she’d felt in possibly her entire life.

In the distance, behind the office building village, a massive tower rose up, as high as anything Kira had seen in Manhattan. It was pitch-black, like a hole in the night sky, and she could see it only as a patch of darkness moving against the snow-covered mountains behind. She thought Calix was leading them there, but she stopped them instead at a low building that looked like it had once been a warehouse, and had since been converted to a hospital.

“He’s in here,” said Calix, opening the door. Kira saw that it was glass, and realized with a start that almost all the windows in the Preserve still had glass in them—a classic sign of human habitation, and a phenomenon that Kira had only ever seen in East Meadow. It made her feel even more at home, and the fact that she was going into a hospital only reinforced the feeling. Samm, however, hung back, and after an awkward moment Kira walked back to drag him.

“Come on,” she said, “this is it. This is what we’ve been looking for.”

“We left the horses,” said Samm, his voice barely above a whisper. “We shouldn’t leave them overnight—let’s go get them and meet this guy tomorrow.”

“Is that what’s been bothering you?” asked Kira. She tugged on his arm. “Come on, the horses will be fine, we can get them in the morning.”

“They let us keep our guns,” Samm whispered, jostling them for emphasis. “I know that makes it seem like they trust us, but it’s creepy as hell—they have no way of knowing if anything we say is true, and that means that behind all their smiles and accommodations there’s some higher level of security we can’t see, and I don’t like it at all. Let’s come back in the morning.”