Kira grabbed her things quietly, packing in the dark, and stole down the stairs to follow him. He was already at the corner when she reached the street, and she waited until he rounded it before slipping out after him, stepping as lightly as she could through the rubble in the street. She peered around the corner and saw him walking slowly, pulling the cart behind him. He moved strangely, almost like a waddle, and Kira wondered if it was just his bulk or some other factor. He reached the end of the block and stepped into the street without pausing, as if completely unconcerned that he would be seen or, worse, eaten. How had he survived this long without running into that nocturnal monster? He disappeared around a low wall, and Kira crept after him.

He stood at the mouth of a subway tunnel, filling his plastic jugs with a long-tubed pump similar to her own. He huffed as he worked, as if the exertion was too much for him, but the rest of his mannerisms spoke of long familiarity and expertise. He’d done this often enough to be very good at it.

Was he a Partial? Kira stayed motionless in the shadows observing him, trying to . . . not to listen, not to smell, but to feel him, in the way that she’d been able to feel Samm. The link. It was more emotional than informational; if she linked with this man at all, it would be through feeling the things he felt. She examined her emotions closely: She was curious; she was tired; she was sure of her purpose. Did any of that come from him? What would he be feeling? He was muttering to himself, not angrily but simply talking, the way she had started talking to herself. She couldn’t hear the words.

The more she watched him, methodically filling the jugs, the more she realized that his size suggested he was human. The Partials had been engineered not just as soldiers but as specific soldiers: the infantry were all young men, the generals were all older men, and Samm had said that their doctors were women and their pilots were petite girls designed to fit easily into small vehicles and tight cockpits. The military contractors had saved billions of dollars building undersized jets. Obviously there were exceptions—Kira had no idea what role Heron was intended to fill, the tall, leggy supermodel who’d captured her for Dr. Morgan—but did one of the templates include this man? He was huge, especially now that she saw him from ground level. Some kind of super-soldier among super-soldiers? A heavy-weapons specialist, maybe, or a close-combat expert? Samm hadn’t mentioned anyone like that, but there had been a lot of things he’d never mentioned. Kira concentrated as hard as she could, willing herself to detect this giant through whatever version of the link she possessed, but she felt nothing.