“I need the backpack,” he said, his voice practically dripping with desperation. “I’m not supposed to ever leave the backpack, I always take it with me, it’s everything I have.”

“Are these your supplies?” she asked, stepping to the side. The move gave the man a better view of the backpack, and he surged forward five more steps, his hand reaching out as if to snatch it away from her from fifty feet away. “I’m not here to steal from you,” she said slowly. “I just want to talk. How many others are there?”

“That’s the only one,” he pleaded. “I need it, I can’t lose it, it’s everything I have—”

“Not the backpack,” she said, “other people: How many other people are with you in the safe house?”

“Please give me the backpack,” he said again, creeping forward. He stepped into the light, and she could see tears in his eyes. His voice was hoarse and desperate. “I need it, I need it, I need the backpack. Please give it back to me.”

“Is it medicine? Do you need help?”

“Please give it back,” he muttered, over and over. “Never leave the backpack.” Kira considered for a moment, then stepped to the side, moving twenty feet away to the other side of the water cart—far enough that he could come up and grab the backpack while still staying well outside her reach. He rushed forward and collapsed on it, clutching it and crying, and Kira looked again for an ambush—for snipers in the windows, or men coming up behind him in the street. He seemed to be completely alone. What’s going on here? Could this be the bomber who’d been so hard to track, who’d set traps so cunning that even Partials didn’t find them until it was too late?

He didn’t seem eager to talk about anything but the backpack, though, so she focused on that.

“What’s in it?”

He answered without looking up. “Everything.”

“Your food? Your weapons?”

“No weapons,” he said firmly, shaking his head, “no weapons. I’m a noncombatant, you can’t shoot me, I don’t have any weapons.”

Kira took a small step forward. “Food, then?”

“Are you hungry?” He seemed to perk up at this, his head rising.

Kira thought carefully, then nodded. “A little.” She paused, then gestured toward her own pack. “I have some beans if you want some, and a can of pineapple I found in a drugstore.”

“I have lots of pineapple,” he said, climbing slowly to his feet. He brushed off his hands and hefted the backpack up onto his shoulders. “I like fruit cocktail best: It has pineapples and peaches and pears and cherries. Come back to my house and I’ll show you.”