What stood out to her more than anything was the sudden, almost shocking proficiency he had with the topic. She’d assumed he was slow, too childlike to do more than fetch water on somebody else’s instructions, but she saw now that her first impression had been wildly wrong. Afa had his quirks, certainly, and she didn’t doubt that there was something off about him, but on at least one subject the man was brilliant.

“Stop,” she said, holding up her hands, “wait, you’re going too fast. Start at the beginning: What does I-T mean?”

“Information technology,” said Afa. “I was an IT director. I kept everyone’s computers running, and I set up the servers, and I maintained cloud security, and I saw everything on the network.” He leaned forward, staring at her intently, stabbing the floor with his finger. “I saw everything. I watched it all happen.” He leaned back and spread his arms, as if to encompass the entire room, maybe the entire building, in his gesture. “I have it all here, almost all of it, and I’m going to show everyone, and they’re going to know the whole story. They’re going to know exactly how it happened.”

“How what happened?”

“The end of the world,” said Afa. He swallowed, his face turning red as he raced to speak without pausing for breath. “The Partials, the war, the rebellion, the virus. Everything.”

Kira nodded, so excited her fingers started to tingle. “And who are you going to tell?”

Afa’s face fell, and his arms dropped to his sides. “No one,” he said. “I’m the last human being left alive.”

“No, you’re not,” said Kira firmly. “There’s an entire community on Long Island—there are nearly thirty-six thousand humans left there, and goodness knows how many more on other continents. There have to be more. What about me?”

“You’re a Partial.”

The accusation, again, made her uncomfortable, especially since she couldn’t counter it with a flat refusal. She tried a misdirection instead. “How do you know I’m a Partial?”

“Humans don’t come to Manhattan.”

“You’re here.”

“I was here before; that’s different.”

Kira ground her teeth, caught again in Afa’s circular, self-referential arguments. “Then why did you let me into you house?” she asked. “If the Partials are so bad, why trust me?”

“Partials aren’t bad.”