She felt a tear in the corner of her eye and blinked it away. Afa began to cry, more like a lost child than anyone she’d met in ten years, and Kira drew him into an embrace. He hugged her back tightly, sobbing like a baby, nearly crushing her with his massive arms, and Kira let her own tears run freely. She patted him softly on the back, soothing him gently, luxuriating in the sheer presence of another person, real and warm and alive.

CHAPTER TEN

Marcus ran as fast as he could through the forest, trying to keep his feet under him and his head from cracking into low-hanging branches and vine-crusted poles. The soldier beside him fell abruptly, red blood blossoming on his back as a bullet brought him down. Marcus faltered, instinctively turning to help the fallen soldier, but Haru grabbed him and dragged him forward, crashing headlong through the trees.

“He’s gone,” Haru shouted. “Keep running!”

More shots flew past them, whistling through the leaves and exploding against trunks and old boards. This part of Long Island had been heavily wooded even before the Break, and in the twelve years since then, nature had reclaimed the neighborhood, tearing down rotten fences and collapsing old roofs and walls, filling the lawns and gardens with new growth. Even the sidewalks and streets were cracked and split by a dozen years of freezes and thaws, and trees had sprung up in every gap and rift and crevice. Marcus leapt over a crumbling brick retaining wall and followed Haru through a living room so filled with vines and brush it was almost indistinguishable from the world outside. He dodged a sapling sprouting up through the floorboards, and cringed as another Partial bullet whooshed past his ear and shattered the glass in a picture frame not ten feet in front of him. Haru turned down a sagging hallway, dropping a live grenade just around the corner, and Marcus’s eyes went wide in terror as he leapt over it, putting on an extra burst of speed he didn’t know he had. He tumbled out the far side of the house just as it exploded. Haru hauled him to his feet again with an urgent grunt.

“If they’re as close behind as I think they are, that got at least one of them,” said Haru, puffing as he ran. “Either way it’s going to slow down anyone who followed us into the house, and it’s going to make them think twice about following us into the next one.”

“Sato, you all right?” A woman’s voice cut sharply through the trees, and Marcus recognized it as Grant, the sergeant of this squad of Grid soldiers. Haru ran a little faster to catch up, and Marcus snarled with exhaustion as he struggled to keep up.

“Just dropped a frag in that last house,” said Haru. “Medic and I are fine.”