She read a bit of the court order in her hand, something about the words “Partial Nation” being declared a sign of terrorist sympathy. Students couldn’t write or say them on school campuses, and anyone caught using them in graffiti was subject to prosecution as a threat to national security. She waved it lightly, grabbing his attention. “You’ve got a lot about the last days before the war,” she said. “You’ve really worked hard to put this together. Do you have anything . . .” She paused, almost too cautious to ask. She wanted to know about the Trust, which Samm had implied was part of the Partial leadership, but she worried that if she just blurted it out, like she had with ParaGen, he might shut down again. “Do you have anything about the Partials themselves? The way they’re organized?”

“They’re an army,” said Afa. “They’re organized like an army.” He was on the floor now, looking at two of his boxes and the papers in them; every third or fourth one he frowned at and moved to the other box.

“Yes,” said Kira, “but I mean, the leaders of the army—the generals. Do you know anything about where they are now?”

“This one died,” said Afa, holding up a paper without looking away from his boxes. Kira walked to him and took it carefully; it was an article from the New York Times, like some of the others she’d seen, but printed out from a website instead of clipped from a real paper. The headline read NORTH ATLANTIC FLEET SUNK IN LOWER BAY.

Kira looked up, surprised. “They sank a Partial fleet?”

“The Partials didn’t have a navy,” said Afa, still sorting his papers. “That was a human fleet, sunk by the Partial Air Force, just off the shore of Brooklyn. It was the biggest military strike in the war, in retaliation for the death of General Craig. I have one about him, too.” He held up another page, and Kira snatched it away, poring over the information: “‘General Scott Craig, leader of the Partial uprising and former mouthpiece of the Partial rights movement, was assassinated last night in a daring strike by human commandos—’ We killed him?”

“It was a war.”

“And then they destroyed an entire fleet.” She counted up the ships in the article, a massive group sailing north to attack the concentration of Partial forces in New York State. The ships had been undermanned, their crews already ravaged by the plague. “Twenty ships, and they just . . . killed everyone on them.”

“It was a war,” said Afa again, taking the papers from her hands and dropping them back in the box.