Xochi led them off the main road at the first good cross street, winding through a series of narrow, tree-lined roads before finally finding a house tucked back behind the others, surrounded on three sides by thick woods. The group trekked around to the back, entering through a wide broken window so the door looked undisturbed, and slipped into the basement. It was dank and musty, but they closed the basement doors and pulled up mattresses to stand against them, blocking as much sound as they could. Arwen got down to play, excited to see her daddy and babbling wordlessly as she sat on the mildewed carpet. Isolde pulled Khan from his sling and tried to nurse, but the screaming baby was too bothered to suck, and Isolde worked instead to calm him down. Ariel thought his blisters looked worse than usual, but it was hard to tell.

Hobb stared at the boy in alarm. “What’s wrong with him? He’s sick!”

“He was born with it,” said Nandita. “We have some painkillers and fever reducers to help keep him comfortable, but it’s the best we can do for now.”

“You know what that looks like,” said Hobb, peering in closely.

“It’s the bioweapon,” said Haru, leaning forward as he noticed the same thing. “The symptoms look identical.”

“What bioweapon?” asked Isolde.

“We don’t know exactly,” said Haru. “The Partials are getting sick—we used to think it was part of their expiration, but everything we’ve managed to overhear says otherwise. They’re calling it a bioweapon, and they think it’s us fighting back.”

“The two we ran into outside Plainview said the same thing,” said Ariel. “Why do they think it’s a bioweapon and not just a plague?”

“Because it targets very specific areas,” said Haru. “We got the full story from two victims of it, also near Plainview; they were scouts, I think, who contracted it on a mission and never made it back to base. When we found them they were too sick to fight back, so we got as much info as we could in exchange for a merciful death.”

Madison paled. “They asked you to kill them?”

“It’s apparently very painful,” said Haru. “They think the bioweapon was deployed in East Meadow, in the district by Nandita’s old house, and then whoever had it moved east along a path the Partials haven’t been able to decipher yet. The symptoms look like more or less the same thing your child has—scaly skin, yellow blisters, high fever, plus the two we talked to were obviously hallucinating. They kept talking about a giant monster, and snow—”

“No way,” said Ariel. She was staring at Isolde, who was staring right back with the same stunned expression. Ariel looked at the other women, her heart sinking as she saw that each of them had apparently come to the same conclusion.