Kira felt her legs trembling, her stomach wrenching, her arms longing to reach out and touch him even as her mind howled at her to run, to stop him, to kill him, to scream. She gripped the wall for support and stared at the face that haunted her dreams, and spoke the word she hadn’t said since she was five years old.

“Daddy?”

Chapter Thirty-six

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Armin Dhurvasula stared back at Kira, his dark eyes flickering, considering her. She could feel his emotions on the link, wonder and uncertainty and a fierce determination, so strong it left her gasping. Her father took a step forward, as if trying to see her better, and a broad, almost childlike smile spread across his face.

“Kira!” he shouted. He ran toward her, wiping his hands on a towel. “Kira, you’re alive!”

Green raised his rifle to fire, but Armin froze him in place with a surge of link data so powerful Kira felt her own knees buckle. Marcus grabbed her arm, holding her up, and when Armin drew close she gripped Marcus tightly.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed at her father.

“Kira,” said Armin. “You can’t know how happy I am to see you. I thought for sure you’d died in the Break—obviously you were immune to RM, but when I finally made it home again, you were gone.”

“I was . . . alone for weeks.”

“It was a chaotic time,” said Armin. “But you’re here now, and we can do so much together—”

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “You’re the Blood Man? You’re the one leaving dismembered bodies all over the . . . everywhere? How could you do this?”

“I’m saving them,” he said simply. “The world’s ending—you thought it ended in the Break, but that was just the gunshot; the last thirteen years have been a long, slow bleeding, twitching in an illusion of life, preparing for this moment—this true death. The Partials will die in a few months, and the humans not long after. Jerry’s impossible winter will only hasten the inevitable. How long do you really think we have?”

“So just because we’re dying means it’s all right to murder everyone?” asked Kira. “Like we’re some kind of . . . sociopathic playground now? What’s wrong with you?”

“I do not enjoy what I’m doing,” said Armin. “Don’t think me heartless for accepting the inevitable—no more than an oncologist is being cruel when he tells a cancer patient that he only has a month to live. That doctor isn’t a monster, he’s simply doing his job. The difference here is that I can do something no oncologist has ever been able to do; no doctor, no politician, no holy man. I can save them, Kira.”

“By killing them?”