Armin sighed, and the energy in his face fell away like dead skin, leaving nothing behind but a dull, emotionless stare. “You’ve heard what I’m planning,” he said softly. “You understand that there is no other way.”

He pulled a small metal tube from a sheath on his belt, like a rounded trowel, sharpened on one end. The precise size and shape to puncture a human body and sluice out all the blood and tissue within. “None of us is more important than this. Not even my own daughter.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Dr. Cronus Vale used the link to clear a path through the crowded White Plains street, ignoring the stunned glances of the Partials he passed. His age alone marked him as an anomaly, for there were no Partials left who looked older than eighteen. The doctor and officer models were all part of early batches, long since expired, and his link data marked him as a god, a powerful being their biology had no choice but to obey. There were no guards at the door of his hotel, just as there were no housekeepers inside. The soldiers took turns cleaning it, infantrymen alternating with the women of the piloting corps, giving the building an austere, military feel. Everything in White Plains felt that way. Vale missed the country paradise of the Preserve, but there was no way to get back there now. He could commandeer a rotor, he supposed, but what then? Fly there in the deepening cold and worsening storm? Bring another group of Partials along and hope they would understand what he was trying to do? Rely on Morgan to not come out looking for him again? Vale wanted to see the Preserve once more, the friends that he’d made there, but more than that he wanted to keep the Preserve safe. If the only way to do that was to stay away, he’d stay away.

Especially now that there was a nuke on the loose. The stakes had been raised, and the few Partials who knew about it were clamoring to take the fight to the humans. They were already terrified by the thought of the bioweapon—Vale had left Dr. Morgan’s lab partly just to keep the army under control, halting every new plan for retaliation. If he told them the humans were on the way with a nuclear device in tow, he didn’t know if he’d be able to hold them back.

A Partial soldier named Vinci was waiting in the lobby; he was the one who’d warned Vale about the nuke. He’d been chasing Delarosa all the way from Long Island, but when he’d lost the canny human terrorist in Manhattan, he’d come straight to White Plains to recruit more people to the search. He watched Vale with somber eyes. “Any news?”