BooksBarbecue
Back Ruins Save as PDF
Chapters (62)
  1. Dedication
  2. Contents
  3. Part 1
  4. Chapter One
  5. Chapter Two
  6. Chapter Three
  7. Chapter Four
  8. Chapter Five
  9. Chapter Six
  10. Chapter Seven
  11. Chapter Eight
  12. Chapter Nine
  13. Chapter Ten
  14. Chapter Eleven
  15. Chapter Twelve
  16. Chapter Thirteen
  17. Chapter Fourteen
  18. Chapter Fifteen
  19. Chapter Sixteen
  20. Chapter Seventeen
  21. Chapter Eighteen
  22. Chapter Nineteen
  23. Chapter Twenty
  24. Chapter Twenty-one
  25. Part 2
  26. Chapter Twenty-two
  27. Chapter Twenty-three
  28. Chapter Twenty-four
  29. Chapter Twenty-five
  30. Chapter Twenty-six
  31. Chapter Twenty-seven
  32. Chapter Twenty-eight
  33. Chapter Twenty-nine
  34. Chapter Thirty
  35. Chapter Thirty-one
  36. Chapter Thirty-two
  37. Chapter Thirty-three
  38. Chapter Thirty-four
  39. Chapter Thirty-five
  40. Chapter Thirty-six
  41. Chapter Thirty-seven
  42. Part 3
  43. Chapter Thirty-eight
  44. Chapter Thirty-nine
  45. Chapter Forty
  46. Chapter Forty-one
  47. Chapter Forty-two
  48. Chapter Forty-three
  49. Chapter Forty-four
  50. Chapter Forty-five
  51. Chapter Forty-six
  52. Chapter Forty-seven
  53. Chapter Forty-eight
  54. Chapter Forty-nine
  55. Chapter Fifty
  56. Chapter Fifty-one
  57. Acknowledgments
  58. About the Author
  59. Back Ad
  60. Credits
  61. Copyright
  62. About the Publisher

“Why did you let them shoot us?” asked Ariel. She gripped her gun more tightly, though she still hadn’t pointed it anywhere but the floor. “You can control Partial soldiers with a thought—you could have stopped that gunfight before a single shot was fired. And yet you didn’t.”

“I . . .” Nandita stopped, a motionless form in the darkness. “I guess I decided that if I couldn’t stop Erin, I shouldn’t be able to stop the Partials.”

“You didn’t want to control them?”

“I did not.”

Ariel felt her voice rising. “You’d rather let them kill us all?”

“It was an inconvenient time for a moral revelation,” said Nandita. “You don’t have to tell me. But these things happen; I was ready to do it, and then I wasn’t. The moment happened, and then it was past.”

“So you think you made the right choice, then? That letting people get shot in the name of your moral revelation was worth it?”

“We didn’t get killed.”

“You had no way of knowing we wouldn’t.”

“I believe,” said Nandita, “that that is precisely the point.”

On. Off.

“I came down here to kill you,” said Ariel.

“I know.”

“I was always going to do it,” said Ariel. “That was the whole reason I came. You were the only one who could save Khan, and so I was going to wait until you had done that, and as soon as you did, blam.” She gestured with the gun. “No more lying, no more schemes, no more control. I figured the world would be better off.”

“I can hardly disagree with you.”

“Now here I am, and all I want to do is kill you, and . . .” She paused, waiting for Nandita to speak, but the woman said nothing. “You’re not the person I thought you were.”

“I can say the same about you,” said Nandita.

“Who did you think I was?”

“I thought you were a child,” said Nandita. She shook her head. “I was mistaken.”

Ariel stood up, pointed the gun at Nandita’s head . . .

. . . and stood there.

“Khan deserved to live,” said Ariel. “Maybe Hobb does, too. Or maybe he, and you, and all those Partials in that explosion, all deserved to die. I don’t know. Now here we are, and I’m the one with the control, with the power, with the ability to let you live or die with a thought. If I’m going to have any inconvenient moral revelations, now would be the time.”

She lowered the gun and turned away. “I’m going to go look for water.”

Chapter Forty

CHAPTER FORTY