“Yep.” Kira didn’t know how to feel about Armin, and so refused to feel anything. She tested the heat again, trying to gauge the perfect temperature for the tea.

“I saw a picture of him once,” said Marcus. “Heron showed it to me.”

Kira looked up at this. “Heron?”

“You remember that Partial assassin who captured you when we went north with Samm? She showed up here one night last year, out of the blue. Showed me a picture of you as a little girl, standing between Nandita and that guy from the hospital. Armin . . . Walker, I guess?”

“Dhurvasula,” said Kira, looking back at the stove. “I couldn’t remember my last name when the soldiers found me after the Break, so they gave me one. I might be Kira Dhurvasula, I don’t know. I don’t know if he legally adopted me or what.”

“If you were an experiment, you might not legally ex—” He stopped. “Never mind.” Marcus finished with the last mesh ball and dropped one into each mug. “Is the water close?”

“Yeah,” said Kira. The teapot had already started to give short, feeble whistles, gearing up for a full boil. They watched in silence, and when it piped loudly she took it off the stove and poured a steaming stream into each thin mug. The aroma of the tea rose up in a cloud, calming her, and she breathed deep. Chamomile.

“Is he going to come after you?” asked Marcus.

It was a question Kira hadn’t allowed herself to think about yet, but now that it was out in the air there was no avoiding it. “Probably.”

“He said you were a new model,” said Marcus. “Some kind of ultimate refinement of the Partial design. If he’s collecting . . . artisanal DNA, or whatever, he’s going to want yours.”