“He’s probably raiding the rest of the refugees,” said Marcus, nodding toward the road ahead. “Everyone who went before us. With that rotor and his band of Ivies, he’ll have the pick of anyone’s DNA he wants.”

“But he still wants mine,” said Kira. “He’s going to make another play for it eventually, and we won’t have a nuclear bomb to distract him.”

“Have you considered just giving him your blood?” asked Marcus. “Peacefully, I mean—a pint or two, safely drawn, and then he can go on his way and leave us alone.”

“And create another species that will smash the planet to pieces trying to justify its existence?” Kira shook her head. “No more playing God, even for people with godlike powers. When he comes for me, we have to stop him.”

“That makes you sound like bait,” said Marcus warily.

“It makes me feel like bait,” said Kira, and nodded back to the refugees struggling behind them. “I just hope none of the others get caught when the trap goes off.”

They traveled nearly a mile, and Kira felt her toes and face go numb, when Levi called out a warning. “Bridge out!”

“What?” Kira scrambled ahead to join him, and stared openmouthed at the giant gap in the road. “Did it collapse?”

“It looks like someone ahead of us already blew it,” said Tomas, and pointed at the rubble. “That’s a blast pattern, and you can see the blackened marks under the edges of the snow.”

Kira walked farther forward, looking at the rocky shores of the island. “We’ll have to swim across.”

“In this weather?” asked Marcus. “That channel is deep and ice cold—if it weren’t seawater, it’d be frozen solid. Not to mention, we were planning to blow every bridge we crossed—if whoever’s ahead of us did the same, we’ll never make it across every gap. We’d just be stranding ourselves out there.”

Kira cursed, grinding her teeth. “They’ve probably blown the eastern causeway, too.”

“It’s not worth going three miles out of our way to find out,” said Tomas. “We’ll have to go back north, and then west on the mainland.”

Kira shook her head. “The army’s behind us.”

“And now it’ll be closer behind us,” said Levi. “Do we really have a choice?”

“No,” said Kira. She made a fist, growling in frustration, then took a breath and forced herself to think critically. “If we assume they’ve blown all the other bridges, our only access to the landing zone—or what we assume is the landing zone—is overland through Inwood and Rockaway.”

“That’s right,” said Marcus.