“Done and done,” said Marcus. “I’ve only met her once, but . . . holy crap. If anyone does die in the next few days, I won’t be surprised if she’s the one pulling the trigger.”

Chapter Forty-seven

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

The Partial army didn’t arrive that day, and Kira’s refugees made it to the second outpost at Cross Bay Bridge without trouble. They lit their fires and huddled together through the night, listening for the sound of the Grid’s defensive traps and explosives, but they heard nothing.

“They’re not coming,” said Samm.

“Or they found the traps and disarmed them,” said Heron. She grinned at the nearby humans wolfishly. “Sorry, I’m a bit of an optimist.”

“Whose side are you on?” asked Marcus.

“This close to the end,” said Kira, “we all have to be on everyone’s side. We’re running from them because they’re trying to kill us, but we can’t survive without them. That’s how this works.”

“So how do we reconcile that with the ‘trying to kill us’ part?” asked Calix. “That’s going to make peaceful coexistence pretty impossible, by definition.”

“We’ll talk to them,” said Kira. “But we’ll get everyone to safety first. They’re angry—they think we blew up their home and murdered eighty percent of their species. We’ll get everyone clear—of them and of the fallout—and then when they don’t have anyone left to shoot at, we can talk to them.”

“They can still shoot whoever tries to talk to them,” said Marcus.

Kira nodded. “Here’s hoping that they don’t.”

The next day they loaded up with more dry clothes and walked the four miles to the third outpost. Kira was surprised to find that she’d been there before, on her first trip into Manhattan; they’d gone the long way around to hide, from both the Senate and the Voice, and crossed this bridge into Brooklyn. She hadn’t recognized the city in the snow, but the bridge was unmistakable. Beyond the outpost it was just three miles to the tip of the promontory, to Breezy Point itself, and Kira could already see the vast group of refugees—the entire human population—swarming over the land ahead. It filled her heart to see so many still alive, after living so long alone in the wilderness, but at the same time it chilled her, more profoundly than even the storm.

Every human on the island, she thought. I’ve never seen them all in one place before.

There’s so few of us.