Shon stared at him, feeling as if the ground were slipping away beneath his feet, disappearing into an inky black depth desperate to suck him down and drown him. He wasn’t made for this either—he was an infantryman, not an officer; he wasn’t ready for this kind of decision. Certainly not for the impossible task of supporting it after he made it. “Do you realize what will happen if I go out there and tell the army we’re making peace with the humans? The same people who attacked us with a bioweapon? Who destroyed White Plains? You said it yourself: We’re soldiers. We were bred for war; we were designed to fight and to kill. You talk about peace as if it were natural, as if all we had to do was stop fighting and our problems would be solved, but fighting is why we exist. War is our nature, and that makes peace the most . . . unnatural act we could perform. We even fought ourselves when we couldn’t find anyone else. Sometimes I think no matter what I do we’ll be fighting till the last Partial draws breath.”

“I understand that,” said Samm. “I’ve felt the same thing. But I have to believe there’s more to us than that.”

“They built us for war,” Shon repeated.

“They built us to love.”

Shon sat in silence, staring at his desk. He traced the cracks in the wood, dry and brittle under his fingertip. He stopped, tapped the desk, and spoke quietly. “I want to believe you.”

“Then believe me.”

“It’s hard to believe when they keep shooting at us.”

“So be the bigger man and stop first.”

Shon thought about the army waiting outside, the rage that still fueled them from the loss of their home. From the bioweapon. From the years of hatred and slavery and war that dated back decades. Every memory he had of humans was drenched in hate and death and oppression.

He shook his head. That’s a coward’s excuse, he thought. We didn’t rebel so they’d treat us better, we rebelled so we could live our own lives. So we could make our choices.

If this is the best choice, then it doesn’t matter what the humans do.

“What will they do if we offer a truce?” asked Shon. “Will they accept it?”

“I can’t speak for them any more than you can speak for your soldiers,” said Samm. “Less, actually. I’m still an outsider in their camp.”

Shon raised his eyebrow. “Then why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t,” said Samm. “You should trust Kira Walker.”

Chapter Fifty

CHAPTER FIFTY

Kira hadn’t slept, and she couldn’t imagine anyone else had, either, the entire refugee camp terrified about Armin, about the Partial army, about—