The Partial in the center of the line walked forward, his feet crunching in the snow, and stopped in the middle of the icy road. Kira hesitated a moment, then walked forward to meet him.

“My name is Shon,” said the Partial. “Acting general of the Partial army.”

Kira looked him in the eye. “Kira Walker. I suppose you could say that I’m the closest thing the human race has to a leader right now.”

“I was told I could trust you.”

Kira nodded. “Do you?”

“Samm told me some very interesting things about you and your . . . theories.”

Kira couldn’t help but notice that it wasn’t an answer. She humored him and followed the new line of discussion. “If we work together, we can save both species. See that man behind me, second from the end? His name is Ritter, and he’s from the Third Division.”

“I’ve linked him, yes,” said Shon.

“He’s twenty-two years old,” said Kira. “You can cure us, and we can cure you. Regular contact between the species will propagate a biological particle that—”

“Samm explained it all,” said Shon. “On the other hand, he also introduced me to one of the AWOL Partials we’d already captured, a man named Green. It’s hard to believe your theory when the man with the most human contact is lying on his deathbed.”

Kira felt a pang of despair. “Is he already—?”

“He might as well be,” said Shon. “Some of his batch already expired in the night. When I left Green this morning he could barely breathe, let alone speak or keep his eyes open.”

“I’d like to see him again,” said Kira. “Even if it’s only . . . after.”

“Friendships like yours with Green,” said Shon, “or with Samm, or this other Partial behind you, are inspiring in their way, but that’s not enough. You have to see that.”

“I do.”

“The seeds for the hatred between my people and yours were sown years ago,” said Shon. “Before either of us were born. We tried living together once before, and it failed—my best friend was beaten to death by human supremacists in Chicago, five months before the revolution even started, for having the temerity to take a human girl to see a movie.”

Kira was silent.

“You want peace,” said Shon. “You want it, and I want it, but the two of us can’t speak for everyone. For the tens of thousands of scared, flawed, fallible people who are going to be down there every day, living and working and arguing and being . . . people. They’re going to fight, because that’s our natural state of being, Partials and humans. It’s how we were built.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t try,” said Kira. “Things are different than they were before the Break.”