“You can have my blood,” Kira shouted, “but nobody else’s.” She pointed behind her at Shon and his sergeants, watching the scene with obvious shock. “We’re making peace here, Armin. This is the end of the war, and I’m not going to let you ruin it.”

Ritter ran out from behind the rotor, a branch in his fist, ripped from one of the snowy trees on the side of the road, but the Ivies had sensed him coming on the link and turned to fire before he’d even cleared the corner of the aircraft. Kira screamed, incensed by his empty sacrifice, but a moment later she saw the sense behind it: Marcus and the other humans had flanked them, charging around the other side of the rotor, surprising the Ivies from behind and tackling two of them to the frozen ground. The remaining Ivies spun again to meet the new threat, and Kira screamed again as her friends went down, as Marcus went down, blood erupting from their ragged coats in bright red clouds. She ran toward them, still screaming incoherently, Samm struggling to hold her back, when the Partials rose up behind her, drawing weapons of their own and charging toward the fight, firing at the Ivies. The Ivies fired back, and Kira screamed as Samm stepped in front of her, taking a bullet in his arm. Armin stood in the middle of the battle, seemingly unafraid, and stopped the world with a thought.

NO

The command rolled out across the link, freezing Shon and his Partials midstep, binding Samm like a man of stone, stopping even the Ivies. Kira stumbled, overwhelmed by the order, by the word, by the entire concept of NO. It seemed to fill her link, her mind, her entire body. She gritted her teeth and put her hands to her head, as if she could somehow shut it out.

“That’s better,” said Armin. He looked at Kira, walking toward her slowly. “You were right about one thing,” he said. “This is the end. Maybe not of your war—they look to still have some fight left in them—but of the war’s importance. I have all the DNA I need now. The humans and Partials, so desperate to end each other’s existence, can now do so without harming our future.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” said Kira, forcing the words out. “It’s your plan—the one you made all those years ago. It can still happen.”

“For the moment, perhaps,” said Armin. “But eventually they’ll start fighting again. They’ll blame each other for your death, for not saving you or killing me. They might even try to work together to leave this island before it irradiates them all beyond recovery, but it won’t last. Their differences are too great, and the biological peace I tried to force with RM and the Partial DNA wasn’t enough.”