An Ivie bullet had grazed the side of Marcus’s head, scraping away the skin right down to the bone and knocking him out cold, but he was alive. Kira wrapped the wound and roused him, and he helped with the others—stopping blood wherever they could, stuffing holes with bits of ripped cloth, and then helping everyone back to the camp. Haru was in the worst shape, his gut punctured and his right hand mangled, but he was stable. Six Ivies were still alive as well, and surrendered on the spot with their leader dead. Kira led them back to the human camp, and Shon and Mkele stepped in for Haru, reorganizing the evacuation, slowing the frantic pace while still planning to get everyone clear of the fallout. With the Ivies’ old rotor to help, they could tighten the schedule considerably.

Kira dressed Samm’s wound herself, laying him on a sterilized table in their crowded makeshift medical center and cleaning his shoulder with alcohol before carefully stitching it closed. “This reminds me of being in the lab,” she said, remembering their time in the East Meadow hospital when she’d studied him, talked to him, and ultimately decided to help him. She’d felt a connection to him she hadn’t felt with anyone else, not even Marcus, and she’d worried for a time that it was just the link, traces of it drifting on the fringes of her mind. She looked at the next table in the row, where Marcus was stitching a bullet hole in Calix’s leg—her other leg, now a mirror image of the one Heron had shot months ago.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Kira thought, and looked back at Samm. But I know what I want to do. “I need to talk to you,” she said nervously.

“Are you done with my shoulder?” asked Samm.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“I did,” said Samm, wincing as he raised himself upright and eased gently off the table. “But I need to talk to you, too.”

Marcus looked up from his surgery. “You’re going to do it right here? Just right in front of me?”