Which was to be expected, he decided, when you found yourself tied up by a terrorist you went looking for in the first place.

“This is what we get for trusting her,” said Marcus.

“She was our only option,” said Galen.

“She is also a convicted criminal,” said Marcus. He looked at the others with as bemused a grin as he could muster. “I kind of feel like we should have given that point more weight when we made our plan to find her.”

“She was working with the Senate and Defense Grid,” said Woolf. “Since the start of the invasion she hadn’t done anything suspicious or illegal—that we knew about,” he added.

Marcus closed his mouth, swallowing his snarky comment.

Woolf shook his head. “Obviously if we’d known she’d managed to round up a nuclear warhead, we would have thought twice about it.”

“If we’d known she had a nuclear bomb, we would have done exactly the same thing,” said Vinci. “We just would have handled the meeting a little differently. Infiltrating her army would have been the best bet.”

“I suppose it’s too late for that now?” asked Marcus, looking at the guard on the other side of the room.

The guard nodded. “Yes, it is.”

“Bummer,” said Marcus. “Thought we had something there.”

“Why is she doing this?” asked Vinci. “A bomb big enough to destroy the invading Partial army would kill almost every human on the island in the same instant. Ninety percent of both groups are in East Meadow—she can’t possibly consider that an acceptable loss.”

“She won’t set it off on Long Island,” said Woolf. “She’ll take it north to White Plains, or as close as she can get it, and detonate it there. Even out the numbers, like she said.”

“It’s genocide,” said Vinci.

“You mean like RM?” asked the guard. “You mean like exactly what you did to us thirteen years ago?”

“The Partials had nothing to do with RM,” said Vinci, his voice calm and matter-of-fact. He wasn’t arguing, Marcus realized, simply explaining. A quick glance at the seething guard showed just how unlikely he was to listen to reason.

“You’re talking to a man ready to set off a nuclear device fifty miles from the last human survivors,” said Marcus. “Let’s just assume he doesn’t believe you and move on.”

“The Partials need to be destroyed,” said the guard, lifting his rifle. “Every one of them. I can’t believe she hasn’t let us execute you yet.” He stood up, his face hard as stone, and Marcus pressed as far back against the wall as he could.

“See?” said Marcus, trying to keep his voice from cracking with fear. “I told you this would be more fun.” The guard’s eyes were red with fury, and Marcus half expected him to shoot all four of them in one long burst of bullets.