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DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to everybody you hate.

Sorry. Life’s like that sometimes.

CONTENTS

Dedication

Part 1

    Chapter One

    Chapter Two

    Chapter Three

    Chapter Four

    Chapter Five

    Chapter Six

    Chapter Seven

    Chapter Eight

    Chapter Nine

    Chapter Ten

    Chapter Eleven

    Chapter Twelve

    Chapter Thirteen

    Chapter Fourteen

    Chapter Fifteen

    Chapter Sixteen

    Chapter Seventeen

    Chapter Eighteen

    Chapter Nineteen

    Chapter Twenty

    Chapter Twenty-one

Part 2

    Chapter Twenty-two

    Chapter Twenty-three

    Chapter Twenty-four

    Chapter Twenty-five

    Chapter Twenty-six

    Chapter Twenty-seven

    Chapter Twenty-eight

    Chapter Twenty-nine

    Chapter Thirty

    Chapter Thirty-one

    Chapter Thirty-two

    Chapter Thirty-three

    Chapter Thirty-four

    Chapter Thirty-five

    Chapter Thirty-six

    Chapter Thirty-seven

Part 3

    Chapter Thirty-eight

    Chapter Thirty-nine

    Chapter Forty

    Chapter Forty-one

    Chapter Forty-two

    Chapter Forty-three

    Chapter Forty-four

    Chapter Forty-five

    Chapter Forty-six

    Chapter Forty-seven

    Chapter Forty-eight

    Chapter Forty-nine

    Chapter Fifty

    Chapter Fifty-one

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Back Ad

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

PART 1

CHAPTER ONE

“This is a general message to the residents of Long Island.”

The first time they heard the message, nobody recognized the voice. But it played every day, all day, for weeks, cycling through every available frequency to be sure that every human on the island could hear it. Terrified refugees, huddled in groups or alone in the wilderness, came to know it by heart; it blared from every radio relentlessly, burning itself into their minds and memories. After the first few weeks it haunted their dreams, until even sleep was no respite from the calm, methodical proclamation of death.

“We did not want to invade, but circumstances forced our hand.”

The voice, they eventually learned, was that of a scientist named McKenna Morgan, and the “we” of her sentence referred to the Partials: unstoppable super-soldiers, created in labs and grown in vats to wage a war the humans couldn’t win on their own. They fought, and they won, and when they came back to the United States to find themselves homeless and hopeless, they turned on their creators and waged a new war, the Partial War, the war that ended the world.

But the war that ended the world was not the last war that world would ever see, for twelve years later the humans and the Partials were both on the verge of extinction—and each species was willing to destroy the other to survive.

“We are looking for a girl named Kira Walker, sixteen years old, five feet ten inches tall, approximately one hundred eighteen pounds. Indian descent, light-skinned, with jet-black hair, though she may have cut or dyed it to help disguise her identity.”

Only a few people on the island knew Kira Walker personally, but everyone knew her by reputation: She was a medic, trained in the hospital to study the plague known as RM. They knew Kira because she had found the cure; she had saved the life of Arwen Sato, the Miracle Baby—the first human infant in twelve long years to live more than three days. Kira was infamous because, in the process of finding the cure, she had led two unprovoked attacks on the Partial army, awakening, they thought, the monster that had lain dormant since the end of the Partial War. She had saved the world, and she had damned it. The first time the message played, most people didn’t know whether to love her or hate her. Their opinions grew less complicated with every human death.

“Bring us this girl and the occupation ends; continue to hide her, and we will execute one of you every day. Please don’t force us to do this any longer than is necessary. This message will cycle through all frequencies and repeat until our instructions have been complied with. Thank you.”

The first day they killed an old man, a schoolteacher from back in the days when there were still children to attend. His name was John Dianatkah, and he kept a hive of bees to make honey candy for his students. Partial soldiers shot him in the back of the head in the middle of East Meadow, the largest human settlement on Long Island, leaving his body in the road as a sign that they were serious. Nobody turned Kira in because, at that time, they were proud and unbroken; the Partials could rattle their sabers all they wanted, but the humans would not bend. Yet still the message played, and the next day they killed a young woman, barely seventeen years old, and the day after that an old lady, and the day after that a middle-aged man.

“Please don’t force us to do this any longer than is necessary.”