a circus, well fed by the herds of wild deer and horses that roam Central Park. There are even elephants—I heard them last year. Do they feed on those, too?
Focus, she told herself. They’re going to feed on you if you don’t find a way out of this. Lions or panthers or worse.
Panthers. A terrifying thought occurred to her: Panthers are supposed to hunt at night, but I’ve only ever seen them in the day. Do they hunt in both now, or is this thing in the darkness something worse—something so dangerous the panthers had to change their habits to avoid it? Am I being hunted by a nocturnal panther, or are the panthers hiding, scared in their dens, to escape the creature that’s hunting me? Memories of the ParaGen brochure leapt unbidden to her mind—dragons and intelligent dogs, engineered lions and who only knew what else they’d done. They’d designed the Partials as the ultimate soldiers—had they designed an ultimate predator as well?
Kira stole a glance back down the street where she’d come, shaking her head at the long string of derelict cars and delivery vans; this creature could be hiding behind any one of them, waiting for her to pass by. It was the same with the plaza in front of her. Her best bet lay across the street, in the lobby of what might once have been a shopping mall: fallen mannequins, faded posters of bodies and faces, rack upon rack of ragged clothes. The beast could be in there, too—for all she knew the cluttered hallways could be its den—but there were doors as well, human-size and closed, and if she could get inside one and close it again behind her, she would be safe. Safe until it went away, safe until morning if it took that long. She heard the same rumbling growl, closer now than ever, and set her jaw fiercely.
“It’s now or never.” She leapt to her feet, charging across the broken street to the mall beyond, dodging around the corner of a car as a rush of air tore past behind her. She imagined giant claws swiping inches from her back, and struggled to regain her footing as she raced in through the shattered glass facade of the building. Debris clattered in her wake, far more than she could ever dislodge by herself, but she didn’t dare look back; she raised her gun over her shoulder, firing wildly behind her, turning again as she reached a cracking pillar. The interior of the mall was bigger than she’d expected, glistening metal stairways climbing up and down in pairs, a vast courtyard yawning wide in the center of the floor below her. It was too dark to see the bottom or the top; too dark to see much of anything. The door she’d been aiming for was on the other side; she turned to the right, skirting the pit, and brought her gun back in front of her, switching on the light. The thing seemed to be scrabbling on the slick floor; Kira found the first door she could and sprinted straight toward it.
The light beam jerked wildly as she ran, up and down, back and forth, shining back from the tiled floor and the metal stairs and the mirrored plates across the walls. In a flash of reflected light the wall before her showed her own image, a massive black shape bearing down from behind, and then the beam jerked again and the scene was gone, a strobing nightmare of light and darkness and fear. She fixed her eyes on the doorway, running like she’d never run before, and moments before she got there she lowered her rifle, sighted on the doorknob, and fired a semiautomatic burst. The lock blew clear, the door fell open, and Kira dove through without a pause, slamming her hand against the left wall to help propel her toward the right and another open door. She grabbed at this one as she passed, slamming it closed behind her, and leaned against it just as something hit it from the other side, cracking it loudly; still, though, it held, and Kira braced herself tightly against it as the thing came back for another hit.
She looked around wildly, aiming the rifle awkwardly with one hand to shine its light on the room, and saw a large wood desk. Claws scraped across the other side of the door—it was pawing at the barrier now, not smashing it, and she took the risk, jumping over the desk and heaving against it, pushing it back to block the door. The scratching turned to thumping; the door shook, and suddenly Kira was deafened by a massive roar. She lost her footing, dropped her rifle, and threw herself against the desk again, slamming it up against the door just as the thing on the other side slammed it again, shaking the room. The desk held. Kira fell back, reaching for the rifle’s light, and brought it up to illuminate the top half of the door, riven with cracks and splintered away from the frame. Something moved beyond it, nearly as tall as the ceiling; the light reflected against a huge amber eye, narrowing to a slit as the light blinded it. Kira reeled at the sheer size of it, scooting away almost involuntarily. A massive paw clawed at the gap in the door, giant claws gleaming silver in the halogen beam, and Kira fired a burst from her rifle, clipping it in the toe. The creature roared again, but this time Kira roared back, cornered and furious. She climbed on the desk, sighted straight through the broken doorway, and fired at the wall of fur and muscle before her. It howled in rage and pain, thrashing wildly at the door, and Kira ejected the spent clip, slapped in another one, and fired again. The creature turned and fled, disappearing into the darkness.
Kira stood frozen in the doorway, her knuckles white as bone as they clutched the rifle. A second became a minute; a minute became two. The monster didn’t return. The adrenaline rush wore off and Kira began to shake, subtly at first and then harder, faster, shaking uncontrollably. She climbed down from the desk, nearly falling to the floor, and collapsed in the corner, sobbing.
The dawn light didn’t reach through the maze of walls and doorways, but Kira could hear the sounds of morning: birds singing to greet the sun, bees buzzing through the flowers in the asphalt, and yes, even the distant trumpet of an elephant. Kira stood up slowly, peering through the cracked doorway. Her light was still on, though the batteries were failing; the room beyond was covered in sprays and smears of blood, but the creature itself was gone. She pulled back the desk, carefully opening the door; it was lighter out here, and she saw a beam of sunlight on the cluttered floor of the mall. Red-brown footprints led out to the street and into the plaza, but Kira didn’t bother following them. She took a drink from her canteen, sloshing the cold water on her face. It had been stupid to go out at night, she knew, and she promised herself she would never do it again.
She shook her head, working out the kinks in her back and arms and fingers. The men she was chasing were probably too far away to have heard the gunfire last night, but if she was unlucky with the echoes, who was to say what could have happened? It didn’t change her plan—she had already been in a rush to find their building, and it was only more urgent now. She pulled her map from her backpack, locating herself and her quarry and planning out the best route to take. With a sigh and another sip of water, she set off through the city.
Kira traveled cautiously, wary now not only of Partial patrols but of giant hairy claw monsters; she saw movement in every shadow, and had to force herself to stay calm and levelheaded. When she arrived at the right neighborhood, it took her a few hours to positively identify the building with the antenna, though most of that was her fear of being seen. She ended up climbing another building’s staircase to get a bird’s-eye view, and from there spotted the antenna easily. The buildings here were shorter, only three or four stories for most of them. Knowing what she was looking for, it was easy to spot some of the more subtle clues that the building was inhabited—many of the windows were boarded over, especially on the third floor, and faint tracks in the built-up dirt showed that someone had recently used the front steps.
This was the tricky part. She didn’t dare to move in until she knew who lived there, where they were, and whether the bombs were set to explode. The most likely scenario, at least to her, was that this was some kind of outpost for a faction of Partials—and not a faction friendly to Dr. Morgan, since their last meeting at the other outpost had gone so destructively. That didn’t automatically mean that these Partials were friendly to humans, though, and Kira didn’t want to walk into a trap. She would watch, and wait, and see what happened.
Nothing happened.
Kira watched the building all day and night, holed up in the apartment across the street. She ate cold cans of beans and huddled under a moth-eaten blanket to avoid starting a fire. Nobody went in and nobody went out, and when night fell there were no fires in the windows, no smoke rising
