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"I miss them," the boy said

She nodded, content for the moment to let the ain But for now you havehome soon, you know"

"With theExpe-dishunary" A look of deterrow up, I want to be a soldier like Uncle Peter"

Ao "If that’s what you want to be, then that is what you’ll be Now, sleep"

"Amy?"

"Yes, Caleb?"

"Did anyone love you like that?"

Standing at the boy’s bedside, she felt thecarousel, and a taste of powdered sugar; of a lake and a cabin in the woods and the feel of a big hand holding her own Tears rose to her throat

"I believe that they did I hope they did"

"Does Uncle Peter?"

She frowned, startled "What makes you ask that, Caleb?"

"I don’t know" Another shrug, faintly e"

"Well" She did her best to show nothing Was it nothing? "I think he is s because he’s happy to see you Now, sleep Do you proroaned with his eyes "I prohtness as total as the Colony’s-Kerrville wasdusk, lit at the edges with a crown of stars above A to the shadows At the base of the wall she located the ladder She made no effort to conceal her ascent; at the top she was met by the sentry, a broad-chested man of middle years with a rifle held across his chest

"What do you think you’re doing?"

But that was all he said As sleep took hiainst the rampart with his rifle across his lap When he awoke he would possess only a fragirl? One of the sisters, wearing the rough gray tunic of the Order? Perhaps he would not awaken on his own but would be found by one of his fellows and hauled away for sleeping at his post A few days in the stockade but nothing serious, and in any event, no one would believe him

She made her way down the catwalk to the eh every ten hts spilled their bea her eyes, A the over the field

-Coliding from the blackness First one and then another and another, fore of the shadows And in her mind she heard the voices, always the voices, the voices and the question:

Who am I?

She waited

Who aast, the one who had loved her Where are you? she thought, her heart aching with loneliness, for night after night, as this new thing had begun happening inside her, she had felt his absence keenly Why have you left ast was nowhere, not in the wind or the sky or the sound of the earth’s slow turning The one

Who am I who a as she dared Thecloser: the sentry

-You are o

They scattered into the darkness

Chapter 2

SEVENTY-SIX MILES SOUTH OF ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO

On a war, many miles and weeks from ho, adopted daughter of the great Niles Coffee and scout sniper of the Second Expeditionary Forces of the Army of the Republic of Texas, baptized and sworn-awakened to the taste of blood on the wind

She enty-seven years old, five foot seven, solidly built in the shoulders and hips, red hair shorn close to her scalp Her eyes, which had once been only blue, gloith an orange hue, like twin coals She traveled lightly, nothing wasted Feet shod in sandals of cut canvas with treads of vulcanized rubber; denim trousers worn thin at the knees and seat; a cotton jersey with the sleeves cut away for speed Crisscrossing her upper body she wore a pair of leather bandoliers with six steel blades ensheathed, her trade on a lanyard of sturdy he 45 seazine, her weapon of last resort, was holstered to her thigh

Eight and one, was the saying Eight for the virals, one for yourself Eight and one and done

The toas called Carlsbad The years had done their work, sweeping it clean like a giant broom But still some structures remained: empty husks of houses, rusted sheds, the becale She had spent the day resting in the shade of a filling station whoseat dusk to hunt She took the jack on her cross, one shot through the throat, then skinned it and roasted it over a fire of y flesh from its haunches as the fire crackled beneath it

She was in no hurry

She was a woman of rules, rituals She would not kill the virals while they slept She would not use a gun if she could help it; guns were loud and sloppy and unworthy of the task She took them on the blade, swiftly, or on the cross, cleanly and without regret, and alith a blessing of mercy in her heart She said: "I send you home, my brothers and sisters, I release you fro was done, and she had withdrawn her weapon from its lethal home, she touched the handle of her blade first to her brow and then her chest, the head and heart, consecrating the creatures’ deliverance with the hope that, when that day should coe would not fail her and she herself would be delivered

She waited for night to fall, doused the flames of her fire, and set out

For days she had been following a broad plain of lowland scrub To the south and west rose the shadowed shape offroht have thought: That’s what this place is, the sea The floor of a great, inland ocean, and the iant reef froinable had roaht Where are you hiding, my brothers and sisters of blood?

She was a woman of three lives, two befores and one after In the first before, she had been just a little girl The world was all lurching figures and flashing lights, ither nothing She was eight years old the night the Colonel had taken her outside the walls of the Colony and left her with nothing, not even a blade She’d sat under a tree and cried all night, and when the irl she’d been was nobefore her where she sat in the dust He would not hold her for comfort but faced her squarely, like a soldier Do you understand now? And she did; she understood Her life, the iven it up She had taken the oath that day

But that was long ago She had been a child, then a wo, neither viral nor hu apart She traveled a the virals like an unseen spirit, part of thehosts In her veins was the virus, but balanced by a second, taken from Amy, the Girl from Nowhere; from one of twelve vials from the lab in Colorado, the others destroyed by Amy herself, cast into the flames Amy’s blood had saved her life, yet in a way it hadn’t Making her, Lieutenant Alicia Donadio, scout sniper of the Expeditionary, the only being like herself in all the living world