"So she's normal?"
Something close to mercy had started moving in me and I didn't like where it was going. The alley's lamps put successive yellow bars across Ingrid's shoulders as we walked. Between them the dark felt thicker than it had a minute ago. Ingrid walked through the light and out of it without changing pace.
Ahead, Code's silhouette cut the far light and kept moving.
"She isn't infected." She kept her eyes forward. "Whatever's in the rest of them, she holds it off. I watched her do it for weeks and I still couldn't tell you how."
"Then why are we going to kill her?"
It came out before I'd checked it. My boot hit a puddle hard enough to send a sheet of dirty water up the brick. The cold climbed my ankle.
"I mean is there no other way. Any other way at all."
"There isn't. I've looked."
No rise in her voice.
Code was well ahead of us now — a dark cut against the mouth of the alley, then past it, into the wider dark.
