Isolation by Dan Wells Page A

prisoners would have nowhere else to hide. Their resistance would crumble. Heron concealed a knife in her prison jumpsuit, and when her “punishment” ended, she returned to the camp.
    She had been doing drills like this for months. Identify the target, infiltrate, and strike. In and out. She studied the camp with new eyes, noting each guard tower and bunkhouse, and decided she could do this job even without the guards’ help. She returned to her room, commiserated with her bunkmates about the injustice of the prison system, and bowed to all the right people in the mess hall for dinner, showing deference and gaining, in return, renewed trust. Hsu Yan caught her up on the latest passwords, and Li Gong himself thanked her for her shining example of resistance. It occurred to Heron that in her list of leaders she should have included herself: She was well known as a rebel, an agitator, and a planner. The camp looked up to her. If word got around that Mei Hao, of all people, had killed Huan Do, the camp would be crushed.
    The guards called lights-out at nine p.m., cutting all power to the bunkhouses, but the prisoners stuffed sheets and blankets in the cracks of their windows, and burned small lamps and flashlights they’d either scrounged or built themselves. The women in Heron’s bunkhouse talked about new plans for escape, and Heron made detailed mental notes just in case the death of Huan Do failed to break their spirits. When they finally went to sleep at one a.m., Heron lay in the dark and waited until every other prisoner was asleep before picking the lock and slipping outside. The camp was quiet and dark. Heron moved like a ghost through the streets and alleyways, dodging guards and searchlights and watchdogs as if they weren’t even there. Huan Do’s bunkhouse was near the center of camp and locked down even tighter than her own; he was a dangerous troublemaker, and the guards had been watching him for weeks. Heron picked the lock in five silent seconds, and her footsteps as she slipped inside were no louder than a snake gliding ghostlike across the floor.
    The bunkhouses were separated by gender, so Huan Do was alone in his bed; the prisoners sometimes sneaked their wives in, but not tonight. There were eight rooms to a house, and eight men to a room. All the men in this house were fast asleep. Heron stood over Huan Do’s sleeping form, the knife in her hand.
    This is the first time I’ve killed one for real, she thought. All my other missions were drills; all my other targets were mannequins, or sensors, or drones. With the exception of Sergeant Latimer, who did most of the work himself, I have never killed a real human before. She stared at the sleeping man, listened to him breathe. Her knife was polycarbonate fiber, sharp as steel but a matte black that disappeared into the darkened room like a shard of shadow. Huan Do was helpless and oblivious, like a child.
    This is my graduation, she realized. The message we’re ostensibly sending to the prisoners will be effective, but unnecessary; their escapes never work, and they’d have nowhere to go if they did. It will make them easier to control, at least for a while, but that’s not the full reason for this action. She looked down at her jumpsuit. I’m flying out to the real war in just one week, and this is my graduation. One final mission. “Prove you can kill when the target’s a real person.” She had learned in her seduction training—from Ms. McGuire, not a drunk sergeant in the shower—about the concept of empathy. Of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes, and feeling the way they feel. “Make them love you,” McGuire had said, “and they won’t be able to kill you. Make them see you as a person, as a life, as a thing to be protected rather than harmed. All humans have empathy, and you can use it against them.”
    “Partials have it too,” Heron had said. “We can feel each other’s emotions through the link.”
    “That’s