“Let me see that,” said Dr. Morgan, stalking across the room to the wall screen. She tapped it furiously, dragging charts across the wall and zooming in and out on a rapid flurry of images. She stopped on a strand of DNA, not a scoped image but a graphical re-creation, and stared at it with enough intensity to burn a hole through the plating. “Who performed the scan?”
“The computer did it on its own,” said the other doctor. “We asked for a full analysis, and it’s part of the package.”
“She’s not on the link,” said Samm. Kira’s heart flipped in her chest, the implications of their words starting to come clear.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. She tried to sound strong, but her voice cracked.
Dr. Morgan turned to face her, ripping off her mask and looming over Kira’s bed like a tower of seething stone. “Who sent you?”
“What?”
Morgan screamed it again. “Who sent you?” Kira didn’t answer, and Dr. Morgan threw the empty syringe across the room, shattering it against the picture of the DNA. “Who’s trying to infiltrate my plans now—Cronus? Prometheus? What are they planning? Or maybe it’s not me they’re after,” she said, turning away with wild eyes. “Maybe they’re planning something else, and now that I’ve stumbled onto it I can use it against them.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kira protested.
“You were with the humans until Samm brought you here,” said Dr. Morgan, crouching over Kira with her eyes wide and her teeth bared. “Tell me what you were doing there. What was your mission?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“You’re a Partial!” Dr. Morgan shouted. “It’s all right there on the wall! You have no RM in your bloodstream, you have bionanites sweeping your blood clean of our sedatives, you have the damn ParaGen product tags coded into your damn DNA. You are a Partial.” She stopped suddenly, staring down at Kira; on the wall screen behind her Kira saw her own face twisted in shock and confusion. The doctor’s expression changed slowly from anger to fascination, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “But you didn’t know that, did you?”
Kira opened her mouth, but no words came out. A chaos of protests and realizations and questions ran madly through her head, starting and stopping and derailing one another uselessly until her mind was a white noise of abject terror. She heard a loud boom, saw Dr. Morgan shouting at her through a haze of confusion, heard another boom, then Samm’s voice cut through the chaos.
“Explosions. We’re under attack.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Dr. Morgan looked up wildly, screams and gunshots echoing from beyond the closed door. The doctors scrambled; the medical insect reared up, knives and other lethal attachments clicking and rotating and locking into place. Samm rushed to the door, securing it tightly, then stood back.
“They’re here for Kira,” he said.
“Of course they’re here for her,” Dr. Morgan snapped, “but who are they? Which faction?”
“We need to get out of here,” said one of the other doctors.
“We’re not armed,” said Samm, shaking his head. “We’re not prepared for an attack. Our best plan is to stay here and hope the other soldiers repel it.”
“This room doesn’t seal,” said one of the doctors, nodding at the heavy door. “Anyone who passes will link us.”
“They’ll know we’re here,” said Dr. Morgan, “but not her. That could buy us precious time.”
“That’s what doesn’t make sense,” said Samm. “How can she be a Partial if she doesn’t link?”
“Only the military models link,” said Dr. Morgan. “At least, the way we’re used to. It was part of the soldier enhancement package. But ParaGen made other Partials for other purposes.”
Kira was shaking her head, only dimly aware of what anyone was saying. I’m not a Partial. Once again, faced with a problem, her mind seemed to split in two: on one side a scientist, counting all the reasons she could never be a Partial. I age, and they don’t. I don’t link, and they do. I don’t have their strength or reflexes, and I definitely don’t have their miraculous healing. But even there she had to stop herself, suddenly unsure. My leg recovered abnormally quickly from the burn, without any of the expected side effects from the regen box.
She shook her head. More than anything else, I don’t remember being a Partial—I grew up in a human house, I have a human father. I went to school in East Meadow for years. I’ve never been contacted by Partials, approached by Partials, nothing. It makes no sense at all.
And yet even as she analyzed her life, behind it all was the other side of her, the emotional side, the lost child crying in the darkness: Does this mean I never had a mommy?
The sounds of battle were getting closer.
“It’s ridiculous,” said one of the doctors. “Why bury a Partial agent in the human population? One who doesn’t even know what she is? What possible reason could there be?”
“Maybe it was an accident,” said one of the doctors. “Maybe she got lost in the chaos, fell in with the refugees, and ended up on the island without knowing why she was there?”
“Everything had a purpose at ParaGen,” said Dr. Morgan. “Everything. She isn’t an accident.” She looked up. “If we can figure out what she’s supposed to do, we can use her against them.”
The room shook with the sound of a gunshot against the door; doctors yelped and jumped back; Samm and Dr. Morgan stayed as firm as iron.
“They’re here,” one of the doctors said, panicked. “What do we do?”
“Get me down from here,” said Kira, still strapped to a table in what was about to become a battlefield. “Untie me!”
“Get behind the spider,” another doctor hissed, moving to the far corner of the room. The others followed, eyeing the spiky arms warily, slinking around the outside of the room.
“There’s no one in the hall,” said Samm, confused.
“Yes there is,” said Dr. Morgan. “Humans.”
Another gunshot rocked the door, blowing it off its hinges. Marcus appeared in the doorway with a shotgun, and Kira called out, “Get down!” just as the medical spider swung a vicious surgical razor at his neck. Marcus dropped, rolling under the blade, then raised his gun and blasted the spider at close range. Kira shrieked, feeling the heat from the gunpowder, the rain of shrapnel cascading down from the damaged robot. The sound of the blast nearly deafened her.
“She’s in here!” shouted Marcus, calling over his shoulder, then turned and nodded at her. “Hi, Kira.”
Xochi stepped in behind Marcus, already crouched low, training a pair of semiautomatics on the doctors in the corner. “I just reloaded,” she said, “so feel free to make any sudden moves.”
“Get them,” snarled Dr. Morgan, but Samm seemed frozen in place.
Jayden came last, dodging another scalpel from the spider and crouching inside the door. Marcus fired again at the spider, disabling it, then rushed to Kira’s side and began untying the restraints.
“You’re a hard girl to find,” said Marcus, forcing a smile.
“They’re close behind us,” said Jayden. “Don’t take any longer than you have to.”
“Can I shoot the doctors?” asked Xochi, running her pistols back and forth across the line of them.
Jayden fired into the hallway. “And now they’re here; I told you to hurry. We’re pinned down.”
“Samm, stop them,” said Dr. Morgan, but still Samm didn’t move, his body tensed, his face frozen with some intense, invisible effort.
“How did you get in here?” asked Kira. Marcus finished her first arm, and she instantly used it to work on her other arm while Marcus moved down to her legs.
“We saw you get captured,” said Marcus, shooting a venomous glance at Samm. “We followed you here, ran out of ideas, and then another group of Partials attacked the hospital. When the outer defenses fell, we just kind of … slipped in the back.”
“We heard the
m talking,” said Xochi, “and Samm was lying: All D Company does is crazy research, like this, on humans and Partials alike. The other group follows something called the Trust.”
“We follow the Trust,” said one of the doctors. Kira shot a glance at Dr. Morgan, but the cold woman stayed silent, her face revealing nothing.
Marcus finished untying Kira’s feet while Kira finished her second hand, and when she was free she clutched the sheet to her chest and sat up. Jayden fired again into the hallway.
“Do you have a plan to get back out?” asked Kira.
“Honestly, I’m kind of shocked we made it this far,” said Marcus. “Are you okay?” He noticed her bare shoulders and frowned. “Are you…”
“Yes,” said Kira, looking around for her clothes. There was nothing in the room but a tray of syringes and some debris from the broken spider. She pointed at one of the doctors. “You, give me your lab coat.”
“They’re getting closer!” shouted Jayden.
The doctor didn’t move, but a grim gesture of Xochi’s pistol encouraged her to take off her surgical smock. Dr. Morgan shouted with rage.
“Damn it, Samm, stop them!”
Samm’s hand came down on Marcus’s shotgun, discarded on the table where he’d left it to help with Kira’s ties. Kira swore, diving away from Samm off the far side of the table, but the Partial soldier simply stood there, staring straight ahead.
“Samm,” Dr. Morgan began, and suddenly Samm brought up the shotgun and fired—not at Kira or her friends, but at Morgan. She dodged, shockingly nimble, and the wall screen behind her exploded in sparks and shards of glass. Xochi began firing as well, but Morgan was too quick; round after round tore into the wall screens while the doctors screamed and cowered on the floor. Dr. Morgan danced ahead of the bullets, all too quickly working her way toward the door. Samm leaped across the room, fired and missed again, and the third time the shotgun clicked on an empty chamber. He spun it around, gripping the barrel with a roar, and drove it into the back of Morgan’s skull as she made a final dive for the hallway. The doctor slumped to the floor, and Xochi pumped a round into her thigh.
“And stay down!”
“She was too strong,” said Samm, and grabbed the ammo belt from Marcus’s shoulder. “I’m sorry that it took me so long. How many are outside?” He slid a shell into the chamber, then another and another, quickly and methodically.
Kira rose to a crouch, watching Samm in wonder. Is he really on our side? Jayden turned warily, sizing him up, then looked back at the open door.
“Just four,” he said, “around that near corner. The main body of their force is tied up with the rival Partials.”
Samm checked his gun quickly, making sure the safety was off. “Cover me.”
Jayden fired out with his rifle, clearing the hall, and Samm dove past him in a blur, rolling to the far wall and then dashing down the corridor toward the enemy position. Jayden stopped firing, and the Partials peeked out just in time for Samm to come barreling into them, shotgun blasting.
Kira took the doctor’s offered surgical smock and pulled it on, wrapping the back all the way closed with a pair of ties around her waist. For good measure she took the doctor’s mask and hairnet as well, and finally her shoes.
Samm came back, his face and shoulder bleeding. “Hallway’s clear. I think we can make it to the jeeps, but we have to go now.”
“I’m getting really sick of trusting this guy,” said Xochi.
“He’s coming with us,” said Kira. There’s something I have to talk about, that I can’t talk about with anyone else. She gave him a long glance, wondering what it meant now—if she was really a Partial, if she was really an agent, if she was really everything they thought she was.
“We have to go,” urged Marcus.
“One thing first,” said Kira. She scooped up the last syringe from the tray in the corner: a sample of the Partial pheromone.
The cure for RM.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Samm drove, the only one of the five who really knew how. Marcus examined Kira’s wounds in the backseat: It seemed the Partials had done little more than give her a few shots, draw some blood, and prep her for a surgery that never happened. The burn on her leg was almost fully healed, but the sight of her own shin, nearly scarless, seemed suddenly strange and alien; a sign not that the regen box had worked better than normal, but that her own body was healing well beyond the human standard. Just like Samm.
She looked at him, saw him looking back at her in the rearview mirror. Their eyes locked for a moment, silent. The others didn’t know, and Kira and Samm had said nothing.
Am I really a Partial? How could I not have known? Partials heal quickly, but this is the first major injury I’ve ever really had, so I’ve never had a chance to see my own healing abilities in action. I’ve never really been sick, either—does that mean anything? She racked her brain for anything else she knew about them. Partials are sterile, and that’s never come up. Partials are fast and strong and agile, but is that only the soldiers? She remembered Dr. Morgan, screaming frantically about secret Partial designs and some kind of inter-faction war. If I’m not a soldier, what am I? How many groups are out there, and what do they want? And why would any of them plant a Partial agent in a group of human refugees?
“You’ve been quiet,” said Marcus.
“I’m sorry,” said Kira. “I’ve had a lot to think about.”
This time it was Marcus who glanced at Samm, studying him silently, thinking. He looked back at Kira, then down at her leg. “Looks like you’re doing great. You’re sure they didn’t do … anything else?”
Kira felt caught; she felt claustrophobic in the back of the car, even with the windows down and the wind gusting wildly. “What do you mean?”
Xochi raised an eyebrow. “We find you buck naked, strapped down to a table. What do you think he means?”
“Nothing like that,” said Kira quickly.
“You said they knocked you out, how do you know they didn’t do something while you were—”
“Nothing happened,” said Samm. His jaw was hard, his eyes cold. “I never left her side for a second. They didn’t do anything to hurt her.”
“But they were going to,” said Marcus, “and you didn’t really do a whole hell of a lot about it until we showed up.”
“I did everything I could!”
“Stop arguing,” said Kira. “It’s the link—he couldn’t disobey them.”
“That’s not making me any happier about having him here,” said Jayden. He was in the other front seat, watching the passing ruins with the shotgun ready for action.
“I helped you this time,” said Samm. “I helped you get away. What more do you want from me?”
“Everybody just calm down,” said Kira. “I’m pretty sure we have more important things to worry about right now.”
“More important than whether we can trust the enemy soldier taking us who knows where?” asked Xochi.
“I’m driving east,” said Samm, “away from the controlled zones.”
“And into the uncontrolled zones,” said Marcus. “That sounds safe.”
“Our people aren’t like yours,” said Samm. “We don’t have the Voice and bandits and all these little outlying … nonconformists. If there’s no faction of the army out here, there’s nothing out here. Everything west of here is full of people trying to find us, so we’re heading east until we think we’ve lost them. Then we’ll… I don’t know what we’ll do then. Hide.”
“We’ll find a boat and go back to East Meadow,” said Kira. Marcus looked at her in surprise.
“Are you serious? After what we did when we left?” He shook his head. “They’ll kill us.”
“Not when they find out what I’m bringing back.” Kira glanced down at the syringe in her lap, and Marcus’s eyes followed. He frowned at it, then looked back at her in shock.
“You don’t mean…”
Kira nodded. “I’m ninety-nine percen
t certain.”
“What?” asked Xochi.
“The cure for RM,” said Kira. Jayden turned around, eyes wide, and even Samm lost control of the car for just a split second, swerving and regaining direction. Kira held up the syringe. “I found a particle in Samm’s breath that bore a resemblance to RM, though it wasn’t a virus. It turns out it’s one of their pheromones that they don’t have any use for—all it does, literally its only function, is to bond with RM. The RM particles I saw in the newborn’s blood is really an inert form of RM created through interaction with the pheromone.”
Marcus furrowed his brow. “So the infants die because we don’t have any Partials around?”
“Exactly. But if we can get this into their system early enough—right at birth, maybe even before birth through some kind of intrauterine injection—they’ll resist the virus and we can save them.” She gripped the syringe tightly. “Madison was close to delivering when we left East Meadow, and Arwen might already be dying. But we can save her.”
Marcus nodded, and Kira could see the wheels turning in his head, parsing all the data to the best of his ability. After a moment he looked up. “This might be true.” He nodded again. “Based on what I’ve seen of your work, which is admittedly little, it does sound … possible. But are you willing to stake your life on it?”
“Are you willing to stake our species against it?”
Marcus looked down. Xochi caught Kira’s eye but said nothing.
The trees broke, and the road rose up to a bridge across a narrow inlet from the sound. “There are boats down there,” said Jayden, but Samm shook his head.
“We need to keep going. They’re going to send someone after us as soon as they finish with the other group of Partials; for all I know both groups are going to come after us. We need to put as much distance behind us as possible before they get organized enough to follow.”
“What we need is to get out of this car,” said Jayden. “Make some distance first, yes, but then we hide this thing and never look back. It’s too loud—they’ll be able to hear us halfway across the continent.”