Partials

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 percent 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?”