Partials

“If it does, we might die tomorrow,” Kira shot back, “but if we don’t cure RM, we die every day for the next fifty years—or sooner, if the Voice starts a civil war. And if we don’t find an answer for RM soon, it’s going to happen.”

“I’m not having this conversation with a plague baby,” snarled Skousen. “You weren’t old enough to know what was happening when the Partials turned on us. You didn’t watch a small group of these things take out an entire military brigade. You weren’t watching when everyone you knew wasted away and vomited blood and boiled alive in their own fevers.”

“I lost my father—”

“We all lost our fathers!” yelled Skousen. Kira paled at the sound of it, leaned away from the mad look in his eyes. “I lost my father, my mother, my wife, my children, my friends, neighbors, patients, colleagues, students. I was in a hospital at the time; I watched it fill up and spill over until there weren’t even enough survivors to carry away the corpses. I watched my entire world eat itself alive, Walker, while you were playing with your dolls. So don’t tell me I’m not doing enough to save the human race, and don’t you dare tell me we can risk another Partial War.” His face was livid, his hands shaking with anger.

Kira swallowed her response, not daring to speak; anything she said now would only make it worse. She dropped her head, averting her eyes again, fighting the urge to simply get up and walk out. She wouldn’t do it—he was angry and she was probably fired, but she knew she was right. If he wanted her out, he’d damn well have to do it himself. She raised her head and looked him straight in the eyes, ready for her sentence. She was done here, but she wasn’t giving up. She hoped he couldn’t see her tremble.

“You will report to the research department tomorrow morning,” he said. “I’ll let Nurse Hardy know you’ve been transferred.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kira watched her friends as they laughed and joked in Nandita’s living room. It was late, and the room was dimly lit with candles; the juice stored up in Xochi’s solar panels was dedicated, as always, to the music player. Tonight’s selection was CONGRATULATIONS KEVAN, one of Xochi’s favorites: drill and bass, violent electronic music. Even turned down, it made Kira’s blood pump faster.

Nandita had already gone to sleep, which was good. Kira was about to ask her friends to commit treason, and it wouldn’t be fair to drag Nandita into the middle of it.

She couldn’t stop thinking about what Skousen had said—about what it had been like to live through the Break. She couldn’t blame him for feeling so strongly about it, because everyone felt that way, but it hadn’t been until that moment when Kira realized just how differently it had affected people. Skousen would have been in a hospital when the virus was released; he would have watched it fill up in hours, spilling into the halls and out into the parking lot, consuming the world in a plague-borne storm. His own family members died in his arms. Kira, on the other hand, had been alone: Her nanny had died quietly in the bathroom, and her father had simply … never come home. She’d waited for a few days, until all the food she knew how to make was gone from the house, and then she’d wandered out to ask for more. The neighborhood was empty; the world itself seemed empty. If not for a passing army caravan, retreating desperately from the war front, she might not have survived at all.

Skousen remembered a world falling apart. Kira remembered a world pulling together to save itself. That was the difference. That was why Skousen and the Senate were too afraid to do what it took to solve this. If it was going to get done, it would have to be the plague babies who did it.

Haru was already talking—passionately, of course, since that seemed to be his only way of doing anything. He was always the center of any conversation he joined, not through charisma so much as sheer determination. “What you’re not realizing,” he said, “is that the Senate doesn’t care. You can talk about being robbed of your childhood, you can talk about inefficient science, but that’s all beside the point for them.” The rumor mill was working overtime, insisting that the Senate was going to lower the pregnancy age again, and Haru had taken Isolde’s refusal to comment as a tacit confession that the rumor was true. “They’ve decided that the best way to beat RM is to drown it in statistics, and that means they’ll lower the pregnancy age as far as they think they can get away with. Lowering the pregnancy age from eighteen to sixteen gives them what, five thousand new mothers? Five thousand new babies every ten to twelve months? It doesn’t matter if it’s effective or not, it’s the best and quickest advancement of their chosen strategy. It’s inevitable.”

“You don’t know that,” said Isolde, but Haru shook his head.

“We all know it,” he said. “It’s the only way this government knows how to make decisions.”

“Then maybe we need a new government,” said Xochi.