Ruins

“I think something in your body holds the secret that will help me cure it,” said Morgan. “The last time I had you in a lab, when we discovered you were a Partial—another secret the ‘Trust’ kept from me—my initial scans determined that despite being a Partial, you had none of the genetic handicaps the others have: no sterility, no fixed age, no inhibition of growth or any other human function. If it turns out that you have no expiration date either, there might be a way to reverse engineer certain fragments of your genetic code to help save the rest of the Partials.”

“I’ve already told you that this is impossible,” said Vale. “I’m the one who programmed the expiration date—I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you at the time, but there it is. You were unstable, and no, we didn’t trust you. It wasn’t just you, though—Armin didn’t trust me with some of the pieces, either.”

Armin, thought Kira. My father—or the man I used to think was my father. He took me home to raise as his own, he never even told me what I was. Maybe he would have, one day. Now nobody even knows where he is. She wondered if he was dead. Everyone else in the Trust had survived the Break—Trimble and Morgan here with the Partials, Vale in the Preserve with a group of hidden humans, Ryssdal in Houston working on “environmental issues,” whatever that meant, and Nandita on Long Island with the humans.

Nandita. The woman who raised me, who also didn’t tell me I was a Partial.

Dr. Morgan tried to kill me, but at least she hasn’t pretended to be something she isn’t.

“Even if you can find something in there,” Vale continued, “how are you going to incorporate it into the Partials’ genetic sequence? Gene mods? You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people—even if we had the facilities and the personnel to mount that kind of a mass modification effort, we don’t have the time to pull it off. How many Partials are left, half a million?”

“Two hundred thousand,” said Morgan, and Kira couldn’t help but gasp at the low number. Morgan’s voice was grim and exhausted. “They were created in batches, so they die in them as well. The next wave is due in just a few weeks.”

“And they’re all soldiers,” said Vale. “Infantry and pilots and maybe a few commandos, but the leaders are all dead—more to the point, the doctors are all dead. It’ll be up to you and me, and we wouldn’t be able to process even a tenth of what’s left before their time runs out—even if we already knew how.”

“That’s why we have to do something,” said Kira. She thought of Samm, and everything they’d shared, and their final, terrifying, passionate moment together. She loved him, and if her sacrifice here could keep him alive . . . “Everyone in the world is dying, humans and Partials, and I gave myself up because this is our best shot at saving anyone. So let’s get on with it.”

Vale’s expression darkened. “I’m trying to help you, Kira, don’t get snotty with me.”

“You don’t know her very well,” said Morgan, and her voice softened.

Vale stared at her a moment, then snarled and turned away.

Morgan looked at Kira. “Last time, we scanned your reproductive system only peripherally—back when we thought you were human, it wasn’t a priority. Today we’re going to do several biopsies.”

Kira’s hips and abdomen already felt numb and lifeless from the anesthetic. She looked back at Morgan, steeling her resolve, and nodded silently.

“Engage,” said Morgan, and the spider unfurled its knives.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Disengage that last hose,” said Heron. Her voice sounded tinny and distant through the radio, and Samm bristled again at the oddness of trying to communicate without the link. Partials used pheromonal communication because it was efficient, folding words and emotions and tactical information into a single, silent package. Working side by side, yet communicating solely through the radios in their helmets, felt like being deaf and mute. He still didn’t understand how humans did it.

As difficult as dealing with the repurposed diving gear was, though, it was necessary. If either of them breathed a whiff of the air in the laboratory, they’d be unconscious in seconds.