Ruins

Haru could tell from their faces that the others were thinking of the same insurmountable problem. His throat was dry, and his voice sounded weak when he broke the silence. “Our best-case scenario keeps sliding closer and closer to our worst.”

“The Partials are our greatest enemy, but they’re also our only hope for the future,” said Mkele. He steepled his fingers and pressed them to his forehead a moment before continuing. “Maybe we should take some with us.”

“You say that like it’s easy,” said Haru.

“What do you want to do?” asked Tovar. “Just keep a few in cages and pull out the pheromone when you need it? Doesn’t that seem kind of evil to any of you?”

“My job is to protect the human race,” said Mkele. “If it means the difference between life and extinction, then yes, I will keep Partials in cages.”

Tovar’s face was grim. “I keep forgetting you had this same job under Delarosa.”

“Delarosa was trying to save the human race,” said Mkele. “Her only crime was that she was willing to go too far in order to do it. We decided, briefly, that we didn’t want to go along with her, but look at us: We’re hiding in a basement, letting Delarosa fight our battles, seriously considering letting her deploy a nuclear bomb. We are long past the point where we can pick and choose our morality. We either save our species or we don’t.”

“Yes,” said Tovar, “but I’d prefer it if we were still worth saving by the end of it.”

“We either save our species or we don’t,” Mkele repeated, more forcefully this time. He looked at the other men one by one, starting with Hobb. The amoral senator nodded almost immediately. Mkele turned next to Haru, who stared back only a moment before nodding as well. When the alternative is extinction, all kinds of horrors become acceptable.

“I don’t like it,” said Haru, “but I like it more than everybody dying. We’re out of time for anything better.”

Mkele turned to Tovar, who threw up his hands in frustration. “Do you know how long I fought against these kinds of fascist policies?”

“I do,” said Mkele calmly.

“I started a civil war,” said Tovar. “I bombed my own people because I thought freedom was more important than survival. There’s no point saving us if we lose our humanity in the process.”

“We can change if we live,” said Mkele. “A nation built on slavery can be redeemed, but not if we all die.”

“This is wrong,” said Tovar.

“I never said it wasn’t,” said Mkele. “Every choice we have is wrong. This is the lesser of ninety-nine evils.”

“I’ll lead your distraction,” said Tovar. “I’ll give my life to help the rest of you escape, and I’ll sell that life as dearly as possible. Hell, I’ve always been a better terrorist than a senator anyway.” He stared at them pointedly. “Just don’t give up on goodness yet. Somewhere out there there’s a way to get through this.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but instead just shook his head and turned to leave. “I hope we find it in time.”

Tovar’s hand was inches from the doorknob when suddenly the door shook, practically rattling on its hinges as someone pounded on the other side.

“Senator!” It was a young voice, Haru thought, probably another soldier. Tovar glanced back at the group curiously before opening the door.

“Senator Tovar,” said the soldier, practically tripping over himself in his rush to speak. “The message has stopped.”

Tovar frowned. “The message … stopped?”

“The radio message from the Partials,” said the soldier. “They’ve stopped the broadcast. Every channel is clear.”

Mkele stood up. “Are you sure?”

“We’ve scanned every frequency,” said the soldier.

“They’ve found her,” said Haru, stunned by the sudden blend of relief and terror. He’d known Kira for years, and the thought of her in Partial hands was sickening, but at the same time, Kira would be the first to say that one girl was more than a fair trade for the hundreds of people the Partials seemed willing to kill in their search for her. He’d come to hate her for not turning herself in, and eventually convinced himself that she couldn’t possibly still be on the island; she must have either fled or died, or surely she would have come forward by now. No one could stand by silently while so many people were executed. But now, if she’s been captured, maybe that means she’s been here all along … The thought made him furious.

“We don’t know for sure that they’ve found the girl,” said Mkele. “It’s possible that their radio tower’s just failed temporarily.”

“Or maybe they just gave up,” said Hobb.

“Keep monitoring the frequencies,” said Tovar to the soldier. “Let me know the instant you hear anything. I’ll join you when I can.” The soldier nodded and ran off at a dash. Tovar closed and locked the door, keeping their conversation secret—nobody else knew about the nuke, and Haru knew it was wise to keep it that way. “How does this change our plans?” asked Tovar, looking back at the group. “Does it change them at all? There’s still a nuke, and Delarosa’s still probably going through with her plan. Even without the daily executions it’s still just a matter of time, and this is still the strongest blow she can strike against them.”

“If the Partials pull out, it makes the nuke an even more attractive option,” said Mkele, “because it will catch more of them in the blast.”

“And Kira too,” said Haru. He didn’t know how he felt about that.

Tovar smiled sadly. “Twenty minutes ago we were struggling to justify this attack, and now we can’t bear to give it up.”

“Delarosa will go through with her plan,” said Hobb, “and we should go through with ours.”

“Then I guess it’s time to piss off the overwhelming enemy,” said Tovar. He saluted them stiffly, the ex-marine appearing like magic from inside the form of the old, weathered traveler. “It’s been a pleasure serving with you.”

Mkele saluted him back, then turned toward Hobb and Haru. “You’re in charge of the evacuation.”

“He means me,” said Hobb.

“He means us,” said Haru. “Don’t think you’re in charge just because you’re a senator.”

“I’m twice your age.”

“If that’s the best reason you can come up with, you’re definitely not in charge.” Haru stood. “Can you shoot?”

“I’ve trained with a rifle since we founded East Meadow,” said Hobb indignantly.

“Then get your gear ready,” said Haru. “We’re leaving in an hour.” He left the room, deep in his own thoughts. Maybe the Partials really had found Kira—but where? And why now, after all this time?

And now that they had her, what would they do?

CHAPTER THREE

Kira stared up at the surgery robot, a massive metal spider looming down from the ceiling. Twelve sleek, multijointed arms swiveled into place, each tipped with a different medical instrument: scalpels and clamps in half a dozen different sizes, syringes with interchangeable barrels of brightly colored liquid, and spanners and spikes and other devices with functions Kira could only guess at. She’d been in medical training since she was ten—almost eight years ago now—but there were things in here she’d never even dreamed of.

They showed up all the time in her nightmares, though. This was the same facility in Greenwich, Connecticut, where Dr. Morgan had captured her and tortured her before Marcus and Samm had saved her. Now she’d abandoned them both and come back of her own free will.

The spider rotated silently, reaching toward her with sleek steel pincers. Kira suppressed a scream and tried to think calm thoughts.

“Local anesthetic to points four, six, and seven,” said Morgan, tapping the locations on a massive wall screen, where a diagram of Kira’s body hung motionless in the air. “Engage.” The spider reached down without pause or ceremony and plunged its needles into Kira’s hip and abdomen. Kira stifled another scream, gritting her teeth and compressing her fears into a low grunt.

“Such a glowing bedside manner,” said Dr. Vale, standing by another wall. “It warms my heart, McKenna—you’re like a mother hen.”

“I started a war to find this girl,” said Morgan. “You want me to ask permission every time I touch her?”

“A quick ‘This will only hurt a little’ might be nice,” said Vale. “Maybe even an ‘Are you ready, Kira?’ before we start the surgery?”

“As if my answer would change anything?” asked Kira.

Morgan shot her a glance. “You made the choice to be here.”

Vale snorted. “Another answer that didn’t technically change anything.”

“It changed a great deal,” said Morgan, looking back at the wall screen. She plotted out lines for incisions. “It impressed me.”

“Well, then,” said Vale. “By all means, treat her like a lab rat.”

“I was a lab rat last time,” said Kira. “This time is better, believe me.”

“That’s the kind of answer that only makes this worse,” said Vale, shaking his head. “You were always cold, McKenna, but this is the most coldhearted, dehumanizing—”

“I’m not a human,” said Kira, and realized with a start that Morgan had said almost the same thing—“She’s not a human”—simultaneously. They looked at each other for a moment, then Morgan turned back to her wall screen.

“In the interest of”—Morgan paused, as if searching for the right way to say it—“a peaceful working relationship, I will be more communicative.” She tapped a few icons on the wall screen, which split into three sections—the line diagram of Kira’s body on one side, and two half-size boxes on the other showing two sets of data: one labeled “Expiration” and one labeled “Kira Walker.” “Dr. Vale and I were part of the Trust—the group of ParaGen scientists who created the Partials and the RM plague. We didn’t intend for the plague to bring the human race to the brink of extinction, obviously, but the damage is done, and once I realized the humans were a lost cause, I turned my attention to the Partials instead. I’ve spent the last twelve years helping them build a new civilization, trying to find ways to overcome the sterility and other handicaps hardwired into their DNA. Imagine my surprise when they began dying, for no discernible reason, precisely twenty years after they were created.”

Vale spoke up again. “The expiration date was—”

“The expiration date was the surest sign that ‘the Trust’ was a horrible misnomer,” said Morgan. “Living, thinking beings that I helped create were preprogrammed to wither to dust in a matter of hours the moment they hit their biological deadline, and I knew nothing about it. I’ve been doing everything in my power to fix it, which brings us here.”

“You think I can cure it,” said Kira.

“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.

Samm slowly disengaged the final hose from the unconscious Partial’s odd metal face mask. There were ten comatose Partials here in Dr. Vale’s old laboratory, fast asleep in a secret subbasement of the Preserve. Vale had kept them here, unconscious, for thirteen years, tending them like plants and harvesting the Lurker pheromone from their bodies—an engineered chemical, naturally produced by all Partials, which served as the only known cure for RM. These Partials had kept the humans of the Preserve alive for over a decade, allowing them to raise healthy children—something the humans on Long Island had been completely unable to do. These ten Partials—But no, Samm corrected himself, these nine Partials. These nine Partials had given the Preserve a life and hope no other human had felt since the end of the world. Maybe even before that. They were saviors. But they were unwitting, unwilling, unconscious saviors, and Samm could not allow that to continue. The tenth Partial, this last one with the odd-looking face mask, had been modified by Dr. Vale to produce a different pheromone: one that would instantly render any Partial comatose. His mere proximity was a weapon.

Samm and Heron were disconnecting him, but they still had no idea what to do with him.

“That hose was pumping his sedative throughout the building,” said Heron. “Now that we’ve cut off his access, the effect should be limited to his immediate presence.”

“He’s got a tag,” said Samm, leaning in closer. “Williams.” He flipped the dog tag over, reading the numbers on the back; he couldn’t interpret them perfectly, but he knew the coding system well enough to know that Williams had been assigned to the third regiment. The group we left behind, back in the rebellion, to guard Denver and NORAD after we’d taken them. He guessed that the other Partials in the room had come from the same group. He flipped the tag over again, hoping to find something he’d missed, but there was nothing. It wasn’t surprising, exactly—most Partials only had a first name—but it was odd to find one who only had a last name. He wondered what the man’s story was, where his name had come from, what he’d done and what he’d thought and how he’d lived, but that information was lost forever now. His own genes would keep him sedated for the rest of his life.

It was the cruelest thing Samm had ever witnessed, and Samm had watched the world end.

“This mask is grafted on,” said Heron, probing Williams’s face mask with gloved fingers. Samm looked closer and saw that she was right—it wasn’t really a mask at all, more of a cybernetic implant that covered, or perhaps replaced, the man’s nose, mouth, jaw, and neck. Vents stood out on the side like gills, and the surface was covered with nozzles and valves. His entire body was rebuilt for a single purpose, thought Samm, to spread this sedative, but then he paused and considered his own body. I was built for a single purpose too. All of us were. We’re weapons, just like him.

I’m even designed to destroy myself, when I reach my expiration date.

In eight months.

“We still haven’t decided what to do with him,” said Samm.

“We can leave him here for now,” said Heron. “Vale kept him healthy for years, and he’s still hooked up to life support. Now that the hoses are disconnected, we can access the rest of the building without these stupid helmets, and we can move the rest of the Partials up and out of range so they can wake up.”

“And then what?” asked Samm. “We just keep him here forever?”

“Until his expiration, yeah,” said Heron.

“He’s like a living corpse,” said Samm. “That’s cruel.”

“So is killing him.”

“Is it?” Samm sighed and shook his head, looking around at the room full of atrophied, corpselike Partials. “Every single one of us is going to be dead in eight months—I was part of the last purchase order, and when we go, there’s nobody left. The humans will live longer, but without the cure for RM their species won’t propagate, and they’ll be just as dead as we are. The entire world is on life support, and—”

“Samm,” said Heron. Her voice sounded cold and clinical, and Samm wondered if she was really being terse or if all the consoling, sympathetic feelings were being cut off with the rest of the link. With Heron it was hard to tell, even under the best of circumstances. “Survival is all we have. If we end we end, but if we live a second day there’s always a chance, no matter how slim, that we can find a way to live a third, and a fourth, and a hundredth and a thousandth. Maybe the world kills us and maybe it doesn’t, but if we give up, it’s the same as killing ourselves. We’re not going to do that.”

Samm looked at her, confused by the care she seemed to be taking for his welfare. It wasn’t like her, and without the link to clue him in, he had no idea why she was behaving so strangely. He tried to read her face, the way Kira said that humans did—Heron was an espionage model, the most human of the Partial designs, and showed a lot of her emotions on her face. Even without the curved diving helmet distorting her visage, though, Samm was just too unpracticed to read anything.

The best thing he could do, then, was answer. “I’m not really considering it,” said Samm. “I would never give up.” He stared at Williams. “But he can’t give up, even if he wants to. For all we know he’s miserable—maybe he’s in pain, or he’s aware enough to feel trapped, or something even worse. We don’t know. There’s always a chance for us to find something new, like you said, but what about him? Vale said he lost the technology to make another Partial like him, and that includes the technology to turn him back. He will never be conscious or … alive, ever again. I just don’t know if that existence, specifically, is worth preserving. Maybe euthanasia is the most merciful thing to do.”

Heron paused a moment, looking at him, before answering softly. “Do you really want to kill him?”

“No.”

“Then why are we even talking about it?”

“Because maybe what I want doesn’t matter here. Maybe the best decision is the hardest one to make.”

Heron turned away and started fiddling with one of the other Partials, the one next to Williams, checking his vital signs before carefully disconnecting him, tube by tube, from the life support system. She wasn’t killing him, Samm knew, she was freeing him; this was the next step in their plan. He checked his own oxygen level in the diving helmet—a needless precaution, since there were several hours left—and read Williams’s sensor readout one last time. He was alive, technically, and his body was as healthy as any long-term coma patient’s would be. He turned to the other nine Partials and helped Heron unplug them from the machines.

They wheeled the first two gurneys to the elevator and took them upstairs. The humans who lived in the Preserve were waiting outside, led by the only two humans Samm was certain he could trust: Phan, the short, perpetually cheerful hunter, and Calix, the most skilled scout in the Preserve, now confined to a wheelchair from the gunshot in her leg. She watched Heron coldly as they brought the first two Partials out of the building, but when they actually reached her the coldness was gone, and she was all business.

“I didn’t want to believe you,” she said, staring at the comatose Partials.

“There are eight more down there,” said Samm, taking off his diving helmet. The air was fresh, with no lingering trace of the sedative. “All as emaciated as these two.”

“And this is where Dr. Vale got the cure,” said Phan. He touched one of the unconscious Partials lightly on the arm. “We didn’t know. We never would have …” He looked up at Samm. “I’m sorry. If we’d known he was enslaving Partials, we would have … I don’t know. But we would have done something.”

“We’ve had more than one thousand children born since the Break,” said Laura, an older woman, and the acting leader of the Preserve now that Vale was gone. “Are you really saying you would have let them all die?”

Phan went pale, an impressive feat on his dark features. “I didn’t mean that, I just mean—”

“Are you saying you want them back down there?” asked Heron, watching Laura like a snake about to strike. She still wore her helmet, and the radio gave her voice a menacing, mechanical sound. Samm interjected before the situation could get out of hand.

“I’ve already told you I’ll fill in for them myself,” said Samm. “You need the cure, and I understand that, so you can get it from me—willingly. The slaves go free, and everybody’s happy.”

“Until Samm dies,” said Heron. He assumed she was being flippant and sent her a scalding blast of WATCH IT before realizing that with her helmet on she was still cut off from the link data. He glanced at her instead, trying to convey the same sharpness he’d seen so often when Kira was mad at her. She smirked back, silently amused, and he assumed he’d done it wrong. At least she knows what I meant, even if she doesn’t care.

Calix craned her neck over her shoulder, calling to the gathered humans behind her. “Take these two back to the hospital, and make sure they’re ready for more.” The crowd hesitated, and Calix barked another command that even Samm could tell was intended as a harsh verbal slap. “Now!”