by Dan Wells
Kira listened with wide eyes. Way to go, Haru. You tell ’em. She leaned toward Isolde. “That ought to earn some respect.”
“For him, yes,” Isolde whispered. “It’s actually really bad for you. He’s trying to set you up as equals, to make sure this looks like a joint conspiracy of adults instead of one adult leading a group of minors. He could get a harsher sentence if they think he masterminded the whole thing. He doesn’t want to get slammed on your behalf like Jayden was for Yoon.”
“But that’s…” Kira frowned, looking back and forth between Haru and the senators. “But he sounded so noble.”
“It was brilliant,” said Isolde. “A conniving weasel like that is wasted in construction.”
“Very well,” said Senator Hobb. “Kira Walker, do you wish to be tried as an adult?”
Damn. Thanks a lot, Haru. She stood slowly and held her head high. “I made my own decisions, Senator. I knew the risks and I understood them.”
“You seem very certain of that,” said Dr. Skousen. “Tell me, Kira, what were you planning to do with this Partial once you caught it? How were you going to keep it contained? How were you going to address the threat of a new contamination?”
“I wasn’t planning to bring it back at all, sir. That was your idea.” She paused, watching Dr. Skousen’s brow grow dark with anger, wondering if she’d pushed him too hard. She forged ahead, glancing at the Partial; it looked back darkly, and she tried not to imagine how quickly it could break out of its restraints. “I was going to cut off its hand and test it in the field,” she said, “with a medicomp we brought to Brooklyn. There was never any threat to anyone until—”
“No threat to anyone?” asked Dr. Skousen. “What about the three men who died across the river? What about the two women of breeding age who almost died with them? Surely you of all people, with your job in maternity, understand the need to protect every possible pregnancy.”
“If you please, Doctor,” said Kira, feeling her face grow hot with anger. “We’ve asked to be treated like adults, not cattle.”
The doctor stopped short, and Kira gritted her teeth, forcing herself to keep her face as calm as possible. What am I doing?
“If you wish to be treated as an adult,” said Senator Delarosa, “I encourage you to keep a civil tongue.”
“Of course, Senator.”
“Can you tell us, for the record, what you expect to gain from your study of Partial tissue?”
Kira glanced at Dr. Skousen, wondering how much he’d already told them. “We’ve studied RM for years, but we still don’t know how it works. Everything that should be effective in abating it isn’t; everything that should inoculate us against it doesn’t. We’ve hit a dead end, and we need a new direction. I believe that if we study the immunity from a Partial perspective — not the chance mutation that keeps us from developing symptoms, but the engineered resistance that makes them wholly immune — we can find the cure we’ve been looking for.”
Senator Weist narrowed his eyes. “And you thought the best way to do this was to run screaming into the middle of enemy territory with no planning and no backup?”
“I asked Dr. Skousen for backup,” said Kira. “He made it clear I wouldn’t get any help from the Senate.”
“I made it clear that you should not attempt it under any circumstances!” roared Skousen, slamming his hand on the table.
“My friend is pregnant,” said Kira. “Haru’s wife; Jayden’s sister. If we’d done what you said, that baby would die, just like every other child you haven’t saved for eleven straight years. I didn’t study medicine to watch people die.”
“Your motives were admirable,” said Senator Kessler, “but your actions were stupid and irresponsible. I don’t think there’s any argument on that point.” Kira looked at her, seeing again — as she always did — a remarkable similarity between her and Xochi. Not in their appearance, of course, but in their attitudes: Adopted or not, Xochi had managed to grow up with Senator Kessler’s same stubborn, passionate zeal. “We have laws in place to deal with people who do stupid and irresponsible things,” she continued, “and we have courts in place to adjudicate those laws. Frankly, I find these criminals’ presence here a waste of the Senate’s time: I say we send them to criminal court and be done with them. This, on the other hand…” She gestured at the Partial. “We are in a hearing, and this is what I’d like to hear.”
“We have laws,” said Senator Hobb, “but I think this is fairly obviously a special case—”
Senator Kessler glared at Kira, who did her best to meet the look with as much dignity and resolve as possible. “I move that we send this criminal hearing to the proper court,” said Kessler, turning back to Senator Hobb, “and deal with the real problem instead.”
“I second,” said Skousen.
“And I object,” said Delarosa. “The presence of a Partial on Long Island, let alone right here in East Meadow, is of the utmost secrecy — we can’t allow anyone, and certainly not an investigative court, to know anything about it. We will speak to the Partial, and then we will decide what to do with the defendants.”
“I second,” said Weist.
“I have no objection,” said Hobb. Kessler paused, her face stern, then nodded.
Senator Hobb gestured for Kira and Haru to sit, then turned to the Partial. “Well. You have the floor now. What do you want to say?”
The Partial said nothing.
“Why were you in Manhattan?” asked Delarosa. She waited, but the Partial didn’t respond. She waited a moment longer, then spoke again. “You were part of an armed strike team making a temporary camp only miles from our border. What was your mission?”
The Partial remained perfectly silent.
“Why now?” continued Delarosa. “After six months of brutal rebellion and eleven years of complete absence — why are you back again?”
“Just kill it,” said Senator Weist. “We should never have brought it here to begin with.”
“Study it,” said Kira suddenly. She stood up, feeling all eyes on her again. This was her last chance — with the Partial refusing to talk, they’d lost what little reason they’d had to keep it alive. It would be dead in minutes. She had to make them see; she had to convince them not to throw this opportunity away. “Going out on our own was dumb, and there’s a million ways it could have gone wrong, and probably a million ways it could still go wrong, but look at what we’ve got: a live Partial, right there, just waiting to be studied. Punish us if you want — kill us if you want us killed — but somebody, please take advantage of this opportunity and study it. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong — that’s okay, the damage has already been done. But if I’m right, we can cure RM and finally start putting our society back together again. No more RM, no more Hope Act, no more Voice or armed rebellions — a unified society with a chance at a future.”
The senators stared at her a moment; then Delarosa called them together and they leaned in closely, whispering softly among themselves. Kira strained to listen, but couldn’t make it out. Every now and then one of them stole a glance at the Partial.
“That was good,” Isolde whispered. “I just hope it works. They keep staring at you, though, and that’s making me nervous.”
“Wait,” said Kira, “at me? I thought they were looking at the Partial.”
“Now and then,” said Isolde, “but mostly you. I don’t know what that means.”
The senators conferred a moment longer, and Kira could see that yes, their furtive glances across the room were looking past the Partial and straight at her. She swallowed nervously, wondering what punishment they were going to give her. Finally they leaned back, silent, and Senator Hobb rose.
“The Senate has reached a decision,” he said. “We have become convinced of the necessity for study: The Partials are immune to RM, and if we can discover the secrets behind that immunity, we may finally be able to find a cure. This Partial’s body may be the key to our survival, and it doesn’t appear to prese
nt any immediate threat when restrained and sedated.” He glanced at Dr. Skousen, straightened, and spoke in a loud, clear voice. “We are moving the Partial to a secure facility in the hospital, confidentially and under guard, where it may be studied and analyzed in detail. After five days, it will be dismantled and disposed of. As for the study, it will be conducted by you, Ms. Walker.” He looked at Kira; she was too stunned to read his expression. “You have five days. Use them well.”
Kira spluttered, still trying to process the information. “You mean I’m not arrested or … you’re giving me the body? You’re going to let me do my tests?”
“Not just the body,” said Dr. Skousen. “You can conduct better tests if it’s alive.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“It doesn’t make sense,” said Xochi. “My mother hates Partials — she would have killed that thing with her bare hands if they’d let her get close to it. Why do they want it alive?”
“Keep it down,” said Kira. She glanced out the window again, peering through a small gap in the shades. “If anyone hears you — if anyone even finds out that we told you — there’s going to be some serious hell to pay.”
“Mkele probably wants to try to interrogate it,” said Jayden. He and Haru started their sentences in hard labor the next morning, but the Senate had given them the night to gather their things. Haru was at home with Madison, but Jayden had come to Nandita’s place. Nandita was gone, off on another herb-collecting trip; Kira shuddered to think of the explaining she’d have to do when Nandita got back. She could take insults from people she hated, but it was the disappointment from someone she loved that always broke her down. She started tearing up just thinking about it and forced herself to think of something else.
“I think you may be forgetting a key fact here,” said Isolde. “Apparently Partials are smoking hot. If you’d have told me that before you left, I would have gone to Manhattan with you.”
“Come on, Isolde, that’s gross.” Kira grimaced.
“You saw it, same as I did,” said Isolde. “That thing is an Adonis. Do something for me: When you get to spend your five days alone with that genetic perfection, try to find time for a close physical examination. Just for me.”
“It’s not even human,” said Jayden.
“In what sense?” asked Isolde, continuing to bait him. “It’s got all the right parts in all the right places. If this is what Para-Gen was going for when they started making artificial people, now I’m even sadder that it went nuts and tried to kill us.”
“The questions in this hearing were nothing,” said Jayden, finally deciding to ignore her. “All slow-pitch softball. Tonight they’re going to put it in a subbasement somewhere, torture it, and learn everything they can. A night with some Grid soldiers in a soundproof room will take the fight right out of it.”
“Now you’re really turning me on,” said Isolde.
“Shut up,” said Jayden, and Xochi laughed.
“But why do they want me in charge?” asked Kira. “There are researchers with more experience than me, there are more skilled lab techs, there are—”
“I know,” said Xochi. “Anybody in that hospital would be better for this than you. No offense.”
“None taken,” said Kira. “That’s what I’ve been saying all night.”
“Right,” said Xochi. “So think about it: Why put your most junior student in charge of something that important unless you want to guarantee that it’ll go wrong? Or to use her as a scapegoat when the whole thing blows up in their faces?”
“I’m sure there’s a better reason than that,” Kira said, though at heart she wasn’t sure at all. She looked out the window again, scanning the dark street. Nothing.
“I don’t think he’s coming,” said Xochi.
Kira turned back quickly. “What? No, I was just … looking at the trees. At the open street that isn’t teeming with panthers and poison ivy.”
“The world across the line was pretty different,” said Jayden, nodding. “I don’t know how to describe it.”
“It’s because there weren’t any people,” said Isolde. “Manhattan’s gone more primal than Long Island because there’s never anyone scaring away the animals or stomping down the plants.”
Jayden laughed thinly. “There are forty thousand people on Long Island,” he said. “There used to be millions. Sometimes I think this island doesn’t even know we’re here.”
“It’s not just Manhattan,” said Kira, “it’s everywhere — we saw a panther in Brooklyn. We saw a baby antelope — a little antelope fawn, probably two months old at the most. Someday they’ll wonder where all those weird, two-legged animals went, and then they’ll take a drink from a river, and look up at the clouds, and then they’ll forget they were ever even thinking about us at all. Life will go on. There’s no point even leaving a record behind, because there will never be anyone, ever again, who can read it.”
“Somebody’s depressed,” said Jayden.
Xochi punched him in the arm. “Does anyone want some more home fries?”
“Ooh, me,” said Isolde, sitting up. “Forget extinction — I’m dying the day all our vegetable oil finally runs out.”
Xochi passed her the plate and stood up. “I’m sick of ‘Antonio, on His Bar Mitzvah.’ Any requests?”
“Phineas,” said Kira. “No — Nissyen. He always cheers me up.”
Xochi sorted through her basket of players, glancing quickly at the generator to make sure there was power. Isolde took a bite of potato and pointed at Kira with the other half, talking with her mouth full.
“I think you’re just spooked,” she said. “All joking aside, that thing almost killed you in the field, and now you have to work with it.”
“Not with it.”
“With it in the room,” said Isolde. “You know what I mean. I think it’s scary.”
“I think you’re scary,” said Xochi. She plugged in a music player — TO NISSYEN FROM LISA — and bubbly techno started playing in the background. “You’re the most elegant one of us,” Xochi continued, sitting next to Isolde, “and here you are flinging fried potatoes around like you’re an outlands street vendor.”
“I may be a little drunk,” said Isolde seriously, pointing at Xochi with her half-chewed fry. She raised her eyebrow. “Senator Hobb gave me some champagne.”
“Ooh la la,” said Xochi.
“Maybe beacuse the hearing went better than expected?” said Isolde. She shrugged. “I wasn’t going to say no.”
“But they didn’t get anything they wanted,” said Kira, sitting up straighter. “Four dumb kids forced them into…” She stopped. “Unless that’s what they wanted all along.”
“They wanted it alive?” asked Jayden. “They wanted you to study it?”
“I don’t know,” said Kira. “None of it makes sense.” She looked out the window. Still nothing.
“Doesn’t it make you a little suspicious, though?” asked Xochi. “If the Senate is running some kind of weird scheme here, how many other things are they doing that we don’t know about?”
“You’re being paranoid,” said Jayden. “What kind of horrible conspiracies do you think they’ve got going?”
“They’re hiding a Partial inside the city limits,” said Xochi. “If they’re capable of that, why not more?”
The room went quiet.
“Attacks against the farms,” said Xochi. “Accused Voices disappearing in the middle of the night. We accept these things because we think we know the reasons behind them, but what if we don’t? What if the reasons we’ve been told all along are just lies?”
“I’ve been Senator Hobb’s assistant for nearly a year,” said Isolde, “and I can guarantee you I’m not keeping any dangerous state secrets.”
“You’re defending the honesty of a group that you know, firsthand, is lying to the people of East Meadow,” said Xochi. “And they’re doing it too effectively to be first-timers. The only surprising thing about it is that any of you are surp
rised.”
“I think Xochi’s right,” said Kira. She felt a pit in her stomach, slowly growing deeper and darker as she thought through Xochi’s logic.
“Why are you so desperate to attack them?” asked Jayden. “Listen, Xochi, I’m sorry your mom is a bitch, but she’s not the entire Senate. And what about the Defense Grid? You’re talking about people who defend us and keep us safe — people who die in the outlands so that you can sit here with your monogrammed music players and your fancy foods and whine about how oppressed you are.”
“Not counting your own fiasco,” said Xochi hotly, “when’s the last time a soldier actually died in combat?”
“Last year, in the Voice raid on the Hampton farms.”
“And how do you know that was the Voice?” Xochi demanded.
“Why would they lie to us?”
“How do you know there wasn’t just some disgruntled farmer,” Xochi pressed, “who refused to send in his quota, so the Long Island Bloody Defense Grid went out to rough him up a little?”
“Why would they lie to us?” Jayden repeated.
“Because it keeps us in line!” Xochi shouted back. “Look at everything we go through — armed soldiers in the streets, invasive searches of everyone going in and out of the market; they’ve even started searching homes. The Senate says jump and we ask how high because they’ve convinced us the Voice will kill us if we don’t. Our boys go to war, our girls get pregnant, and we always do everything they say and it never changes anything. Nothing ever gets better. You know why? Because if it gets better, we don’t have to listen to them anymore.”
Kira flicked her eyes from person to person, shocked by the outburst. Everyone else seemed as shocked as she was.
Jayden grumbled and stood up. “You’re insane,” he said, walking to the door. “I’ve got better things to do with my time than waste it here.”
“Idiot,” Xochi muttered, and stormed into the kitchen.
Kira looked at Isolde, who looked back with wide, startled eyes.
“They’re not evil,” said Isolde. “I work with them every day — they’re just people. Hobb’s really trying to do his best.” She paused. “You should take your own gun tomorrow. We have no idea how strong the Partials are, or what they’re capable of. Do you have a handgun?”
