Fragments (33 page)

They didn’t risk going to Nandita’s house until the following night, wary of being
followed; when they arrived, they found that the Partials had already torn through
it with a vengeance, searching every nook and cranny in meticulous detail. “If there’s
anything left, I’ll be amazed,” said Marcus, but they dove into it anyway, hoping
to find a sign of Nandita’s plans that the Partials had missed, if they even knew
what they were looking for. They spent their days in the empty house, tearing it apart
as carefully and as quietly as they could, and their nights hiding in nearby houses,
a different one every night, doing their best to remain invisible.

The people who attracted too much attention always ended up dead in the evening execution.

They started by searching Nandita’s room: all her drawers and closets, in the boxes
under her bed, in the spaces behind the dresser and the large vanity mirror, even
between her mattresses and hidden in the pockets of her clothes. They searched the
hothouse as well, though in the months of Nandita’s absence Xochi had already taken
over much of it, and there were very few spaces not already filled by Xochi’s ever-growing
collection of herbs and sprouts. When they failed to find anything, they began searching
the rest of the house, first looking in all the drawers and cupboards and eventually
prying up floorboards, cutting open upholstery, and even digging holes in the garden.
They found nothing.

“I think we have to face it,” said Marcus days later, leaning tiredly on the kitchen
counter. “These experiment logs either don’t exist, or they’re gone.”

“They exist,” said Ariel. “I saw them.”

“She may have taken them with her,” said Marcus. He stared at the gaping hole they’d
just punched in the kitchen wall; Nandita had repaired a section of Sheetrock there
about a year before, something the Partials apparently didn’t know, but when they
broke it open they found nothing but a few dropped nails. “That might be why she left,
to continue her studies or analyze the results or something.”

“Or to hide them,” said Ariel. “Or maybe just destroy them outright. Though I don’t
know what would have prompted her to do it.”

Marcus shook his head. “You’re assuming she left willingly. What if she was taken?
Her and her records? That seems . . .” Marcus slowed, and laughed dryly. “I was going
to say that seems needlessly paranoid, but under the circumstances it might actually
be right. I don’t think anything would surprise me at this point.”

Ariel shook her head. “If they took her, they wouldn’t be back here looking for her,
right?”

“There are a lot of Partial factions,” said Marcus. “It might have been one of Morgan’s
enemies.”

“Nandita and Dr. Morgan were both performing experiments on Kira,” said Ariel, nodding.
“For all we know, they were working together.”

“I certainly got the impression she was working for Morgan when Heron confronted me,”
said Marcus, “but I suppose Heron’s not exactly the most trustworthy source. Consider
this, though: As far as we know, Morgan’s recent experiments on Kira were purely coincidental.
She just wanted a human girl, she never went out of her way to get a specific one.”

“As far as you know,” said Ariel.

“As far as we know,” Marcus agreed, “but I was there. I watched Kira go through this,
making all her decisions in very Kira-like ways. If Morgan wanted a specific girl,
all she had to do was raid the island like she’s doing now, not set up some ridiculously
elaborate con game to trick her into visiting the mainland of her own free will.”

“But what about that photo you told me about?” asked Ariel. “You saw Kira and Nandita
together before the Break, which is weird enough already, but then to see them at
the ParaGen building? That’s not like a huge red flag for you that something weird
is going on here? There’s got to be more to that relationship.”

“Like what?” Marcus asked. “Of course it’s a red flag, but for what? I’ve been trying
to figure it out for weeks now, that’s why we’ve torn your whole house apart, but
what does it mean? Does seeing them at a ParaGen facility mean that Kira’s different
somehow? Most of us have some kind of gene mods from when we were kids—does Kira have
a special one? Is she important in some way? I’m with you on this, Ariel, but I honestly
don’t know what any of it means.” They heard a rumble, and immediately recognized
the sound as an engine, probably a pretty big one. The Partials had brought motor
vehicles back to East Meadow, thanks to their wealth of resources and energy, and
the humans had learned to listen for the sound of approaching Partial “police.” They
dropped to the ground, trying to look as not-home as possible. It worked.

“That was the closest one yet,” said Ariel. “I think they know we’re here—that we
use this house, I mean.”

“The papers you saw in Nandita’s hothouse,” said Marcus. “What else can you remember
about them?”

“I told you,” said Ariel. “It said ‘Madison: Control.’ It had a lot of physical information,
height and weight and blood pressure and all that, not just single readings but changes
over time. Madison and I would have been ten, maybe getting on to eleven, just starting
to go through puberty, so there were a lot of changes to track. At least half of it,
though, probably more than half of it, was chemicals—herbs, I guess, but she’d scrawled
in some notes about different properties of each herb, and different mixtures in her
droppers from one time to the next. She was trying to find the right combination for
. . . something. I don’t know. ‘Control,’ whatever that is.”

“Oh damn,” said Marcus, staring at the floor. He closed his eyes, slowly shaking his
head as the realization washed over him. “Double dog damn it and around again for
another damn.”

Ariel smiled. “You watch your filthy mouth, Mr. Valencio.”

“It’s not about control,” said Marcus, looking up at Ariel. “How much do you know
about the scientific method?”

“I saw what I saw,” she insisted.

“Of course you did,” said Marcus, “but you were ten years old and you didn’t know
how to interpret it. When a scientist does an experiment, they always have at least
two subjects: the experiment, which they screw around with, and the control, which
they don’t. It’s a baseline, unmodified test subject intended only for observation,
so that whatever happens to the experimental subject has something you can compare
it to. Nandita could have been using Madison as a control subject to help her understand
her observations of Kira.”

“She’d never raised children before,” said Ariel, seeing where he was going with the
line of thought. “When Kira did something weird, Nandita had no way of knowing if
it was weird because all kids are weird, or weird because of . . . whatever stupid
thing we still don’t know about Kira.

“So we were all control subjects,” said Ariel, slowly understanding. “Three controls
against one experiment.” She frowned. “It makes sense, I suppose, but it doesn’t answer
anything. We don’t know what she was testing for, or why, or what any of it has to
do with ParaGen.”

Marcus shrugged. “There are only three people who do know,” he said. “Kira, Nandita,
and Dr. Morgan. I’d bet you anything Morgan knows at least some of it, or she wouldn’t
be tearing this island apart trying to find the other two.”

“Well I’m not going to go up and ask her,” said Ariel.

“And Kira won’t tell me anything,” said Marcus. “I hear from her about once a week
now, and never more than a few seconds. Wherever she is, the signal’s incredibly weak.”

Ariel looked around at the ransacked house, now more of a junkyard than a home. “If
there was ever any sign of Nandita, the Partials got it before we did. Even if we
find a hint of where she might be, we’re weeks behind them, and we’re hopelessly outnumbered.
There’s no way we’re going to find Nandita before they do.”

“Don’t give up yet,” said Marcus, and waggled his radio. “Most of the reports I get
on here are Partial battles—one of the other factions is still attacking the ones
who have occupied the island.”

“So we get crushed between two Partial armies?” asked Ariel. “I thought you were trying
to cheer me up.”

“What I mean is that they’re distracted,” said Marcus. “They can’t focus all their
energy on finding her, because they spend half their time fighting off other Partials.”

“And we spend almost all our time hiding from Partials,” said Ariel. “They still come
out ahead.”

Marcus blew out a puff of air, deflating as he sank back and stared at the floor.
“I was just trying to find a bright side, but I guess we don’t have any of those left.”
He played with the broken Sheetrock, shifting the pieces with his foot. A thought
began to dawn on him. “Maybe we do.”

“We have a bright side?”

“We have a second Partial army.”

Ariel raised her eyebrow. “That’s the worst bright side I’ve ever heard of.”

“No,” said Marcus, growing more excited. “Think about it: Dr. Morgan has raised a
massive army of Partials, with the express purpose of raiding our island and holding
us hostage, and another army of Partials is attacking her for it. Partials don’t just
attack things for no reason—they’re soldiers, not . . . barbarians. The only reason
to cross the sound and attack Morgan’s forces is because you’re trying to stop her,
and the only reason to try to stop this invasion is because you disagree with it.”

Ariel frowned, obviously skeptical. “So the second group of Partials is on our side?”

“If A hates B and C hates B then A and C are allies,” said Marcus. “That’s the . . .
transitive property of battlefield ethics, which I just made up. But it’s true.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Ariel.

“I knew there was a phrase like that somewhere.”

“So how does that help us?” asked Ariel. “I’m pretty sure one of us could get out
of East Meadow, slip through the Partial patrols, if the other makes a big enough
distraction, but what then? Head north through the most occupied territory on the
island, into the middle of an inter-Partial battle zone, and hope you can tell which
group is which? You’ll end up back here in less than twenty-four hours, assuming you
live through it at all.”

“We go off the island,” said Marcus, shaking his head. “We let the soldiers do the
fighting, and we go around them to talk to the leaders in the back.”

“You want to just march into the mainland, all alone, and find a group of Partials.”

Marcus laughed. “Who am I—Kira? I’m not doing this alone, I’m going straight to the
Senate.”

“The Senate fled East Meadow in the invasion,” said Ariel. “What makes you think you
can even find them?”

“Because Senator Tovar used to run the Voice,” said Marcus, “and I know where some
of the old Voice hideouts are. You just help me escape, I need to get to the JFK airport.”

K
ira looked at her three companions, nodding as if to convince herself that her words
were true. “The Failsafe was RM. It was created by ParaGen, under the direction of
the government, as a way to control the Partial army.”

Samm’s face was solemn. “It was designed to kill Partials?”

“It was a kill switch,” said Heron. “If the Partials ever got out of hand, boom: Activate
the Failsafe, problem solved.”

“That’s a really good idea,” said Afa, heavily doped on painkillers but still relatively
lucid. His thoughts all seemed clear, but his voice was slurred and his inhibitions,
if he had any, were missing altogether. “Aside from the genocide, of course. No offense.”

“You’re a sweetheart,” said Heron, though her face told a different story.

“So the Failsafe was built into us,” said Samm. “It was a biological self-destruct
button.”

“Which killed the wrong people,” said Afa.

“I don’t think so,” said Kira. She held up the screen and flipped through the file
tree, looking for a specific one; when she found it, she held it up for all to see.
“Here’s a cached email from the earliest days of the RM epidemic, attached to an article
about a mystery disease that seemed to appear out of nowhere; the records don’t say
exactly when the Failsafe was activated, or who did it, but my guess is that it happened
about three days earlier. This particular email is from Nandita to my father.” She
turned the screen back toward herself and read out loud, “‘New Super-Disease Claims
Seven Human Lives in San Diego. Dozens of other cases may be related.’” She looked
up. “The body of the email just says, ‘Quicker than we thought.’ Not ‘Oh no, it’s
targeting the wrong people,’ just ‘Quicker than we thought.’”

“So they may have targeted humans on purpose,” said Samm. “Which . . . doesn’t make
any sense at all.”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Kira, “which is why I’m not sold on the idea yet, I’m just
pointing out that it’s a possibility.”

“Are you going to speculate wildly on the rest of the information?” asked Heron. “Or
just this part? I want to know when I should start paying attention again.”

Kira mentally rolled her eyes, but stopped herself from doing it for real. “That’s
the thing,” she said. “Most of the rest of the information is pretty clear. We don’t
get any sort of viral formula or anything, but there are records in here that detail
almost everything else. We know how they did it: They designed the pheromone glands
that run the link so that they could start pumping out viral spores when triggered
by a specific chemical. We know why they did it: because they were worried the Partial
army could rebel, or worse, and they wanted an easy way to shut it down; not the most
ethical decision they’d ever made, but there you go.” She put her hand on the glowing
screen. “There are records in here where they debate it, there are records where they
plan it, there are records where they talk about the specific details of contagion,
trying to predict how quickly it would spread. But all those discussions were about
Partials, and then the virus attacked humans, and there are literally no emails in
the entire batch that talk about how weird that is. Nothing from the Trust, anyway.
There is one email from Noah Freeman, the ParaGen CEO, to the board of directors,
that seems to support this theory.” She called up the email on her screen and read
from it. “‘We cannot confirm that the Partial team is working to undermine the Failsafe
project, but just in case we’ve hired new engineers to imbed the Failsafe in the new
models. If the team betrays us, the Failsafe will still deploy.’”