Partials (29 page)

“Hey,” said Kira. “You heard about Madison?”

“Yeah,” she said, “but that’s not why I’m here.”

Kira frowned.
Please, no more disasters
. She sat up straight, forcing herself upright. “What is it?” Her voice sounded stronger than she felt.

“Isolde just got back from the Senate,” said Xochi. “They’re going to make an announcement tomorrow. The Hope Act has been amended. The age is sixteen now, Kira.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“I
t’s official,” said Isolde. She was lying down on their couch, holding a bottle of some kind of liquor. It was half-empty. “It passed this afternoon. Or yesterday afternoon, I guess—it’s past midnight, isn’t it?”

“I can’t believe this,” said Xochi. She stared at the floor. “I can’t believe this.”

Isolde took a swig. “It doesn’t matter if you believe it or not. Your government just gave you two months to get knocked up.” She held up the bottle, her face dull and red. “Cheers.”

“You better get your fill of the booze now, then,” said Xochi. “You’ll be drinking for two pretty soon.”

Kira sat on the couch in silence, watching the other girls complain and thinking about the Senate’s motives. On the surface, this was likely due to the Voice’s ultimatums. Anything less would be seen as a concession, and they were making a statement in direct opposition to them. But in her heart, she knew it had to be because of Samm. The “contingency plans” Hobb had hinted at. She had warned them to ease up, but instead they were tightening their grip, exerting more control. For the people who believed in the Hope Act, sure, this might be seen as a sign of strength and solidarity, but to everyone else? It was practically a declaration of war.

The worst part was keeping the secret. She knew that Mkele was right—if the truth about Samm got out now, with tensions so high, the riot would be terrifying, and she’d be right in the middle of it. She didn’t dare say any more about Samm, or the tests, or anything else. Better to work as hard as she could, and cure the virus before anyone else had to die.

And yet even after two full days, she wasn’t any closer. She knew how Samm thought, how he communicated, how he breathed and ate and moved, but she still didn’t know how his immunity worked. She was confused. And because she couldn’t tell anyone, she was confused alone.

She felt like she was drowning.

Isolde took a swig from her bottle. “Drinking while pregnant is punishable by incarceration and full-time monitoring,” she said. “I have to enjoy this now.”

“Your baby is more important than your rights,” said Xochi. “As far as the Senate is concerned, you’re just a uterus with legs.”

“Grow up,” said Kira sullenly. As soon as she said it, she felt guilty—she agreed with Xochi, so why was she attacking her? The Hope Act wasn’t working, and the Senate was strengthening it for the wrong reasons. Maybe it was the way she said it, the focus on personal rights over everything else. Kira had believed that too, but things were different now. She’d seen the Senate debate this—she’d seen the fear in their eyes. This was about extinction, like Delarosa had said. The other girls turned to her, and their surprised looks only made her angrier. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe something
is
more important than your rights? That maybe the survival of your entire species is more important than your right to whine about it?”

Xochi raised her eyebrows. “Someone’s feeling bitchy.”

“I’m just sick of hearing about everyone’s civil rights and everyone’s privacy and everyone’s inviolable power of choice. We either solve our problems or we go extinct—there is nothing in between. And if we’re going to go extinct, I don’t want it to be because Xochi Kessler was too worried about her rights to pitch in and save us.”

Xochi bristled. “We’re not talking about pitching in,” she said, “we’re talking about institutionalized rape. We’re talking about the government taking full control over your body—what it’s for, what you do with it, and what other people can do to it. I’m not letting some horny old dude screw me just because the law says I have to.”

“Then pick a horny young dude,” said Kira, “or get inseminated artificially—those are all options, and you know it. This isn’t about sex, it’s about survival.”

“Mass pregnancy is the worst possible solution to that problem,” said Xochi.

“Okay now,” said Isolde, her voice slurring, “let’s all calm down for a minute. Nobody’s happy about this—”

“Sounds like Kira is,” said Xochi. “Of course she’s the one with a boyfriend, so I guess that makes sense—she’s probably doing him anyway—”

Kira jumped across the room with a scream, blind with fury, clawing for Xochi’s neck, but Isolde leaped up to block her, tripping drunkenly over her own feet. She lost her balance, but clung to Kira so strongly Kira couldn’t get past her to Xochi; Kira tried to fight past her, shoving Isolde away, gouging her forehead with her fingernail. Isolde yelped in pain, and Kira’s struggling devolved into tears.

“Damn,” gasped Xochi.

“Just sit down,” said Isolde, easing Kira onto the sofa beside her. Kira sobbed, and Isolde held her gently. She shot Xochi a cold glance. “That was over the line.”

“I’m sorry.” Xochi settled herself back into her seat. “I’m sorry, Kira, you know I didn’t mean it. I’m just going crazy—this whole damn thing is over the line.”

“What’s done is done,” said Isolde. “The law is passed. Now we can complain about it, or we can get drunk enough to not care.”

“You’ve had too much of that as it is,” said Xochi, standing up and ripping the bottle from Isolde’s hands. Isolde’s grip was loose, her strength used up in the struggle with Kira, and Xochi took it easily, opening the window and throwing the bottle outside.

“Hey, Xochi!” It was a voice from the street, one of the local boys—Kira didn’t recognize it exactly. “Crazy stuff with the Hope Act, right? You guys wanna talk? Can we come in?”

“Go to hell,” said Xochi, and slammed the window closed.

“That was my bottle,” said Isolde, her voice slurring. Nobody paid her attention.

“I’m sorry, Xochi,” said Kira, sitting up straighter. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at … pretty much everything else in the world. But the world doesn’t have a face, so I was going to take it out on yours.”

Xochi smirked, but her expression fell again just as quickly. “I’m not ready,” she said softly. “None of us are ready.”

Isolde traced a pattern on the couch with her finger. “Haru was right, you know. What he said in the Senate hearing. We don’t have any children left, just adults who don’t know what they’re doing.”

The girls sat quietly, lost in their thoughts. Kira thought about Marcus—she’d rejected his advances, and now the government had changed everything. A two-month grace period to get things going, and then she could get arrested just for not being something she’d never been before. If she had to have children, she wanted them to be Marcus’s, she guessed; she’d never thought about anyone else, not seriously. But if she told him now, he’d know it was for the law, and not for him. She couldn’t do that to him. And yet she couldn’t go to anyone else without hurting him even worse.

Besides, she didn’t want to be pregnant. Not like this. If she was going to create a new life, she wanted to do it because it meant something, not because she’d been forced to.

And yet she’d just yelled at Xochi for proposing the same idea. She didn’t even know what to think anymore.

For just a second—just the briefest fraction of a moment—she thought about Samm, and wondered if a half-Partial child would be immune.

“Do any of you remember your mother?” asked Isolde. “Not your new one, Xochi, your old one. Your real mother from before the Release.”

“A little,” said Xochi. “She was tall.”

“That’s it?”

“Like seriously tall,” said Xochi. “In every image I have of her, she’s towering over me, and not just because I was little—she towered over everyone. Six-four, maybe six-six.” Her voice softened, and Kira could tell she was drifting into memory: Her eyes were wet and unfocused, staring blindly into space. She grabbed a lock of her coal-black hair. “She had black hair, like mine, and she was always wearing jewelry. Silver, I think. She had a big fat ring on her hand like a flower, and I used to play with it. We lived in Philadelphia—I used to think that was the name of the state, but it’s a city. Philadelphia. Someday I want to go back and find that ring.” She rolled her eyes. “You know. Someday.”

“My mom sold airplanes,” said Isolde. “I don’t know how, or to who, but I remember that’s what she told me, and I thought it was so amazing, and now I look back and I think: We don’t even have airplanes anymore. We don’t have gas to put in them, I don’t know if we even have anyone left who could fly them if we did, but my mom used to sell them like they were nothing, like they were fish rolls in the market.”

“I don’t think I had a mother,” said Kira. “I mean, obviously I had one at some point, but I don’t remember her, just my dad. I don’t even remember him talking about her, but I’m sure he did. I guess they were divorced, or she was dead. Probably divorced: We didn’t have any pictures of her.”

“So imagine something awesome,” said Xochi. “If you don’t remember your mom, that means she can be anyone you want—she can be an actress, or a model, or the president of some giant company, or … anything you want.”

“If you can’t know the truth,” said Isolde, “live the most awesome lie you can think of.”

“All right then,” said Kira. “She was a doctor, like me—a brilliant scientist renowned for her work with children. She invented … gene sequencing. And nanosurgery.” Kira smiled. “And normal surgery, and penicillin, and she cured cancer.”

“That is a pretty awesome dream,” said Xochi.

“Yeah,” said Kira. “I guess awesome dreams are all we have left.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“S
tay alert today,” said Shaylon.

Kira eyed the young soldier warily, her eyes still red from tears and fatigue. “More so than normal? What’s going on?”

“Mr. Mkele thinks someone’s planning an attack,” he said, gripping his rifle more tightly. “The Voice hiding in town, still looking for whatever they didn’t find at the town hall. The new amendment to the Hope Act probably didn’t help matters, either. He’s sending more patrols outside, but he told us to be careful here anyway, just in case.”

Kira nodded. “I’ll keep my eyes open.” She pushed her way through the door into the decontamination tunnel, rubbing her face with her palms as the air blasted around her.
I should be using Shaylon a lot more than I am. If I can find a way to talk to him alone, maybe after hours, I can probably learn a lot more about what the Grid is doing
.

Kira sighed.
Like I have time for another project
.

She set down her stack of notebooks and crouched by Samm’s table, checking his face and arm—a ritual that had become standard now.

“They beat you again.”

Samm, of course, said nothing.

Kira watched him a moment, then glanced nervously into the corners. “They shouldn’t be doing this to you. It’s inhumane.”

“I’m not sure that statement has any bearing on me.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re human or not,” said Kira, probing the Partial’s shins through the fabric of his pants, searching for more wounds. “They’re human, and that means they need to act like it.” She pulled up his pant legs. “You’ve got a few new cuts on here, but they’re not bleeding, obviously, and you should be okay.” She rolled them back down. “None of these wounds has ever gotten infected.” She wondered if Samm’s body produced some kind of natural antiseptic or antibiotic, and made a mental note to check it out later—through some means other than just stabbing him with a dirty knife. “You should be fine,” she said, and walked to the computer.

Kira noticed immediately that the files had been read: her DORD images, her preliminary notes on the pheromones, even her handwritten notes in her notebook. Someone had moved them, sorted them, paged through them.
Is Skousen checking my work?
she wondered.
Is he duplicating it?
Some of the files were new; he’d done studies of his own while she was away. She didn’t know if she should be grateful someone was watching, or indignant that they didn’t trust her results. She was nearly too tired to care.

I only have three days left
, she told herself.
Stop whining and work
. She struggled to concentrate on the DORD images, looking for any discrepancy between Samm’s physiology and that of a human, but she kept thinking about what he said yesterday. The sincerity in his voice. What if he was telling the truth—what then? If the Partials had never created the virus in the first place, then who did? The Lurker in his breath, whatever it was, proved that he had some relationship to RM, but that didn’t mean he made it. The Partials were soldiers, not geneticists; they had doctors, but they weren’t necessarily capable of this level of engineering. What if the similarity meant something else entirely?

What if it was a sign of common ancestry? What if RM and the Partials were both created by the same third party?

Kira closed her eyes, trying to remember what she’d learned in school.
What was the name of the company? Para-something?
It was so hard to remember the details of the old world—names and places and technologies that simply had no meaning in modern life. Food companies were easy, because the ruins were all around her: Starbucks and Panda Garcia and a dozen more like them. She could even remember eating at some of them as a child, before the Break. Genetics companies, on the other hand, were completely outside the realm of her experience. She’d learned the name in her history class, but they hadn’t made a big deal about it. It was the government who’d commissioned the Partials, Para-something was just the contractor.

Para-Genetics
, she remembered.
They were called ParaGen. Haru had mentioned them the other day. But what could they have to do with RM? Certainly they hadn’t created it—they were human too. It doesn’t make sense
.