Fragments

by Dan Wells

  “You’re still not telling us where you’ve been,” said Ariel, her arms folded tightly across her chest. She was so used to hating Nandita that this string of confessions was leaving her deeply confused: On the one hand, it gave her more reasons to hate the woman, and to justify all her suspicions and accusations. On the other hand, though, how could she trust anything Nandita said? Even when it was self-incriminating?

  “Have patience,” said Nandita. “I’m getting to that. You need the proper setup first.”

  “No, we don’t,” said Ariel. “We need answers.”

  “I taught you better manners than that.”

  “You taught me to distrust everything you say,” said Ariel. “Stop trying to win us over and just answer our questions, or every woman in this room will gladly turn you over to the Partials.”

  Nandita stared at her, fire lighting up her ancient eyes. She looked at Ariel, then at Isolde, then back to Ariel again. “Fine,” she said. “I was gone because I was trying to re-create the chemical trigger to release the cure.”

  Xochi frowned. “That actually seems pretty easy to understand.”

  “That’s because I gave you the context for it,” said Nandita. “I worked on it for eleven years, as best I could with the facilities I had, using herbs to distill the chemicals I needed. Last year while I was out searching for ingredients I found something I never imagined still existed—a laboratory with operable gene-mod equipment, and enough power to run it. I tried to get back here, to bring you to it and explain the entire thing and solve the problem once and for all, but a civil war and now a Partial invasion have made safe travel very difficult.”

  “But why us?” asked Ariel. “Why take us to the lab—why use us for your experiments?”

  “That’s the part you don’t yet have the context for,” said Nandita. “The chemical trigger was for you—the cure is in you. Kira, Ariel, and Isolde.”

  “What?” asked Madison.

  Isolde stared in shock, covering her nine-month swollen belly with her hands as if to protect it from Nandita’s words.

  Ariel smiled thinly, her confusion and terror leavened by a victory so long in coming she couldn’t help but revel in it. “So you were experimenting on us.”

  “I had to re-create the trigger from scratch,” said Nandita, “which required a lot of trial and error.”

  “Back up,” said Xochi. “You said the cure was built into the Partials—why were you trying to get it from these three?”

  “You’ve answered your own question,” said Nandita.

  “We’re Partials,” said Ariel, keeping her eyes fixed on Nandita. “Your little Partial orphanage.” Her mind reeled at the revelation, but her anger kept her focused—she’d hated Nandita for so long, concocted so many theories about her behavior, that this new shock was all too easy to believe. “How could you do this to us? We treated you like a mother!”

  “I can’t be a Partial,” said Isolde, the hurt obvious in her voice. “I’m not, I’m . . . I’m pregnant. Partials are sterile.” She was shaking and laughing and crying all at once. “I’m a human, like everybody else.”

  “I’ve watched them grow up,” said Kessler. “Partials don’t grow.”

  “These are new models,” said Nandita. “The first generations were created for the war, but everyone knew the war couldn’t last forever. ParaGen was a business, and Partials were a product, and the board of directors was always looking ahead to the next season’s hot new thing. What do you do with BioSynth technology when you don’t need any more soldiers?”

  Ariel felt nauseated, feeling suddenly alien in her own skin. “We were children.” She grimaced. “You were selling children?”

  “We were creating Partials that people could love,” said Nandita. “Strong, healthy children who could be adopted and raised just as human children—filling a market need, which is how we could convince our bosses to pay for it, while at the same time assimilating Partials, and the thought of Partials, into the ranks of humanity. The children we created were the missing link that would take Partials from an alien horror to a simple part of everyday life. They were as human as we could make them—they could learn and grow, they could age, they could even procreate.” She gestured at Isolde. “On top of that, they had all the benefits of being a Partial: stronger bodies and bones, more efficient muscles and organs, better senses and sharper minds.”

  “And a death sentence after twenty years,” said Xochi.

  “No,” said Nandita, “no expiration date. Everything about the new models was designed to match or improve on human life; there were no limitations, no hedging our bets with a Failsafe.”

  “You weren’t just building children,” said Ariel, “you were rebuilding the human race.”

  Nandita said nothing.

  “It’s not true,” said Isolde, her voice rising. “None of what you’ve said is true. You’re a crazy old woman and you’re a liar!”

  Ariel looked at her adopted sister, her hatred for Nandita slowly giving way to the kind of horror that was destroying Isolde. If they were Partials, they were monsters. They’d destroyed the world—maybe not personally, but they were a part of it. Other people, everyone they’d grown up with, would think they were a part of it. Already Senator Kessler was inching forward, placing herself between Xochi and the Partial freaks that used to be her friends. What did she think they were going to do? Now that Ariel knew she was a Partial, was she suddenly going to start killing people? What would the rest of the island think of her: that she was a traitor? A sleeper agent? A fool or a monster? At least Ariel had no friends to betray, already isolated by years of living on the outside; Isolde had friends, family, a job—a job in the Senate, in the heart of human government. Would they think she was a spy? What would they do to a Partial spy, pregnant or not?

  What would the Partials do if they found out? Did they already know? Could Ariel go to them for help, or to help end the occupation? Maybe if they heard it from one of their own . . .

  One of their own. A Partial. Ariel’s mind rebelled, and she felt herself get sick, running to the kitchen and vomiting in the sink. A Partial. Everything she’d ever thought about Nandita was true. It was even worse.

  No one came to the kitchen to help her.

  “What about Isolde’s baby?” asked Xochi. Her voice was uncertain. “Is it a . . . which is it? Human or Partial?”

  “I’m not a Partial!” Isolde screamed.

  Ariel wiped her face and mouth, staring out the kitchen window into the darkness beyond.

  “I assume it’s both,” said Nandita. “A human/Partial hybrid. We assumed this could happen, but . . . I’ll need to do more studies to find out exactly what it means.”

  Ariel walked back into the room. She felt different. Apart. More so than she’d ever felt before.

  “So you spent years trying to activate the cure,” said Madison, “and then . . . what, you left to go activate it somewhere else? Without the girls?”

  “I found a laboratory, like I said,” said Nandita. “Powered and self-sustaining. I would have come back for the girls, but the political climate was not exactly friendly at the time.”

  Kessler growled. “We’re not stupid—if you’d told us you were working on a cure—”

  “You would have stonewalled me like you stonewalled Kira,” said Nandita. “And if I’d ever told the story I told you just now, you’d have thrown me into prison or killed me outright.”

  “So stop talking and do it,” said Isolde. “You’re back because you have the cure, right? You can unlock it and we can save everyone.” She touched her belly again, and Ariel felt a surge of hope, but Nandita shook her head.

  “What?” asked Xochi. “You didn’t find it?”

  “Of course I found it,” said Nandita. “I had eleven years of biological data on the girls, I worked on the original project, and I had an ideal laboratory. I knew there was a trigger, and I found the exact chemical blend to pull it.” She brought out a small glass
vial from a pouch around her neck and held it up; it glittered in the light. “But it’s not the cure. Someone already triggered the cure, in every Partial who has it.” She looked at Madison. “Kira discovered that while I was gone, that’s how she saved your baby.”

  “So what did you find?” asked Isolde. “What does that vial unlock?”

  “I have an inkling,” said Nandita. “But it’s not good.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “I think we lost them,” Kira whispered, panting with exertion. They’d been running through the ruins for nearly an hour, with what felt like the entire Preserve following closely behind them. She was so tired she could barely walk, and they’d taken refuge in an old bank. “I don’t know if I can run another step. Now I know how you felt in the spire.”

  “How I still feel,” said Samm. He collapsed against the wall and sank slowly to the floor, leaving a smear of blood from the wound in his arm. “Whatever sedative he used in there is an absolute killer. Patch me up.”

  Kira stayed by the window nearly a minute longer, watching the road for any sign of movement or pursuit. Still nervous, she retreated to Samm’s wall and hauled out the remnants of her medkit—not a full kit, for that was back in Calix’s room, but the essentials she’d kept in her backpack with the other things she didn’t want to leave her sight: her gun, now out of ammo; a handful of water-stained documents from Afa’s stash; the computer handle, though that was now lost in Vale’s secret lab. She swabbed the gash in Samm’s arm, a bloody groove where Vale’s bullet had grazed his triceps, and gave him a handful of antibiotics to swallow.

  “You’re probably not going to need these,” she said, “from what I’ve seen of your immune system, but take them anyway. It makes me feel better.”

  “This isn’t your fault.”

  “He was aiming at me,” said Kira. “I’m the one who pissed him off.”

  “And I got in the way on purpose,” said Samm. “I told you, he’s on the link—I knew who he was going to shoot before he did it.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better,” said Kira, searching her bag for bandages and finding that she didn’t have any. “All back in the Preserve,” she said. “Hang on, let me see what I can find.” They were hiding in the bank’s back offices, away from the street, and she stood up to search for some kind of cloth.

  “Now that we have some time to breathe,” said Samm, “you can tell me why he suddenly wants to kill us. I assume we got caught slinking around in the spire.”

  “I found his secret,” said Kira, opening the drawers in an old wooden desk. Plus, he found out mine, she thought, but she didn’t want to share that with Samm just yet. What would he say if he knew I was carrying the disease that could kill every Partial in the world? “He doesn’t have a new cure. He’s harvesting the pheromone from a group of Partials locked up and sedated in the spire. One of them has been modified to produce a powerful Partial sedative, which is why you passed out as soon as you entered the building. It’s how he keeps them incapacitated.”

  Samm was silent a moment before speaking. “That’s horrible.”

  “I know.”

  “We have to stop him.”

  “I know,” said Kira, “but we’ve got other things to think about first. Like you not dying of blood loss.” She found a suit jacket in a small closet and pulled it out to examine it. On Long Island it would be half mildew after twelve years in the humidity, but here in the wastes of a desert city, it was fairly well preserved. She brought it back to Samm and sat on the floor with her knife, cutting it into wide strips. “I’ve always wanted to see you in a suit.”

  “We have to free them.”

  Kira stopped mid-cut. “It’s not that simple.”

  “We can go back. At night. We need to figure out a way to rescue Heron anyway; she’s been gone too long to not be in there somewhere. We can find her, and free the people that he’s captured, and get everyone out of there.”

  “I know,” said Kira, “but it’s not that simple. The captured Partials are practically skeletons. I don’t know if they could survive outside the lab, let alone a daring nighttime rescue attempt.”

  “Would you say the same thing if they were human prisoners?”

  Kira felt like she’d been slapped. “I’m not saying you’re not right, I’m just saying it’s not that simple. Why are you so mad at me?”

  “This is the same thing Dr. Morgan tried to do to you,” he said. “To turn a living being into a petri dish for a science experiment. I risked my life and destroyed my friendships to free you.”

  “You helped capture me.”

  “And then I freed you,” said Samm. “There’s a very real possibility that whatever Morgan wanted to do to you would work—that she could learn something from your biology to help stop the expiration date—but I freed you. Tell me right now that the reason you won’t go back there with me doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that those Partials are being used to save human lives.”

  Kira opened her mouth to deny it, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t lie to Samm. “So you’re saying we should just let all the human children here die.” She didn’t phrase it as a question.

  “You don’t know that’s what would happen—”

  “I know damn well that’s exactly what would happen,” she shot back, stopping him before he could even finish. “In East Meadow that’s happened every day for twelve years, and for one of those years I was right in the maternity ward watching it. If we take those Partials out of that lab, the human children being born will die. I’m not going to let that happen.”

  “But you’ll let those Partials be used like machines?” he said. She had never heard him this angry before. He sounded almost . . . human. “You’re a Partial, Kira. It’s about damn time you start to come to terms with that.”

  “That’s not what this is about.”

  “The hell it isn’t. What is it, shame? Are you ashamed of what you are? Of what I am? I thought you were in this to save both races, but when push came to shove you went right back to the humans. Heron has been explaining from the beginning how we might be able to save the Partials, but you wouldn’t do it; you had to come out and here look for a way to save the humans first.”

  “It’s not that simple!” Kira shouted. “Take away those Partials and these children will die. This community will disintegrate. I don’t want this to be about numbers, but in this case it is: ten people for two thousand, for ten thousand or twenty thousand as the community grows. If they were humans in that lab who were keeping alive a hospital filled with Partial children, I’d be saying the same thing.”

  “Then why not treat them like humans?” Samm said. “For all you know, the Partials would stay willingly. Did he even ask them? Did he even explain the situation? We’re not heartless monsters, Kira, and we don’t deserve to be treated like it.”

  “Would you stay?” she asked, turning it back on him. “Give up everything you have, every hope and ambition, to become a . . . milk cow? You’d stay here and do nothing and let them harvest your pheromones? At least you’d have Calix to keep you company.”

  “Kira, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “How about this?” she asked, too angry to stop the tirade. “The Partial who produces the sedative; his name is Williams. He’s a living weapon who cannot, by definition, coexist with any other Partials. Vale altered his DNA, and he can’t alter him back because the equipment broke. The only way to really free them is to—” She stopped suddenly, realizing that she wasn’t just talking about Williams anymore. She was talking about herself. The living weapon that threatened every other Partial merely by existing. “The only way they can be free,” she said softly, “is for him to die.” Her voice choked up, and she forced herself to ask the final question. “What do you do with him?” Please don’t say you’d kill him, she thought. Please don’t say you’d kill me.

  “I think . . .” He stopped, and Kira could tell he was thinking deeply. �
��I hadn’t thought of that yet,” he said. “It’s not simple, but it’s . . .”

  Please let him say no, she thought.

  “I guess that sometimes one person has to suffer so everyone else can be free,” he said, and Kira’s face went pale.

  “So you would kill him?”

  “I’m not happy about it,” said Samm, “but what’s the alternative? Sacrificing a whole community for one person? You have to do what’s best for the group, or all you have are tyrants.”

  “So you’d sacrifice one guy for the other nine,” said Kira, “but you won’t sacrifice ten guys to save a few thousand. That’s a weird inconsistency, don’t you think? This town full of humans isn’t one of those groups you have to do what’s best for?”

  “What I’m saying is that we can’t use people,” said Samm, “because people aren’t things. Though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since that’s exactly the way we treated Afa.”

  “Excuse me?” asked Kira. “I’m the one who defended him—I’m the one who stood up for him the entire time, who did everything I could to keep him healthy, to be nice to him—”

  “We dragged him into a situation he had no business in,” said Samm, “because we needed him. We used him for our own ends, and I’m not saying you did it—we all did it, we all brought him along. But we were wrong to do it, and now he’s dead, and we have to learn our lesson from that.”

  “And our lesson is to let more people die?” she asked. “I know that Afa’s death was our fault, and mine more than anybody’s, and I don’t want that on my conscience, but no matter how much I couldn’t save him, I can save the next generation of human children. I’m not happy about it, and Vale’s not happy about it, but these are impossible choices. Everything we pick is going to be horribly, tragically wrong for somebody, somewhere, but what’s our alternative? Don’t pick? Sit back and let everyone die? That’s the worst choice of all.”