by Dan Wells
A new section expanded across the screen, one brief sentence with a handful of pictures attached: 27 Instances of RM Virus.
“What?” Kira whispered. The number blinked, updating to twenty-eight. She tapped one of the pictures, and it flew up into a corner of the screen, enlarging to a 3-D representation of RM. It was a rough, fat sphere, highlighted in yellow to stand out from the background image. It looked putrid and menacing.
The number in the alert continued to grow: 33 Instances. 38. 47. 60.
“This virus is everywhere,” said Kira, flicking through the images almost as fast as they popped up. She’d seen the structure of the virus before, of course, as part of her early medical studies, but never like this. Never so much of it, and never in a live human. “This can’t be right.”
“I’m not sick, obviously,” said Marcus.
Kira frowned, and studied one of the images more closely. The virus loomed over the other data like a predator, vast and insatiable. “It’s not telling me this is abnormal,” said Kira, “it’s just telling me it’s there. Someone told the computer how to recognize the virus, but didn’t tell it the virus was a cause for concern. How common is it?” She looked back at the alert and saw a small link to the database. She tapped it, and a new box appeared, a long, thin rectangle down the full right side of the screen. When she expanded it, she found it was a list of similar references. She sifted through it with her finger, pulling up page after page of links. She clicked one, and found another patient’s file, their blood filled with RM. She looked at another and another, all the same. She almost didn’t dare to say it out loud.
“We’re all carriers,” she said. “Every single survivor has it in us, all the time. Even if we’re resistant to it, we can still pass it along. That’s why the babies die — that’s why it gets them so fast. Even in an airtight room.” She looked up at Marcus. “We can never get away from it.” She sifted through the images of the virus, trying to remember everything she’d learned about how it spread and functioned. Part of RM’s danger was that it didn’t behave like a normal blood-borne virus — it lived in the blood, yes, but it lived in every other part of the body as well; it could be passed through blood, saliva, sex, and even the air. Kira pored over the images, looking at the structure of the virus, looking for anything that would key her in to the secret. It was a big virus, big enough to contain every function of a very complex system — though they still didn’t know exactly what that system was.
Marcus rubbed his eyes, dragging his hands slowly down his face.
“It’s what I told you before — the top minds left in the world have been studying RM for eleven years. They’ve looked at everything.”
“But there has to be something else,” said Kira, flipping furiously through the list.
“Live studies, dead studies, blood scrubbers, dialysis, breath masks. There are even animal studies in here. Kira, they’ve studied literally everything they could possibly get their hands on.”
She kept flipping through study after study, variable after variable. And as she reached the end of the list, something dawned on her.
There was one test subject not included anywhere in the database. A subject no one had seen in eleven years.
Kira paused, staring at the screen, feeling dirty and uncomfortable as the virus stared darkly back.
If they wanted to understand that virus, why not go to the source? If they wanted to see what true immunity looked like, why not look at the subjects who were truly immune?
If they really wanted to cure RM, what better way than by studying a Partial?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Come in,” said Dr. Skousen. Kira opened his door slowly, her heart in her throat. She’d spent a week going through the current research with Marcus, convincing herself of the need to come to Skousen, and several days more planning exactly what she’d say and how she’d say it. Would it work? Would he agree, or would he laugh her out of his office? Would he get mad and throw her out of the hospital completely? Skousen’s office was bright, lit by both the wide glass windows and a brilliant white lamp on his desk. Electric light always surprised her, no matter how many times she saw it. It was an extravagance few people could afford. Did those people realize how casually they used it in the hospital?
“Thank you for seeing me, Doctor,” said Kira, closing the door behind her and walking crisply to the desk. She’d put on her most professional-looking outfit: a red blouse, a coffee-colored skirt with matching jacket, and even a pair of heels. She usually hated heels — they were ridiculously impractical, both for her job and for post-Break life in general — but Skousen had grown up in the old world, and she knew he would appreciate them. She needed him to see her as an adult, as an intelligent, mature person, and she’d use every advantage she could get. She held out her hand, and Skousen shook it firmly; his hands were old, the skin wrinkled and papery, but his grip was still strong.
“Please,” he said, gesturing to a chair, “have a seat. It’s Walker, right?”
Kira nodded, sitting straight-backed on the edge of the chair. “Yes, sir.”
“I was impressed with your paper.”
Kira’s eyes widened in surprise. “You read it?”
Skousen nodded. “Very few interns attempt to publish research papers; it caught my attention.” He smiled. “Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be not only well researched but wholly original. Your conclusions on the structure of RM were flawed, but innovative. You show a lot of promise as a researcher.”
“Thank you,” said Kira, feeling a surge of warmth flow through her body. This might actually work. “That’s what I came to talk to you about: more research.”
Skousen leaned back in his chair, his eyes focused on her; he wasn’t enthusiastic, but he was listening. Kira plunged ahead.
“Consider this: The Hope Act is really just a streamlined version of the same thing we’ve been doing for eleven years — have as many newborns as possible — and in eleven years it hasn’t yielded a single viable success. We’re throwing mud at a wall to see what sticks, and eleven years is long past time to say that more mud is not the answer. We need to start throwing something else.”
Skousen stared back, stone-faced. “What do you suggest?”
“I want to transfer from maternity to research.”
“Done,” he said. “I was going to suggest that anyway. What else?”
Kira took a deep breath. “I think we need to seriously consider the benefits of opening a program for the study of Partial physiology.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“For lack of a better way to put it, sir, I think we should organize a team to cross onto the mainland and obtain a Partial for study.”
Dr. Skousen was silent. Kira waited, watching him, not even daring to breathe. She heard the hum of the electric bulb, a stringent buzz just at the threshold of her awareness.
Skousen’s voice was low and hard. “I thought you were taking this seriously.”
“I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
“Your life is not a very large sample size.”
“This is about extinction,” said Kira. “You said so yourself. Our one and only plan at this point is to put on gas masks and isolate the mothers and keep good notes on how the babies die. And yes, against all odds we’ve managed to glean some useful information from those notes, but I’m not willing to hang my species’ future on a long-shot version of what was already a long shot to begin with. The Partials are immune: They engineered a virus perfectly designed to kill human beings, but they’re immune to it.”
“That’s because they’re not human,” said Skousen.
“But they have human DNA,” said Kira, “at least in part. The virus should affect them just as much as it does us. But it doesn’t, and that means their immunity was engineered, and that means we can decipher it and use it.”
Skousen shook his head. “You’re insane.”
“We’re trying to solve the
puzzle of RM immunity by looking at infants who are not immune — the answer is simply not there, no matter how many more subjects we test. If we want to learn about immunity, we have to look at Partials. We have no records left of how they were built, what went into constructing their genetic code, nothing. There must be answers there. It’s worth a shot, at the very least.”
“They’re not going to just hand themselves over for study.”
“So we take one,” said Kira.
“Crossing the line could start another Partial War.”
“If it does, we might die tomorrow,” Kira shot back, “but if we don’t cure RM, we die every day for the next fifty years — or sooner, if the Voice starts a civil war. And if we don’t find an answer for RM soon, it’s going to happen.”
“I’m not having this conversation with a plague baby,” snarled Skousen. “You weren’t old enough to know what was happening when the Partials turned on us. You didn’t watch a small group of these things take out an entire military brigade. You weren’t watching when everyone you knew wasted away and vomited blood and boiled alive in their own fevers.”
“I lost my father—”
“We all lost our fathers!” yelled Skousen. Kira paled at the sound of it, leaned away from the mad look in his eyes. “I lost my father, my mother, my wife, my children, my friends, neighbors, patients, colleagues, students. I was in a hospital at the time; I watched it fill up and spill over until there weren’t even enough survivors to carry away the corpses. I watched my entire world eat itself alive, Walker, while you were playing with your dolls. So don’t tell me I’m not doing enough to save the human race, and don’t you dare tell me we can risk another Partial War.” His face was livid, his hands shaking with anger.
Kira swallowed her response, not daring to speak; anything she said now would only make it worse. She dropped her head, averting her eyes again, fighting the urge to simply get up and walk out. She wouldn’t do it — he was angry and she was probably fired, but she knew she was right. If he wanted her out, he’d damn well have to do it himself. She raised her head and looked him straight in the eyes, ready for her sentence. She was done here, but she wasn’t giving up. She hoped he couldn’t see her tremble.
“You will report to the research department tomorrow morning,” he said. “I’ll let Nurse Hardy know you’ve been transferred.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kira watched her friends as they laughed and joked in Nandita’s living room. It was late, and the room was dimly lit with candles; the juice stored up in Xochi’s solar panels was dedicated, as always, to the music player. Tonight’s selection was CONGRATULATIONS KEVAN, one of Xochi’s favorites: drill and bass, violent electronic music. Even turned down, it made Kira’s blood pump faster.
Nandita had already gone to sleep, which was good. Kira was about to ask her friends to commit treason, and it wouldn’t be fair to drag Nandita into the middle of it.
She couldn’t stop thinking about what Skousen had said — about what it had been like to live through the Break. She couldn’t blame him for feeling so strongly about it, because everyone felt that way, but it hadn’t been until that moment when Kira realized just how differently it had affected people. Skousen would have been in a hospital when the virus was released; he would have watched it fill up in hours, spilling into the halls and out into the parking lot, consuming the world in a plague-borne storm. His own family members died in his arms. Kira, on the other hand, had been alone: Her nanny had died quietly in the bathroom, and her father had simply … never come home. She’d waited for a few days, until all the food she knew how to make was gone from the house, and then she’d wandered out to ask for more. The neighborhood was empty; the world itself seemed empty. If not for a passing army caravan, retreating desperately from the war front, she might not have survived at all.
Skousen remembered a world falling apart. Kira remembered a world pulling together to save itself. That was the difference. That was why Skousen and the Senate were too afraid to do what it took to solve this. If it was going to get done, it would have to be the plague babies who did it.
Haru was already talking — passionately, of course, since that seemed to be his only way of doing anything. He was always the center of any conversation he joined, not through charisma so much as sheer determination. “What you’re not realizing,” he said, “is that the Senate doesn’t care. You can talk about being robbed of your childhood, you can talk about inefficient science, but that’s all beside the point for them.” The rumor mill was working overtime, insisting that the Senate was going to lower the pregnancy age again, and Haru had taken Isolde’s refusal to comment as a tacit confession that the rumor was true. “They’ve decided that the best way to beat RM is to drown it in statistics, and that means they’ll lower the pregnancy age as far as they think they can get away with. Lowering the pregnancy age from eighteen to sixteen gives them what, five thousand new mothers? Five thousand new babies every ten to twelve months? It doesn’t matter if it’s effective or not, it’s the best and quickest advancement of their chosen strategy. It’s inevitable.”
“You don’t know that,” said Isolde, but Haru shook his head.
“We all know it,” he said. “It’s the only way this government knows how to make decisions.”
“Then maybe we need a new government,” said Xochi.
“Don’t start this again,” said Jayden, but Xochi was almost impossible to stop when she got going.
“When’s the last time we actually elected someone?” she said. “When’s the last time we voted at all? Sixteen-year-olds aren’t even allowed to vote, and now they’re making a decision that affects us directly and we have no say in it? How is that fair?”
“What does fairness have to do with it?” asked Haru. “Take a good, hard look at the world, Xochi, it’s a pretty unfair place.”
“The world, yes,” said Xochi. “That doesn’t mean we have to mimic it. I’d like to think humans have a stronger sense of justice than the random forces of nature do.”
Kira watched Xochi’s face as she talked, looking for … she wasn’t sure. Xochi was different these days, more fiery than usual. The others probably hadn’t even noticed — Xochi was always fiery — but Kira knew her better than anyone. Something had changed. Would that change make her more likely to help, or less?
“The Hope Act was enacted before any of us could vote,” said Madison, “but I still would have had to get pregnant when I turned eighteen if I wasn’t already. That’s just the way it works.” It was still early in her pregnancy, but she was already starting to swell. She patted her belly often, almost reflexively; Kira had noticed other pregnant women do the same. There was a bond there, a tangible link, even now when the fetus was barely recognizable as human. The thought of it broke Kira’s heart.
Madison was sure to support her plan — it was her child, after all. She had the most to gain and the most to lose. Haru probably would as well, for the same reason, but you could never tell with him. She’d seen him argue against his own interests more than once. His opinions were stronger than his needs. As for Jayden, well, he was a mystery. He wouldn’t want to lose his niece or nephew, Kira knew, but at the same time he was fiercely loyal to the Defense Grid. He wouldn’t react well when Kira asked him to commit treason.
“What you’re talking about is treason,” said Jayden, staring coldly at Xochi, and Kira smiled. Good old predictable Jayden. “Replacing a senator is one thing — they retire and we elect a new one, it happens — but replacing the entire government is revolution. It’s also suicide: Do you realize how vulnerable this city would be if the Senate weren’t around to organize the Defense Grid and keep the peace? The Voice would blow it up in the first ten minutes.”
“If the Senate’s gone, the Voice have no reason to blow it up,” Xochi countered. “That’s their whole thing.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a Voice now,” said Jayden.
Xochi leaned forward. “If my alternative
s are government by idiot or government by military, maybe government by rebel doesn’t sound so bad.”
“They’re not rebels,” growled Jayden, “they’re terrorists.”
Xochi would want to help, Kira knew, but she didn’t know how much help her friend would actually be. She had no military training beyond the simple marksmanship classes they’d had in school, and her skills ran in surprisingly traditional directions: cooking, farming, sewing, and so on. She’d grown up on the farms, and that gave her some wilderness experience, but that was all. Isolde was even worse: She’d probably go along with it because that’s who she was, a follower, but she wouldn’t, and shouldn’t, actually come with them. She might be able to help from behind the scenes, hiding their actions from the government and the Grid, but even that was a long shot. If Kira was going to pull this off, she needed dedicated people who could handle themselves in the field. Kira didn’t really fit that description herself, for that matter, but at least she was a medic and had a bit more experience with weaponry from her salvage runs.
Which led her, at last, to Marcus. He was sitting next to Kira, relaxing on the couch and staring out the window at the last light of the setting sun, blissfully refusing to participate in Haru’s argument. He wasn’t a soldier, but he was a fair shot with a rifle and a gifted surgeon, especially in high-pressure situations. He’d been short-listed for the hospital’s emergency room almost immediately. He’d keep her safe, he’d keep her sane. She patted his knee gently, bracing herself for what she was about to do, and sat up straight.