Partials p-1

by Dan Wells

  “Madison,” she said again, “do you trust me?”

  Slowly, tearfully, Madison nodded. Kira held up the cure, still wrapped on the belt, and Madison stepped forward.

  “Madison, stay back,” growled Haru. “I am not letting you give our baby to that traitor.”

  “Then shoot me,” said Madison fiercely. She planted herself squarely between Haru and the incubator; his hand quivered, faltered, and dropped to his side.

  Kira collapsed to the floor, and Marcus ran to the cupboards on the wall to find a needle for the syringe. The soldiers in the doorway didn’t move, watching the whole thing with their guns pointed at the floor. Xochi helped Kira to her feet and took her to the incubator; Kira could feel the heat from the tiny body’s fever like a pit of dying coals. Marcus handed her a needle and swabbed the child’s arm with disinfectant.

  Kira prepped the injection, hesitating over the red, screaming body. Right now the Blob virus was roaring through her like a pack of wild dogs, ripping and tearing, eating her from the inside. This syringe, this pheromone, would save her.

  Kira leaned forward. “Hold her still.”

  Madison held the baby close, Marcus and Xochi stopped moving, even Haru fell silent in the background. The entire world seemed focused on this single moment. Arwen’s thin, hoarse crying filled the room like smoke, the final, desperate sparking of an engine about to fail. Kira breathed, steadied her arm, and gave the baby the shot.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  “We have discovered a cure for RM.”

  Cheers rang through the coliseum, applause and shouts and cries of joy. It wasn’t news — something so world-shaking could hardly be contained, and the news of Arwen’s recovery had spread like wildfire — but still the people cheered. Senator Hobb smiled at the crowd, his giant holographic head mimicking the expression in the air above him. Kira sat neatly on the stand behind him, crying again and wondering, as she had a thousand times in the last week, if it was all really true. If it was all really happening. She caught Marcus’s smile from the audience, and smiled back. It was real.

  Hobb raised his hands to call for order, smiling indulgently as the crowd continued to celebrate; they wanted their chance to cheer, and he seemed happy to give it to them. Kira marveled at the man’s capacity for change — not two weeks ago he was helping to turn the island into a totalitarian state, and it had collapsed catastrophically around him, and yet here he stood, smiling and clapping. Kessler had managed to maintain her seat as well, and Kira stole a glance at her on the other end of the stand. The other members of the subcommittee had not been so lucky.

  Hobb quieted the crowd again, and this time they followed, growing hushed as Hobb prepared to speak. “We have found a cure for RM,” he said again. “We found it, of all places, in the Partials — in a chemical they excrete in their breath, which reacts with the virus to nullify it completely. We learned this thanks to a series of tests performed by our local hero, Ms. Kira Walker, under the supervision of the Senate.” Scattered applause filled the hall, and Hobb waited patiently for it to die down. “These tests were performed, as the rumor mill has already told you, on a live Partial subject obtained as part of a secret mission by members of the Defense Grid. We admit, shamefaced but honest, that we were not as open with you about these tests as perhaps we should have been. We feared a violent riot, and in the end that is exactly what we got. Rest assured that in the future the Senate will be much more transparent about our goals, our plans, and our methods for carrying them out.”

  Kira blew out a long, nervous breath, watching the crowd for signs of unrest. Everything Hobb was saying was, technically, true, but the way he said it felt so … greasy, at least to Kira. He admitted just enough to seem repentant, while taking credit for much more of the process than the Senate had truly been a part of. The crowd wasn’t cheering him, but they weren’t booing him either.

  “Arwen Sato is doing fine,” said Hobb, “more fit and healthy than we had dared to hope. We didn’t want to risk taking her from the hospital, where she is under the strictest care of both the doctors and her mother, but we did record this holo so that you could all see her.”

  Hobb sat down, and the holo-image in the center of the coliseum changed from a close-up of his head to a scene from the maternity center; Kira, even knowing exactly what the movie was, couldn’t stop herself from crying as Saladin, the youngest human alive, stood beside the red-faced baby in the hospital crib to whom he was passing the honor. The sight of the child sent a gasp of awe through the audience, and Kira let herself get drawn up in it: the first human baby in eleven years that wasn’t sick, wasn’t screaming, wasn’t dying or dead.

  The holo stopped and Hobb stood up, his eyes brimming with tears. “Arwen Sato is the future,” he said, echoing Kira’s thoughts. “That child, that precious little girl, is the first of a new generation — the inheritors of a world that will, we hope, be better than the one we have known for the last eleven years. Our scientists are working around the clock to replicate the compounds that saved Arwen’s life, so that we can begin applying them to other children, but that is not enough. If we want a brighter tomorrow, we must tear down the shadows of yesterday. That is why I am pleased to announce that the Hope Act is now and forever officially repealed.”

  The audience cheered again, though not as unanimously. Many of the people in East Meadow still supported the Hope Act, saying that the existence of a real cure only made it more important to have as many children as possible, but the Senate had chosen to repeal it as a peace offering to the Voice. The same peace offering had included the resignations of Alma Delarosa and Oliver Weist; between them they had managed to soak up most of the blame for the city’s rapid dip into martial law. Skousen had also left, not in ignominy but to focus his time on replicating the cure. In their place the people had elected Owen Tovar, newly pardoned of his crimes with the Voice. The new Senate was a combination of East Meadow and Voice, both their ideas and their ways of thinking, and the island was finally at peace again. At least in theory. Kira looked down the row of Senators on the dais, seeing gaps and holes as each one sat closer or farther from their neighbors; this one avoided that one’s eyes, and that one whispered conspiratorially in the ear of the next. The crowd in the coliseum mirrored this behavior on a larger scale: they were united, but there were still deep rifts running just below the surface.

  “We have not yet decided a course of action,” said Hobb, his voice rich with earnest sincerity. “Our medics and researchers are working to unlock the secrets of the cure, and once they do we will begin synthesizing more. This is our plan for the time being, but should things change, rest assured that your votes will decide what steps we take next. Our society will work together, or not at all.

  “But there is one thing more.” He paused, a purely theatrical moment that Kira saw worked marvelously well: The crowd hushed and leaned forward. Hobb raised his finger, tapping it gently in the air, and finally resumed his speech. “There is one thing more that we discovered in our experimentation on the Partial. Something that will change the course of our lives, and of the entire world.” He took a breath. “The Partials are dying, rapidly, and there’s nothing they or anyone else can do to stop it. In a year, our greatest enemy will be gone forever.”

  The cheer that rose from the crowd shook the coliseum to its core.

  “We can’t synthesize it,” said Kira. Marcus had walked her home after the town hall meeting, and they were sitting in her living room. Kira knew the truth, and it burned inside her like a white-hot coal: The cure, the Lurker, could not be replicated artificially, and her own private tests had shown that she did not produce it. If she was truly a Partial, as Dr. Morgan and the others had claimed, her purpose and her origins remained a mystery she could only guess at.

  She prayed it was not sinister.

  “We can’t make it, we can’t fake it, we simply don’t have the tools,” she continued. “I’m not even sure the tools exist — maybe ParaGen had s
omething, and whoever made the virus in the first place, but they’re gone now. The only way to get it is from the Partials themselves.”

  “Isolde says the Senate is preparing for the possibility of an attack on the mainland,” said Marcus.

  Kira nodded. “A contingency plan.” She was the island’s expert on the subject and consulted with the Senate often, but she worked more closely with Skousen; she knew they were planning something, but she didn’t know the details. “Did Isolde say anything about a timeline?”

  “A few months, maybe.” Marcus shrugged helplessly. “It was one thing to watch the newborns die before, but now that there’s a cure… Three more have died since we saved Arwen, and the women Tovar injected with the other two doses haven’t given birth yet. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but regardless, the people aren’t going to sit still once things go back to the way they were. And now that they know the Partials are dying, it’s only a matter of time before they start calling for a new plan. There are proposals for peace talks and envoys, too, not just war, but with the state of things we saw over there…” He shook his head. “Any ambassadors we send are as likely to get shot as deliver a treaty.”

  “Just like what we did to them.” She frowned. “Maybe.” She still wasn’t sure what to think about Samm — had he been lying the whole time? Was peace with the Partials even possible?

  “Kira,” said Marcus, and instantly she heard the change in his voice: a deep breath, a softer pitch, a searching tone that filled her name with a deep and portentous meaning. She knew exactly what he was going to say, and she cut him off as gently as she could.

  “I can’t stay with you.”

  Even as she said it, she saw Marcus deflate — first his eyes, the brightness bleeding out of them, his head hung low. His face fell, his shoulders drooped.

  “Why?” he asked.

  Not “why not,” thought Kira, but “why.” It’s such a different question. It means he knows I have another reason — not something pushing me away from him, but something pulling me toward something else.

  “Because I need to go away,” said Kira. “I need to find something.”

  “You mean someone.” His voice was rough, tears close to the surface. “You mean Samm.”

  “Yes,” said Kira, “but not like … it’s not what you think.”

  “You’re trying to stop a war.” He said it simply, a statement rather than a question, but Kira could sense the same question underneath it: Why? Why was she leaving him? Why wasn’t she asking him to go? Why did she need Samm when he was right here? He didn’t ask, though, and Kira wouldn’t have been able to answer him anyway.

  Because I’m a Partial. Because I’m a question. Because my entire life, the entire world, is so much bigger than it was a few months ago, and none of it makes sense, and everything in it is dangerous, and somehow I’m at the center of it. Because groups I didn’t even know existed are using me for plans I can’t possibly comprehend. Because I need to know what I am.

  And who.

  “Now it was her turn to cry, her voice cracking, her eyes growing wet. “I love you, Marcus, I do, and I always have, but I–I can’t tell you this. Not yet.”

  “When?”

  “Maybe soon. Maybe never. I don’t even know what it is I can’t tell you, I just … just trust me, Marcus, okay?”

  He glanced at her bag, packed and ready by the inside of her door. “Are you leaving today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now?”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “I’ll come with you,” he said. “There’s nothing keeping me here.”

  “You can’t come with me,” said Kira adamantly. “I need you to stay here.” I’m not ready for you to learn the things I want to learn about myself. I’m not ready for you to know what I am.

  “Fine, then,” said Marcus. His words were short and clipped, trading sadness for anger and only barely concealing either. He stood slowly, walked to the door, opened it. Waited.

  “Thank you,” said Kira. “For everything.”

  “Good-bye,” said Marcus.

  Kira blinked back a tear. “I love you.”

  Marcus turned and walked away. Kira watched the empty doorway long after he was gone.

  Nandita had never returned, and the house was cold and empty. Kira assembled her things: her bag of clothes, a bedroll and camping supplies, a new medkit; a rifle over her shoulder, and a semiautomatic at her hip. She looked around her house one final time, straightening the sheets on the bed, and her eye caught the gleam of a reflection on the nightstand. A framed photo. Kira frowned and walked toward it. That’s not mine.

  It was a photo of three people, standing in front of a building. It was upside down, and she turned it around slowly.

  She gasped.

  Standing in the middle was her, as a child, barely four years old. On her right was her father, exactly how he looked in her memory. On her left was Nandita. Behind them, on the high brick wall of the building, was a single word.

  ParaGen.

  In the corner of the photo someone had written a small message, the letters jagged, the handwriting hurried and desperate:

  Find the Trust.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The book you hold in your hands represents the collaborative effort of a great many people, in whose company I count myself lucky to be. First and foremost is my editor, Jordan Brown, who did so much, and with so much passion, that we should really be listing him as a full collaborating creator. Similar credit goes to Ruta Rimas, who contributed so much to the creation of the book and our early, formative ideas for it. She switched publishers halfway through, moving on to new projects, but her psychic fingerprints can still be seen on every page of the book.

  Many friends and readers provided their own insight to the manuscript, including such personal luminaries as Steve Diamond, Ben Olsen, Danielle Olsen, Peter Ahlstrom, Karen Ahlstrom, Ethan Skarstedt, Alan Layton, Kaylynn Zobell, Brandon Sanderson, Emily Sanderson, and my brother Rob Wells. I’d further like to thank some of the artists whose work had an influence on this particular book, with special gratitude to Ursula K. Le Guin, Ronald Moore, Kevin Siembieda, and Muse.

  This novel was greatly helped by the readers of my website, www.fearfulsymmetry.net, who helped name some of the key groups and concepts in the Partials world. The Hope Act was named by my wife, the Break came from Eric James Stone, and the Voice came from Michele Chiapetta. Thanks to them and to everyone else who gave us such amazing input; it was a fun crowdsource project and we’ll definitely be doing it again.

  As always, and perhaps most importantly, I couldn’t have written this book, and certainly couldn’t have done a very good job on it, without the invaluable assistance of the three women who make my life navigable: my agent Sara Crowe, my assistant Janella Willis, and my wonderful wife and the love of my life, Dawn.

  As a final note, many thanks to Nick Dianatkhah, who is always on hand to die in whatever surprising and horrifying way a story may require.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DAN WELLS is the author of the John Cleaver series: I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER, MR. MONSTER, and I DON’T WANT TO KILL YOU. He has been nominated for both the Hugo and the Campbell Award and has won two Parsec Awards for his podcast Writing Excuses. He plays a lot of games, reads a lot of books, and eats a lot of food, which is pretty much the ideal life he imagined for himself as a child. You can find out more online at www.fearfulsymmetry.net.

  Visit www.authortracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite authors and artists.

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