Fragments (58 page)

Five faces stared back at her, all the women in Ariel’s life: her sisters Madison
and Isolde, her friend Xochi Kessler, and Xochi’s mother, the former senator Kessler.
Even Arwen was here, the miracle baby. All trapped by the Partial army, brought back
here to simmer and worry and die. They’d gathered in Nandita’s house because it was
the only home they had left.
If they knew how close we were to Kira,
Ariel thought,
we’d be in even more trouble than we are.

“The Grid’s been searching for you for a year,” said Senator Kessler. “Where the hell
have you been, and what are your ties to the Partial army?”

“I created them,” said Nandita.

“What?” Kessler stammered, the first to manage a response. Ariel was too shocked to
say anything. “You created the Partials?”

“I was on the team that built their genetic code,” said Nandita, taking off her coat
and shawl. Her hands were wrinkled, but missing the calluses Ariel had always seen
on her. Wherever she’d been, she hadn’t been working in a garden, or in any kind of
manual labor.

Kessler seethed with anger. “You just admit it? Just like that? You created one of
the greatest forces for evil this world has ever—”

“I created people,” said Nandita, “like any other mother. And the Partials, like any
other children, have the capacity for good or evil. I’m not the one who raised them,
and I’m not the one who oppressed them so harshly they were forced to rebel.”

“Forced?” demanded Kessler.

“You’d have done no less in their place,” snapped Nandita. “You’re more eager to fight
what you don’t agree with than anyone I know; anyone but Kira, perhaps.”

“Just let her talk, Erin,” said Xochi. Ariel had never heard the girl call her mother
by anything but her first name.

“So you created the Partials,” said Isolde. “That doesn’t explain why you disappeared.”

“When we created them, we built them to carry the plague,” said Nandita. “Not exactly
what came to be known as RM, mind you: The plague that was released was more virulent
than even we intended, and for reasons we don’t fully understand. But we also made
a cure, carried by all Partials, that could be activated by a second chemical trigger.
And then, as you can see, everything went to hell.”

“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.”

“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.”