Voice,” said Senator Weist. Kira was packed into a hospital conference room with Mkele and the same five senators she’d met at her hearing, and the atmosphere was more tense than she’d ever felt it. “They hit the Senate building. It was the biggest strike team yet—at least forty insurgents, maybe more—and we didn’t take a single one of them alive.”
“What if we’d been there?” demanded Hobb. His wavy hair was limp and sweaty, and his face was pale as he paced restlessly through the room. “We don’t have enough guards for this—”
“The Senate was not their target,” said Mkele. “With no meetings in session, and no senators on site, they attacked during the lightest possible guard rotation. Their purpose was obviously to get inside with as little resistance as possible.”
“So it was a robbery?” asked Delarosa. “It still doesn’t make sense. Everything we store in the Senate building they can get more easily just scavenging the outlands.”
“They were looking for the Partial,” said Mkele. The room went quiet. “Rumors are already going around. That’s why I’ve invited Ms. Walker to join us.”
“One of the soldiers talked,” said Senator Kessler, “or Kira did. We never should have trusted her.”
Kira started to protest, lining up her best and most horrible insults for Kessler’s smug face, but Mkele cut her off.
“If Kira had talked,” he said, “they would have known to attack the hospital. I think it’s more likely that the Voice didn’t know what we had, just that we probably had something; they obviously didn’t know where it was. Even the message they spray-painted on the building was vague: ‘The Senate is lying to you. What are they hiding?’ If they’d known what we were hiding, don’t you think they would have said it?”
“Only if they wanted to start a riot,” said Weist. “News of the Partial would incite nothing less.”
“A riot might be their only plausible goal at this point,” said Delarosa. “The only way for them to create enough unrest to stage a coup.”
“Given how little we actually lost,” said Mkele, “this attack helped us more than it hurt us. The information they apparently had, combined with the information they obviously didn’t have, gives me a valuable estimate of their intelligence network.”
“That’s great now,” Hobb sneered, “but what about before the attack? How did our secret get out? If you’re so brilliant, why didn’t you stop any of this from happening?”
“If you had any delusions that this was going to stay a complete secret in a community this small, you were fooling yourself,” said Mkele. “I advised against the Partial’s presence from the beginning.”
“We made our decision based on your assurances,” said Kessler. “If there’s a leak in the Defense Grid, you need to find it—”
“We knew exactly what we were getting into,” said Delarosa. “If our plan with Ms. Walker carries through, every attack will have been worth it. The potential benefits outweigh the obstacles.”
“If it works,” said Kessler, throwing a sharp glance at Kira, “and if the Voice don’t launch a consummate attack before we’re done. That’s a lot of ifs.”
They’re talking about my work as if they’re the ones doing it, thought Kira. Her first impulse was to protest, but she held back. No. If they think we’re working on this together, that means they’re invested in the outcome. They’re supporting the project. It doesn’t matter who gets the credit as long as somebody finds a cure.
“A lot of ifs,” Hobb continued, “and all it takes is one of them to go wrong and suddenly we’re traitors and war criminals. Weist is right about the riot: If word gets out that we’ve got a Partial in custody, no one’s going to wait for an explanation. They’re going to smash everything in sight until they find it, and then they’re going to destroy the Partial, too.”
“Then we have to move it,” said Skousen. “The attack on the town hall was highly destructive; if they do the same at the hospital, it puts too much at risk—the patients, the facilities, even the structure itself.”
“But we can’t move him,” Kira insisted. “The Nassau hospital is the only facility on the island with the resources we need for the study. Nowhere else even has the equipment.”
“The best scenario is to say nothing at all,” said Mkele. “Senator Weist’s initial reaction was correct, according to my simulations: If word gets out that we’re hiding a Partial in the middle of East Meadow, the public outcry will be passionate and violent. People will riot, or defect to the Voice en masse. I recommend we double the police patrols and triple the guard at the Senate.”
“Why complicate things?” asked Kessler. “We should just execute the thing and be done with it.”
“There’s still a lot we can learn—” said Kira, but froze when Kessler shot her a furious glance. What is that woman’s problem?
“I agree,” said Mkele. “What we need to decide is whether or not the things we stand to learn warrant the risk of this secret getting out. Ms. Walker, can you give us a report of your progress?”
Kira glanced at him, then back at the panel of senators. “We finish the five days,” she said quickly.
“We want a report,” said Delarosa, “not an opinion.”
“The tests have already revealed priceless medical data,” said Kira. “Even the first blood test alone told us more about Partial physiology than we’ve ever known before. He has an advanced platelet system—”
“It,” said Dr. Skousen.
Kira frowned. “I’m sorry?”
“‘It’ has an advanced platelet system,” said Skousen. “You are talking about a machine, Kira, not a person.”
Kira scanned the room, seeing the senators’ eyes filled with a mixture of distrust and anger, all aimed at her because she was speaking on behalf of their enemy. She couldn’t afford that attitude, not while they were deciding how quickly to kill him. When had she started calling it “him” anyway? She nodded obediently and looked at the floor, trying to appear as unthreatening as possible. “Sorry, just a slip of the tongue. It has an advanced platelet system that allows it to heal cuts and other wounds at an exponential rate—several times faster than a healthy human.”
Weist shifted in his seat. “And you think its . . . advanced healing abilities might hold the secret to curing RM?”
“Possibly,” said Kira, though in her mind it seemed unlikely; she had to make this sound as positive as possible. “Even more likely is something I found this morning.” She was exaggerating this part as well, but she needed to buy more time. “The Partial’s breath contains traces of neutralized RM.”
The senators made a chorus of surprised noises; Hobb even smiled. Kira could tell they were happy, and plunged ahead. “I was analyzing the Partial’s breath to see if I could find evidence of the airborne virus, what I’ve labeled the Spore, but instead I found an inert, nonviral form of the blood-borne virus. It literally looks exactly like someone took an RM sample and stripped all the functional viral portions of it away—it can’t reproduce, it can’t spread, it can’t do anything. It’s the surest evidence we’ve seen so far that Partial biology holds some promise of helping us combat RM.”
“I’m impressed,” said Delarosa, nodding. She glanced at Skousen. “Were you aware of this?”
“She found it this morning,” said Skousen. “I haven’t had time to review her records yet.” The old doctor turned heavily toward Kira. “Are you certain this is a neutralized RM, and not an RM waiting to be activated?”
I knew he’d call me on that. “I’m still researching it.”
“It seems premature to