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.”
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 alternatives 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
