Marcus stood up and disappeared behind the frame of the window, and then the front door opened. Kira was running up the porch steps before she even knew what was happening, and when Marcus appeared in the doorway, she threw her arms around him, sinking her face into his chest. He caught her tightly, holding her close, and she closed her eyes and soaked him in: his strength, his smell, his presence, as recognizable to her as her own. He’d been a part of her life for as long as she could remember; he was more real than anything in the old world. That was the life she’d been born in, but this—East Meadow, Marcus, even RM—was the life she lived. She held him close, raising her face and finding his. Their lips met in a long, fierce, desperate kiss.
“I’m sorry I didn’t go with you,” Marcus whispered. “I regretted it every day you were gone.”
“You could have died,” said Kira, shaking her head and then kissing him again.
“But I should have been with you,” he said, his voice hard. “I should have been there to protect you. I love you, Kira.”
“I love you too,” she said softly, but a voice in the back of her head said, You didn’t need to be protected.
She ignored the voice, shoving it away. Right now, all she wanted in the entire world was to be in his arms.
“You got one, didn’t you?”
Kira paused, not wanting to talk or even think about the Partial, then nodded. “Yeah.”
“The rumors are going around. Everybody knows the Grid brought something back from the west end of the island, but nobody knows what. It wasn’t hard for me to put two and two together.”
Kira felt a wave of tension creep back through her body, remembering how tense the city had been before she’d left it. How close the people were to civil war. “You think anyone else has figured it out?”
“I doubt it,” said Marcus. “Bringing a Partial into the middle of East Meadow is not exactly the first thing that’s going to leap into anyone’s mind.”
“Maybe not the first,” said Kira, “but the second, or the fifth, or the twentieth. Someone might figure it out.” She felt suddenly cold, pulling away from Marcus to rub her arms. He put a hand on her back and led her gently inside.
“We have plenty of other things to worry about,” he said, uncharacteristically somber. “There was another Voice attack while you were gone, a big one. They raided the kennels and killed or kidnapped almost every trained dog the Grid had. Now we can’t—”
Kira stopped and grabbed him by the arm, her heart pounding. “The kennels? Isn’t that where Saladin worked?”
“The boy wonder,” Marcus nodded, “the youngest human on the planet. They took him when they took the dogs, and half the people working with him. It was a pretty big blow, psychologically. Without the dogs we can’t track the Voice through the wilderness anymore, but without Saladin . . . it’s like they came in, kicked a puppy, and stole a baby. A lot of people are calling for an all-out war.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Kira. “Obviously it was going to make people mad—it’s almost like they went out of their way to piss us off. It’s certainly not going to win them any new supporters. Maybe they’re trying to start a war?”
“They might be holding him for ransom,” said Marcus. “He’s a pretty big bargaining chip, and they left a note.”
“A note?”
“Well, technically they tagged the kennel with twenty feet of graffiti, but still. The message was clear, the same as it’s always been: ‘Repeal the Hope Act.’”
Kira pushed her way through the plastic tunnel. “Good morning.” She said it without thinking, then paused, wondering why. When had she started to think of it as a person?
The Partial, of course, said nothing. It didn’t even seem to react when it heard her, and Kira wondered if it was asleep. She crept closer, trying to stay as quiet as she could, but the Partial groaned and coughed, rolling his head to the side and spitting.
“What are you—” She froze.
The spit was red with blood.
Kira dropped her files and rushed to his side, gently lifting his head. His face was black with bruises and crusted blood.
“Holy crap, what happened to you?”
He groaned again, slowly blinking his eyes open. “Blood.”
“Yeah,” said Kira, running to the cupboards to look for towels, “I can see you’re bleeding, but why? What happened?”
He didn’t say anything. He tilted his head, popping the joints in his neck, then held up his right arm; it moved about three inches before the restraint jerked it to a stop. He had been given a change of clothes, and Kira pulled back his sleeve to reveal an arm covered with thin lacerations, tender and pink. “They cut me.”
Kira’s mouth dropped open in horror. “Who?” The horror turned to anger almost instantly. “Who was it? The guards? Doctors?”
He nodded slightly, and probed his mouth with his tongue, making sure all the teeth were still in place.
“That’s ridiculous,” said Kira, fuming. She stomped to the microscope, snarled, and stomped back. Everything she’d thought about doing, and rejected for being inhumane, someone else had come in and done. She shot a long, cold glance at one of the cameras, an unblinking eye that stared back without emotion. She wanted to smash it, but took a breath and forced herself to calm down. Getting angry wasn’t going to solve anything. I’m trying to be the good guy here, but . . . is coddling the Partial really “good”? Would I be serving humanity better by testing his limits? She walked to her desk and sat down, still staring straight ahead. I don’t even know what to do.
She hung her head, and while looking down she saw the crumpled rubber glove in the garbage can. The breath test—she still needed to find a way to isolate the Partial’s breath so she could search it for samples of the airborne RM. The Spore. She still hadn’t found a good way to do it. The rubber gloves would work, she was pretty sure, but only if the subject was willing. She glanced at the Partial, grim and silent on the table.
She stood, pulled out another rubber glove, and walked slowly to the table.
“Do you have a name?”
The Partial eyed her carefully, that slow, studying look that made her feel like he was calculating everything about her.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because I’m tired of calling you ‘Partial.’”
He studied her a moment longer, then smiled, slowly and warily. “Samm.”
“Samm,” said Kira. “I have to admit, I was expecting something more unusual.”
“It has two Ms.”
“Why two Ms?”
“Because that’s what it said on my rucksack,” said Samm. “‘Sam M.’ I didn’t realize
