told you,” said Senator Kessler, “the same canned message every time.” She looked Kira over. “You sound exactly like Xochi, like the Voice, spouting this groundless, incendiary tripe.”
Kira struggled for words, but they caught in her throat.
“Your job is the future,” said Mkele softly. “Ours is the present. I told you before: If our goals ever conflict, ours takes priority. An organized Voice attack on East Meadow is imminent and there are only so many battles we can fight at one time. Before we do anything else, the Partial must be destroyed.”
Kira glanced at Samm. As always, he was expressionless, but she could tell that he knew this was coming. She turned back to the senators. “Just like that? Not even a trial or a hearing or—”
“The hearing was four days ago,” said Weist. “You were there, and you heard the decision.”
“You gave us five days of research,” said Kira. “We’ve only had three.”
“The laboratory is destroyed,” said Skousen, “along with most of your work. You’re in no condition to continue, and there’s not enough data left for anyone else to finish what you started. Not in time.”
“Then move us to another laboratory,” said Kira. “Surely somewhere we have the equipment—all we need is the time. The five days was an arbitrary timeline in the first place.”
“And risk further attacks?” asked Delarosa. “Absolutely not.”
Hobb leaned forward. “The plan we’re considering will still allow for—”
“Then let him go free,” said Kira suddenly. She swallowed, nervous, watching as their eyes grew dark and narrow. She plunged forward before they could protest. “He’s done nothing to hurt us, he’s even helped with the research. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t let him live.”
“Is this a joke?” hissed Kessler.
“It serves your purpose,” said Kira. “You want him gone: He’ll be gone. If nothing else, it will help alleviate the possibility of a Partial retaliation.”
Skousen and Kessler scowled, and Weist shook his head. “Do you honestly think that will do any good?”
“Of course she does,” said Mkele. “She’s an idealist.”
“She’s a plague baby,” said Kessler. “She’s developed an attachment to this thing, but she has no idea what the Partials are really like.”
“And you do?” asked Kira. She tried to stand, gasped at the shock of pain, then rested back and turned in her chair. “You fought them eleven years ago—eleven years. Is it impossible to consider that something may have changed?”
“You can’t believe anything it tells you,” said Mkele.
“He’s a soldier, not a spy,” said Kira. She turned to look at him; struggling, in this last moment, to decide once and for all if she could trust him. If he had been honest the last few days, or if he was really the monster the senators made him out to be.
He watched her, outwardly calm and yet not quite concealing his nervousness, his determination. His hope. She looked back at the senators and spoke strongly. “Samm has faced captivity and torture by people who want to see his entire race destroyed, and he’s done it without crying, without complaining, without begging, without anything but strength and determination. If the other Partials are half as understanding as he is, we might just stand a chance—”
“I’m on a mission of peace,” said Samm. His voice was firm and confident; Kira turned to him, tears forming again in her eyes as he stepped forward to the full reach of his manacles. The senators were silent. “My squad was in Manhattan because we were coming here, to talk to you. We came to offer a truce.”
“Lies,” snarled Kessler.
“It’s the truth,” said Samm. “We need your help.”
But why? thought Kira. We can’t trust you if you don’t tell us why.
He looked at Kira for a moment, fixing her with his eyes, then turned to the senators and drew himself up, standing as tall and proud as he could. “We’re dying.”
Kira’s eyes went wide; the entire room was shocked into silence.
“Like you, we can’t reproduce, though ours is an engineered sterility built into our DNA—a fail-safe to keep us from getting out of hand. That never bothered us before because we don’t age, either, so there was never any danger of us disappearing. But apparently there’s a fail-safe for that, too.”
Dr. Skousen regained his voice first. “You’re . . . dying? All of you?”
“We discovered ParaGen designed us with an expiration date,” said Samm. “At twenty years, the process that halts our aging reverses, and we shrivel and die within weeks, sometimes days. It’s not accelerated aging. It’s decay. We rot alive.”
Kira’s mind reeled. This was the great secret he’d never dared tell—that the Partials had a ticking clock, just like the humans did. That’s why they wanted a truce. She was too shocked to move, but looked at the senators, trying to guess what they were thinking. Kessler was smiling, but Hobb and Weist were staring at Samm with shocked eyes and open mouths. Delarosa looked like she was trying not to cry, though Kira couldn’t tell if they were tears of joy or sorrow. Weist was mumbling under his breath, his mouth moving almost as if he didn’t realize it. Mkele was stone faced and silent.
“They’re dying,” said Kessler, and Kira nearly recoiled from the vicious glee in the woman’s voice. “Do you realize what this means? The first Partials were created in the third year of the Isolation War, which was . . . ten years before the Partial War. Twenty-one years ago. The first wave of them would have started dying last winter, and the youngest have what, two years left? Three at the most? And then they’ll be gone forever.”
“Everyone will be gone forever,” said Samm, and Kira felt more emotion in his voice, more earnestness, than she’d ever felt before. “Both of our species are going extinct—every sapient life form on the planet is going to die.”
“Our shelf life is longer than yours,” said Delarosa. “I think we’ll take our chances on our own.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” said Kira, finally finding her voice. “Without them there is no cure.” She looked at Samm, finally understanding his pleas. “We have to work together.”
Samm nodded. “You can have babies, but they die of RM; we’re completely immune, but we can’t reproduce. Don’t you see? We need each other. Neither species can beat this alone.”
“Think what this will do for morale,” said Hobb. “Once the people hear this, they’ll . . . they’ll declare it a holiday. A new Rebuilding Day.”
“What is wrong with you people?” Kira demanded, struggling to stand before collapsing heavily back into her chair. “He thought you’d kill him when you heard his secret, but it’s worse.”
“We were always going to destroy it,” said Mkele. “That was never in question.”
“What
