chapter FORTY-SEVEN
“I apologize for my absence,” said Nandita. “I was trying to save the world.” She stood in the living room of her old house—the one Ariel had run away from so many years ago, and swore she’d never come back to.
Ariel clenched her fists and snapped back. “You lied to us before,” she said. “What makes you think we’ll believe you now?”
“Because you’re adults now,” said Nandita, “or close enough. Children need to be protected from the truth, but teenage girls need to face it.”
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.”