“It’s not that simple!” Kira shouted. “Take away those Partials and these children will die. This community will disintegrate. I don’t want this to be about numbers, but in this case it is: ten people for two thousand, for ten thousand or twenty thousand as the community grows. If they were humans in that lab who were keeping alive a hospital filled with Partial children, I’d be saying the same thing.”
“Then why not treat them like humans?” Samm said. “For all you know, the Partials would stay willingly. Did he even ask them? Did he even explain the situation? We’re not heartless monsters, Kira, and we don’t deserve to be treated like it.”
“Would you stay?” she asked, turning it back on him. “Give up everything you have, every hope and ambition, to become a . . . milk cow? You’d stay here and do nothing and let them harvest your pheromones? At least you’d have Calix to keep you company.”
“Kira, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How about this?” she asked, too angry to stop the tirade. “The Partial who produces the sedative; his name is Williams. He’s a living weapon who cannot, by definition, coexist with any other Partials. Vale altered his DNA, and he can’t alter him back because the equipment broke. The only way to really free them is to—” She stopped suddenly, realizing that she wasn’t just talking about Williams anymore. She was talking about herself. The living weapon that threatened every other Partial merely by existing. “The only way they can be free,” she said softly, “is for him to die.” Her voice choked up, and she forced herself to ask the final question. “What do you do with him?” Please don’t say you’d kill him, she thought. Please don’t say you’d kill me.
“I think . . .” He stopped, and Kira could tell he was thinking deeply. “I hadn’t thought of that yet,” he said. “It’s not simple, but it’s . . .”
Please let him say no, she thought.
“I guess that sometimes one person has to suffer so everyone else can be free,” he said, and Kira’s face went pale.
“So you would kill him?”
“I’m not happy about it,” said Samm, “but what’s the alternative? Sacrificing a whole community for one person? You have to do what’s best for the group, or all you have are tyrants.”
“So you’d sacrifice one guy for the other nine,” said Kira, “but you won’t sacrifice ten guys to save a few thousand. That’s a weird inconsistency, don’t you think? This town full of humans isn’t one of those groups you have to do what’s best for?”
“What I’m saying is that we can’t use people,” said Samm, “because people aren’t things. Though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since that’s exactly the way we treated Afa.”
“Excuse me?” asked Kira. “I’m the one who defended him—I’m the one who stood up for him the entire time, who did everything I could to keep him healthy, to be nice to him—”
“We dragged him into a situation he had no business in,” said Samm, “because we needed him. We used him for our own ends, and I’m not saying you did it—we all did it, we all brought him along. But we were wrong to do it, and now he’s dead, and we have to learn our lesson from that.”
“And our lesson is to let more people die?” she asked. “I know that Afa’s death was our fault, and mine more than anybody’s, and I don’t want that on my conscience, but no matter how much I couldn’t save him, I can save the next generation of human children. I’m not happy about it, and Vale’s not happy about it, but these are impossible choices. Everything we pick is going to be horribly, tragically wrong for somebody, somewhere, but what’s our alternative? Don’t pick? Sit back and let everyone die? That’s the worst choice of all.”
Samm’s voice was softer now, no longer aggressive but simple and sad. “I don’t believe in impossible choices.”
“Then what’s the answer?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said, “but I know it’s out there. And we have to find it.”
Kira realized she was crying, and wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. She was still holding a ripped strip of the suit jacket, and waved it feebly. “Give me your arm,” she said. “I still need to wrap it.”
“Do it nice and slow,” said Calix, and Kira and Samm jerked up, whirling around to find the blond girl standing behind them with a drawn pistol. Her rifle was slung over her back. “Thanks for having such a heated discussion,” she said. “It made it much easier to find you.”
“I’m out of bullets,” said Kira, shooting a glance at her discarded gun and backpack on the far side of the office room.
“I have one,” said Samm, “but I’m pretty sure she could shoot us both before I can get to it.”
“That’s the truest thing you’ve ever said,” said Calix. “How about you pull that gun out nice and slow and kick it over to me.” Samm grabbed his pistol with two loose fingers, nowhere near the trigger, and dropped it on the floor. “That’s right,” said Calix, “over to me.” He kicked it, awkwardly from his slumped position, and she bent down to retrieve it, keeping her semiautomatic trained on them the entire time with her other hand. She made sure Samm’s safety was on, and dropped the gun in a satchel by her waist. “Now, let’s answer a few questions before I take you back to the Preserve. First”—and here her voice wavered slightly—“are you really Partials?”
“We are,” said Kira, “but that doesn’t make us enemies.”
“Dr. Vale said you were trying to take away our RM cure.”
“That’s . . .” Kira looked at Samm, then back at Calix. “We don’t want anyone to die.”
“But you’re talking about shutting down his lab.”
“Do you know what the cure is?” asked Samm.
“It’s an injection,” said Calix.
“But do you know how he makes it?”
Calix’s confusion faded, and her face grew grim and determined again. “Why does this matter?”
“The cure comes from Partials,” said Kira. “He has ten of them in a basement lab, where they’ve been living in induced comas for twelve years.”
“That’s not true,” said Calix.
“I’ve seen them,” said Kira.
“You’re lying.”
“Dr. Vale created the Partials,” said Samm. “There’s a lot about him you don’t know.”
“Stand up,” said Calix. “I’ll take you back, and we’ll talk to Dr. Vale, and he can show everyone exactly how wrong you are.”
“That’s going to be a lot more eye-opening than you think,” said Kira, rising to her feet, when suddenly a gunshot blasted through the building and she dropped to the floor, covering her head. Did she shoot me? Samm? She heard another shot, and a cry of pain, and Calix slumped to the floor. Kira looked up in surprise, then glanced at Samm; he seemed just as confused as she did. Calix was rolling on the floor, clutching her chest in a growing pool of blood. Kira cried out and ran to her. “Calix!”
Calix groaned through clenched teeth, a snarl of pain and anger. “What did you do?”