The crowd was getting heavier now as they approached the coliseum; they might even fill it, which they hadn’t done in months. Not since the Senate passed the latest amendment to the Hope Act, dropping the pregnancy age to eighteen. Kira felt a sudden knot in her stomach and grimaced. “What do you think the ‘emergency meeting’ is about?”
“Knowing the Senate, something boring. We’ll get a seat by the door so we can slip out if Kessler goes off on another tirade.”
“You don’t think it’ll be important?” asked Kira.
“It will at least be self-important,” said Marcus. “You can always rely on the Senate for that.” He smiled at her, saw how serious she was, and frowned. “If I had to guess, I’d say they’re going to talk about the Voice. The word in the lab this morning was that they attacked another farm this week.”
Kira looked at the sidewalk, studiously avoiding his eyes. “You don’t think they’re going to lower the pregnancy age again?”
“So soon?” asked Marcus. “It hasn’t even been nine months yet — I don’t think they’d drop it again before the eighteen-year-olds even come to term.”
“They would,” Kira said, still looking down. “They would, because the Hope Act is the only way they know how to deal with the problem. They think if we have enough babies, one of them’s bound to be resistant, but it isn’t working, and it hasn’t worked for eleven years, and getting a bunch of teenagers pregnant is not going to change that.” She let go of Marcus’s hand. “It’s the same thing in the hospital: They take care of the moms, they keep everything sterile, they record all the data, and the infants are still dying. We know exactly how they’re dying — we know so much about how they’re dying it makes me sick just to think about it — but we know absolutely nothing about how to save them. We get a bunch of new girls pregnant, and all we’re going to have are more dead babies and more notebooks full of the same exact statistics for how those babies died.” She felt her face grow hot, tears coming behind her eyes. Some of the other people were looking at her as they passed on the road; many of the women were pregnant, and Kira was certain some of them had heard her. She swallowed and hugged herself tightly, angry and embarrassed.
Marcus stepped closer and put his arm around her shoulder. “You’re right,” he whispered. “You’re absolutely right.”
She leaned into him. “Thank you.”
Someone shouted through the crowd. “Kira!”
Kira looked up, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Madison was weaving through the press of people, waving excitedly. Kira couldn’t help but smile. Madison was a couple years older, but they’d grown up together, practically sisters in the makeshift family they’d formed after the Break. She raised one hand and waved back.
“Mads!”
Madison reached them and hugged Kira excitedly. Her new husband, Haru, followed a few steps behind. Kira didn’t know him well; he’d been in the Defense Grid when he and Madison met, and only transferred into civilian duty when they’d gotten married a few months ago. He shook her hand and nodded solemnly to Marcus. Kira wondered again how Madison could fall for someone so serious, but she supposed everyone was serious compared to Marcus.
“It’s good to see you,” said Haru.
“You can see me?” asked Marcus, patting himself in sudden shock. “The potion must have worn off! That’s the last time I give my lunch to a talking squirrel.”
Madison laughed, and Haru raised his eyebrow, confused. Kira watched him, waiting, until his lack of humor was so funny she couldn’t help herself and burst into laughter as well.
“How are you guys doing?” asked Madison.
“Surviving,” said Kira. “Barely.”
Madison grimaced. “Rough night in maternity?”
“Ariel had her baby.”
Madison went pale, and her eyes drooped in genuine sadness. Kira could see how much it hurt her, now that she was almost eighteen. Madison wasn’t pregnant yet, but it was only a matter of time. “I’m so sorry. I’ll follow you back after the meeting to say hi to her, and see if there’s anything I can do.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Kira, “but you’ll have to do it without me — we have a salvage run today.”
“But you were up all night!” Madison protested. “They can’t make you do a salvage run.”
“I’ll grab a nap before leaving,” said Kira, “but I need to go — I’ve been falling apart at work, and I could use the change of pace. Plus I need to prove to Skousen that I can handle it. If the Defense Grid wants a medic on their salvage run, I’ll be the best damn medic they’ve ever seen.”
“They’re lucky to have you,” said Madison, hugging her again. “Is Jayden going?”
Kira nodded. “He’s the sergeant in charge.”
Madison smiled. “Give him a hug for me.” Jayden and Madison were siblings — not adopted siblings, actual birth siblings, the only direct genetic relatives left in the world. They were proof, some said, that RM immunity could be inherited, which only made it more frustrating that so far none of the newborns had done it. More likely, Kira thought, Madison and Jayden were an anomaly that might never be repeated.
Jayden was also, as Kira often informed Madison, one of the more attractive human beings left on the planet. Kira glanced impishly at Marcus. “Just a hug? I could pass along a kiss or two.”
Marcus looked awkwardly at Haru. “So. Any idea what the meeting’s gonna be about?”
Kira and Madison laughed, and Kira sighed happily. Madison always made her feel better.
“They’re closing the school,” said Haru. “The youngest kids on the island are turning fourteen, and there are practically more teachers now than students. I’m guessing they’re going to graduate everyone into trade programs early, and send the teachers somewhere they can be more useful.”
“You think?” asked Kira.
Haru shrugged. “It’s what I’d do.”
“They’re probably going to yak about the Partials again,” said Madison. “The Senate can never shut up about those things.”
“Can you blame them?” asked Haru. “They killed everyone on Earth.”
“Present company excepted,” said Marcus.
“I’m not saying they
“We’ll find out soon enough, I guess,” said Kira, nodding toward the north; the coliseum was just visible beyond the trees. The Senate had its own building, of course, in an actual town hall, but “town hall” meetings like this one, where the entire city was asked to attend, were held in the coliseum. They rarely filled it, but the adults said it used to fill up all the time, back in the old days when they’d used it for sports. Before the Break.
Kira had only been five years old in the Break; most things about the old world she couldn’t even remember, and she didn’t trust half the things she could. She remembered her father, his dark face and his messy black hair and his thick-framed glasses pushed up on the bridge of his nose. They had lived in a split-level house — she was fairly certain it was yellow — and when she turned three she had a birthday party. She didn’t have any friends her age, so there were no little kids, but most of her father’s friends were there. She remembered she’d had a big toy box full of stuffed animals, and she’d wanted to show it to everyone, so she’d puffed and strained and pushed it down the hall; it seemed like a half an hour or more in her mind, but she knew it couldn’t have been that long in real life. When she’d finally reached the living room and shouted for everyone to look, her father had laughed and chided her and taken the whole thing back to her bedroom. All her effort, gone in seconds. The memory didn’t bother her; she never thought of her father as mean or unjust. It was simply a memory, one of the few she had of her life in the old world.
The crowd was heavy now, pressing together as they passed through the trees around the coliseum. Kira held tight to Marcus with one hand and Madison with the other, Haru trailing off the back like the end of a human chain. They wove a path through the mass of people and found a row of empty seats — near a door, like Marcus wanted. Kira knew he was right: If Senator Kessler got off on another rant, or if Senator Lefou got talking about shipping schedules or whatever boring thing he was on about this month, they’d need an easy way to slip out. Mandatory attendance was one thing, but once the important stuff was over, they wouldn’t be the only ones leaving
