prick into her neck. The effect was almost instant: Her eyes grew heavy, her mind seemed to warp and bend. The world grew dark and thick, and Kira had time for one last thought before she fell unconscious.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Kira was heavy — before she perceived anything else, she could feel her own weight, her body too weak for her muscles to move. She was lying down.
There was a noise, rhythmic and soft, somewhere near her head. Near? Yes, she was sure of it. Wherever she was, the noise was nearby. She tried to roll her head, but her neck wouldn’t turn; tried to open her eyes, but her lids were too leaden to move.
There was another noise, a white-noise buzz in the background of her perception. She focused on it, tried to parse it, to understand it. Voices. A low murmur.
“… the subject…”
“… burn mark…”
“… tests positive…”
They were talking about her. Where was she?
She was in a hospital. She remembered being under the bridge, Samm betraying her, the girl, Heron, injecting her with something. Was she being healed? Or studied?
“… all normal except…”
“… ready to proceed…”
“… preparing first incision…”
Kira moved her hand, a herculean effort, dragging ten tons of flesh and bone across three inches of table. The voices stopped. Her hand hit a barrier, a leather restraint; she could feel one on her other hand as well. She was tied down.
“She moved. Didn’t you sedate her?”
Kira opened one eye, then squinted it shut again at the brutal shock of bright lights. She heard a rustle and a sharp metal crash.
“Get those out of her face, she’s waking up.” Samm’s voice. She opened her mouth, suddenly aware of a plastic tube stretching past her tongue and down her throat. She gagged, coughing, trying not to retch, and the tube slid out like a long, slick snake. She coughed again, swallowed, cracked one eye the tiniest fraction.
Samm was standing over her.
“You,” she coughed, “bloody bastard.”
“We have to begin,” said a voice.
“Stop,” said Samm. “She’s awake!”
“Then we sedate her again. With a bigger dose this time.”
“You bloody”—she coughed again—“bastard.”
She could see better now, her eyes adjusting to the light. She was surrounded by women in hospital robes and surgical masks. She was in some kind of operating room, but it wasn’t like any operating room she’d ever seen. Metal arms hung from the ceiling like the limbs of a giant insect, scalpels and syringes and a dozen other instruments poised mere inches from Kira’s face. The walls were glowing with a muted, multicolored light — computer screens, the walls were computer screens, alive with graphs and charts and scrolling numbers. She saw her heartbeat, the thin line spiking in perfect unison with the pounding in her chest; she saw her temperature, her blood oxygen level, her height and weight in precise thousandths of a measurement. She turned her head again and saw her own face, scrubbed and topped with a plastic hat, her body stripped and bare, strapped down to the flat metal table. Her eyes were wide with terror. She gasped and the image gasped with her, the wall-size face twisting into a rictus of fear, a live camera feed of her dying moments filling the room like a horror show. She panicked; her breathing accelerated; her heart pumped; the graphs scrawled mad, thumping lines three feet high across the walls.
“I’m sorry,” said Samm. “I tried to tell them you came willingly—”
“You were not asked to bring a volunteer,” said a stern voice. A woman stepped forward. Her blue mask hid her face, but her eyes were the color of polished gunmetal, cold and unfeeling. “You have succeeded where your entire squadron failed. Do not risk your commendation now by interfering.”
Samm turned back to Kira. “They’ve asked me to be here, to talk to you, so you’d have someone you trusted—”
“I don’t trust you!” she shouted. Her voice echoed through the operating room, raw and ragged. “I helped you! I rescued you! I believed everything you said! Every word about surviving together or not surviving at all — and it was all a lie?”
“I was telling the truth,” said Samm. “When we reached the mainland, I was trying to keep you away from them until I could explain things — that you’d come to try to help us.”
“Then let me go!” Kira sobbed. The face on the wall sobbed with her, a mockery of her despair. She moved her legs, struggling against the restraints; she pulled on her arms, vainly trying to cover her chest and groin. She felt exposed and vulnerable and helpless. “Get me out of here.”
“I…” Samm’s face went rigid again, the same concentration he’d shown before — she could almost see his body seize up as the link took hold, forcing him to obey his superior officers. “I can’t.” He let out a breath, the tension gone, his muscles relaxing. “I can’t,” he repeated. “I obey my orders.” His expression darkened.
“Very good,” said the woman. She stepped forward, and one of the metal arms swung around with her, shining a light in Kira’s face, blinding her again. “Samm says you came willingly?”
“I did,” said Kira. “I came to help you.”
“And you think your dark-age technology is of any value to us? You barely understand how your own genetics work, let alone ours.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore, it was all lies.”
“Some of it was,” the woman agreed, “some of it was not. I am surprised Samm told you about our plight, our ‘expiration date,’ but that much, at least, was true. That’s why you’re here.”
“I’m a medic,” said Kira. “I’ve focused my studies on pathology and reproduction, trying to find a cure for RM. I can use that knowledge to help you.”
“Your human studies are worthless,” said the woman. “I assure you our needs lie in a completely different area.”
“I’ve studied Samm, too,” said Kira, “not like this—” She paused suddenly, thinking how much of Samm’s experience
The woman smirked. “Humane? Even the word is an insult.”
“You have a genetic deficiency that we don’t,” said Kira. “You’re immune to RM and our babies are not.” She pleaded with the woman. “We need each other.”
“The last time Partials and humans tried to work together, it didn’t work out so well,” said the woman. “I think we’ll take our chances on our own.”
Another metal arm swung into place, a bright hypodermic needle gleaming at its tip. Kira started to protest, but the needle darted forward like the tail of a scorpion.
