Partials

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The needle pierced Kira’s chest, a sharp sting almost instantly dulled by the slow, spreading numbness of a topical anesthetic.

“You can’t put me under again,” Kira insisted, trying to sound stronger than she felt. The steel-eyed doctor shook her head.

“We’re not putting you under, girl, we’re prepping you for this.” She held up a syringe in her white-gloved hand, much bigger than the other, with a thick needle nearly four inches long. Kira shuddered at the sight of it, inching away as far as she could in her restraints. “Don’t worry,” said the doctor, though her voice carried no hint of compassion. “That anesthetic is excellent; you won’t feel a thing. It’s important that you be awake for this test so we can observe your responses — we were going to wait, and perform a different experiment first, but since you’ve woken up early, we may as well get started.” The doctor turned away, and another arm of the spiderlike medical robot swung down and pricked Kira’s thigh, drawing a vial of blood into a clear glass syringe.

Kira’s heart was racing. “What was that?”

The doctor spoke idly over her shoulder as she studied one of the wall screens. “Since you’ve proven somewhat resistant to our sedatives, we’re going to analyze your blood and mix one custom. We need you awake for now, but it wouldn’t be good for anyone if you wake up during the next test.”

Kira fought against her tears, irrationally determined not to let these monsters see her cry. I am stronger than my trials. She saw movement from the corner of her eye and cringed as a sudden fluid shape blotted out the light. She bit back a scream, but the shadow moved past her face and settled over her body; it was Samm, spreading a blanket to cover her.

“We need her chest exposed for the injection,” the doctor snapped.

“Then you can move it,” said Samm. “If she’s going to be awake, at least give her some dignity.”

The doctor paused, studying Samm with narrowed eyes, then nodded. “Fine.”

Samm leaned in close to Kira’s face. “I tried the captain on a radio, but Dr. Morgan is outside the command structure — she’s on special assignment from the Trust. She’ll be hard to stop.”

“Go to hell,” said Kira.

Samm looked down, no longer meeting her eyes, and walked away silently.

Kira could hear the other doctors discussing in low tones, manipulating one of the wall panels with their fingertips.

“… other subjects … pheromone… RM.…”

Kira’s ears snapped to attention, all her energy focused on trying to hear exactly what the doctors were saying. She couldn’t see past them to the image they were looking at, but as she concentrated, their words became clearer.

“… so we’ll inject her, and see how she reacts. We’re looking for the time it takes the particle to be absorbed, the range and coverage it achieves, and any hint of necrotic activity.”

It’s their last-minute prep, thought Kira.

But what are they going to inject me with?

Dr. Morgan hefted the big syringe and turned toward Kira; the others moved with her, spreading out around the table. The medical spider spun into place, grippers and pincers and lights and scalpels all hovering above her like a spiky metal nightmare. As the doctors left the wall panel, Kira saw the images they’d been looking at — recognized them immediately from her own study of Samm: a magnified picture of the Predator, the stage of RM that appeared in the newborn’s blood, and beside it the Lurker, the one she’d found in Samm that shared so much of the Predator’s structure.

Dr. Morgan pulled back the sheet, exposing the top of Kira’s chest. “We have reason to believe that this is going to make you very sick, very quickly.” She held the syringe over Kira’s heart. “We’ll be monitoring your vital signs, of course, but we need you to tell us anything else you may experience: pain in your joints, shortness of breath, loss of vision or hearing. Sensory details our instruments can’t detect or interpret.”

“You’re injecting me with the Lurker,” said Kira, already feeling her body starting to panic, and struggling to keep her breathing even and calm. “The particle you produce, the inert version of RM. What are you expecting it to do?”

“A version of RM? I told you your knowledge was useless to us.” She plunged the needle into Kira’s chest — she could feel it sliding in, pain and pressure and a horrifying sense of invasion. The anesthetic isn’t working! Dr. Morgan pressed down on the plunger, and Kira gasped at the sudden flood of fire in her chest, pumping directly to her heart and from there to the rest of her body, filling her in seconds. Her breath caught; her hands grasped involuntarily at the edge of the table, scrabbling for anything solid to hold on to. The injection seemed to take ages, and when Dr. Morgan finally pulled out the needle, Kira whimpered, imagining she could still feel the fluid as it coursed through her.

“No reaction yet,” said a masked doctor, her eyes fixed firmly on the wall. Another shined a light in Kira’s eyes, checking her dilation with one hand and her pulse with the other.

“Everything normal.”

“We’re not sure how quickly this works,” said Dr. Morgan, watching Kira closely. “We haven’t experimented on humans since just after the Partial War.”

Kira breathed deeply, summoning her control after the violation of the injection. The particle still rotated slowly on one of the screens. Am I going to die? She said the Lurker’s not a new version of RM — then what is it? And what are they expecting to see?

She remembered one of their snatches of overheard whispering and looked back at the images on the wall: the virus and the Lurker, so similar and yet so unlike a virus. It had always confused her, dealing only with her own incomplete information, but here with the Partials she knew more. She had heard them talking about it.

“You called it a pheromone,” said Kira.

Dr. Morgan paused suddenly, looking at Kira quizzically. She followed Kira’s eyes to the images on the wall, then looked back at Kira. “You know this particle?”

“We thought it was a new stage of RM, because it looked so much like the other, but you called it a pheromone. That’s why Samm was producing it — it’s part of your link data.”

Dr. Morgan glanced to the side of the room, beyond Kira’s field of vision, and Kira could tell from her eyes that she was frowning. She looked back at Kira. “Your knowledge is more extensive than I expected. I confess that when you — a human, of all things — told me you were a medic, I didn’t really take you seriously.”

Kira fought down a wave of nausea, still reeling from the pain of the injection. She composed herself again and looked at Dr. Morgan. “What does it do?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“Is it part of the link?” asked Kira. “Is the whole RM virus just a side effect of your abilities?”

“Over the past twelve years I’ve catalogued every pheromone the Partials produce,” said Dr. Morgan. “I’ve isolated every particle, I’ve tracked them back to the organ that produces them and the stimulus that triggers their production, and I’ve determined their precise purpose and function. Every one of them.” She nodded at the image on the wall. “Except that one.”

Kira shook her head. “Why would you have a pheromone with no purpose? Everything about you was built with a purpose.”

“Oh, there’s a purpose,” said Dr. Morgan. “Everything at ParaGen had a purpose, as you say. One of those purposes was a fixed time of death, and it is our suspicion that this pheromone might somehow be related to it. If we can study certain reactions, we might be able to combat it.” She gestured at the images behind her. “As you can see from the wall screen, the pheromone doesn’t react with other Partials, and it doesn’t react with humans. It reacts with RM.”

Suddenly Kira saw the two images in a new light: not as versions of each other, but as a combination. The Predator didn’t just look like the Partial pheromone, it was the Partial pheromone, with an airborne RM Spore wrapped around it. That was how the Spore became the Predator — not on contact with blood, but on contact with the pheromone. On contact with blood, the Spore turns into the Blob. Kira’s mind filled with the image of the newborn baby’s blood, the bizzarre Predator virus multiplying like mad and yet not causing any damage to the cells. Samm was right there: he’d been breathing the Lurker into the air for days. It got into the sample, attached itself to the Spore, and rendered the virus inert.