“I came to say good-bye,” said Delarosa. “I don’t want to kill you, but we can’t transport you effectively without attracting too much attention. I’m leaving tonight, and I’m leaving Yoon Bak in charge of this outpost, with explicit orders that you not be harmed.”
“Tell this guy, too,” said Marcus, nodding at the guard. “You heard her, right? No harm.”
Vinci studied her. “Why are you leaving me alive if you’re just going to murder my entire species?”
“Because it’s not about murder,” said Delarosa, “it’s about necessity.”
“That doesn’t make it not murder,” said Marcus.
“Why, Marcus,” said Delarosa coldly. “I thought all you did was tell jokes.”
She turned and left, and Yoon stared fiercely at the guard with the rifle until he grudgingly sat down.
“You’re alive,” said Yoon, “but you’re still considered enemy combatants. We’ll keep you in here, under guard.”
“Until we die of old age?” asked Woolf.
“Until you’re not a threat,” said Yoon. “Or until it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“You can’t agree with this insane plan,” said Marcus. “You don’t want this nuke to go off any more than we do.”
“There’s a lot of things I don’t want,” said Yoon. “Sometimes we have to accept them to get the things we do.”
Marcus pleaded with her. “If getting what you want means killing a ton of people, is that really worth it?”
“I don’t know,” said Yoon. She glanced at Vinci. “Is it?”
“I’m not ashamed of what we did,” said Vinci. “But eradicating your species was never part of our plan.”
“You Partials keep saying that,” said Yoon, turning to look right at him. “Considering where we are now, do you think maybe it should have been?”
Vinci was silent. Yoon stood and left the room.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ariel planted herself in front of Nandita, refusing to budge an inch. “Tell us what that was.”
“I told you,” said Nandita, “I don’t know.”
“It knew you.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life,” said Nandita. “Not here, not before, not anywhere.”
“Something like that would have to have come from ParaGen,” said Kessler. “You made all kinds of genetic freaks before the Break—Watchdogs and dragons and who knows what else. And you’ve told us that all you people in the Trust gene-modded yourself to hell. Longer life, sharper brainpower, increased physical abilities. That twisted abomination sure looks like your handiwork to me.”
Ariel considered Xochi and Kessler, who were usually fighting tooth and nail but at the moment were completely unified. They even stood alike, expressing their anger with the same fierce gestures and posture. They did everything they could to be different, yet here they were.
“I assure you,” said Nandita, “if I’d worked on a project like that, or even seen one, I’d remember it.”
“You told us before that some of the Trust didn’t trust the others,” said Isolde. “You worked on projects without telling each other. What if it’s something like that?”
“Some kind of proto-Partial?” asked Nandita. “A model one of the others miraculously kept secret for thirty-odd years? Impossible.”
“Then somebody else,” said Madison. “Another genetics company, making their own version of the same technology?”
“Then it wouldn’t know Nandita,” said Ariel. “This did, which means it came from ParaGen, which means she knows something she’s not telling us.”
Nandita sighed, looking behind them. “If I talk while we walk, can we at least keep moving? We’re too exposed here.”
“We have to cut south now,” said Kessler. “We’re coming into Commack, and we had two old farms in this region. We have to assume the Partials have a presence here, even if it’s just a few scouts.”
“That means crossing the Long Island Expressway,” said Xochi, looking at her map. “If you don’t like how exposed we are now, that’s really going to get you.”
“If we have to, we have to,” said Ariel, jogging to catch up with Nandita. “Now talk.”
“That creature was almost definitely ParaGen,” said Nandita. “But I don’t recognize it, and I truly don’t know who had the skill to make anything like it. Furthermore, the fact that I don’t recognize it almost guarantees that it was created after the Break.”
“Who has that kind of technology?” asked Ariel.
“I didn’t think anyone did,” said Nandita, “but finding the facility at Plum Island has forced me to reevaluate. If that lab could continue, there may be other labs as well, remnants of the old green movement, designed to run entirely on self-sustaining power. The obvious first guess is the ParaGen facility itself.”
