FIC: Five Days, Chapter 3

[shiiki]

Title: Five Days
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Samm, Kira Walker, various others, Gen
Fandom: Partials

Summary: Alone in enemy territory with only five days to live, Samm makes an unexpected ally and reaches some stunning conclusions about the fate of their two species. Alternate PoV of Part II of Partials.

In this chapter
Chapter Title: Ally
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Samm, Kira Walker, Duna Mkele, Dr Skousen
Word Count: 6,456

Chapter Summary: Samm starts to realise that Kira might be the key ... not just to his survival, but the saving of both his and her species.


Day 2

The other humans returned in the night: the white-haired doctor and the grim black man, flanked by several uniformed soldiers. They were midway in a conversation as they entered.

‘-anything useful?’ said the black man.

‘Only a preliminary analysis,’ said the doctor as he started up the computer. ‘Bloodwork was clean of RM. Whatever immunity they have kicks it out of their system entirely.’ He peered at the screen. ‘Some speculation about its accelerated healing, but that’s a long shot.’ The doctor looked speculatively at Samm.

‘So nothing to show for today.’

‘Research is a slow process, Mkele.’

‘The city won’t wait, Skousen. As you well know. The last Voice attack left people up in arms. They’re questioning whether the Hope Act was the right way to deal with RM. And knowing that we’re hiding something is only fuelling the flames.’ The black man-Mkele-surveyed Samm. ‘Research is your way of getting information. My job, distasteful as it may be, is to explore other methods. If we get the answers we need now, we can save ourselves four days of riots waiting to happen.’

The doctor-Skousen-closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, his lips tightened into a thin line and he wheeled out a chest of drawers from under the table. ‘It may be that its cell regeneration was too rapid for your … methods last night to be effective. Torture is moot if the subject doesn’t feel any pain.’

Samm felt a thrill of horror as light glinted off a blade that Skousen extracted from the drawer. Its sharp end gleamed as one of the soldiers took it by the handle.

‘Do what you must,’ said the doctor, and he left the room.

‘Well, Partial,’ said Mkele. ‘We need answers. You’re going to die either way. The only difference is whether you spend your last days in pain.’

Terror gripped Samm as the soldiers equipped themselves and rounded on him. A voice at the back of his head reminded him, however, Actually, the difference is whether you get what you’re looking for and kill me now.

‘What was your mission in Manhattan?’

The tip of a blade pressed threateningly against the skin of his arm. Samm held his tongue despite his fear. Answering would serve no purpose except to hasten his own execution. The blade dug in, making Samm shudder and grit his teeth against the pain.

‘What are the Partials plotting?’

Again, a stab of a knife, the twist of a blade.

‘Does it have something to do with RM?’

With each refusal to answer, a new cut, each deeper than the last. Samm’s breath left him in hisses of pain.

‘Are they planning an attack? A release of an advanced version of RM?’ Mkele was getting more inventive with his questions tonight, possibly as a result of his observations during the day. Samm could have answered this last one quite safely, but if he did, they might draw their conclusions from which questions he answered and which he didn’t. He held his silence.

It went on … Samm wouldn’t answer, but eventually he couldn’t keep himself from screaming as they cut him deeper, tearing flesh and ripping vessels.

As with the previous night, there reached a point where his interrogators seemed to go beyond purposeful questioning and were simply visiting fury and vengeance on him instead. The air reeked with his blood; the room reverberated with his cries. At last, as the night wore on and a faint crack of dawn began to appear through the window, one man smashed him in the face. Samm felt it connect with his nose in a sickening crunch, and then mercifully, he blacked out.

*

The middle-aged lady had been staring at him for a while now, as the bus rolled along down the Interstate. Samm hadn’t realised it at first, lost in thought as he was, but her prolonged gaze was becoming uncomfortable. He turned to meet her eyes, wondering what she wanted.

‘Are you one of them?’ she said in a quavering voice.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘A Partial,’ her voice rose slightly, increasing in pitch with every word, ‘are you a Partial?’

Heads turned towards them. Samm briefly considered saying he was human, but the lie never made it to his lips. ‘I am,’ he told her.

The woman sprang away from him as the bus rounded a bend; its inertia caused her to swing into another passenger, who caught her and glared at Samm.

‘Get off the bus,’ growled a man behind him. Samm held his hands up in alarm, whether for defence or a show of peace he wasn’t even sure. The passengers on the bus were turning on him in unison now.

‘It’s a Partial!’

‘It pushed this lady!’

A punch flew at him; Samm ducked it easily, and the man who’d thrown it smashed his fist into the window, shattering the glass. His blood splattered the seats.

The bus screeched to a stop.

‘Enough!’ roared the driver. ‘You-off!’

Stung by the injustice, Samm stood his ground. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

The humans were beyond reason, though. ‘Filthy Partial!’ More fists swung at him, boots kicked out towards him. He could avoid most of them by reflex, but the space was enclosed and several hits connected landed. There was no way to avoid it without fighting back and if he did, he could probably take down about half his attackers at once …

Terror struck him-he’d heard of Partials who had retaliated to racist violence in self-defence and ended up convicted because of it. But he’d also heard stories of Partials beaten to death by mobs, their heightened strength overcome by sheer number.

Samm fled the bus. One of the passengers landed a square blow to the side of his head as he stumbled out the door, making him trip and land hard on the gravel road. The doors closed behind him and the bus trundled off.

He was bleeding, his palms were scraped where they’d broken his fall, and he was at least a hundred miles from home. He’d never get back before his shift, and there would be hell to pay then.

But there was nothing for it. His body and soul both stinging, Samm started walking.

*

Samm came to with a splutter. Something touched his head and he flinched, thinking it was about to begin again-he wished he’d stayed unconscious. But the touch was soft, gentle, almost a caress. He dragged his eyes open.

‘Holy crap, what happened to you?’ It was the girl, her hands cradling his head, her fingers applying light pressure against his sore cheeks.

His mouth was thick with a rusty twang. ‘Blood,’ he croaked, wincing. His whole head felt sore and stiff. The girl set his head back down gently. He could hear the rustle of her movements about the room, and then she was back, holding a cloth to his mouth. He spat gratefully into it.

‘I can see you’re bleeding, but why? What happened?’

Did she really not know? He cracked his neck, releasing the stiffness with a loud pop. ‘They cut me.’ His skin still felt slightly raw, chafing against cloth. Cloth? He lifted his arm, surprised. They’d dressed him back in his original uniform. It was an astonishingly humane gesture, completely incongruent with the brutality and indignities he’d been subjected to.

The girl caught his arm and rolled up the sleeve. Her fingers traced the tender scars lightly.

‘Who?’ Her voice shook with anger, though Samm didn’t think it was directed at him. ‘Who was it? The guards? Doctors?’

He nodded vaguely. His mouth still felt disgusting; he ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to rid himself of the metallic taste.

‘That’s ridiculous.’ She pulled away, her motions jerky and sharp with fury. It was amusing … almost endearing. Samm was fairly certain her indignation was on his behalf, at his ordeal at the hands of his enemies. Her people.

When had she ceased to be the enemy?

‘Do you have a name?’ she asked, suddenly.

He stared at her in surprise, floored by the unexpected question.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because I’m tired of calling you “Partial”.’

Warmth bubbled up unexpectedly inside him. This was the strongest proof she’d given him that he wasn’t just a thing to her. ‘Samm,’ he said, an olive branch in return.

She repeated his name uncertainly. ‘I have to admit, I was expecting something more unusual.’

‘It has two Ms,’ he offered. It was the only difference from the regular name. He wasn’t sure why she had expected him to be unique from the other Partials … unless she meant unusual from humans. Was ‘Sam’ a common human name as well?

‘Why two Ms?’

No one had named him specifically; it had been on the rucksack, labelled ‘Sam M.’, given to him when he was two days fresh from the vats. ‘I didn’t realise the M was for a last name,’ he explained.

The girl nodded. ‘Samm, I know you have no reason to help me, no reason to do anything I say, but I want you to understand that this is very important.’

He frowned, wary at her sudden seriousness.

‘You guessed yesterday that RM is still a big concern for us, and you were right. Everything I’m doing here-everything we’re all doing-is to find a way to cure it. That’s why we were in Manhattan, because nothing we have left here on the island was giving us any answers. I don’t know if that’s important to you in any way, but it’s incredibly important to me. I’d give up my life to find a cure.’

Did she really mean that? It seemed like a big sacrifice to make, for something that wasn’t of direct use to her. She didn’t need a cure herself; yet she professed to be willing to die in order to discover one.

The idea was mind-boggling. The other implication, though, was that she might be willing to consider something more drastic. If she thought the Partials could help, would she be willing to work with them in exchange?

‘Now I know this sounds weird,’ the girl continued, ‘but I’m going to ask you a favour. Will you breathe into this?’ She held up a rubber glove.

He raised an eyebrow. Was this still related to the cure somehow? It wasn’t in his breath, he knew that much.

‘I need you to inflate it. That will allow me to isolate your breath sample and study it in the medicomp.’

It sounded innocuous enough. And if he was going to contemplate co-operation, he might as well start here. If he was going to be working with her though, Samm wanted a handle for her, too.

‘Tell me your name.’

‘Why?’

He almost smiled at how she had unknowingly mirrored his response. ‘Because I’m tired of calling you “human”.’

She blinked, the corners of her mouth twitching, then said, ‘My name is Kira.’

Kira. ‘Then yes, Kira,’ said Samm, trying out the name. ‘I will inflate your rubber glove.’

He drew a deep breath as she fitted the opening of the glove to his lips, and exhaled into it. ‘Thank you,’ she said, once she had sealed it off. Having retrieved what seemed to be her sample of interest for the day, she returned to her machines to run her tests. He watched her for a while, intrigued by the fervour in her analysis.

She was very different from the other humans, beyond the obvious physical distinctions. In hindsight, this shouldn’t have come as a surprise. There were plenty of personality variations among Partials, even within the same models, and that was for a species that had been specifically designed. Humans were bound to be much less homogeneous.

There were many ideological differences among Partials, too, as their split factions could attest to. Reasoning along the same lines, the humans probably exhibited these as well, and possibly to a greater extent. The threat of expiration had intensified the civil war among Partials. Samm wondered if the humans faced a similar splintering in their community, divided in their approach to dealing with RM.

He immediately felt certain that they were. Mkele had hinted at it last night. The human society was probably as fractured as his was, probably as terrified, too.

With so many similarities among them, the distinction between ‘human’ and ‘Partial’ no longer seemed terribly vast. He’d found that he could identify with their situation. Was the reverse possible?

Even if it was, what would that mean? And how did it relate to what he should do?

Samm’s head spun as he tried to work it out. He wished for the presence of a superior, genetically planned to strategise in complicated scenarios. Ironically, he’d often chafed at the enforced choices of the military, caught between his nature to obey as a soldier and a desire to experience his own decisions. Now here he was, in a situation where he had to think for himself, and he was wishing for someone to tell him what his next move should be. Be careful what you wish for indeed.

What would Heron do? he wondered, suddenly thinking of his … well, he supposed he could call her his friend. She wasn’t his officer, for sure, in spite of her status at the top of the link hierarchy. The spy models all eschewed leadership, preferring to operate in aloof independence. Why Heron bothered with him was just one of the mysteries of Heron.

But she was the most resourceful person he knew, especially when it came to survival. No one was more ruthlessly determined. Heron would have searched for the best way to survive, though. She always did. She would have been dispassionately rational about it, too. Samm had always looked upon her indifference to how others treated her with a mixture of admiration and envy. Nothing discomfited Heron, she just thought things through logically to find the best solution.

Logically, he supposed it didn’t matter what he did: they planned to kill him anyway in five days, so it was a matter of whether he died sooner or later. But what was it they used to say in the trenches? Every day you’re alive is another chance to make it to the next.

Samm laid out the facts he had again, starting from their point of similarity with the Partials: the humans were struggling to cure RM, but they were divided in their approach. The only reason he was here was because they believed-well, Kira, believed, and she had convinced her superiors-that he had the answers, whether in his body or his knowledge. The moment they extracted it from him, he would die. But in five days, when they didn’t get the answers they were searching for, he would still die.

Unless they believed that his survival could benefit them.

Could he manage to convince them?

Not Mkele or the soldiers. They were already impatient with the allotted five days. Mkele had been clear enough about his disapproval of keeping Samm alive; if he had his way, Samm was sure this little experiment would be abruptly discontinued.

Start with Kira. If he couldn’t get her to believe in his usefulness to her and her goals, he wouldn’t have a hope with anyone else. But he must not forget that he was ultimately dealing with the decisions of generals, which meant he had to think like them. Kira had bought him five days with the hope of curing RM; her generals had wider concerns, as Mkele had hinted.

He would need first to establish two things: first, that the Partials were not a threat or danger to the humans, and next, that the Partial community as a whole might have the answers they were looking for. And not just the cure to RM, but a way to soothe their fractured society.

A tall order, considering that the Partials hadn’t exactly managed to solve that problem themselves.

Samm wondered if Kira recognised that curing RM was only the beginning. He thought about how she’d spoken of laying down her life. It must mean more to her than just a cure-perhaps a magical solution that would unite her society. That was why she was so much more invested than her generals in this study. She didn’t realise yet that curing RM was a band-aid.

Either way, none of the goals were going to be achieved by her studying a glove full of his breath under a microscope.

‘You’re not going to find what you’re looking for,’ he said.

Kira whirled around to glare at him. ‘And how do you know what I’m looking for?’

‘You’re looking for a solution.’

‘I’m looking for a cure.’

‘The cure is only part of it. You’re looking for a solution to your problems: rebels, plagues, political unrest, civil war. You’re scared of everything, and to be fair, everything in your lives is pretty scary.’ He thought of how their lives had been thrown into a frenzy since their first batch had expired a few years back, and it was quite easy to project the same feelings onto the human community. ‘You’re looking for a way to move past it, to bring your lives back together. But you’re not going to find the answers simply by curing RM, and you know it.’

Kira strode away from him to the window, cursing under her breath. He could hear her struggling with it for a minute, getting louder as she failed to budge it. He read in her actions the desperation they both shared, for the futures of their respective species.

‘We don’t want you to die,’ he said, his first peace offering.

‘Then why did you kill us?’

‘I told you, we didn’t create RM.’

‘What I found in your breath suggests otherwise.’

So she had found something. He doubted she fully understood; his breath was a complicated concoction of link data, which even their own scientists couldn’t completely unpack. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter; related or not, he needed to convince her that his people never had the intent to kill hers. ‘If we wanted you dead, you would be dead. That’s not a threat, it’s a fact.’

‘Then what do you want from us? Why did you keep us alive? What are you planning? Is this why you were in Manhattan?’

He had to tread carefully now. She was his best chance for collaboration, for survival, but he wasn’t certain enough that she would react. He felt like he could possibly trust what she said, but claims that she would die for a cure weren’t necessarily tantamount to a willingness to consider working with Partials. ‘You seem like you’d do anything to ensure humanity’s survival. How far are you willing to go?’

‘What are you talking about? What are you suggesting?’

How did he phrase the next part? She sounded ready to listen, which was good, but at the same time he felt a heightened awareness of the cameras watching and listening in. He wasn’t sure he’d managed to convey a convincing sense of harmlessness. Moving on to his next point wouldn’t be very effective if he hadn’t hit the first well enough.

‘No, you can’t just say something like that and then clam up again.’ Kira’s face loomed over his. ‘Why did you even start talking if you’re not going to finish?’

She was hovering uncomfortably close above him. He looked away from the startling intensity of her gaze.

‘Is this what you were talking about yesterday? That you can’t tell us because you don’t want to die? I’ve got news for you, Samm: You’re going to die anyway.’

Whatever hope he’d had deflated, pricked by the harshness of her words. She was as committed to his eventual death as the other humans; he hadn’t led her anywhere near considering an alternative.

‘If you’ve got something to say, say it. You were in Manhattan for a reason; are you saying it had something to do with RM?’ When he didn’t answer, still trying to organise his thoughts, she stalked away to take it out on the window again. Her battering had a strange, muffled quality to it this time, almost like she was beating it from the outside. And then she moved away, rushing past his table without a second glance at him as she dashed out the door.

She was certainly dramatic, though Samm supposed he was becoming accustomed to it. It was even somewhat endearing. He reminded himself again that expressive behaviour was her only interactive tool. She was bound to be extravagant with it.

He waited for her to return, but minutes passed, possibly hours, and no one came, not even Dr. Skousen. Samm lay staring at the cameras, wondering if they were observing him now. He thought about his failed attempt at seeding the idea of his harmlessness. He’d gone about it wrong, starting from the perspective of RM. The disease was an intensifying factor, but the animosities between their species had existed long before it.

They hated us, even before they believed we loosed a plague on them. It was the very reason we rebelled.

How did he even begin to contend with that? Memories of unfair attacks lobbied at him since he’d first return from the Isolation War still haunted his dreams. He could barely remember a time when the Partials and humans hadn’t been enemies. Was it even possible to overcome such a long, deep animosity?

You have.

Samm was startled by his own realisation. It was true … his own feelings about humans had evolved in the short time he’d been held, from bitter hatred to slow understanding. He still held anger and fear towards Mkele and the soldiers, but he could comprehend their motivations. And Kira was human, too. He couldn’t recall the cruelty of her fellows without reliving the softness of her touch or the acceptance in her words. The two intertwined in his recollection, impossible to separate.

As if on cue, Kira returned just then. Their eyes locked once, and Samm felt a strange flush of heat in his face and looked away. After some time, she strode purposefully over to him and he expected her to continue questioning him, perhaps to demand he explain himself, but she only adjusted something at the base of his operating table and moved the entire contraption to a machine in the corner of the room. It hummed and whirred as it scanned him.

Unease crept up upon Samm. Kira hadn’t explained her actions this time, and she was clearly studying him in earnest now. Did it mean she was less receptive to his words now, after his earlier suggestions? Samm’s disappointment at his failure was sharp and bitter, tinged with a sense of loss. It hurt more than it should, the thought that he might have lost whatever goodwill that was developing between them.

‘Tell me about your … pheromones,’ she said, suddenly, without any preamble. Samm turned the word over in his head, trying to understand the command. Pheromones … those were chemicals, weren’t they?

‘You have a highly developed system of chemical synthesizers and receptors; can you tell me about it?’

Samm felt a prick of alarm as he realised she must mean his data. That was what she’d been scanning in the machine. Did it have the ability to read it and relay information to the humans after all? He hadn’t been careful with his thoughts since determining that the humans had no access to the link. If Kira had found a way, though …

She brought out something vaguely hand-shaped. Samm barely had time to register that it was the glove he’d blown up for her earlier, before she pricked it.

The sudden burst of link data, so close, so familiar, exploded over his senses: TRUST. CO-OPERATE. Even as he jerked away in surprise, its effects flowed into his parasympathetic nervous system instantly, priming him to relax.

To comply.

That was the link-communication and control mixed in one inescapable package.

Samm cursed. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘What just happened?’

‘You’re using my own data against me.’ The words spilled out of his mouth automatically. He fought to regain control. It wasn’t too difficult; the data was his own, a command without hierarchical weight.

‘What data? The pheromones? Is that what you call them? You just told me something you didn’t want to tell me, didn’t you? You’ve never done that-this was a slip. What did the pheromones do?’

From the way she was questioning him, it was clear she didn’t know what information had passed. If she couldn’t read his data, his secrets were safe. Samm kept his mouth clamped shut nevertheless, annoyed at the way she had managed to turn it on him, shocked him with his own emotions. Link commands were one thing filtered down from a Partial general. Samm wasn’t about to allow a human to control him, not even one he had been feeling some connection with.

Anyway, she didn’t seem to need his answer. She figured it out quickly-she was clearly intelligent-reasoning it out loud. ‘You can standardise one person’s emotional state across an entire group,’ she concluded.

‘You can’t use it against me any more,’ Samm warned her. ‘I’m not breathing into your gloves.’

‘I’m not trying to use it against you, I’m trying to understand it. What does it feel like?’

He wondered if he should reassess his opinion of her intelligence. ‘What does hearing feel like?’

‘Okay, that was a stupid question,’ she said, backtracking. ‘You’re right, it doesn’t feel like anything, it’s just a part of who you are.’

It must be as intriguing to her as the humans’ range of expression was to him. ‘I’d forgotten that humans couldn’t link,’ he said, thinking of his initial difficulty in deciphering their behaviour. ‘All this time I’ve been so confused, trying to figure out why you were all so melodramatic about everything. It’s because you can’t pick up each other’s emotions from the link, so you have to broadcast them through voice inflection and body language. It’s helpful, I’ll admit, but it’s kind of …’ he searched for an appropriate adjective, ‘… histrionic.’

‘Histrionic?’ she repeated sceptically. ‘If you depend on chemical triggers to tell people how you’re feeling, that explains a lot about you, too. You don’t display nearly enough emotion for human society; if we seem melodramatic to you, you seem downright deadpan to us.’

He supposed this was a fair assessment. She’d missed the extent of how the link worked, though. She wasn’t lying when she said she hadn’t intended to control him: she hadn’t had a clue what pricking that glove would do.

‘It’s not just emotions; it lets us know if someone’s in trouble, or hurt, or excited,’ he explained. He elaborated about the battlefield applications - how it saved them shouting warnings that could be overheard and primed their sympathetic nervous system ahead of attack.

Kira lingered on the concept of data. ‘Links and data-very technological words.’

A stray term she’d used the previous day popped into his head and Samm smiled. ‘You called me a biological robot yesterday,’ Samm reminded her. ‘That’s not entirely inaccurate.’ Kira grinned at him, and he forgot for the moment that he was strapped to a table in enemy territory. He could have been home, having a normal conversation with a friend. ‘I don’t know how you people even function,’ he joked. ‘It’s no wonder you lost the war.’

It was the wrong thing to say; the temperature in the room seemed to drop. Kira’s smile faded and she looked away from him. Samm linked regret, but he was acutely aware that she wouldn’t recognise it. They had different perspectives of the Partial War. He wondered if she’d ever heard the Partial side of the story. What would she think of it?

‘I worked in a mine,’ he told her. ‘You created us to win the Isolation War, and we did, and then we came home and the US government gave us jobs, and mine was in a mine.’ He could still remember the harsh conditions, the tedium, the disconnection he’d felt down there every day. ‘I wasn’t a slave, everything was legal and proper and … “humane”.’ It was what they’d called it when the Partials were paid wages. But he’d had no choice in the matter; no more ability to decide his own life than when he’d been commanded on a Chinese battlefield. How did he explain that in a way Kira, who clearly knew nothing about being controlled, would understand?

‘I didn’t like it,’ he settled on saying. He painted for her a rough picture of his limited life before the rebellion, when no jobs were hiring Partials, no schools were accepting them, and no homes were available to them outside of their assigned slums.

‘So you rebelled.’

‘We hated you. I hated you.’ Samm remembered the intensity of their resentment, disseminated and shared through the link. How much of it had been collective? How much of it had been his own? He caught Kira’s eye. The look in them, so close to tears, gave him a stab of anguish. ‘But I didn’t want genocide,’ he said, returning to his earlier theme. ‘None of us did.’

‘Somebody did.’ Kira looked away, and Samm felt guilty, realising all of a sudden that she must have lost people in the Break. She couldn’t have been more than five years old, part of a generation of humans who would never know the old world. Disconnected and parentless … just like him.

‘And you lost every connection to the past,’ he said softly, wishing she could feel the empathy he was sending out. ‘I know exactly how you feel.’

Kira turned on him vehemently. ‘No, you don’t! You say whatever you want, but don’t you dare say that. We lost our world, we lost our future, we lost our families-’

‘Your parents were taken from you,’ Samm argued. ‘We killed ours when we killed you.’ Even if they hadn’t intended for RM, he couldn’t pretend the rebellion had been free of bloodshed. And culpable or not, they still shouldered the shame of RM. ‘Whatever pain you feel, you don’t have that guilt stacked on top of it.’

‘Is that why you’re telling me all this? Because you feel bad about killing us?’

Samm paused. Their conversation had progressed so organically that he’d almost forgotten why he’d initiated it. Yes, he wanted her to understand his side of the story, but there was more to it. He took in her wide-eyed expression and remembered her idealism and his need to make her see a wider picture.

‘I’m telling you this,’ he said finally, ‘because you have to understand that the cure is not enough. The war was devastating, but the problems started long before that.’

Her eyes darkened. When she spoke, her tone was aggrieved. ‘Don’t tell me what I have to understand.’

The conversation ended; she moved him back to his original position in the centre of the room and retreated to her corner. Samm watched her intermittently for the rest of the day while he thought things through again.

He considered the history he’d related to Kira, and the events before and after that had shaped it. He’d been in the last batch of Partials created, a small regiment who’d seen barely a year of active service in China when the Isolation War ended. That was when he’d met Heron and wondered what it would be like to be independent like her. The end of the war had struck him as a good chance to explore life for himself.

Only it hadn’t-he was no more free on American soil, between government assignments and the social fabric that constrained him just as effectively to an empty, meaningless existence. Twist and turns in official legislation had first promised better rights, then descended into worse marginalisation.

The rising rebellion had started with the top ranks, but it spread like wildfire even without needing the use of the link hierarchy. The early days of the revolution had been full of hope and promise, with grand speeches about how they would restore proper hierarchy and deliver freedom to the Partials from the human yoke.

Only it had all gone wrong. They’d subdued the humans, but just as they had intended to treat with them and establish their bold new society, RM had spread out of nowhere and redrawn the battle lines even more fiercely. The first splinters in the Partial command structure appeared as battle strategies morphed into attempts to contain the disease and spare the human population versus retaliation against the new wave of increasingly desperate counterattacks from the humans.

And then they were gone-99% of the population dead, the remaining survivors retreated to Long Island-leaving an empty world that the Partials had no clue how to run.

In the end, revolution hadn’t led to a better life. Maybe things had changed in that the decisions handed down were made by Partials themselves, but ultimately it hadn’t led to freedom or more choices on the individual scale. No, all they had gained was ten more years of war, this time among themselves, because war was all they knew. Even the more pacifist communities had never dropped their military structures. No Partials had an idea of how to construct a society of peace. Their response to expiration-a renewal of the civil wars, each faction believing they had the answer-only proved it.

Did the humans know any better, though, with their own impending unrest? Samm supposed they did have the better of the Partials, if it had taken a decade of struggling against extinction to divide the community. What had made them unite initially? Humans were so naturally independent, more so than Partials, which made it more surprising that they could work together. Something strong must have driven each one to believe in collaboration.

Something drew Samm’s gaze back to Kira, still concentrated on her analysis. She was single-mindedly, stubbornly determined in her mission. Images of her flew through his head: arguing defiantly in the hearing, claiming passionately that she would sacrifice herself for the cure. She practically blazed with her purpose. And it was more than the altruism of a soldier ready to sacrifice herself for her platoon, because there was no command, no mission handed down from a higher authority. Every decision she’d made, she’d chosen for herself. RM inspired her. And perhaps that was what differentiated her from the rest of the humans-not her desire to cure the plague hanging over them, but the fact that she was still dedicated to the vision.

It inspired all of them at the start. RM united them. They had to rally together to tackle the problem. But some of them will have given up by now … the way some of our factions accepted expiration.

He’d told Kira that the cure wasn’t a solution to all their problems. While he could see that was true, he wondered if her view was, too. That it was possible to reunite a community around a common, achievable goal.

But he had no concrete cure to offer. Without one, she wouldn’t be giving her people anything to rally around. What about redefining the purpose? He thought about the way the humans had fought back harder in the Partial War when driven by RM’s deadly ticking clock. If they knew about expiration, would they realise that both species were on the same side, with extinction the real enemy they faced?

It couldn’t be that easy. A colder, more dangerous thought surfaced: there was a simpler way to create a unifying purpose, one that had been evident in the Partial War within both sides.

A common enemy.

He’d never be able to pit countering an abstract enemy against the attractive goal of triumphing over one they could see and touch. And here he was, a real life enemy they could successfully display at the end of the five days, saying, ‘Look, we managed to avenge ourselves upon one.’

If the humans knew about expiration, their leaders would kill him, and the quicker the better to repair their society with a unifying display of defeat over the Partials.

Samm shut his eyes in frustration, deeper than ever in his dilemma. The more convinced he became that the two species needed each other, the more impossible it also seemed that a truce could be forged. His nightly interrogations were already cues that the humans were all too set in their views of him as a deadly enemy.

No, not all the humans. His eyes flew open, landing on Kira. He no longer considered her as an enemy; was the feeling mutual? She was a visionary, feisty, determined, and stubborn. The way she spoke out of turn to her superiors, her willingness to break the rules for a cause she believed in … the wildest idea yet came to him. Could she trust him enough to work with him independently of the other humans?

The implications of what he was now considering were not lost on Samm. He would be counting on Kira to help him escape, to return to Greenwich with him and make a deal with his faction-an exchange, one cure for the other. Somehow he would need to communicate all this to her without alerting the humans on the other side of the cameras to his goal.

It was a seemingly insurmountable task, and yet it still seemed easier than convincing a whole community of hostile humans that he wasn’t the real enemy.

Kira got up from her table. She looked sad and tired, and he presumed her analysis had not gone the way she’d hoped. She glanced at him hesitantly, and her expression held a full volume of things she wanted to convey. Yet all she said was, ‘Good night, Samm.’

‘Good night, Kira,’ he told her, but she had already turned. He didn’t know if she had heard. All the same, Samm felt a glimmer of hope in her greeting. It was a sign that she was still receptive to listening to him. He would just have to trust that he could get through to her tomorrow.

I’ve got three days left to believe in something. I may as well believe in this. I may as well believe in her.