Fragments

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Getting caught by the Partials had been easy. Marcus and Ariel packed their gear, started walking along the widest highway they could find, and got picked up by a patrol within the first two hours. The two-man team searched them, confiscated their weapons, and marched them toward East Meadow; a few miles later they met a truck, already half-full of human prisoners, which drove them the rest of the way in. The humans sat quietly in the back, their faces numb with terror, and Marcus didn’t have to fake his own fear at the prospect of Partial occupation. They had gotten themselves caught on purpose, but they didn’t have any idea what the Partials were planning to do with them. When they reached East Meadow they were dropped off, searched again, and interrogated. They didn’t seem to recognize Marcus, or if they did, they didn’t care. Near midnight they were released into the city with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They found an empty house and hid until morning.

They didn’t risk going to Nandita’s house until the following night, wary of being followed; when they arrived, they found that the Partials had already torn through it with a vengeance, searching every nook and cranny in meticulous detail. “If there’s anything left, I’ll be amazed,” said Marcus, but they dove into it anyway, hoping to find a sign of Nandita’s plans that the Partials had missed, if they even knew what they were looking for. They spent their days in the empty house, tearing it apart as carefully and as quietly as they could, and their nights hiding in nearby houses, a different one every night, doing their best to remain invisible.

The people who attracted too much attention always ended up dead in the evening execution.

They started by searching Nandita’s room: all her drawers and closets, in the boxes under her bed, in the spaces behind the dresser and the large vanity mirror, even between her mattresses and hidden in the pockets of her clothes. They searched the hothouse as well, though in the months of Nandita’s absence Xochi had already taken over much of it, and there were very few spaces not already filled by Xochi’s ever-growing collection of herbs and sprouts. When they failed to find anything, they began searching the rest of the house, first looking in all the drawers and cupboards and eventually prying up floorboards, cutting open upholstery, and even digging holes in the garden. They found nothing.

“I think we have to face it,” said Marcus days later, leaning tiredly on the kitchen counter. “These experiment logs either don’t exist, or they’re gone.”

“They exist,” said Ariel. “I saw them.”

“She may have taken them with her,” said Marcus. He stared at the gaping hole they’d just punched in the kitchen wall; Nandita had repaired a section of Sheetrock there about a year before, something the Partials apparently didn’t know, but when they broke it open they found nothing but a few dropped nails. “That might be why she left, to continue her studies or analyze the results or something.”

“Or to hide them,” said Ariel. “Or maybe just destroy them outright. Though I don’t know what would have prompted her to do it.”

Marcus shook his head. “You’re assuming she left willingly. What if she was taken? Her and her records? That seems . . .” Marcus slowed, and laughed dryly. “I was going to say that seems needlessly paranoid, but under the circumstances it might actually be right. I don’t think anything would surprise me at this point.”

Ariel shook her head. “If they took her, they wouldn’t be back here looking for her, right?”

“There are a lot of Partial factions,” said Marcus. “It might have been one of Morgan’s enemies.”

“Nandita and Dr. Morgan were both performing experiments on Kira,” said Ariel, nodding. “For all we know, they were working together.”

“I certainly got the impression she was working for Morgan when Heron confronted me,” said Marcus, “but I suppose Heron’s not exactly the most trustworthy source. Consider this, though: As far as we know, Morgan’s recent experiments on Kira were purely coincidental. She just wanted a human girl, she never went out of her way to get a specific one.”

“As far as you know,” said Ariel.

“As far as we know,” Marcus agreed, “but I was there. I watched Kira go through this, making all her decisions in very Kira-like ways. If Morgan wanted a specific girl, all she had to do was raid the island like she’s doing now, not set up some ridiculously elaborate con game to trick her into visiting the mainland of her own free will.”

“But what about that photo you told me about?” asked Ariel. “You saw Kira and Nandita together before the Break, which is weird enough already, but then to see them at the ParaGen building? That’s not like a huge red flag for you that something weird is going on here? There’s got to be more to that relationship.”

“Like what?” Marcus asked. “Of course it’s a red flag, but for what? I’ve been trying to figure it out for weeks now, that’s why we’ve torn your whole house apart, but what does it mean? Does seeing them at a ParaGen facility mean that Kira’s different somehow? Most of us have some kind of gene mods from when we were kids—does Kira have a special one? Is she important in some way? I’m with you on this, Ariel, but I honestly don’t know what any of it means.” They heard a rumble, and immediately recognized the sound as an engine, probably a pretty big one. The Partials had brought motor vehicles back to East Meadow, thanks to their wealth of resources and energy, and the humans had learned to listen for the sound of approaching Partial “police.” They dropped to the ground, trying to look as not-home as possible. It worked.

“That was the closest one yet,” said Ariel. “I think they know we’re here—that we use this house, I mean.”

“The papers you saw in Nandita’s hothouse,” said Marcus. “What else can you remember about them?”

“I told you,” said Ariel. “It said ‘Madison: Control.’ It had a lot of physical information, height and weight and blood pressure and all that, not just single readings but changes over time. Madison and I would have been ten, maybe getting on to eleven, just starting to go through puberty, so there were a lot of changes to track. At least half of it, though, probably more than half of it, was chemicals—herbs, I guess, but she’d scrawled in some notes about different properties of each herb, and different mixtures in her droppers from one time to the next. She was trying to find the right combination for . . . something. I don’t know. ‘Control,’ whatever that is.”

“Oh damn,” said Marcus, staring at the floor. He closed his eyes, slowly shaking his head as the realization washed over him. “Double dog damn it and around again for another damn.”

Ariel smiled. “You watch your filthy mouth, Mr. Valencio.”

“It’s not about control,” said Marcus, looking up at Ariel. “How much do you know about the scientific method?”

“I saw what I saw,” she insisted.

“Of course you did,” said Marcus, “but you were ten years old and you didn’t know how to interpret it. When a scientist does an experiment, they always have at least two subjects: the experiment, which they screw around with, and the control, which they don’t. It’s a baseline, unmodified test subject intended only for observation, so that whatever happens to the experimental subject has something you can compare it to. Nandita could have been using Madison as a control subject to help her understand her observations of Kira.”

“She’d never raised children before,” said Ariel, seeing where he was going with the line of thought. “When Kira did something weird, Nandita had no way of knowing if it was weird because all kids are weird, or weird because of . . . whatever stupid thing we still don’t know about Kira.

“So we were all control subjects,” said Ariel, slowly understanding. “Three controls against one experiment.” She frowned. “It makes sense, I suppose, but it doesn’t answer anything. We don’t know what she was testing for, or why, or what any of it has to do with ParaGen.”

Marcus shrugged. “There are only three people who do know,” he said. “Kira, Nandita, and Dr. Morgan. I’d bet you anything Morgan knows at least some of it, or she wouldn’t be tearing this island apart trying to find the other two.”

“Well I’m not going to go up and ask her,” said Ariel.

“And Kira won’t tell me anything,” said Marcus. “I hear from her about once a week now, and never more than a few seconds. Wherever she is, the signal’s incredibly weak.”

Ariel looked around at the ransacked house, now more of a junkyard than a home. “If there was ever any sign of Nandita, the Partials got it before we did. Even if we find a hint of where she might be, we’re weeks behind them, and we’re hopelessly outnumbered. There’s no way we’re going to find Nandita before they do.”

“Don’t give up yet,” said Marcus, and waggled his radio. “Most of the reports I get on here are Partial battles—one of the other factions is still attacking the ones who have occupied the island.”

“So we get crushed between two Partial armies?” asked Ariel. “I thought you were trying to cheer me up.”

“What I mean is that they’re distracted,” said Marcus. “They can’t focus all their energy on finding her, because they spend half their time fighting off other Partials.”

“And we spend almost all our time hiding from Partials,” said Ariel. “They still come out ahead.”

Marcus blew out a puff of air, deflating as he sank back and stared at the floor. “I was just trying to find a bright side, but I guess we don’t have any of those left.” He played with the broken Sheetrock, shifting the pieces with his foot. A thought began to dawn on him. “Maybe we do.”

“We have a bright side?”

“We have a second Partial army.”

Ariel raised her eyebrow. “That’s the worst bright side I’ve ever heard of.”

“No,” said Marcus, growing more excited. “Think about it: Dr. Morgan has raised a massive army of Partials, with the express purpose of raiding our island and holding us hostage, and another army of Partials is attacking her for it. Partials don’t just attack things for no reason—they’re soldiers, not . . . barbarians. The only reason to cross the sound and attack Morgan’s forces is because you’re trying to stop her, and the only reason to try to stop this invasion is because you disagree with it.”

Ariel frowned, obviously skeptical. “So the second group of Partials is on our side?”

“If A hates B and C hates B then A and C are allies,” said Marcus. “That’s the . . . transitive property of battlefield ethics, which I just made up. But it’s true.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Ariel.

“I knew there was a phrase like that somewhere.”

“So how does that help us?” asked Ariel. “I’m pretty sure one of us could get out of East Meadow, slip through the Partial patrols, if the other makes a big enough distraction, but what then? Head north through the most occupied territory on the island, into the middle of an inter-Partial battle zone, and hope you can tell which group is which? You’ll end up back here in less than twenty-four hours, assuming you live through it at all.”

“We go off the island,” said Marcus, shaking his head. “We let the soldiers do the fighting, and we go around them to talk to the leaders in the back.”

“You want to just march into the mainland, all alone, and find a group of Partials.”

Marcus laughed. “Who am I—Kira? I’m not doing this alone, I’m going straight to the Senate.”

“The Senate fled East Meadow in the invasion,” said Ariel. “What makes you think you can even find them?”

“Because Senator Tovar used to run the Voice,” said Marcus, “and I know where some of the old Voice hideouts are. You just help me escape, I need to get to the JFK airport.”