BooksBarbecue
Back Fragments
Chapters (58)
  1. DEDICATION
  2. PART 1
  3. CHAPTER ONE
  4. CHAPTER TWO
  5. CHAPTER THREE
  6. CHAPTER FOUR
  7. CHAPTER FIVE
  8. CHAPTER SIX
  9. CHAPTER SEVEN
  10. CHAPTER EIGHT
  11. CHAPTER NINE
  12. CHAPTER TEN
  13. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  14. CHAPTER TWELVE
  15. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  16. PART 2
  17. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  19. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  21. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  22. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  23. CHAPTER TWENTY
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  33. CHAPTER THIRTY
  34. PART 3
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  42. PART 4
  43. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  44. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  45. CHAPTER FORTY
  46. CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
  47. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
  48. CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
  49. CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
  50. CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
  51. CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
  52. CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
  53. CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
  54. CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
  55. CHAPTER FIFTY
  56. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  57. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  58. ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

“I know we can’t just leave him,” she snapped, then softened her voice and looked away. “I know we’re doing everything we can for him, I just don’t like it. When ‘everything we can do to help him’ involves ‘dragging him through a poisoned wasteland,’ there’s something intensely wrong with the decisions that got us here.”

“What would you have done differently?”

Kira shot him a quick glare, annoyed by his relentless practicality, but she shook her head and conceded defeat. “Nothing, I guess, except maybe not getting attacked in the data center. And it’s not like we had any control over that. I don’t like having to put him through this now any more than I liked having to bring him in the first place, but we can’t do this without him, and he can’t survive without us. I just . . .” She looked at Samm, searching his face for some kind of sympathy. “I just feel bad for him. Do you?”

“I do,” he said, nodding. “I can’t help it.”

Kira smirked and looked across the river. “You’d think they would have built their super-soldiers without any feelings at all, to make them better at . . . killing, I guess. War.”

“They actually did the exact opposite,” said Samm. Kira looked at him quizzically. “You didn’t know?” he asked. “It was one of the earliest design laws that led ParaGen to create military-grade BioSynths. Afa has a copy of the UN resolution in his backpack, though I doubt you can read it at this point. They’d had some problems with automated drone soldiers and vehicles making decisions of . . . questionable morality in the field, and the only companies from there that could get contracts for autonomous military units were biotechnology firms that could create weapons with a human emotional response.”

Kira nodded. “I guess that makes sense. I mean, I’ve always felt completely human, emotionally, so . . .” She shrugged, not knowing how to finish her thought. She paused, then frowned and looked back at him. “If you—we—were designed to know right from wrong and whatever, it seems like that would make us less likely to cross the line in battle.”