“You’re a nation without a leader,” said Woolf, “a nation of young men—”

“Young men who defeated you,” said Vinci hotly, “and who will do it again if you give us any reason to.”

“This is not what I was trying to do,” said Marcus, stepping back in between them. He knew he was cringing, preemptively flinching from an attack he was certain would come from one side or the other, but he stood there anyway, grimacing and hoping they’d stay calm. “Vinci, my commanding officer here did not mean to imply that you were incapable of making your own decisions, and that you need an old human dude to step in and run things for you.” He looked pointedly at Woolf. “He knows exactly how offensive that would be, and he would never say it or imply it. Right?”

Woolf nodded, somewhat sheepishly, but Marcus could hear his teeth grinding as he spoke. “Absolutely. I did not mean to offend you.”

“Sweet,” said Marcus, and glanced at Vinci before looking back at Woolf. “Next, and furthermore: Commander Woolf, Vinci here did not mean to imply that help was out of the question entirely, or that he would sooner start another genocidal war than form an alliance with you.”

“You don’t speak for him,” said Woolf.

Marcus turned to Vinci. “Am I wrong? You didn’t actually mean to imply anything even remotely like that, did you? I mean, you know how similarly offensive that would be, right?”

Vinci took a deep breath, the first social clue Marcus had seen from him yet, and shook his head. “We don’t want another war with the humans.”

“Sweet baby James,” said Marcus. “Now do you think you two can carry on a civil conversation, or do I have to mediate the entire thing? Because I’m seriously on the verge of peeing myself here.”

Vinci looked at Woolf. “This is your Partials relations consultant?”

“He’s unorthodox but effective,” said Woolf. He rubbed his chin. “Is what he said right, though? That your commanding officers are all dead?”

“Not all,” said Vinci, and Marcus could tell from his pause that he didn’t want to say the next part: “But most of them, yes. We have one left. As you likely gleaned from our operations on Long Island, we’re locked in a small-scale war with Morgan’s faction; we’re trying to cure this expiration date, as you call it, just like she is. But her methods have become too extreme.”

“But time is running out,” said Marcus. “We think that we can help you—we have some of the best medical minds on Earth, literally, slaving over the cure to our own extinction-level disease. With your help we can solve the RM problem in a matter of weeks, or at least we think we can, and then all that medical mind power can point straight at your expiration date. We can save each other.”