They came out into a hallway, locking the door carefully behind them. People bustled back and forth, and Kira was shocked to see that most of them were happy—they laughed and talked and smiled, cuddling tiny warm bundles to their chests. Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. Families, real, genetic families, like she’d never seen them before. The maternity ward she’d worked in was a place of death and grief, a place of exhausted struggle and a relentless, implacable foe. It was the only kind of maternity she’d ever known. Here, though, everything was different. The mothers who came to give birth knew that their children would live. This was a maternity ward full of hope and success. Kira had to stop for a moment, steadying herself against the wall. This is everything I’ve ever wanted, she thought. This is what I want to create at home—this is what I want to bring them. Hope and success. Happiness.

And yet . . .

Behind all the sounds of activity was one that Kira knew all too well—the wail of a dying child. She knew from intense personal experience exactly how the virus would progress; how it would attack the child from moment to moment. If the child had been born just a few hours ago, as Vale suggested, then RM was still developing in its bloodstream. The child would have a fever, but not yet a deadly one; the virus was slowly replicating itself, cell by cell, building more viral spores, eating the tiny body from the inside until finally—tomorrow, perhaps—the child would practically cook itself alive trying to keep up. This early in the process the pain could be assuaged, the fever controlled, but the process could not be stopped. Without the pheromonal cure, death was inevitable.

Vale walked through the hall toward the sound, nodding politely to the people he passed, and Kira followed numbly behind. Is this what he wanted her to see? The cure in action, saving an innocent life? She didn’t know what he hoped to accomplish with that—she already knew the stakes, probably better than he did, thanks to living so long with no cure at all. It wouldn’t sway her opinion on the captive Partials, and it wouldn’t buy her silence or compliance. Dr. Vale pushed through the last door, entering the room, and Kira saw the mother practically collapse in joy at the sight of him. The father, equally grateful and nervous, shook Vale’s hand enthusiastically. Vale reassured him with small talk and a smile, prepping the syringe, and all the while Kira stood against the wall, watching the baby squall and scream in the bassinet. The parents glanced her way but quickly dismissed her, their focus turning back to the child. Kira watched them as they held their child, looking for all the world like Madison and Haru. Like every set of parents she had ever seen.