“But that doesn’t hold together,” said Kira adamantly. “If she wanted the human race dead, completely eradicated, she could have betrayed us to the Partials, or started spreading poison, or a million other things to kill us, but she didn’t. It had to be her partner,” said Kira, following him breathlessly as she sorted through the clues in her head. “Graeme Chamberlain, the one who killed himself. Could he have, I don’t know, re-engineered the Failsafe behind everyone’s back?”

“You’re still not seeing the entire picture,” said Vale, never looking at her as he walked briskly down the hall. There was something he was keeping from her, something he was reluctant to tell. Kira pressed on.

“But Chamberlain acting alone doesn’t add up either,” said Kira, slowing a bit as she thought deeper into the problem. She ran to catch up. “The cure was part of the Partials’ design, embedded in their genetic makeup. Why would he make a virus obviously intended to kill every human on Earth, and then also build a cure perfectly designed to stop it? It doesn’t make sense. But it does make sense if . . .” The answer was right there, on the tip of her brain, and she struggled to grab it—to force it to coalesce into a simple, understandable thought. There were so many of them working, she thought, on so many different pieces. How do they fit together?

Vale walked a few more steps, dragging slowly to a stop. He didn’t turn around, and Kira had to strain to hear his voice. “I was against it in the beginning,” he said.

“But it’s true?” Kira approached him slowly. “You and the rest of the Trust—you did this on purpose? You altered the Partial Failsafe to kill humans instead, and you built them to carry the cure so that . . . Why?”

Vale turned to face her, his face once again tinged with deep anger. “Think about the Failsafe for a minute—about what it is, and what it represents. We were asked to create an entire species of sentient creatures: living, breathing individuals who could think and, thanks to the UN Resolution on Artificial Emotional Response, feel. Think about that—we were specifically instructed to make a being that could think, that could feel, that was self-aware, and then we were told to strap a bomb to its chest so they could kill it whenever they wanted. Ten minutes ago you wanted to free ten comatose Partials, and you couldn’t stand to kill a single human child. Would you be able to condemn an entire race to death?”