Ariel looked at her adopted sister, her hatred for Nandita slowly giving way to the kind of horror that was destroying Isolde. If they were Partials, they were monsters. They’d destroyed the world—maybe not personally, but they were a part of it. Other people, everyone they’d grown up with, would think they were a part of it. Already Senator Kessler was inching forward, placing herself between Xochi and the Partial freaks that used to be her friends. What did she think they were going to do? Now that Ariel knew she was a Partial, was she suddenly going to start killing people? What would the rest of the island think of her: that she was a traitor? A sleeper agent? A fool or a monster? At least Ariel had no friends to betray, already isolated by years of living on the outside; Isolde had friends, family, a job—a job in the Senate, in the heart of human government. Would they think she was a spy? What would they do to a Partial spy, pregnant or not?

What would the Partials do if they found out? Did they already know? Could Ariel go to them for help, or to help end the occupation? Maybe if they heard it from one of their own . . .

One of their own. A Partial. Ariel’s mind rebelled, and she felt herself get sick, running to the kitchen and vomiting in the sink. A Partial. Everything she’d ever thought about Nandita was true. It was even worse.

No one came to the kitchen to help her.

“What about Isolde’s baby?” asked Xochi. Her voice was uncertain. “Is it a . . . which is it? Human or Partial?”

“I’m not a Partial!” Isolde screamed.

Ariel wiped her face and mouth, staring out the kitchen window into the darkness beyond.

“I assume it’s both,” said Nandita. “A human/Partial hybrid. We assumed this could happen, but . . . I’ll need to do more studies to find out exactly what it means.”

Ariel walked back into the room. She felt different. Apart. More so than she’d ever felt before.

“So you spent years trying to activate the cure,” said Madison, “and then . . . what, you left to go activate it somewhere else? Without the girls?”

“I found a laboratory, like I said,” said Nandita. “Powered and self-sustaining. I would have come back for the girls, but the political climate was not exactly friendly at the time.”

Kessler growled. “We’re not stupid—if you’d told us you were working on a cure—”

“You would have stonewalled me like you stonewalled Kira,” said Nandita. “And if I’d ever told the story I told you just now, you’d have thrown me into prison or killed me outright.”