“So stop talking and do it,” said Isolde. “You’re back because you have the cure, right? You can unlock it and we can save everyone.” She touched her belly again, and Ariel felt a surge of hope, but Nandita shook her head.

“What?” asked Xochi. “You didn’t find it?”

“Of course I found it,” said Nandita. “I had eleven years of biological data on the girls, I worked on the original project, and I had an ideal laboratory. I knew there was a trigger, and I found the exact chemical blend to pull it.” She brought out a small glass vial from a pouch around her neck and held it up; it glittered in the light. “But it’s not the cure. Someone already triggered the cure, in every Partial who has it.” She looked at Madison. “Kira discovered that while I was gone, that’s how she saved your baby.”

“So what did you find?” asked Isolde. “What does that vial unlock?”

“I have an inkling,” said Nandita. “But it’s not good.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

“I think we lost them,” Kira whispered, panting with exertion. They’d been running through the ruins for nearly an hour, with what felt like the entire Preserve following closely behind them. She was so tired she could barely walk, and they’d taken refuge in an old bank. “I don’t know if I can run another step. Now I know how you felt in the spire.”

“How I still feel,” said Samm. He collapsed against the wall and sank slowly to the floor, leaving a smear of blood from the wound in his arm. “Whatever sedative he used in there is an absolute killer. Patch me up.”

Kira stayed by the window nearly a minute longer, watching the road for any sign of movement or pursuit. Still nervous, she retreated to Samm’s wall and hauled out the remnants of her medkit—not a full kit, for that was back in Calix’s room, but the essentials she’d kept in her backpack with the other things she didn’t want to leave her sight: her gun, now out of ammo; a handful of water-stained documents from Afa’s stash; the computer handle, though that was now lost in Vale’s secret lab. She swabbed the gash in Samm’s arm, a bloody groove where Vale’s bullet had grazed his triceps, and gave him a handful of antibiotics to swallow.

“You’re probably not going to need these,” she said, “from what I’ve seen of your immune system, but take them anyway. It makes me feel better.”

“This isn’t your fault.”

“He was aiming at me,” said Kira. “I’m the one who pissed him off.”

“And I got in the way on purpose,” said Samm. “I told you, he’s on the link—I knew who he was going to shoot before he did it.”