“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” said Kira, searching her bag for bandages and finding that she didn’t have any. “All back in the Preserve,” she said. “Hang on, let me see what I can find.” They were hiding in the bank’s back offices, away from the street, and she stood up to search for some kind of cloth.

“Now that we have some time to breathe,” said Samm, “you can tell me why he suddenly wants to kill us. I assume we got caught slinking around in the spire.”

“I found his secret,” said Kira, opening the drawers in an old wooden desk. Plus, he found out mine, she thought, but she didn’t want to share that with Samm just yet. What would he say if he knew I was carrying the disease that could kill every Partial in the world? “He doesn’t have a new cure. He’s harvesting the pheromone from a group of Partials locked up and sedated in the spire. One of them has been modified to produce a powerful Partial sedative, which is why you passed out as soon as you entered the building. It’s how he keeps them incapacitated.”

Samm was silent a moment before speaking. “That’s horrible.”

“I know.”

“We have to stop him.”

“I know,” said Kira, “but we’ve got other things to think about first. Like you not dying of blood loss.” She found a suit jacket in a small closet and pulled it out to examine it. On Long Island it would be half mildew after twelve years in the humidity, but here in the wastes of a desert city, it was fairly well preserved. She brought it back to Samm and sat on the floor with her knife, cutting it into wide strips. “I’ve always wanted to see you in a suit.”

“We have to free them.”

Kira stopped mid-cut. “It’s not that simple.”

“We can go back. At night. We need to figure out a way to rescue Heron anyway; she’s been gone too long to not be in there somewhere. We can find her, and free the people that he’s captured, and get everyone out of there.”

“I know,” said Kira, “but it’s not that simple. The captured Partials are practically skeletons. I don’t know if they could survive outside the lab, let alone a daring nighttime rescue attempt.”

“Would you say the same thing if they were human prisoners?”

Kira felt like she’d been slapped. “I’m not saying you’re not right, I’m just saying it’s not that simple. Why are you so mad at me?”

“This is the same thing Dr. Morgan tried to do to you,” he said. “To turn a living being into a petri dish for a science experiment. I risked my life and destroyed my friendships to free you.”

“You helped capture me.”