“So you’re no closer to synthesizing the cure than you were last time,” said Senator Woolf.

“We have eliminated certain possibilities as dead ends,” said Skousen. His face was worn and full of lines, and Marcus heard his voice drop. “It’s not much, as victories go, but it’s all we have.”

“We can’t continue like this,” said Woolf, turning to the other senators. “We saved one child, and almost two months later we’re no closer to saving any more. We’ve lost four more children in the last week alone. Their deaths are tragedies on their own, and I don’t want to gloss over them, but that’s not even our most pressing concern. The people know we have a cure—they know we can save infants, and they know that we’re not. They know the reasons for it, too, but that’s not exactly mollifying anyone. Having the cure so close, but still unattainable, is only making the tensions on this island worse.”

“Then what do you propose we do?” asked Tovar. “Attack the Partials and steal more pheromone? We can’t risk it.”

You might not have a choice soon, Marcus thought. If what Heron said is true . . . He squirmed in his seat, trying not to imagine the devastation of a Partial invasion. He didn’t know where Nandita was, or Kira, and he certainly didn’t want to hand them over to the Partials even if he could, on the other hand . . . a Partial invasion could mean the end of the human race—not a slow fade, dying off because they couldn’t reproduce, but a bloody, brutal genocide. The Partials had proven twelve years ago that they weren’t afraid of war, but genocide? Samm had insisted so fiercely that they weren’t responsible for RM. That they felt guilty for causing, even inadvertently, the horrors of the Break. Had things changed that much? Were they ready to sacrifice an entire species just to save themselves?

They’re asking me to do the same thing, he thought. To sacrifice Kira, or Nandita, to save humanity. If it comes right down to it, would I do it? Should I?

“We could send an ambassador,” said Senator Hobb. “We’ve talked about it, we’ve chosen the team—let’s do it.”

“Send them to who?” asked Kessler. “We’ve had contact with exactly one group of Partials, and they tried to kill the kids who contacted them. We tried to kill the Partial who contacted us. If there’s a peaceful resolution in our future, I sure as hell don’t know how to reach it.”

They were the same arguments, Marcus realized, that he and his friends had bandied around in Xochi’s living room. The same circular proposals, the same obvious responses, the same endless bickering. Are the adults just as lost as the rest of us? Or is there really no solution to this problem?