Tovar pursed his lips. “I don’t know how you’re going to top the first bit, but I’m excited to hear it.”

Marcus felt the attention of the entire room bearing down on him and bit back the urge to make another wisecrack; he cracked jokes reflexively when he got too nervous, and he was more nervous now than he’d ever been. I shouldn’t be doing this, he thought. I’m a medic, not a public speaker. I’m not a debater, I’m not a leader, I’m not . . .

. . . I’m not Kira. That’s who should be here.

“Mr. Valencio?” asked Senator Woolf.

Marcus nodded, steeling his determination. “Well, you asked for it, so here it is. The leader of the Partial faction we ran into, the one who kidnapped Kira, was some kind of a doctor or a scientist; they called her Dr. Morgan. That was the reason they sent that Partial platoon into Manhattan all those months ago, and they kidnapped Kira because Dr. Morgan thinks the secret to curing Partials is somehow related to RM, which means it’s related to humans. Apparently they’d experimented on humans before, back during the Partial War, and if they think it will save their lives, they’ll kidnap as many more of us as they need, which might just be Kira again, but for all we know it’s all of us. They’re probably having the same meeting right now, on the other side of the sound, trying to decide how they can grab a few of us to experiment on—or if those reports you mentioned are true, they already had their meeting and might very well be putting their plan into motion.”

“That’s classified information,” said Senator Hobb. “We need—”

“If you’ll permit me to recap,” Marcus interrupted, holding up his hand, “there is a group of super-soldiers”—he put down his first finger—“trained specifically in military conquest”—he put down his second finger—“who outnumber us, like, thirty to one”—third finger—“who are desperate enough to try anything”—fourth finger—“and who believe that ‘anything’ in this case means ‘capturing human beings for invasive experimentation.’” He folded down his last finger and held his fist silently in the air. “Senators, the information might be classified, but it’s a pretty good bet the Partials will be unclassifying it a lot sooner than you think.”

The room was quiet, every eye focused on Marcus. Several long, heavy moments later, Tovar finally spoke.

“So you think we need to defend ourselves.”

“I think I’m scared to death, and I need to learn how to stop talking when everyone is staring at me.”