“I wasn’t planning to bring it back at all, sir. That was your idea.” She paused, watching Dr. Skousen’s brow grow dark with anger, wondering if she’d pushed him too hard. She forged ahead, glancing at the Partial; it looked back darkly, and she tried not to imagine how quickly it could break out of its restraints. “I was going to cut off its hand and test it in the field,” she said, “with a medicomp we brought to Brooklyn. There was never any threat to anyone until—”

“No threat to anyone?” asked Dr. Skousen. “What about the three men who died across the river? What about the two women of breeding age who almost died with them? Surely you of all people, with your job in maternity, understand the need to protect every possible pregnancy.”

“If you please, Doctor,” said Kira, feeling her face grow hot with anger. “We’ve asked to be treated like adults, not cattle.”

The doctor stopped short, and Kira gritted her teeth, forcing herself to keep her face as calm as possible. What am I doing?

“If you wish to be treated as an adult,” said Senator Delarosa, “I encourage you to keep a civil tongue.”

“Of course, Senator.”

“Can you tell us, for the record, what you expect to gain from your study of Partial tissue?”

Kira glanced at Dr. Skousen, wondering how much he’d already told them. “We’ve studied RM for years, but we still don’t know how it works. Everything that should be effective in abating it isn’t; everything that should inoculate us against it doesn’t. We’ve hit a dead end, and we need a new direction. I believe that if we study the immunity from a Partial perspective—not the chance mutation that keeps us from developing symptoms, but the engineered resistance that makes them wholly immune—we can find the cure we’ve been looking for.”

Senator Weist narrowed his eyes. “And you thought the best way to do this was to run screaming into the middle of enemy territory with no planning and no backup?”

“I asked Dr. Skousen for backup,” said Kira. “He made it clear I wouldn’t get any help from the Senate.”

“I made it clear that you should not attempt it under any circumstances!” roared Skousen, slamming his hand on the table.

“My friend is pregnant,” said Kira. “Haru’s wife; Jayden’s sister. If we’d done what you said, that baby would die, just like every other child you haven’t saved for eleven straight years. I didn’t study medicine to watch people die.”