I need to isolate the virus first, she thought. She looked around the room for something that could trap the tiny virus, and her eyes fell on a box of latex gloves. She remembered how she and Marcus used to inflate them in school, pinching them almost closed and blowing them full of air. If the virus transformation really did happen in the lungs, her breath would be full of it. And if a rubber glove will hold oxygen, it’ll contain the virus too, at least long enough to take a look at in the medicomp. She walked to the rubber gloves, held one to her mouth, and blew it up like a balloon. Now what? She stood in the middle of the room uncertainly. Would the medicomp be able to read anything through the rubber? Probably, even if she felt stupid shoving an inflated rubber glove into the sensor bay. But there was another problem, which was that whatever she did with her own breath, she’d have to do the same with the Partial’s breath as well. Both tests needed to be the same, or the results wouldn’t mean anything, and she was pretty sure the Partial wouldn’t blow up a rubber glove. She let the glove deflate. She’d have to think of something else.

“We were winning the war,” said the Partial softly. Kira still started when it spoke, not expecting to hear anything from it.

“What?” Kira stared at it, then shoved the glove into her pocket. “Why the hell are you bringing that up?”

“Because you think we created the virus; that’s why you’re studying me as part of your mission to cure it. You think we engineered it.” It shook its head. “We didn’t.”

“Obviously I expect you to lie to me,” said Kira, “but I was hoping you’d be a little more creative.”

“It’s the truth.”

“It is not true!” she shouted. The Partial didn’t respond, simply watched her from the table. Its eyes were dark and serious. “You attacked us, you killed us, and you released that virus to finish the job.”

“We were winning the war,” it said again. “We were the largest branch of your military, so there was no effective way for you to fight back; we struck quickly, we took out your communications, we crippled your counterattack. You had no way of stopping us. In another few weeks, maybe as few as two, we would have taken full control of the government, and we would have done it without losing the infrastructure your society had created—electricity, natural gas, shipping and industry and food production—”

“Was that your plan?” asked Kira bitterly. “To use us as slaves? As labor to maintain your infrastructure?”

“You mean the same thing you had done to us?”