BooksBarbecue
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Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Contents
  5. Part 1
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. Chapter Eight
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Part 2: Three Months Later
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-One
  28. Chapter Twenty-Two
  29. Chapter Twenty-Three
  30. Chapter Twenty-Four
  31. Chapter Twenty-Five
  32. Chapter Twenty-Six
  33. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  35. Part 3: Four Hours Later
  36. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  37. Chapter Thirty
  38. Chapter Thirty-One
  39. Chapter Thirty-Two
  40. Chapter Thirty-Three
  41. Chapter Thirty-Four
  42. Chapter Thirty-Five
  43. Chapter Thirty-Six
  44. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  47. Acknowledgments
  48. About the Author
  49. Credits
  50. Copyright
  51. About the Publisher

He didn’t say anything. He tilted his head, popping the joints in his neck, then held up his right arm; it moved about three inches before the restraint jerked it to a stop. He had been given a change of clothes, and Kira pulled back his sleeve to reveal an arm covered with thin lacerations, tender and pink. “They cut me.”

Kira’s mouth dropped open in horror. “Who?” The horror turned to anger almost instantly. “Who was it? The guards? Doctors?”

He nodded slightly, and probed his mouth with his tongue, making sure all the teeth were still in place.

“That’s ridiculous,” said Kira, fuming. She stomped to the microscope, snarled, and stomped back. Everything she’d thought about doing, and rejected for being inhumane, someone else had come in and done. She shot a long, cold glance at one of the cameras, an unblinking eye that stared back without emotion. She wanted to smash it, but took a breath and forced herself to calm down. Getting angry wasn’t going to solve anything. I’m trying to be the good guy here, but … is coddling the Partial really “good”? Would I be serving humanity better by testing his limits? She walked to her desk and sat down, still staring straight ahead. I don’t even know what to do.

She hung her head, and while looking down she saw the crumpled rubber glove in the garbage can. The breath test—she still needed to find a way to isolate the Partial’s breath so she could search it for samples of the airborne RM. The Spore. She still hadn’t found a good way to do it. The rubber gloves would work, she was pretty sure, but only if the subject was willing. She glanced at the Partial, grim and silent on the table.

She stood, pulled out another rubber glove, and walked slowly to the table.

“Do you have a name?”

The Partial eyed her carefully, that slow, studying look that made her feel like he was calculating everything about her.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I’m tired of calling you ‘Partial.’”

He studied her a moment longer, then smiled, slowly and warily. “Samm.”

“Samm,” said Kira. “I have to admit, I was expecting something more unusual.”

“It has two Ms.”

“Why two Ms?”

“Because that’s what it said on my rucksack,” said Samm. “‘Sam M.’ I didn’t realize the M was for a last name: I was two days old; I’d never met anyone with a last name. I was just… Samm. I spelled it that way on a report, and it stuck.”