Like a flash, Kira remembered a dog—it was giant in her memory, a growling mass of muscle and teeth. It chased her through a park or a garden, something green with grass and flowers, and she was terrified, and the dog was almost on her, and suddenly her father was there. He was not a strong man, he wasn’t big or powerful, but he put himself between her and the dog. He was bitten, and she thought it was very bad. He did it to save her. That’s what fathers did.

“What do you think it says about us that we don’t have any parents?” She looked up and caught Samm’s eye. “I don’t mean us, I don’t mean kids, I mean no fathers at all—a whole society, two whole societies, with no parents at all. What do you think that’s done to us?”

Samm said nothing, but he held her gaze. There was a tear in his eye—the first time she’d ever seen him cry. The scientist in her wanted to study it, to take a sample, to find out how and why and what he was crying. The girl in her simply thought of the Hope Act and wondered if a law like that could ever pass if a voter knew it would be forced upon his own daughter.

Kira looked at the screen, seeing not the image but her memory of Manhattan: of the Partial attack; of Gabe’s body lying slumped in the hall where the Partials had shot him. If they were on a mission of peace, why did they shoot him? She frowned, trying to reconcile that event with Samm’s protestation of innocence. They didn’t even try to talk to us first. It doesn’t make sense.

She racked her brain for more memories, trying to call up anything that would support what she desperately wanted to be true. What was it the Partials said right before we blew up the apartment? She struggled to remember. “Which group is this?” She’d heard it clearly—at least she thought she had. Which group of what? Had they been expecting someone else, maybe a group of bandits or the Voice? Was it pure luck that they’d found Kira instead, the one human who seemed willing to listen?

Or was Samm simply telling her exactly what she wanted to hear?

The doors opened with a sudden buzz, and the decontamination blowers roared to life. Shaylon came through the tunnel, clutching a plastic syringe full of blood, and ran to her in a rush.

“The nurse said to give you this,” he said quickly, holding out the syringe. “She said you’d know what to do with it.”

“You’re not allowed in here,” said Kira.

“She said it was an emergency,” said Shaylon, then stopped and looked at Samm. “So that’s him?”