“He said idiot Voice lies,” said Haru. “Don’t even listen to him.”

“He said I have the cure,” said Kira. She turned painfully, dragging her bloody leg. Was it just her imagination, or was the wound already starting to heal? She clutched the cure in her hand and held it up. “It’s right here.”

“You’re not getting anywhere near my daughter,” said Haru.

“I’m going to save her,” she said again, grabbing the wall and pulling herself, inch by agonizing inch, to her feet. She rested her weight on her good leg and tried to ignore the other, willing herself to stand through sheer mental force. “I have sacrificed everything I had, and everything I am, to save your daughter. Are you really going to be the one to stop me?”

“You’re a Partial agent,” said Haru. “You’re in league with them—God only knows what you’re trying to do to my daughter, but I will die before I let you do it.”

“I’m fine with that plan,” said Xochi.

“He’s dead,” announced Marcus, falling back from Jayden’s body. He looked up at Haru, gasping for breath and reeling from exhaustion. “He died for this, Haru. Don’t do this.”

Madison wailed in despair, and the child in the crib wailed with her, an incoherent cry against a world that brought nothing but pain. Kira stared at Haru fiercely. “You have to let me try.”

“Try?” asked Haru. “You mean you’re not even sure?”

Kira paled, thinking of all the ways she could be wrong, all the ways the injection could fail. What if I’ve done all this for nothing? What if I’ve killed my friends and destroyed my world for nothing more than a sloppy experiment and some bad guesses and my own stubborn pride? The Senate warned me about this: They said I was risking thousands of lives and the future of the human race for one overriding obsession. Is it because I’m a Partial, driven to destroy everything just because that’s how I’m made? Thanks to me, the entire nation is in chaos, thousands are dead, and without a cure, we may never recover. Without a cure, it won’t even matter.

But with a cure…