A few people in the crowd shouted out guesses, mostly outlying farms and fishing villages, but the giant holo-image shook its head sadly. Kira looked below to the man himself, a tiny figure in a worn brown suit made almost white by the spotlight. He turned slowly, shaking his head as the crowd called out locations from all across the island. He stopped turning and pointed at the floor.

“Here,” he said. “Actually, just over there, south of the turnpike, in the old Kellenberg High School. The attack was small, and we managed to contain it without much bloodshed, so you may not have even known about it, but still, they were right there. How many of you live near there?” He raised his hand, nodding at the others in the crowd who raised theirs as well. “Yes,” he said, “you live right there, I live right there, that is the heart of our community. The Voice isn’t just out in the forest anymore, they’re here, in East Meadow, in our own neighborhood. They want to tear us apart from the inside, but we are not going to let them!

“The Voice objects to the Hope Act,” he continued. “They call it tyranny, they call it fascism, they call it control. You call it our only chance. You want to give humanity a future; they want to live in the present, and to kill anyone who tries to stop them. Is that freedom? If there’s anything we’ve learned in the last eleven years, my friends, it is that freedom is a responsibility to be earned, not a license for recklessness and anarchy. If someday, despite our strongest efforts and our deepest determination, we finally fall, let it be because our enemies finally beat us, not because we beat ourselves.”

Kira listened quietly, sobered by the speech. She didn’t relish the thought of getting pregnant so quickly—she had fewer than two years left before she came of age—but she knew the Senate was right. The future was the most important thing, certainly more important than one girl’s hesitation to take the next step.

Senator Hobb’s voice was soft, grim, resolute. “The Voice disagrees with the Hope Act, and they’ve decided to express their disagreement through murder and theft and terrorism. They’re allowed to disagree; it’s their methods that are the issue. There was another group, not so long ago, who used the same methods—a group who didn’t like the way things were and decided to rebel. They were called Partials. The difference is that the Partials were unthinking, unfeeling, inhuman killers. They kill because that’s what we built them to do. The Voices are human and, in some ways, that makes them even more dangerous.”

The crowd murmured. Senator Hobb glanced down, cleared his throat, and continued.

“There are some things more important than ourselves—more important than the limits of the present, and the whims of the now. There is a future to build and protect. And if we’re going to make that future a reality, we have to stop fighting among ourselves. We have to end dissent wherever we find it. We have to trust one another again. This is not about the Senate and the city, this is not about the city and the farms, this is not about any little group or faction. This is about us. The entire human race, united as one. There are people out there who want to tear that apart, but we are not going to let them!”