“This is a very scary sudden silence,” said Haru. “What’s going on?”

“It can’t be him,” said Isolde.

“It absolutely can be,” said Kessler. “Everywhere we’ve gone—”

“I know,” growled Isolde. “I know that it’s probably Khan. I just don’t want it to be.”

“That’s what you named him?” asked Hobb. “Khan?”

“It doesn’t make sense that Khan would catch it, too,” said Haru. “It’s designed to target Partials—”

“He is a Partial,” Isolde snapped. “So am I.” She gestured to Ariel. “We both are—ask Nandita.”

Then men looked at Ariel, then at Nandita. “What?” asked Hobb.

“It’s a long story,” said Ariel, “and Nandita’s really bad at telling it. Here are the bullet points: Nandita was a geneticist at ParaGen. They made the Partials and loaded them up with a bunch of weird diseases, including RM and an alternate disease that kills Partials. When the Partials rebelled, the wrong one got released, because the Partial-killer was only inside a handful of certain late-model Partials designed to mimic a regular human life cycle. Me, Isolde, and Kira.”

Hobb stared at her blankly. “What?” he said again.

Haru shook his head. “I think you mean ‘What the bloody hell?’”

“Ariel left out the reasons behind our actions,” said Nandita, “but the basics are all there. Isolde’s DNA is coded with the blueprints for a Partial-killing plague, and when that DNA mixed with Hobb’s to conceive Khan, it looks like it may have . . . gotten loose.”

“Gotten loose?” asked Hobb. “My son is dying of a plague you built, and all you say is that it ‘got loose’?”

“I might be able to cure him,” said Nandita. “His human half seems to be keeping him alive, and if I can get to the lab on Plum Island, they have genetics equipment that could remove the disease altogether.”

Isolde was holding Khan tightly now, rocking him gently, her eyes filled with tears.

Hobb’s face was still aghast. “You’re a Partial?”

“You need to get past that part,” said Ariel. “None of us knew until a few weeks ago.”

“Let’s take a step back to think about this,” said Kessler. “We were headed to Plum Island—and we should still go there eventually—but if he’s a bioweapon . . .”

“No,” said Isolde.

“If he killed those two soldiers outside Plainview that fast,” Kessler continued, “think what he could do if we got him into the middle of the Partial army.”

“Not a chance,” Isolde hissed. “He’s a baby, not a bomb!”

“The Partials have ruined everything we ever loved,” said Kessler. “We could end it all right now—the war, the occupation, even the hunt to find us—”

Ariel scoffed. “You want to end their hunt by just turning ourselves over?”