“I’m serious about this,” said Gorman, leaning forward. “I can’t leave. The doctor said my lungs might never fully heal, and it’s not like I can take one of these oxygen tanks on a trip through unforgiving terrain. Even when I can walk again, even when I can run, I’ll be sleeping in this building with this cheap plastic noose around my neck for the rest of my life.” He shook the cannula for emphasis. “There’s nothing I’d like more in the world than to find that bastard Vale and kick him in the nads, over and over and over, but these people aren’t him, and they’ve given everything to help me. I want to help them.” He paused. “Let me stay here, in your place, donating Particle two-twenty-whatever-the-hell-it-is, and you go back home. Go to East Meadow and save the humans. Go to White Plains and slap some people around. And sure, if you see Dr. Vale, feel free to castrate him with a steel-toed boot, but first things first.”

“You’d really do this?” asked Samm.

“What else am I going to do?”

Someone banged loudly on the door, and Samm barely had time to look up before Calix threw it open, barging in breathlessly. “You gotta see this.”

Samm leaped to his feet. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s nothing wrong,” said Calix, grabbing his hand and heaving him toward the door. “It’s Monica’s baby, the one that was born last night.”

“You gave her the shot?” asked Samm.

“She doesn’t need it,” said Calix. “She’s not sick.”

Samm stopped in his tracks, staring at her, glancing back at Gorman. “She’s not sick?”

“She never got feverish,” said Calix. “They’ve been watching her all night, waiting for your extraction this morning, but she never got sick.”

Samm broke into a run, hurtling down the hall so fast he left Calix hobbling anxiously in his wake. He reached the maternity ward in less than a minute and pushed his way through the babbling crowd of nurses and onlookers surrounding the nurse’s station. Heron was already there, standing apart in a corner.

“Where is she?” asked Samm.

“Right in there,” said Laura, pointing to a mother staring in awe at her sleeping baby in a private room off the hallway. “Strong as an ox.”

Samm stared as well, not comprehending what was happening. Why hadn’t the baby gotten sick? Was she born immune? Surely RM was still in the air—all these people were carriers. So why wasn’t she sick?

A doctor rushed up to them, holding a small glass data screen in Laura’s face. “The blood test just finished: She already has the pheromone in her system.”

“Who gave it to her?” asked Laura.

“Nobody,” said the doctor.

Samm looked at the data screen, reading the results as best he could. “One of the other Partials, maybe?”