“Disengage that last hose,” said Heron. Her voice sounded tinny and distant through the radio, and Samm bristled again at the oddness of trying to communicate without the link. Partials used pheromonal communication because it was efficient, folding words and emotions and tactical information into a single, silent package. Working side by side, yet communicating solely through the radios in their helmets, felt like being deaf and mute. He still didn’t understand how humans did it.

As difficult as dealing with the repurposed diving gear was, though, it was necessary. If either of them breathed a whiff of the air in the laboratory, they’d be unconscious in seconds.

Samm slowly disengaged the final hose from the unconscious Partial’s odd metal face mask. There were ten comatose Partials here in Dr. Vale’s old laboratory, fast asleep in a secret subbasement of the Preserve. Vale had kept them here, unconscious, for thirteen years, tending them like plants and harvesting the Lurker pheromone from their bodies—an engineered chemical, naturally produced by all Partials, which served as the only known cure for RM. These Partials had kept the humans of the Preserve alive for over a decade, allowing them to raise healthy children—something the humans on Long Island had been completely unable to do. These ten Partials—But no, Samm corrected himself, these nine Partials. These nine Partials had given the Preserve a life and hope no other human had felt since the end of the world. Maybe even before that. They were saviors. But they were unwitting, unwilling, unconscious saviors, and Samm could not allow that to continue. The tenth Partial, this last one with the odd-looking face mask, had been modified by Dr. Vale to produce a different pheromone: one that would instantly render any Partial comatose. His mere proximity was a weapon.

Samm and Heron were disconnecting him, but they still had no idea what to do with him.

“That hose was pumping his sedative throughout the building,” said Heron. “Now that we’ve cut off his access, the effect should be limited to his immediate presence.”