Skousen looked back fiercely, but soon he began to sag. “I’ve dreamed of your deaths every night for thirteen years, but not like this. No one should die like this.”

Michelle stopped trying to reach the old human, and Shon relaxed his grip on her arm. The air recyclers hummed loudly in the background, filling the dark plastic room with an unfeeling hiss. Shon gestured at the dying Partial soldiers. “Do you know how to cure it?”

“I barely even know what’s causing it,” Skousen whispered.

“Michelle said something about it being a genetic disorder.”

“Two different ones, if I’m reading the data correctly,” said Skousen. “It might be a bioweapon, but at this point you have to consider the possibility that this is a . . . malfunction. A factory error in your DNA, possibly related to your expiration date.”

“Expiration doesn’t look like this,” said Shon.

“Nothing in your history looks like this,” said Skousen. “We have to base our theories on analysis, not precedent.”

“So what’s causing it?” asked Shon. “Why is it only appearing in East Meadow, and why only in specific quadrants? Every victim we’ve seen has come from one of two patrol assignments, overlapping in a very specific region of the city—that has to be environmental.”

“Every victim we’ve seen has appeared in the last four days,” said Skousen. “This disease is too new to make any assumptions about—something that looks like a trend might just be a quirk blown out of proportion by a small sample size.”

A muffled alarm sounded down through the insulated ceiling, just loud enough to hear. Michelle looked up sharply.

“New victims.”

“Damn.” Shon moved to the door, but Michelle blocked his path.

“The disinfection procedure to get out of this room takes ten minutes. We might as well just wait.” She sighed. “They’ll bring them right to us anyway.”

They waited, agonizingly helpless, listening to the shouts and footsteps above them. Finally the door opened, and two gas-masked soldiers dragged a stumbling, blistered Partial into the basement laboratory. Skousen helped them get the man onto a table, and Shon used the link to demand a report.

“Same patrol as the others,” said the first soldier, saluting as he spoke. “Symptoms are about two hours old; we grabbed him as soon as his unit reported them.”

“The others have been quarantined?”

“They’re in the yard,” said the soldier. “We knew you’d want to talk to them first.”

Shon nodded and walked to the sick man. “What’s your name, soldier?”

“Chas,” said the man, grunting the word through gritted teeth. “The pain, it’s—”

“We’ll do everything we can for you,” said Shon, and turned to Michelle. “Stay here; learn everything you can from him. I need to get upstairs and debrief the others.” He looked at Skousen. “Figure out why this is happening.”

The human’s voice was firm. “Bring me my notes.”