Vale walked toward the screen, studying the glowing words and numbers as he did. “I know the Trust kept a lot of secrets from one another,” he said, engaging more actively in her brainstorm. “But I can assure you there are no more mysterious species out there we can gather up and poke around in.”

“Not strictly true,” said Kira. “On our trip to the Preserve we were attacked by talking dogs.”

“The Watchdogs aren’t a cure for expiration,” said Vale, tapping the screen to call up a file on the semi-intelligent animals. “Believe it or not, Morgan’s already studied them, trying to see if they had the same expiration date the Partials did. They don’t carry any more potential cures than you do.”

“Which is exactly why this giant, useless data dump is such a godsend,” said Kira. “It’s like a road map that only shows ninety-nine percent of a country—all we have to do is figure out what isn’t on the map, and that’s where the answer is. The one percent of the territory that we haven’t studied yet.”

“Okay,” said Vale halfheartedly, flicking through a list of digital folders, “what’s not in here?” He stopped, watching as his simple touch created a cascade of innumerable folders flying past him on the screen. “How are we even supposed to know where to start?”

“We start by thinking about the people, not the numbers,” said Kira. “This isn’t just data, it’s Morgan’s data, collected by her based on her own suppositions. And she wasn’t looking for a natural, random phenomenon, she was looking for something created by another person—by Armin Dhurvasula. He had a plan for everything, you said he did, so all we have to do is figure out what it was.”

“If your plan relies on us reading the mind of a dead mad scientist who might have come up with a plan to save the world, maybe, I’m going to suggest that we’d be better off looking for another plan.”

“It’s not mind reading,” said Kira, “just . . . think about it. What were the resources Armin had to work with?”

“The entire industry of genetic engineering.”

“Divided into a specific subset of tools,” said Kira. “Each of you in the Trust had a specific job, right? What was his?”

Vale narrowed his eyes, as if suddenly caught by the viability of Kira’s line of thought. “He did the pheromones—the link system.”