Kira had yet to find any solid connection between RM and expiration, but she had leads. First of all, she knew from Dr. Vale that the purpose of RM had been to tie humanity intrinsically to its engineered children. The Partials were thinking, feeling people, and the human race couldn’t be allowed to cast them aside like used tools when it was done with them. By putting the cure for RM inside the Partials, it seemed as if they were making a clear statement about the solution to this problem—the humans who cast the Partials aside would get sick, but the humans who embraced them would be fine. The Partials would breathe out their cure, the humans would breathe it in, and everyone would be healthy. And if the Predator had been less deadly, that plan probably would have worked. Would the same plan have saved the Partials as well?

If Kira was right, somewhere in the life cycle of the RM virus there was a cure for expiration. Obviously it wouldn’t be in the Spore, because then the Partials could heal themselves; it wouldn’t be in the Predator, either, because the mere presence of the Partials removed the Predator from the bloodstream. No, the cures seemed to be designed to activate only when the species intermingled, so what she was looking for would be buried in the Blob. The Partials would give humans the Lurker, thus saving them, and then the humans would turn around and give something back to the Partials and save them . . . but what? Was there a fourth stage of the virus she hadn’t encountered yet? Was there another interaction she hadn’t seen? It was possible that some of the Partials who’d spent a lot of time around humans would have already been exposed to the cure, but the only way to test that was to wait until their expiration date and see if they died. She opened a new file on her medicomp and made a note to check the records for something like this, but she didn’t hold out much hope for it—if any of the Partials had survived their expected expiration, it would be bigger news. Very few of the Partials had come into contact with the humans anyway, not for nearly eleven years. The Partials involved in the East Meadow occupation had received plenty of human contact, but was it enough? How much did it take? How quickly could it take effect? There were too many variables, and they were running out of time—observational data wasn’t good enough. She would have to test her theory directly, and that meant hands-on experimentation: She had to obtain a sample of the Blob and expose it to Partial physiology.

It was a good plan. It was the only plan she could make. But the steps she would have to take to carry it out made a part of her die inside.