“I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life,” said Nandita. “Not here, not before, not anywhere.”

“Something like that would have to have come from ParaGen,” said Kessler. “You made all kinds of genetic freaks before the Break—Watchdogs and dragons and who knows what else. And you’ve told us that all you people in the Trust gene-modded yourself to hell. Longer life, sharper brainpower, increased physical abilities. That twisted abomination sure looks like your handiwork to me.”

Ariel considered Xochi and Kessler, who were usually fighting tooth and nail but at the moment were completely unified. They even stood alike, expressing their anger with the same fierce gestures and posture. They did everything they could to be different, yet here they were. Do Nandita and I look like this? Ariel wondered. For all my hatred, how much of me is just a reflection of her? She raised me for eleven years—more than twice as long as my real parents.

Except they were never my real parents. I have nothing left that’s truly my own.

Not even my anger.

“I assure you,” said Nandita, “if I’d worked on a project like that, or even seen one, I’d remember it.”

“You told us before that some of the Trust didn’t trust the others,” said Isolde. “You worked on projects without telling each other. What if it’s something like that?”

“Some kind of proto-Partial?” asked Nandita. “A model one of the others miraculously kept secret for thirty-odd years? Impossible.”

“Then somebody else,” said Madison. “Another genetics company, making their own version of the same technology?”

“Then it wouldn’t know Nandita,” said Ariel. “This did, which means it came from ParaGen, which means she knows something she’s not telling us.”

Nandita sighed, looking behind them. “If I talk while we walk, can we at least keep moving? We’re too exposed here.”

“We have to cut south now,” said Kessler. “We’re coming into Commack, and we had two old farms in this region. We have to assume the Partials have a presence here, even if it’s just a few scouts.”

“That means crossing the Long Island Expressway,” said Xochi, looking at her map. “If you don’t like how exposed we are now, that’s really going to get you.”

“If we have to, we have to,” said Ariel, jogging to catch up with Nandita. “Now talk.”

“That creature was almost definitely ParaGen,” said Nandita. “But I don’t recognize it, and I truly don’t know who had the skill to make anything like it. Furthermore, the fact that I don’t recognize it almost guarantees that it was created after the Break.”

“Who has that kind of technology?” asked Ariel.