Fragments by Dan Wells Read Free Book Online Page B

the cure was and was able
     to obtain a sample from the Partials on the mainland, but Marcus and the other doctors
     were still a far cry from being able to manufacture it on their own.
    “Another died this weekend,” said Isolde softly. She looked up at Sandy for confirmation,
     and the nurse nodded sadly. Isolde paused, her hand on her belly, then turned to Marcus.
     “There’s more, you know—the Hope Act is gone, none of our pregnancies are mandatory
     anymore, and yet there are more now than ever before. Everyone wants to have a child,
     trusting that you’ll have figured out how to manufacture the cure reliably by the
     time they come to term.” She looked back down. “It’s funny—we always called them ‘infants’
     in the Senate, back before the cure, like we were trying to hide from the word ‘child.’
     When all it was was death reports, we never wanted to think of them as babies, as
     children, as anything but subjects in a failed experiment. Now that I’m . . . here,
     though, now that I’m . . . making one of my own, growing another human being right
     inside of me, it’s different. I can’t think of it as anything besides my baby.”
    Sandy nodded. “We did the same thing in the hospital. We still do. The deaths are
     still too close, so we try to keep death distant.”
    “I don’t know how you can do it,” said Isolde softly. Marcus thought he heard her
     voice crack, but he couldn’t see her face to tell if she was crying.
    “You have to have some kind of progress, though,” Madison told Marcus. “You have four
     teams—”
    “Five,” said Marcus.
    “Five teams now,” said Madison, “all trying to synthesize the Partial pheromone. You
     have all the equipment, the samples to work from, you have everything. It . . .” She
     paused. “It can’t be a dead end.”
    “We’re doing everything we can,” said Marcus, “but you have to understand how complex
     this thing is. It doesn’t just interact with RM, it’s part of the RM life cycle somehow—we’re
     still trying to understand how it works. I mean . . . we still don’t even understand
     why it works. Why would the Partials have the cure for RM? Why would it be part of
     their breath, in their blood? As near as we could gather from Kira before she left,
     the Partials don’t even know they have it, it’s just part of their genetic makeup.”
    “It doesn’t make sense,” said Sandy.
    “Not unless there’s some larger plan,” said Marcus.
    “It doesn’t matter if there’s some huge hypothetical plan,” said Madison. “It doesn’t
     matter where the pheromone came from, or how it got there, or why the sky is blue—all
     you have to do is copy it.”
    “We have to know how it works first—” said Marcus, but Isolde cut him off.
    “We’re going to go take it,” said Isolde. There was an edge in her voice Marcus hadn’t
     heard before. He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
    “You mean from the Partials?”
    “The Senate talks about it every day,” said Isolde. “There’s a cure, but we can’t
     make it on our own, and babies are dying every week, and the people are getting restless.
     Meanwhile right across the sound there are a million Partials who make our cure every
     day, without even trying. It’s not ‘will we attack the Partials,’ it’s ‘how much longer
     will we wait.’”
    “I’ve been across the sound,” said Marcus. “I’ve seen what Partials are capable of
     in a fight—we wouldn’t stand a chance against them.”
    “It doesn’t have to be an all-out war,” said Isolde, “just a raid—in and out, grab
     one guy, done. Just like Kira and Haru did with Samm.”
    That got Haru’s attention, and he looked up from his argument with Xochi. “What about
     me and Samm?”
    “They’re talking about whether the Grid’s going to kidnap another Partial,” said Madison.
    “Of course they’re going to,” said Haru. “It’s inevitable. They’ve been stupid to