Partials

Hobb raised his hands to call for order, smiling indulgently as the crowd continued to celebrate; they wanted their chance to cheer, and he seemed happy to give it to them. Kira marveled at the man’s capacity for change—not two weeks ago he was helping to turn the island into a totalitarian state, and it had collapsed catastrophically around him, and yet here he stood, smiling and clapping. Kessler had managed to maintain her seat as well, and Kira stole a glance at her on the other end of the stand. The other members of the subcommittee had not been so lucky.

Hobb quieted the crowd again, and this time they followed, growing hushed as Hobb prepared to speak. “We have found a cure for RM,” he said again. “We found it, of all places, in the Partials—in a chemical they excrete in their breath, which reacts with the virus to nullify it completely. We learned this thanks to a series of tests performed by our local hero, Ms. Kira Walker, under the supervision of the Senate.” Scattered applause filled the hall, and Hobb waited patiently for it to die down. “These tests were performed, as the rumor mill has already told you, on a live Partial subject obtained as part of a secret mission by members of the Defense Grid. We admit, shamefaced but honest, that we were not as open with you about these tests as perhaps we should have been. We feared a violent riot, and in the end that is exactly what we got. Rest assured that in the future the Senate will be much more transparent about our goals, our plans, and our methods for carrying them out.”

Kira blew out a long, nervous breath, watching the crowd for signs of unrest. Everything Hobb was saying was, technically, true, but the way he said it felt so … greasy, at least to Kira. He admitted just enough to seem repentant, while taking credit for much more of the process than the Senate had truly been a part of. The crowd wasn’t cheering him, but they weren’t booing him either.

“Arwen Sato is doing fine,” said Hobb, “more fit and healthy than we had dared to hope. We didn’t want to risk taking her from the hospital, where she is under the strictest care of both the doctors and her mother, but we did record this holo so that you could all see her.”

Hobb sat down, and the holo-image in the center of the coliseum changed from a close-up of his head to a scene from the maternity center; Kira, even knowing exactly what the movie was, couldn’t stop herself from crying as Saladin, the youngest human alive, stood beside the red-faced baby in the hospital crib to whom he was passing the honor. The sight of the child sent a gasp of awe through the audience, and Kira let herself get drawn up in it: the first human baby in eleven years that wasn’t sick, wasn’t screaming, wasn’t dying or dead.

The holo stopped and Hobb stood up, his eyes brimming with tears. “Arwen Sato is the future,” he said, echoing Kira’s thoughts. “That child, that precious little girl, is the first of a new generation—the inheritors of a world that will, we hope, be better than the one we have known for the last eleven years. Our scientists are working around the clock to replicate the compounds that saved Arwen’s life, so that we can begin applying them to other children, but that is not enough. If we want a brighter tomorrow, we must tear down the shadows of yesterday. That is why I am pleased to announce that the Hope Act is now and forever officially repealed.”

The audience cheered again, though not as unanimously. Many of the people in East Meadow still supported the Hope Act, saying that the existence of a real cure only made it more important to have as many children as possible, but the Senate had chosen to repeal it as a peace offering to the Voice. The same peace offering had included the resignations of Alma Delarosa and Oliver Weist; between them they had managed to soak up most of the blame for the city’s rapid dip into martial law. Skousen had also left, not in ignominy but to focus his time on replicating the cure. In their place the people had elected Owen Tovar, newly pardoned of his crimes with the Voice. The new Senate was a combination of East Meadow and Voice, both their ideas and their ways of thinking, and the island was finally at peace again. At least in theory. Kira looked down the row of Senators on the dais, seeing gaps and holes as each one sat closer or farther from their neighbors; this one avoided that one’s eyes, and that one whispered conspiratorially in the ear of the next. The crowd in the coliseum mirrored this behavior on a larger scale: they were united, but there were still deep rifts running just below the surface.