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is a basic Partial template, an example of a Partial genome with no expiration triggers.”
    “Which is exactly what she’s looking for,” said Kira.
    He dismissed that notion with a wave. “It’s a solution she can’t implement. Even if she finds the right genes, what then? We don’t have the time or the means to disseminate the cure to more than a handful of Partials, let alone every Partial in the world. I’ve talked to her about it, but she’s determined.”
    Kira started to speak but trailed off, uncertain and terrified. “But if I’m not . . .” It was a fear she hadn’t even realized she had, but which sprang up in her mind like a nightmare, shaking her to the core.
    I’m not a cure for RM, and I don’t have any special powers or abilities that anyone can find. I’m not even the Partial Failsafe, according to every test they’ve been able to run. I thought I was created for a purpose, but I’ve tried everything else, and curing expiration is the only purpose left.
    But if I’m not the cure for expiration, what good am I to anyone?
    She tried to control her tears, but they burst out in a flood. Vale looked up in surprise, his face a mask of confusion; he looked like he wanted to help but had no idea what to do or say, and Kira stood up quickly, grabbing her rolling IV stand and walking away before he could try to comfort her. She was still sobbing, so much she could hardly see, but she knew that a single word from anyone, even a kind one, would wreck her completely. She staggered out of the room, closing the door behind her, and sagged against the wall in a torrent of tears.
    I thought the Trust had a plan to save everyone, and the more I looked the more it kept coming back to my father, to me, to the questions that no one could answer. Why did he make me? Why would anyone hide a Partial among the humans? What was I intended to do or be or accomplish? What was I  . . . She sobbed, completely unable to even articulate the thought anymore, even to herself. She’d dared to believe that she was the plan—that her father had created her for this time, for this purpose, to cure both species and save the world. To lose that dream was hard enough, but the sheer arrogance of having that dream in the first place broke her in half.
    Dr. Morgan found her twenty minutes later, curled on the floor and shivering in her hospital gown.
    “The spinal fluid was another dead end. I want brain tissue.”
    Kira didn’t bother to ask why, or what her methods were, or how much brain tissue Morgan needed. She dragged herself to her feet, clutching the IV stand like a cane, and shuffled toward the operating room. The biopsies were invasive and painful, more like torture than a medical procedure, but Kira set her face grimly and lay down under the spider. The hospital was so empty, they hadn’t passed a single other person in the halls. Too many of the Partials were dead.
    The needles gleamed, piercing her like daggers, but Kira embraced the pain. It was all she had left.

CHAPTER SIX
    A riel tapped her fingers on the stock of her rifle, watching Nandita as the women in the house readied themselves to leave. It would be so easy to kill her—half a second to aim, another to pull the trigger. Boom. Dead. So easy to rid the world of its most heartless, deceitful, irredeemable denizen. Nandita Merchant had created the Partials, she had created RM, she had kidnapped Ariel and three other girls and experimented on them for years, right under everyone’s noses, lying to them about their true nature. Ariel was a Partial. Her adoptive sisters—Kira and Isolde—were Partials. The enemy.
    In Ariel’s mind it felt as if Nandita had changed her with a sentence, like a magic spell, stealing her humanity to leave her gasping in the darkness. She had made her a monster, with the blood of the world still dripping from her talons. She didn’t know what to think, or even how. It was too much to take in. The world had shifted, and