Free Ruins by Dan Wells Page A

morning, just get it out.”
    He took a deep breath. “It’s just that . . .” He grimaced, still staring at the back of Morgan’s head. “Look, I don’t want this to sound wrong; I’m not trying to say ‘I told you so’—”
    “Don’t even start,” said Morgan.
    “But I do think we need to consider the possibility that we’ve backed the wrong horse, so to speak,” said Vale, pushing forward despite her warning. “Both species are dying, and we know the cure for one of them—let’s just focus on that one, and save as many humans as we can—”
    “And let the Partials die?” Morgan demanded. “Two hundred thousand people that we helped create—practically our children—and we should do nothing? Or worse yet, enslave them? Like your master plan? Lock them up in some basement dungeon as . . . what, feed stock? A temporary cure for the lucky species we deigned to save?”
    “We’re past the point of options we can all agree on,” said Vale. “ Everyone is dying. We’re running out of time, and this is a dead end, and I don’t think I’m being a monster to suggest that we need to use what little time we have left pursuing the only solution that any of us have managed to uncover.”
    “The cure for RM is just as much of a dead end,” said Kira. “In another ten months every Partial will be gone, and the cure will be gone with them, and none of this will matter.” She thought again of Samm, and longed to see him again before he expired. But he was on the other side of the continent, with a toxic wasteland and a pair of solemn promises keeping them apart.
    “That’s why we have to act now,” said Vale. “Extract as much of the cure as we can and store it for the future, to give us a buffer while we try to find another solution.”
    “We have ten months left—” said Morgan.
    Vale sighed, as if his argument was self-evident. “Ten months is nothing.”
    “But we could still do it,” hissed Morgan, “and the humans will still be there when we’re done.”
    “Both of you shut up,” said Kira, forcing herself to sit. She wanted nothing more than to lie down, to heal from her weeks of surgeries, to close her eyes and let this whole problem go away, but she couldn’t. She’d never been able to let go of anything, and no matter how much she cursed herself now, she pushed herself up, gritted her teeth, and stepped down to the floor. “Shut up,” she repeated. “You fight like my sisters, and I’m not in the mood.” She gathered the blanket around her, shivering in the cold room, and walked to one of the undamaged wall screens. “We’re doctors, dammit, let’s act like it.”
    “We’ve been acting like it for weeks,” said Vale. “I think we’ve earned a little break for self-pity.”
    “And only two of us are doctors,” said Morgan snidely. “Neither of them are you.”
    “Only two of us figured out the cure for RM,” Kira countered, studying the monitors. “Go ahead and remind yourself which two.”
    Morgan sneered, but after a moment she stalked to the door. “Have your little pity party,” she said to Vale. “I have work to do.” She stormed into the hall and slammed the door behind her.
    “I delight in anyone who stands up to that harridan,” said Vale, “but she’s arguably the most powerful person in the world right now. You need to keep a civil tongue.”
    “People have been telling me that my whole life,” said Kira, only barely paying attention to him. She stared at the vast screen, cataloguing the data in her mind, searching for some kind of order in the chaos—some final, perfect key that would pull it all together and make sense of it. “What do you see here?”
    “Your entire life, reduced to numbers,” said Vale. “Cellular decay rates, gene sequences, pH levels, white cell counts and bone marrow samples—”
    “The answer’s not here,” said Kira.
    “Of course it’s not here.”
    She felt a tiny spark of excitement, the familiar