Fragments. Dan Wells

looked up, surprised. “They sank a Partial fleet?”

      “The Partials didn’t have a navy,” said Afa, still sorting his papers. “That was a human fleet, sunk by the Partial Air Force, just off the shore of Brooklyn. It was the biggest military strike in the war, in retaliation for the death of General Craig. I have one about him, too.” He held up another page, and Kira snatched it away, poring over the information: “‘General Scott Craig, leader of the Partial uprising and former mouthpiece of the Partial rights movement, was assassinated last night in a daring strike by human commandos—’ We killed him?”

      “It was a war.”

      “And then they destroyed an entire fleet.” She counted up the ships in the article, a massive group sailing north to attack the concentration of Partial forces in New York State. The ships had been undermanned, their crews already ravaged by the plague. “Twenty ships, and they just . . . killed everyone on them.”

      “It was a war,” said Afa again, taking the papers from her hands and dropping them back in the box.

      “But it didn’t have to be,” said Kira, following him across the room. “The Partials didn’t want to kill everyone—you said yourself that they weren’t evil. They wanted equality, they wanted to live normal lives, and they could have done that without killing all those thousands of people on those ships.”

      “They killed billions of people,” said Afa.

      “Do you know that for sure?” Kira demanded. “You have all these documents and articles and everything else—do you have something about RM? About where it came from?”

      “I’m the last human being on the planet,” he said loudly, walking more quickly to stay ahead of her, and Kira realized that she was practically shouting at him. She backed off, forcing herself to calm down; he had to have something about the virus, but she’d never find it without his help. She need to keep him, and herself, calm.

      “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I got loud. I’m very . . .” She took a deep breath, collecting herself. “I’ve been looking for some very important answers, and you’ve found them, and I just got overexcited.”

      “You’re still real,” he said, backing into a corner. “You’re still here.”

      “I’m here and I’m your friend,” she said softly. “You’ve done an amazing thing here—you’ve found all the information I need. But I don’t know your system; I don’t know how it’s organized. Will you please help me find what I’m looking for?”

      Afa’s voice was soft. “I have everything,” he said, his head nodding up and down. “I have almost everything.”

      “Can you tell me who created RM?” She clenched her fists, forcing herself not to get loud or aggressive.

      “That’s easy,” said Afa. “It was the Trust.”

      “Yes,” said Kira, nodding eagerly, “the Trust, keep going. The Trust are the Partial leaders, the generals and the admirals and the people who made the decisions, right? You say they made RM?” That was completely the opposite of what Samm had told her; he’d insisted that the Partials had nothing to do with it, but she’d already suspected that might be a lie—not Samm’s lie, but one that had been told to him by his superiors. If the cure for RM was in their breath, manufactured in their own bodies, then the connection between the Partials and the virus was undeniable. To learn that they had created it and released it was an easy jump to make.