Partials. Dan Wells. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Dan Wells
Издательство: HarperCollins
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Детская проза
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007465576
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Copyright

      First published in hardback in the USA by HarperCollinsPublishers Inc in 2012

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2012

      HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

      Copyright © 2012 by HarperCollinsPublishers

      Cover art © 2012 by Craig Shields

       Photo of girl © 2012 by Howard Huang Cover design by Alison Klapthor

      Dan Wells asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this ebook is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contracual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780007465224

      Ebook Edition © APRIL 2012 ISBN: 9780007465576

      Version: 2017-05-03

       Dedication

      This book is dedicated to the rule breakers, the troublemakers, and the revolutionaries. Sometimes the hand that feeds you needs a good bite.

      Contents

       Title Page

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      PART 2 - THREE MONTHS LATER

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

      CHAPTER NINETEEN

      CHAPTER TWENTY

      CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

      CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

      CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

      CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

      CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

      PART 3 - FOUR HOURS LATER

      CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

      CHAPTER THIRTY

      CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

      CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

      CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

      CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

      CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

      CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

      CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

      CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

      CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

       Keep Reading

      Acknowledgements

       About the Publisher

      

      

      Newborn #485GA18M died on June 30, 2076, at 6:07 in the morning. She was three days old. The average lifespan of a human child, in the time since the Break, was fifty-six hours.

      They didn’t even name them anymore.

      Kira Walker looked on helplessly while Dr. Skousen examined the tiny body. The nurses—half of them pregnant as well—recorded the details of its life and death, faceless in bodysuits and gas masks. The mother wailed despondently from the hallway, muffled by the glass. Ariel McAdams, barely eighteen years old. The mother of a corpse.

      “Core temperature ninety-nine degrees at birth,” said a nurse, scrolling through the thermometer readout. Her voice was tinny through the mask; Kira didn’t know her name. Another nurse carefully transcribed the numbers on a sheet of yellow paper. “Ninety-eight degrees at two days,” the nurse continued. “Ninety-nine at four o’clock this morning. One-oh-nine point five at time of death.” They moved softly through the room, pale green shadows in a land of the dead.

      “Just let me hold her,” cried Ariel. Her voice cracked and broke. “Just let me hold her.”

      The nurses ignored her. This was the third birth this week, and the third death; it was more important to record the death, to learn from it—to prevent, if not the next one, then the one after that, or the hundredth, or the thousandth. To find a way, somehow, to help a human child survive.

      “Heart rate?” asked another nurse.

      I can’t do this anymore, thought Kira. I’m here to be a nurse, not an undertaker—

      “Heart rate?” asked the nurse again, her voice insistent. It was Nurse Hardy, the head of maternity.

      Kira snapped back to attention; monitoring the heart was her job. “Heart rate steady until four this morning, spiking from 107 to 133 beats per minute. Heart rate at five o’clock was 149. Heart rate at six was 154. Heart rate at six-oh-six was . . . 72.”

      Ariel wailed again.

      “My figures confirm,” said another nurse. Nurse Hardy wrote the numbers down but scowled at Kira.

      “You need to stay focused,” she said gruffly. “There are a lot of medical interns