“The Partials will catch her,” said Mkele. “A warhead’s not an easy thing to transport—it’s going to compromise her ability to stay hidden.”
“And if that happens, she might just blow it on sight,” said Hobb. “As long as she’s twenty miles from East Meadow, our major population center is safe, and then the winds will blow the fallout north to White Plains.”
“If she makes it twenty miles,” said Haru.
Tovar raised his eyebrow. “Are we prepared to risk the human race on a bunch of ifs?”
“What are we risking?” asked Hobb. “We send someone to stop her, and everyone else to evacuate the island—we’re not risking anything unless we don’t act.”
“Hobb wasn’t exaggerating about how hard it is to move around,” said Mkele. “Haru can do it because he’s been trained, and he knows the island, but how do you intend to carry out a mass evacuation without drawing attention?”
“We do it after the blast,” said Hobb. “Spread the word, get everything ready, and when the bomb goes off and the occupation force is distracted, we rise up, kill as many Partials as we can, and run south.”
“So your plan is to murder a superior enemy army,” said Tovar, “and then outrun the wind. I’m glad it’s so simple.”
“We have to evacuate first,” said Haru, “now, to avoid even the periphery of the nuclear fallout.”
“We already talked about how that’s not going to work,” said Hobb. “There’s no way to move that many people without the Partials seeing us and stopping us.” He looked at the others. “Remind me why the kid is even here?”
“He’s proven himself valuable,” said Mkele. “We’re not exactly in a position to turn away help.”
“Which is also why you’re still here,” said Tovar.
“My wife and child are in East Meadow,” said Haru, “and you know who they are—every human being alive knows who they are. And that means you know why we don’t have time to waste. Arwen is the only human child in the world, and she’s going to attract some attention—for all we know, they’re already in Partial custody somewhere, ready to be cut open and studied.”
“We can’t lose that child,” said Tovar, and Haru could see that the fear in his face was real. “Arwen represents the future. If she dies in that explosion, or in the fallout after …”
“That’s why we have to evacuate now,” said Haru, “before Delarosa detonates that nuke. There’s got to be a way.”
“Hobb’s plan uses the explosion as a distraction,” said Mkele. “But what if we distracted them another way?”
“If we could create a distraction big enough to overthrow the Partials, we’d have done it already,” said Hobb. “The nuke is all we have.”
Mkele shook his head. “We don’t need to overthrow them, just pull their attention. Delarosa’s guerrillas have been doing that already, more or less, but if we went all out—”
“We’d die,” said Tovar. “It’s like Hobb said, if we could do it safely, we’d have done it already.”
“So we don’t do it safely,” said Mkele.
The other men went quiet.
“This is as final and as deadly as any situation can be,” said Mkele. “We’re talking about a nuclear explosion forty miles from the last group of human beings on the planet. Even our best-case scenario, where somebody finds Delarosa and stops her in time, leaves us trapped in the hands of an occupying species that treats us like lab rats. An all-out attack on the Partials is going to kill every human soldier who tries it—none of us hold any illusions about that—but if there’s a chance that the rest of the humans could escape, then how can we possibly argue that it’s not worth it?”
Haru thought about his family: his wife, Madison, and his baby girl. He couldn’t bear to think of leaving Arwen without a father, but Mkele was right—when the only alternative is extinction, an awful lot of horrors become acceptable. “We’re going to die anyway,” he said. “At least this way our deaths will mean something.”
“Don’t go volunteering just yet,” said Tovar. “This is a two-part plan: One group provides the distraction, and the other gets everyone as far south as humanly possible. No pun intended.”
“Then we run,” said Mkele. His voice was somber. “Away from our only source of the cure. Or did we all forget?”
The room fell quiet again. Haru felt a numbness creeping up his legs and back—no matter how far they ran, they still had RM. Arwen was alive because Kira had found a cure in the Partials’ pheromonal system, but so far the humans had been unable to replicate it in a lab. They’d have to start over in a new medical facility, and it could take years just to find one and get it working again—and there was no guarantee that they’d ever be successful. If the Partials died, the cure would almost certainly die with them.
Haru could tell from their faces that the others were thinking of the same insurmountable problem. His throat was dry, and his voice sounded weak when he broke the silence. “Our best-case scenario keeps sliding closer and closer to our worst.”
“The Partials are our greatest enemy, but they’re also our only hope for the future,” said Mkele. He steepled his fingers and pressed them to his forehead a moment before continuing. “Maybe we should take some with us.”
“You say that like it’s easy,” said Haru.
“What do you want to do?” asked Tovar. “Just keep a few in cages and pull out the pheromone when you need it? Doesn’t that seem kind of evil to any of you?”
“My job is to protect the human race,” said Mkele. “If it means the difference between life and extinction, then yes, I will keep Partials in cages.”
Tovar’s face was grim. “I keep forgetting you had this same job under Delarosa.”
“Delarosa was trying to save the human race,” said Mkele. “Her only crime was that she was willing to go too far in order to do it. We decided, briefly, that we didn’t want to go along with her, but look at us: We’re hiding in a basement, letting Delarosa fight our battles, seriously considering letting her deploy a nuclear bomb. We are long past the point where we can pick and choose our morality. We either save our species or we don’t.”
“Yes,” said Tovar, “but I’d prefer it if we were still worth saving by the end of it.”
“We either save our species or we don’t,” Mkele repeated, more forcefully this time. He looked at the other men one by one, starting with Hobb. The amoral senator nodded almost immediately. Mkele turned next to Haru, who stared back only a moment before nodding as well. When the alternative is extinction, all kinds of horrors become acceptable.
“I don’t like it,” said Haru, “but I like it more than everybody dying. We’re out of time for anything better.”
Mkele turned to Tovar, who threw up his hands in frustration. “Do you know how long I fought against these kinds of fascist policies?”
“I do,” said Mkele calmly.
“I started a civil war,” said Tovar. “I bombed my own people because I thought freedom was more important than survival. There’s no point saving us if we lose our humanity in the process.”
“We can change if we live,” said Mkele. “A nation built on slavery can be redeemed, but not if we all die.”
“This is wrong,” said Tovar.
“I never said it wasn’t,” said Mkele. “Every choice we have is wrong. This is the lesser of ninety-nine evils.”
“I’ll lead your