Ruins, the final novel in the Partials series picks up where the second left off.
The Partials are super-soldiers, created in labs,sent to wage and win a war with China. When the returned victorious to the United States, they found themselves abandoned. So they turned on their creators and this led to the Partials War. Twelve years later, both humans and Partials find themselves facing extinction.
The humans on East Meadows have been ordered to surrender Kira Walker, the sixteen-year-old medic who had found the cure to the RM plague. The cure saved the life of Arwen Sato, who became the first infant to survive in twelve years. The message by Dr. McKenna Morgan blares on radios constantly but the residents of East Meadows cannot turn her in because she isn't among them anymore. The penalty for not presenting Kira is the death of another human each day and continuation of the occupation of East Meadows.
And so every day one human is assassinated. Dr. Morgan knew what the humans did not, that Kira Walker is a Partial, but a special one whose DNA might be able to cure the built-in expiration that killed the Partials.
1. Long Island Senators
With the Partials outnumbering the humans by more than ten to one, the humans needed some way to achieve better odds. That came with the discovery by Marisol Delarosa of a nuclear warhead in a sunken navy ship. The fugitive senate are holed up underneath the ruined JFK International Airport. There, on Long Island, Senator Owen Tovar, Duna Mkele, Haru Sato, Senator Hobb debate the use of a recently discovered nuclear warhead aboard a sunken warship. The nuclear warhead is in the hands of Marisol Delarosa, head of the only successful group of human resistance fighters, known as the White Rhinos. Delarosa believes that as long as the Partials exist, the human race will never recover itself and therefore, she's determined to exterminate all Partials. Tovar, Hobb, Mkele and Haru believe her plan is to take the warhead to the Partials homebase in White Plains only forty miles north of East Meadows and detonate it there. The group debates whether this is a justifiable use of such a deadly weapon. They decide that if this is a likely scenario, they need to evacuate East Meadows quietly and quickly. To that end they decide to create a military distraction, while another group leads the humans out of East Meadows. Tovar will lead the distraction, while Hobb and Haru will do the evacuation. But Mkele wants to take some of the Partials with them, as they are their only hope for survival.
2. Dr. Morgan, Dr. Cronus Vale & Kira
When the broadcasts by the Partials cease, the senators believe this indicates that they have located Kira Walker. Unknown to both the humans and the Partials, Kira Walker, herself a Partial, has returned to Dr. McKenna Morgan at the Greenwhich, Connecticut facility to be experimented on to see if she holds the key to turning off the Partials expiration date. With Morgan is Dr. Vale who is distressed at the way Kira is being treated. Morgan and Vale were part of the group of ParaGen scientists, called the Trust, who created the Partials and the RM plague. Dr. Morgan gave up on the humans and has focused on helping the Partials build a new society and to try to overcome their problems of sterility. Then, twenty years after their creation, they began to die in a matter of hours. But Kira has none of the genetic issues that plague the Partials and she has no expiration date.
Dr. Vale desperately works to recconstruct his work on the Partials' expiration without much success. The Partials live for twenty years and then in a matter of weeks they age quickly and die. Kira tells Vale he could have refused to make the Partials or to make the expiration but he tells her it was supposed to be a temporary thing. Vale reveals that the government wanted a kill switch, the Failsafe that would kill the Partials when they were done with them. They wanted a plague that would kill off only the Partials but the Trust made two: one for the Partials that was never used and a second one for humans - the RM plague that has killed most of humanity. They created a disease that only the Partials could cure, hoping to make the two need each other.
After weeks of tests on Kira, Dr. Morgan realizes that Kira's body does not hold the key to saving the Partials. Dr. Vale wants to focus on saving the humans, since they know the Partials have the antidote for the RM virus. Vale and Kira come to realize that just as the cure for the human RM viral illness was placed into the Partials, it is possible that the cure for the Partial's expiration was put into humans. The RM virus as three stages: the Spore which is breathed out, Predator which sickens the human, Blob which is the deactivated virus. The Partials breathe out the RM virus "the Spore", but in close contact with humans, the Partials Pheromone 47 "Lurker" that they produce deactivates the virus in humans. She theories that while the Partials breathe out the cure for the RM virus, the humans might also provide something to the Partials which will disable the expiration date. Kira theorizes that something in the life cycle of the RM virus deactivates the expiration of the Partials. What do the humans have that can deactivate the expiration in the Partials?
Kira believes she needs a sample of the deactivated RM virus, the Blob. When Kira suggests to Dr. Vale that they need to bring a human into the lab to test her theory, he refuses. They cannot use Kira as she is a Partial-human hybrid, and they can't use Vale as he has been genetically modified. He tells her that Partials and humans can never live together.This leads Kira to slip out of the lab and head north to try to find a group of Partials who might consider working with humans to prove her theory and save both races.
3. Samm and Heron
Meanwhile, Samm and Heron are in Dr.Vale's old laboratory near the Preserve outside of Denver, beginning the process of awakening the nine Partials from the Third Division who have been sedated for the past thirteen years. They have been used to provide the Lurker chemical which is the cure for the RM disease that has decimated the human population. As they awaken, Samm and Heron are removing the Partials from the basement and taking them to the humans who live in the Preserve. A tenth Partial who has been irreparably damaged is left behind. As the Partials are disconnected they struggle to regain consciousness and must be restrained. Heron doesn't understand why Samm is doing this and urges him to leave to find Dr. Morgan and save himself.
Eventually the nine Partials recover from their comas and learn that they have been used for thirteen years. When Samm fills them in on what has happened in that time and explains that the Partials have an expiration date, He tells them there are only thirty-five thousand humans left alive, and only about two hundred thousand Partials. Gorman, one of the Partials tells him that they are all twenty-one years old. Somehow they have survived past their expiration date. Samm encourages them to begin working together with the humans.
Samm decides he is not going stay at the Preserve and instead wants to find Kira Walker, However one of the recovered Partials suggests that Samm take three other Partials, Ritter, Aaron and Bradley and they go to East Meadows to volunteer to provide the pheromone to the humans there so their babies can survive. They then learn that a baby born the previous night has never sickened with the RM virus. Heron states that there are now ten Partials living in the hospital, herself and the nine recovering Partials. They have been releasing the pheromone into the air and it is likely that the concentration is enough that the baby now has it in her blood, protecting her. They now realize that they must get to the humans in East Meadow to tell them what has happened, in the hopes of de-escalating tensions.
4. Nandita and Madison and Arwen
On Long Island, Nandita Merchant who created the Partials and the RM virus and who kidnapped and experimented on the Partials as well as the human-Partial hybrides Ariel, Kira and Isolde, is preparing to leave the Island. Accompanying her are Ariel, Isolde and Isolde's hybrid human-Partial child, Mohammad Khan, Xochi and her adoptive mother, Senator Erin Kessler, Haru's wife Madison and their daughter, Arwen, the first child in the Long Island community to survive in thirteen years. Mohammad did not die from the RM virus but has an unknown illness that causes his skin to erupt in boils. Two Partials come to the house after heaing Mohammad's cries and are told he has RM. They are not convinced but leave. Nandita tells them they are going to the Plum Island Disease Research Center, a hermetically sealed, government research center with it's own power source. She hopes to study and cure Khan's illness.
A routine Partial patrol finds them in the woods, pursues and captures them. One of the Partials, Cedric asks about the biological weapon and the rocket strikes in Plainsview, but Ariel insists they know nothing about this. Just then a large creature, manlike enters the warehouse. When Cedric shoots it in the leg, the flaps on it's shoulders flare and the Partials collapse. It tells them to prepare that the snow is coming. It mentions Nandita by name but quickly leaves.
As they travel north towards Commack, Nandita tells the group she has no idea what the creature is or who made it.She believes ParaGen had the technology to make it. While Ariel is doubtful that ParaGen could create genetic modifications to repair the climate, Nandita is not. While crossing the Long Island Expressway, they unexpectedly meet up with Haru, Senator Hobb who discovers that Mohammad Khan is his half human-Partial son. The group now splits up with, Haru, his wife Madison and their daughter Arwen heading south, while Hobb, Isolde and their son Khan, along with Ariel and Nandita head north to Plum Island.
5. General Shon and the Partial Army in East Meadows
General Shon, leader of the Partial invasion force on Long Island is using the Dogwood outpost to contain the humans on the island. He is not a general but an infantryman. Partials were created in such a way that their military rank is part of their biology. With so many Partials gone, they are disorganized. He is watching as his Partial soldiers begin dying from a new bioweapon he believes the humans have unleashed in East Meadows. The Partials develop boils which turn into rough scaly skin, a contagious, genetic disease in which the Partial becomes allergic to their skin - Acantholysis and the scaly patches are Icthyosis which is the genetic part. In the basement, Dr. Skousen is researching the disease as well as the RM virus. He is angry and tired, because thirteen years ago he watched humans die from the RM virus. As two new patients are brought in (the Partials who checked on Nandita's house in East Meadow) Shon feels overwhelmed.
When Shon goes outside to question the rest of the Partial's platoon he sees them surrounded by a strange and terrible man-like creature, hairless, without a nose and a wide mouth, and covered in plates of hide like a rhinoceros. It tells them that the Earth is changing and warns them to prepare for snow and then leaves. Slits on the creature's neck open and result in the Partials collapsing.
General Shon continues to search for the human terrorists who have been striking all over the island. Their camp has been pinned down by a sniper but they have discovered that it was rigged with a note left by Owen Tovar. He recognizes that the tactics are a decoy but he doesn't know yet why or for what. With the destruction of White Plains and the guerillas leading their troops north and east, allowing the humans to flee East Meadows, Shon realizes they are the last surviving Partials in the world. When Dr. Morgan's orders stopped coming, Shon had stopped the executions and simply kept the humans in captivity. But now Shon decides that he is going to start torturing the people he has captured and they learn that the White Rhinos is behind the attacks. He tortures Yoon Ji-Bak, one of Delarosa's people.
As Shon pursues the remaining humans across Long Island and with thousands of his soldiers soon facing expiration, he believes he has only one thing left: revenge.
6. Marcus Valencio and Commander Woolf.
Marcus Valencio, Commander Asher Woolf, and two Partials, Galen and named Vinci have failed in their diplomatic mission to the Partials, hoping to form an alliance with the largest of the Partials factions to fight back against Dr. Morgan. They need the help of Marisol Delarosa's White Rhinos whom they are trying to find in the woods. Human refugees have told them that Delarosa's resistance group is heading north. They are now holed up in an old house covered in vines. Two humans, a Defense Grid soldier, Yoon Bak along with a young boy named McArthur arrive at the house. They are members of the White Rhinos and along with another man and Yoon's black panther are led to the resistance group which also includes a wagon. The White Rhinos are dressed in Partial uniforms and are carrying gas masks to block the link. In this way the Partials cannot tell that the White Rhinos are humans. To make their use of the gas masks more believable the group has planted the rumour that the humans are using a biological weapon. Ironically the illness seems to be real.
As Marcus attempts to enlist Delarosa and her group to join him and the smaller groups of Partials he hopes to recruit she tells him about the appearance of a "monster", a man-like creature that is eight or nine feet tall and "the color of a new bruise". This creature is warning both Partials and humans about snow. Marcus, Woolf and Delarose remember that there hasn't been snow or a real winter in years, even north in Canada. Marcus, Woolf and Vinci learn that Delarosa intends on using the nuclear bomb on the Partials, but Vinci, who is a Partial tells her he cannot allow her to do this. With Marcus and his crew now imprisoned, Delarosa explains that using the nuclear bomb on White Plains will take out enough of the Partials to even the odds for the humans. She imprisons Marcus, Vinci and Woolf in a warehouse with a guard, but they manage to escape. Vinci goes after Delarosa while Marcus and Woolf lead a band of almost fifty surviving humans back to East Meadow.
As Wells weaves his complicated storyline which includes these six major threads, the truth about saving both Partials and the last of the humans gradually becomes evident. For Samm and Kira it becomes a race against time. Can they make both factions understand that their only hope lies in living together peacefully?
Discussion
Ruins is the final novel in the Partials trilogy by Dan Wells. The novel has to weave together six different narratives, an ambitious goal that mostly succeeds. The narratives are Kira, the remnants of the Senate, General Shon, Samm and the revived Partials, Marcus Valencia and his group, and Nandita and her group. Readers will find it difficult to keep track of all the different narratives especially as there are many new characters introduced.
In Fragments, the world is broken, with humans and Partials determined to destroy each other. In Ruins, the story is the struggle to save what's left of both Partials and humans, as both species are facing imminent extinction. The way to achieve this is gradually revealed: the humans and Partials need each other to survive. They have been bioengineered for this. While Kira Walker suspects that this is the case, it is only after Dr. Morgan's test on her proves futile that she becomes convinced that humans and Partials must learn to coexist if they are both to survive. Her examination of Dr. Morgan's research seems to suggest this. Unknown to Kira at this time, her theory is unexpectedly proven by the events that occur at the Preserve, on the outskirts of what used to be Denver,.
At the Preserve, ten Partials have been enslaved for thirteen years to provide the pheromone to save human newborns from the RM virus. Over one thousand human babies have survived but at the expense of unethical and cruel treatment of the Partials. When Samm and Heron awaken and free nine of the Partials, they learn that they have survived past their expiration date. But it is when a newborn baby born in the hospital alongside the recovering Partials that the theory is proven. The Partials have been living in the hospital for a month, breathing out the pheromone that neutralizes the RM virus. The baby has the pheromone in her blood and never sickens with RM. Events at the Preserve prove that when the Partials and humans live in close proximity, the RM virus is neutralized by the Partial pheromone. No extraction of the pheromone nor injection is required. And the proximity of humans, means the Partials do not expire and die. The challenge now is to convince the remaining humans and the Partials that this coexistence is necessary to save both species. This leads Samm to decide to leave the Preserve and travel back east- to reach out to the humans at East Meadow and the Partials at White Plain to save both.
Kira Walker is also determined to save both humans and the Partials. She has already saved Madison and Haru Sato's daughter, Arwen from the RM virus. So, as a Partial, Kira attempts to find a cure for the Partials expiration by offering herself as a test subject. Dr. Morgan's medical tests reveal that Kira is not the key to curing the Partial expiration. However, reading through Dr. Morgan's notes, Kira uncovers the truth about the humans and Partials. She becomes convinced that humans are the key to saving the Partials from expiration. Kira is faced with a choice, she can go to Dr. Morgan and suggest experiments on humans to find that key or she can choose another path. She knows that Morgan will do to humans what Dr. Vale did to the Partials in the Preserve. It is her conversation with Dr. Vale who convinces her that human experimentation is wrong and that another choice must be made.
Vale challenges Kira on the ethics of experimenting on humans, as he's already done this to a group of Partials. When Kira suggests that the sacrifice would be worth it if it saves the world, Dr. Vale counters, "Now I see I was wrong about you, because you weren't giving yourself for a cause, you were just obsessed, as obsessed as Morgan is, and you only gave yourself because you didn't have anyone else to give."He tells Kira, "I know what it's like to betray your ethics, your humanity, everything that makes you who you are, and I don't want you to go through that."
Dr. Vale doesn't believe that humans and Partials can co-exist, a view that will influence his own choice later in the novel. He questions Kira as to how there can be a "cultural marriage" between Partials and humans when one side holds all the power: "the group with the power has always oppressed the group without--first the humans, by making Partials in the first place, and forcing them to fight and die and come home to a life of second-class subservience." Vale doesn't see the Partials and humans ever co-existing while Kira believes that "Partials could cure humans, and humans could cure Partials." For Dr. Vale, the entire situation appears futile. It's interesting to note that neither Kira nor Dr. Vale know at this point about what has happened at the Preserve.
After speaking with Dr. Vale, Kira opts for another option: she can try to find Partials who will help the humans as Samm did for the people in East Meadow. Later on while captive with Green, a Partial who has abandoned Dr. Morgan, Kira explains her theory. "Partials produce the cure for RM, and humans in turn are able to produce a particle that inhibits expiration in Partials. Both of the cures were engineered this way. So the only way to save both species is to live together. In peace, preferably...The transmission of the particles would be almost impossible to replicate in a lab, not on the scale we're talking about-- tens of thousands of humans and hundreds of thousands of Partials. The two species can cure each other, but they'd have to be constantly breathing the same air. They'd have to live together without fighting." Kira explains that the plan was written into their DNA. However, after being captured and almost killed by the Blood Man's modified Partials, Kira changes her plans and informs Green that she needs to return to Long Island where Morgan's Partials are in the hopes she can convince them of what she's discovered.
Kira's plan faces two unexpected and serious obstacles besides being rejected by both Partials and humans: her father, Armin Dhurvasula who is so genetically modified that he is now insane, is determined to create a new species from the blood of Partials and humans, and Mariosol Delarosa who wants to detonate a small nuclear bomb in White Plains to destroy the Partials, thus evening out the odds for the humans.
Dr. Vale inadvertently removes one obstacle. With the help of the Partials, Vale manages to locate Delarosa and the nuclear bomb in White Plains. Vale attempts to explain how coexistence can save both humans and Partials: "Pretend for a moment, that she, and every human carrying the RM virus, is the cure for expiration. That they produce a chemical agent in their breath, the same as you do for them....You can't synthesize it. It's a two-part biological reaction: You breathe out a particle that renders RM inert in the humans, and then their body alters it, and breathes it back out, curing you of expiration. You have to have both species in close proximity, and you have to have living bodies in which the reactions can take place."
Unfortunately, Dr. Vale's explanation is met with intense skepticism. He listens with deep frustration as the Partials recreate his own failed plans, when he enslaved Partials to save humans, as they suggest creating prison camps full of humans to save Partials.He tries to reason with them but ultimately realizes, "he was caught in a loop of flawed logic generated by racist suspicion, one he could never hope to talk his way out of..." Vale tells Delarosa, that after researching what Kira told him about coexisting as a mutual cure, he believes she is correct. Delarosa is also skeptical. After his discussion with the Partial soldiers, Dr. Vale believes Kira's plan is futile: the Partials are not open minded to even considering the possibility of coexistence. And so choosing once again to save humans, Vale acts, with Delarosa's help, detonating the nuclear device.
Eventually the remnant of the humans on East Meadow along with those Partials (Samm, Green, Herons, Ritter and others) helping them, the surviving Partial army under the command of General Shon and Kira's father Armin meet up in what becomes a final confrontation. Kira learns about what happened at the Preserve and it is Green who begins to recover who proves to the Partials that Kira's theory is correct: coexistence is the cure.
Ruins offers an interesting story with unique characters. Kira Walker, a Partial, is the main character in the trilogy. It's interesting that Ruins, The Hunger Games, and the Divergent series, all feature strong intelligent, young women as leaders against tyranny. At the beginning of the novel, Kira continues to struggle with her identity and purpose, questioning the actions and intent of her father Armin Dhurvasula. "Why did he make me? Why would anyone hide a Partial among the humans? What was I intended to do or be or accomplish?"Kira struggles with her identity as a Partial who has no expiration date and who was planted among humans. Why was she created? What is her purpose if its not to provide a cure for the expiration? To that end, she volunteers to be tested by Dr. Morgan.
When her plans continue to go awry, Kira still struggles with who she is. On Long Island as they are fleeing south from the remnants of the Partial army, she tells Marcus, "I thought I was made for something terrible...and then I thought I was made for something great, and now it turns out I wasn't made for anything. I'm just...here." But Marcus tells her she's just like everyone else: "Nobody has a...destiny. I mean, nobody has some kind of inescapable path for their life...we're clay. Living, breathing, thinking, feeling clay, and we can shape ourselves into anything we want, and we keep shaping ourselves all our lives, getting better and better at whatever we want to be, and when we want to be something else we just smooth out the clay and start over." Marcus tells her that she is not going to save the world because she's predestined to but because she wants to save it.
One of the more interesting characters in the trilogy is Heron who is an espionage model of the Partials, trained to extract information and to hide her emotions. Armin reveals that Heron is a Theta model, one who has free will and isn't controlled by the link. Heron's exposure to humans and other Partials makes her curious about emotions. She kisses Samm in an attempt to feel love, but he explains to her that kissing is not love. He tells her that the Partials were built to feel emotions, "to value human life, to love them." But he doesn't envy her because she is like a black hole. Heron tells Samm, "The espionage models were built differently, ...You don't feel my emotions because I don't feel them either. And you're right about me-- I'm a black hole. I'm a hollow shell." Samm wonders "Why make a person and then take away everything that makes them a person."
After learning that humans cure Partial expiration and as she accompanies Kira and her group of humans along with Samm and the other Partials to Breezy Point, Heron considers taking a human with her and escaping into the wilderness. However Kira realizes what Heron's plan is and confronts her. She tells Heron, "Survival is important...but not if you lose yourself in the process.Surviving just to survive is...empty. That's not a life, it's a feedback loop." Kira is telling Heron, what Dr. Vale tried to tell her weeks earlier. It is Heron who makes the ultimate sacrifice and in doing so, saves the world, the humans and the Partials from Armin and gives the humans and the Partials a second chance to do the right thing. As she lays dying Heron tells Kira, "If my life had no meaning, there was no reason not to end it....So I gave it meaning." Heron's death is heroic.
Besides Kira and Dr. Vale struggling with the morality of their choices, other characters also struggle with the morality of the choices to be made. For the humans on Long Island, their leaders debate the morality of using a nuclear weapon to destroy the Partials. It might appear to be clear cut as every day the Partials kill one more human. For Mkele, the answer is clear: "We are long past the point where we can pick or choose our morality. We either save our species or we don't." However Tovar tells him, "...I'd prefer it if we were still worth saving by the end of it." Mkele tells Tovar, that "We can change if we live...A nation built on slavery can be redeemed, but not if we all die." While Tovar believes using the nuclear warhead is wrong, Mkele agrees but believes it is the lesser of many evils. Tovar agrees to be the distraction but he tells them "Just don't give up on goodness yet. Somewhere out there, there's a way to get through this..."
In Denver, Samm and Heron are working to free nine Partials who have been slaves, having the Lurker pherome harvested from their bodies while under sedation for thirteen years, allowing a colony of humans to survive and reproduce. Samm views these Partials as "saviours. But they were unwitting, unwilling, unconscious saviours.." Samm isn't willing to let this continue and he begins the process to waken them. However, the tenth Partial in the lab is a weapon, genetically modified so that his body produced a pherome that resulted in other Partials including himself becoming comatoase. Samm and Heron realize the cruel reality that this Partial's entire face has been rebuilt for this function. They now face the decision of what to do with this Partial - do they leave him to die on his expiration date or do they kill him now. Heron has some hope for the future, willing to take one day at a time, "...Survival is all we have. If we end, we end, but if we live a second day there's always a chance, no matter how slim, that we can find a way to live a third, and a fourth, and a hundreth and a thousandth." For Heron, giving up is that same as killing themselves. Vale lost the technology that altered the tenth Partial, as well as the way to undo it. To Samm, he is a living corpse and it is cruel to leave him like this and so he considers killing this Partial might be the best thing to do. However, no action is taken in this regard.
While Ruins is an interesting and engaging novel, better editing to remove some unnecessary detail would have shortened the novel, for example Kira's journey through the various subdivisions to find the Ivies. The novel would have benefited from a list of characters, and instead of numbered chapters, chapters labelled with by character would have helped. Maps showing the locations of the various groups would have also added to the story. There are some unresolved parts of the story: what happened to Dr. Morgan, and what of the bioweapon that kills the Partials?
The Partials series does contain plenty of violence, some torture and is probably better suited to older teens and adults. Fans of The Hunger Games and Divergent will enjoy the Partials series.
Book Details:
Ruins by Dan Wells
New York: HarperCollins Publishers 2014
453 pp.
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