How It All Goes Down
Partridge (Beetle)
- Did you miss Partridge? We know we did. Well, Chapter 2 opens up with him locked underground making maps of the Dome. Good old Partridge: nothing has changed.
- He's also written down every single word he could remember that his mother told him before she died. He feels as if they're all coded, like the Swan Wife Story.
- One of the mothers, Mother Hestra, is his own personal guard. They've been living nomadically—going from place to place to stay hidden.
- Partridge thinks about how his father abused the power of brain enhancements and how Rapid Cell Degeneration might even happen to himself.
- Then he remembers: ooh, he has the vials from his mother's house.
- Hey, here's a good idea. Why not test it out on something? Like, oh, a beetle.
- Oh my god Partridge, you're just absurd.
- So he tries to pour some of the serum on a beetle, but beetles can sting you. So yeah, he gets stung and cries like a baby.
- But don't worry: he caught the beetle in the leg with the serum just as it scurried away.
- Mother Hestra comes to check on him after hearing him scream; they talk about leaving in the morning with Lyda and maybe Illia — Illia has been going crazy, probably because of the trauma she's already suffered.
- Mother Hestra leaves, and Partridge hears a low, heavy rasp in the dirt. It's the beetle.
- Or should we say, super-beetle. The serum worked; its leg became gigantic, while the rest of its body stayed the same.
- The result is an awkward looking beetle with a giant leg, but either way, Partridge recognizes that it's a whole new species now.
- This sort of reminds us of Special Forces.