3

WHEN NOEMI RETURNED TO GENESIS WITH LITTLE evidence to support her story about traveling through the galaxy, she could’ve wound up in the brig, if not cashiered out of the service. Every young person on the planet capable of serving in the military does so; her status as a dishonored former soldier would’ve made her an outcast—even more than she already was. One person alone saved her from this fate: Darius Akide, Elder of the Council, and once the prized student of Burton Mansfield himself.

Now they meet every few weeks. She’s conspicuous climbing the stairs of the Hall of Elders, a teenage girl in her emerald-green uniform among gray-haired, august people wearing serene white robes. That’s by Akide’s design, since he knows how alone she is otherwise. By summoning her here, he sends a public signal of the Council’s trust in her version of events. He is her primary defender. Noemi’s grateful, or knows she should be.

But knowing a member of the Elder Council has only made her more sharply aware of the Council’s flaws—and how those flaws endanger Genesis itself.

“I suppose it’s not surprising that you’ve never seen any technology like those mysterious star probes.” He sits at his hewn-stone desk, salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a knot. Like most rooms in the great hall, it is illuminated during daytime only by the sunlight flooding through the oval windows carved into the wall. “But can you remember anything from news sources, or perhaps picked up in conversation? We’ve still no idea what the stars were intended to do. Any hint could help our investigation.”

“I wish I could help.” Noemi keeps her tone even. Akide is the closest thing she has to a friend these days, but sometimes she thinks he expects her to have learned everything about the other worlds of the Loop during her whirlwind journey. “But I don’t remember anything like that at all.”

Akide sighs. His next words seem to be spoken as much to himself as to her. “Were they probes? Weapons that malfunctioned? Meant only to scare us? As if we don’t know the threat Earth presents. As if we don’t know how little chance we have.”

“Don’t talk like that.” It hits Noemi that she just said that to an Elder, and her cheeks flush red. “Excuse me. I meant—we have reasons to hope. Potential allies out there on the Loop, for one.”

He pats her arm, a touch meant to be fatherly, but to Noemi it feels patronizing. Maybe she’d respond to it better if she could remember more about her late father, but he’s just a dim memory of smiles and hugs, an even fainter idea of what it felt like to be cherished, valued, seen.

“Lieutenant Vidal,” Akide says. “You’ve grown up on a planet at war. You’ve known from an early age that victory was unlikely, and that your life would very likely be forfeit to the fight. You’ve never shied away from your duty, even from the ultimate sacrifice, but I don’t think you’ve ever come to terms with defeat as the most probable outcome of the Liberty War. I know it’s hard to come to peace with that—but for your own sake, you must try. Otherwise the pain…” He bows his head. “It would be too much to bear.”

Always sacrifice. Always duty. Always resignation. For a planet at war, Noemi sometimes thinks, Genesis seems to have forgotten how to fight.

That evening, she decides to visit the Temple of All Faiths. It’s one of the largest buildings on Genesis, certainly the most revered—a great dome of gray granite mottled with blue, held aloft by enormous columns as thick around as century-old trees. Smaller chambers set off from the central dome are reserved for different services of different religions, whether those involve chanting, dancing, prayer, or the handling of snakes. But Noemi is here for the one practice most faiths of Genesis share: meditation.

She settles herself on one of the large cushions. It’s old, patched here and there, the cloth soft with age. The light filtering through the high arched windows casts beams through the vast space of the temple. Breathing in deeply, Noemi smells incense.

In this place, even her noisy mind might quiet down.

Closing her eyes, Noemi calls to mind Captain Baz’s two questions:

What are you fighting, Noemi Vidal? And what are you fighting for?

She doesn’t expect to get much out of that, really. It’s a starting place, no more. Because of course she knows the answers. She’s fighting Earth, fighting its mechs. And she’s fighting for Genesis.

But suddenly she realizes that’s not the answer—or at least, not the complete answer. She’s also fighting her fellow soldiers, because they don’t trust her any longer. She’s fighting for Akide to listen to her, to see her planet taking more aggressive action to defend itself.

And I’m fighting to carry on without Esther. Without Abel.

I’m fighting to continue on alone.

She’s always known most other people don’t like her much, and she’s never expected them to. Her one real friendship was with Esther Gatson, the foster sister who had no choice about whether or not to let Noemi into her home and her heart—and Esther’s death has become one of the crimes the others blame her for.

Before, at least, Noemi had hoped her solitude might be temporary. That someday, somehow, she’d figure out how to get closer to people, or stop scaring them off—that she’d figure out just what her problem was so that she could solve it. And when she was out in the galaxy, meeting Harriet and Zayan on Kismet, Virginia on Cray, or Ephraim on Stronghold, she seemed to have figured it out. Making friends was easier when she could make a fresh start.

No fresh starts here. Whatever lessons in friendship she learned out there don’t seem to apply here. Her isolation has become even more complete, and she’s trying to accept that it’s probably permanent.

Relax, Esther used to say. Let people get to know you! Don’t be so nervous and defensive all the time. If you’re not afraid of being rejected, then people are less likely to reject you.

Esther was telling the truth. Noemi knows how people avoid the loneliest among them. But if the trick to making friends is to stop being lonely, the paradox is inescapable. Bitterly she thinks it’s like telling someone starving to death that they can have all the food they want if they’ll just stop being hungry.

Only a few times in her life has she felt that maybe the famine might be over. Really, though, there was only one time she wasn’t utterly alone—one time a person understood her and cared for her—loved her, he said—

Noemi pulls herself out of the memory. Thinking of Abel hurts, for a thousand reasons but mostly because she knows she’ll never see him again.

Sparing Abel’s life was the one moment of religious grace Noemi has ever been granted, the one time faith became a living force inside her. She’d thought that if she ever had such an instant of profound connection, her questions about God would be answered. Everything was supposed to come clear. But it turns out not to work that way. She is still small in a vast cosmos, unsure what is right and good.

Try again, she tells herself, closing her eyes. Use the mantra Baz gave you.

It doesn’t help. Meditation brings her no peace, only reminds her how alone she is—and how afraid she is that the loneliness will endure forever.

“Will you want toast this morning?” Mrs. Gatson says it the way a server in a restaurant might speak to a customer. A new customer, not one of the regulars. Noemi has lived in the Gatsons’ home for nine years.

After Esther’s death, the Gatsons commissioned a portrait of her from an artistic neighbor. The drawing hangs on one of the walls, a soft sketch in pastels that captures her golden hair and blue eyes. But the silence she’s left behind expands to fill the house every morning, until it feels as though Noemi doesn’t have room to draw a single breath. This place will never completely feel like home.

Their house is a typical one on Genesis—bedrooms underground, general living space above, with large “windows” of translucent solar panels. Vegetables sprout from window boxes that line the perimeter of the one large common room, and herbs grow in long, skinny beams that stretch from floor to ceiling and divide the space into areas for cooking and eating, for socializing, and for work. Entertainment is found outside the home, unless a family is fond of music: Vids, books, and the like are kept in libraries, and pools and fitness equipment are at public gymnasiums. Noemi thought nothing of this until she went on her journey through the galaxy, along the worlds of the Loop, where she saw Virginia Redbird’s lab/hideout/opium den on Cray, Kismet’s luxurious resorts with their lavender seas and lilac skies, and the overwhelming, vibrant blizzard of activities and entertainment that dying Earth revels in to distract itself from its approaching end.

Once, hiding on an asteroid in the middle of a nebula’s rainbow cloud, she and Abel watched an old twentieth-century “movie” together, one with former lovers reunited unexpectedly in Casablanca.

If only I could see Abel one more time, she thinks. Without the weight of two worlds pressing down on us. When we could just… be.

“Noemi?” Mrs. Gatson’s smile is stiff at the corners, like a napkin starched into precise folds. Dark circles under her eyes hint at a sleepless night, and her voice is hoarse. Is she getting sick? Maybe she was crying for Esther; for the Gatsons, grief is private. They don’t share theirs with Noemi, and have shown no interest in helping with hers. “Do you want toast?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. I’m distracted this morning.”

Mrs. Gatson’s more at ease once she has something to do and no longer has to look at Noemi directly. “No problems on base, I hope?”

Her foster parents know perfectly well that Noemi’s dealt with nothing but problems since her return. This is not a nice subject to discuss. The Gatsons only like to talk about nice things. When Esther was alive—so naturally, easily, genuinely good inside and out—conversations centered on her, and the sense of strain was less. Now every single chat feels like a test Noemi has to pass.

“Everything’s fine,” Noemi says.

Mr. Gatson walks in, and she startles. He looks terrible. He’s pale, visibly sweaty, and shambling along, his legs shaking. “Mary, I’m not—not shaking off that cold.”

Mrs. Gatson doesn’t go to him, but instead gestures to a chair. “I’ll get you some juice,” she replies, voice wavering.

“No, no, let me get it.” Noemi quickly pours a couple of glasses while Mrs. Gatson settles herself beside her husband. “You’re both coming down with something, looks like.”

“You might be next,” Mr. Gatson warns her. “Keep your distance and wash your hands, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.” Noemi gives him the glass and a smile. They do care for her, in their own remote way. They’d never want to see her come to harm.

But it will always be Mr. and Mrs. Gatson, never uncle and aunt, never any nicknames that would acknowledge they’ve spent as much time raising Noemi as her late parents did. They will never light up at the sight of her returning home. They’ll never hug her good-bye.

Mr. Gatson rubs his forehead. “Do we have any ginger tea?”

“I think we’re out, but I could go to the store for some,” Noemi offers. Until she receives her new assignment from Captain Baz, it’s not like she has anyplace more important to be.

“That would be good,” Mrs. Gatson says. That’s about as close as she gets to thank you. There is an unspoken sense from the Gatsons that their foster daughter owes them courtesy and help—it’s the way she earns her keep.

Halfway to the neighborhood market, Noemi begins to realize fewer people than usual are walking along the paths, and only one or two cyclists zip by. Not as many children are playing outdoors. None of this is remarkable, but the quiet that surrounds her makes her feel cut off from the world.

In the market, she finds her way to the tea stall only to learn they’re out of ginger, as well as chamomile and peppermint—all the ones she’d turn to first for someone sick. As she takes up a packet of elderflower tea, a shopper nearby staggers to one side, then sits on the wooden floor heavily, the way people do when they’re sitting so they won’t faint.

“I’m sorry,” the man says, holding up a hand as if to wave off the woman behind the counter who’s hurrying to his side. “Running a fever this morning. Oughtn’t to have chanced it. If I rest for just a couple of minutes—”

Noemi doesn’t hear the rest. She can’t hear anything over the sudden rush of blood in her ears. Her breath catches as she stares at the man’s outstretched hand—and at the telltale white lines snaking across his skin.

“Impossible,” she whispers, but then she remembers the stars that hit Genesis, the ones meant to harm them in a way they couldn’t understand. She understands now.

Immediately she runs through the market, weaving between stalls and carts until she finds the area comm station. Her fingers shake as she inputs the code for Darius Akide’s offices. “Yes, hello, this is Lieutenant Noemi Vidal calling for Elder Akide.”

An image takes shape on the screen—not Akide’s usual assistant, but someone else filling in. He frowns at the young woman who somehow has the code for this inner chamber. “Elder Akide has many demands on his time—”

“Tell him it’s me, and tell him it’s an absolute emergency.” Noemi takes a deep breath. “Earth’s using biological weapons. They’ve infected Genesis with Cobweb.”

The Elder Council doesn’t question her, instead immediately going into action. Noemi might have been gratified by their trust if it had done a damn bit of good.

Reports of infection come in from all corners of Genesis. The areas with the most cases of Cobweb are those closest to where the stars made impact, but already people have fallen sick in more remote places. Public advisories go out, encouraging people to wear masks and gloves, to take care of themselves, to recognize the symptoms such as the white lines on the skin. But nobody can tell the citizens of Genesis what they need to know most: how to treat it.

“You described Cobweb as an infectious disease,” says one of the senior government doctors, speaking to Noemi the next day through the Gatsons’ comm unit. “But this level of virulence wasn’t indicated in your report.”

“I didn’t think it could’ve been this bad. When we were on Stronghold, they had quarantine protections in place, but still—it wasn’t like everyone on Stronghold got sick at once.” She rakes her hand through her chin-length black hair. “But maybe—maybe it was the amount of whatever they put in the stars?”

Her own ignorance makes her wince. It’s absurd to be advising senior government officials as a teenager with no medical training at all. They’ve called because Noemi’s the only person on Genesis with any firsthand knowledge of Cobweb. She’s seen it. She’s survived it. That doesn’t mean she has the answers.

“Earth may have manipulated the virus,” says the doctor. “Made it even more virulent.”

“It was man-made in the first place, so maybe so.” Not that anyone knows why Earth bioengineered the Cobweb virus, only that they did. If she’d been able to learn the reason—if Ephraim Dunaway had known it—maybe she could give them some clue about the virus that would actually help. But she’s powerless.

Looking across the room, she sees Mrs. Gatson huddled under a blanket, shivering. This is the only time she’s been out of bed today. The spiderweb rash across her skin barely shows against her pallor. Mr. Gatson hasn’t even tried to rise. Noemi can’t leave the house while they’re this sick, even though she doesn’t know what to do for them.

“When should someone go to the hospital?” she quietly asks the doctor. “How high a fever, or—”

“I’m not sure hospitals will be able to help,” the doctor replies. “They’re already overcrowded, and the situation’s going to worsen when the advisory goes out.”

“What advisory?”

The screen answers her as a brilliant orange border appears, the one the government usually uses when making significant announcements via personal comms. Noemi could read the full text at the bottom, but a single word jumps out, one that blots out everything else:

PANDEMIC.

That one word tells Noemi that Earth has done what it meant to do. It’s weakened their planet and made them vulnerable to attack.

Genesis has withstood thirty years of war, yet one virus may bring down this entire world.