PERSONAL RECORD: DESIGNATION ZETA4542910-9545E
CTS THALASSA
478.2.9.05 – 478.2.9.09
Zhen DuBois angled through the computer lab door before it had finished sliding open. My hands stilled, the awkward knitting needles posed mid-stitch, and Williams swiveled around from my old computer. Bustopher, however, remained intent on my yarn.
Dark eyes narrowed at me, and Zhen announced, “I give up.”
I, too, wished to quit or at least to unravel the lopsided, knitted rectangle and begin afresh. Zhen maintained that the increasing evenness of my stitches proved progress, but keeping evidence of improvement was unnecessary. I placed my knitting on the table, and the yarn rolled over the edge and across the antistatic flooring. Bustopher pounced. His feet and body tangled in the yarn, and he sprang back. My project flew off the table and onto his head. His ears went flat, his eyes went wide, and he streaked through the computer lab door, dragging my haphazard creation after him.
When Elinor Williams burst out laughing, Zhen’s expression lightened. My heart did as well. Elinor had not laughed since returning from Pallas.
Cam leaned into the laboratory. “Zeta, soon as I’m off duty, I’ll get your knitting back.”
A heavy thud, a mild curse, and masculine laughter drifted through the door before it closed. Elinor Williams laughed even harder.
Finally, she wiped the corner of her eye. “I needed that.” Still smiling, she took the chair opposite mine. “Well, Zhen, what is it you have given up?”
For an answer, Zhen reached into her pocket and pulled out my cracked, blue datapad.
My heart stammered, and all my flaws came roaring back to mock me, including my inability to adjust equipment. Concern for Daniel and James made me gasp, “You have not given up on the jamming devices, have you?”
“No, I fixed that ages ago.” Zhen deposited the datapad on the table. “Well, Daniel and I did before we left Pallas.”
“This is true,” Elinor Williams affirmed.
I exhaled in relief.
“And since none of us can mess around with Consortium infrared or whatever, a few of us also scrambled information on our ID bracelets.”
Elinor tilted her head to the side, then her eyes widened. “So James and Dan’s bracelets won’t be the only ones that need reprogramming?”
Zhen’s expression reminded me of Bustopher’s when he had stolen and consumed a tidbit from my breakfast. “Right.”
I relaxed. “There is no need to surrender the datapad to me again, if that is your meaning.”
Zhen took the chair across from mine. “Not the datapad itself. I can’t figure out how to find what you were searching for in her personal records.”
Williams leaned over her elbows on the table. “Whose records?”
“Pallas Station’s Recorder’s.”
Elinor Anne Williams gasped. Her gaze darted between us before settling on me. “How did you access them? Her personal logs would have been sealed, and only an Elder . . .” Tension wrinkled the corners of her eyes. “You used the drone.”
“Not intentionally.” They listened closely as I explained how I had utilized the datapads to control the drone and, finding the files, had copied them to my own device for later perusal. “I had intended to view them in VVR.”
“That explains it.” Zhen chuckled, though I did not find humor in my intentions. She leaned back, arms folded. “The drone reserved the slot, didn’t it? This thing’s alarm went off at midnight a few days back to notify me of a VVR reservation at 04:30. Alec wasn’t too pleased about waking up, but then, he never is. He’s positively grouchy in the morning.”
“I . . . had forgotten.”
Zhen flushed and pocketed the datapad. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—never mind. I’ll take care of it.”
My jaw tightened. This was my responsibility, not hers, but I could do little when reading was still so difficult. “It is well. What have you found?”
“A lot and a little, all at the same time.” She shook her head. “I’ve been going over the entries whenever I can snag a time slot in VVR. There has to be a pattern, but I’m not seeing what it is. There are files about Christine Johnson, the infirmary, and a brief journal entry about erased records, but as much as I loathe that voided waste of DNA, nothing on Julian Ross. Not,” she added, “that I want to exonerate him. I just want the truth.”
“The station records proved that he did not kill Kyleigh’s father,” I said.
Elinor Williams nodded. “Yes, since she is working with him, Captain Genet told Kyleigh as much. Though, since there is no proof, he did not offer anything else.”
“But did they clear Ross of the Recorder’s murder?”
I studied the workplace safety posters, which held no more answers than they had when I could read them. “He testified that Christine Johnson killed her.”
“Like he’d admit it? Have you taken a look—no, of course not,” Zhen muttered. “Not when you’ve been locked up in here.”
I stood and took several steps without my cane. “Do not reprimand yourself.”
A smile brightened Zhen’s face. “You’re walking!”
“Of course I am.” I waved her remark aside, refusing to be distracted from the information on the datapad. “I should have viewed the data we sent up from Pallas.”
Elinor exhaled heavily. “Well, you cannot leave this room. Not with that Recorder ready to pounce on you like a cat.”
“Actually, I think she can.”
When I spun to face Zhen, I had to catch hold of a chair.
“It’s Thalassa, after all,” she explained. “The only real threat is that Recorder, and he won’t leave the infirmary.”
“Never?” I asked. “Not even to sleep?”
“The Consortium network’s down, and he won’t go a meter without that drone. He hasn’t figured out how to use a datapad, like you did.”
Williams darted a glance at the door. “The ship-wide network is functional. How do you know the Consortium’s is not?”
“The datapad. After it woke me up, I decided to see if I could access records and track down Alec’s father, which I failed to do with the network down.” She held up a hand when I protested. “Alec’s already lectured me. You don’t need to.”
The possibility of freedom, even though it would be short-lived, burned like a solar flare. “Then I may be of assistance with visual records.”
“Which would be extremely unadvisable,” Elinor Williams said.
Zhen’s expression remained neutral.
“If the Recorder-doctor is not present, I do not see how leaving this room is an issue.”
Zhen’s dark eyes studied my face. “How’s your headache?”
“You have been spending time with Kyleigh,” I responded. “Her abrupt changes in conversational topics have influenced you.”
The corner of her mouth rose a few millimeters. “A bit. But your head?”
“The pain is never truly gone,” I admitted, “but that would not prohibit a short walk. I promise to return. I will even knit without complaint.”
Zhen pursed her lips. “If you take some pain meds, and we’re careful . . .”
Williams placed her hand on my upper arm. “You must entrust this to others, given the circumstances.”
“No.” When she shook her head, I added, “Please. If Zhen is correct, I will be safe. We will go slowly. I have been walking more, and this will give me the opportunity to help. When we reach Lunar One, I might lose . . .” I could not finish the thought.
Zhen flinched as though I had struck her, and Elinor Williams tensed. For the count of thirty-seven seconds, Elinor studied me.
Then, she said, “I do not like it, but if Zhen is correct, and if Max and Archimedes approve, then I will not gainsay the decision.”
I sank into the chair, smiling so broadly my cheeks hurt.
“They will.” Zhen was already on her feet and backing toward the door. “I’ll go talk to them in person, so it won’t be on any log. I have a VVR reservation anyway, and I’ll queue up her entries. Maybe all I need is fresh eyes. I’ll be right back.” She grinned. “I’ll even track down your knitting. Not even Bustopher gets you out of that.”
She spun around, blue hair sheeting like a fall of water, and left.
“I do not like this,” Williams said with quiet intensity.
“Williams, viewing records in VVR is the only way I can be of assistance. If I attempt to manipulate files, she will know.”
“Oh my friend,” she said softly. “You have not told her?”
I grimaced. “You have been my constant companion for days. You know I have not.”
A tight smile straightened her mouth. “Perhaps it is time to tell them the truth. They will not reject you.”
“I know.”
Even so, I was not whole, and all I wanted was to curl into a ball and protect the losses that were but a representation of my fractured self.
An hour and a half later, however, Zhen and I waited outside VVR for the light to turn green. Cam still stood guard over the computer laboratory and Williams, but Eric and Ken Patterson watched the hall, alert as if the Recorder-doctor were Skip, the knife-man, or a roach.
I leaned my weight on my cane. “VVR is taking longer than usual. You are certain the files are loading properly?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe it’s broken,” Ken offered. “It wouldn’t load target practice the other day.”
Zhen darted him a look. “That’s because Hodges tried to reprogram it to have roaches.”
Eric grimaced. “What is it with him and bugs?”
No one answered.
Still, the light remained yellow. Zhen scowled at her identification bracelet and muttered something about time.
“Tia said yes, yet?” Ken asked mildly.
Pink suffused Eric’s face. “Not yet.”
The other young man’s expression fell. “Sorry.”
I was spared any subsequent discussion, for the light flashed green and the door slid open. Gripping my cane, I entered a visual record of Pallas Station’s infirmary.
Standard blue and green walls, two hoverbeds with crisp, white blankets, and familiar stainless doors of an older medicomputer should have seemed familiar, but the arrangement was wrong, as if the room had been shuffled, then rotated ninety degrees. To my left, medical supply lockers lined the wall, and the medicomputer was on the wall to the right of the door instead of across from it. Directly in front of me, a man in a white lab coat over pale-blue scrubs stood frozen in the act of opening a cabinet between the two beds.
I had seen this man before . . . in other records?
Zhen lingered in the hall, her undertones incomprehensible, then breezed into the room. “I sent Patterson to get you a chair. Eric will be fine by himself for a while.” She strode through the room, fearlessly walking through the projections to investigate the doctor’s list. “That’s Oliver Allen. It’s 475.4.4, seventh-day.”
“Yes, Dr. Allen. I remember now.” I squinted into the room, willing myself to recall the date and time as I used to, but my memory refused to obey. “How long before the Recorder dies?”
“Three days. Thirty-one days before Kye’s dad, and not quite five ten-days until the first people get sick.”
“It was the virus.”
“We have no absolute proof of that, but probably.” She twisted her blue hair around her fingers. “Allen thinks he miscounted the supplies, but I’ve watched this over and over and, moons and stars, but the man thought the best of everyone, even that uncouth engineer, Marsden.”
Jean-Pierre Marsden. Yes, that had been his name, though for all his disagreeable traits, he had died trying to drag Dr. Allen to safety.
I hated death.
“So Allen calls in security in a few minutes because of a regulation in reporting discrepancies. I can tell Lorde’s suspicious, but they don’t do anything. Or the Recorder didn’t see what they did.” She groaned. “I wanted to start here, though if you have a better idea, we can do that.”
“It is a reasonable place.”
“Play,” she said.
Dr. Allen opened and closed cabinets, checked and rechecked his datapad. Gideon Lorde joined him, his lanky frame towering over the doctor as he took notes of his own. His sharp eyes traced over labels I could not read, and his thick brows drew together.
They locked the cabinets and conferred in subdued voices, then the recording stopped.
“Nothing,” Zhen declared. “And it’s all like this.”
“Have you viewed the corresponding files from the station?”
“Yes, and they are exactly the same. I even played them at the same time, and there wasn’t a difference.”
A knock at the door spun us both around, and she caught my elbow when I wobbled.
“Here you go,” Ken said as he guided a wheeled desk chair into the room. He gave Zhen a salute and left.
I sat, balancing my cane on my lap. “The names or codes—I cannot recall which—do they reveal anything?”
“I don’t think so,” Zhen said.
“Perhaps if we . . .” I leaned back and closed my eyes.
“Your head bothering you?”
“No more than usual. Read me the files. Perhaps the list itself can direct us to a more productive record.”
She demanded that VVR display the file names and summaries. I squeezed my eyes shut to avoid the words which sprang into the air between us, their letters made more incoherent by their added dimensions. She read them twice before I thought I saw a pattern.
“Four hundred two; five hundred thirty-seven; twenty-one, zero-five. Next: four hundred three; one hundred seventeen; twenty-three, forty-one. Next: four hundred—”
“Dates,” I exclaimed, my eyes flying open. “The ten-day and day. Fourth ten-day, third. The other sequences are times and, I believe, locations. Zhen, pull up a station map. In that naming sequence of numbers, I believe the first sequence is the date and the last is time. Check to see if the middle numbers are locations.”
“First, no, because the times don’t match the timestamps on the files themselves. Second, the rooms weren’t numbered. You were there. You saw the doors,” she protested, though the map hovered in the air between us.
A sharp pain stabbed my head, and my fingers went numb. Panic shot through me, but I pressed it down. “VVR, overlay the station map with blueprints.”
A second map blanketed the first, and numbers labeled the twisting hallways, decorated the unevenly spaced rooms.
“Moons and stars,” Zhen breathed. “How did I not see this? But, no, the room numbers don’t match.”
“I did not see it, either. I needed to hear it. VVR . . .” I could feel my tongue thickening in my mouth, but I had to check. What was the last set of numbers? I could not remember. Carefully, so as not to slur my words, I said, “Zhen, have VVR play the station record for the time and location of the last full numerical sequence.”
“VVR, play station record for,” she hesitated, “fourth quarter, fourth ten-day, third.” She squinted at the blueprints. “Infirmary. Timestamp, 23:41.”
The room around us flickered, showing the infirmary lit in gentle blue. The door opened, and a woman with thick, wavy blonde hair peered in, calling softly to see if anyone was present, then walked to the medical locker and entered a code.
“Christine Johnson,” Zhen muttered.
“Pause recording. Zhen, double-check,” I said, and her fingers whizzed through data. “Was that her own password?”
“That sneaky—” Her jaw clamped shut. “That’s Oliver Allen’s code. And yes, she’s snagging that potassium solution you talked about before.”
“This merely proves that she did indeed steal the medication.” The room split into two images. “Zhen.”
“It’s a better start,” she said, zooming into and out of lists so quickly that nausea struck. “And it gives me an idea of how I can search outside her records as well. It’s a ridiculous idea, true, though I suppose—”
“Zhen,” I said thickly.
“Hmm?”
“I believe . . . I need help.” My cane clattered to the floor.
Alerted by the medical tracker in my wrist before I had even asked for help, the droneless Recorder-doctor arrived at VVR with a hover gurney before Max did, contrary to Zhen’s assertion that he never left the infirmary. Eric and Ken lifted me onto the gurney, and when Max and Nate arrived, I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the increasingly heated argument in the background.
Archimedes Genet and Michaelson were waiting in the infirmary.
Despite the risk, I spent the next several hours in the Recorder-doctor’s care. Nate, Max, and Michaelson refused to leave while I remained there, dosed with nanodevices, drifting in and out of consciousness. I woke in the computer laboratory again, Bustopher curled against my hip. Nate slept in a chair, leaning on my mattress, his cheek on his arm and his other hand holding mine. I rolled to my side and watched him breathe until sleep returned to claim me.
Other than Max, Nate, Kyleigh, and Bustopher, visitors were scarce over the next several days, but on ninth-day, Max declared that if I could remain unagitated, I could again have company. Zhen and Alec arrived with our lunch as usual.
She seemed unusually pale and, after apologizing, picked lethargically at her salad.
“It is not your fault that I have clumps of nanodevices lodged inside me.”
“I pushed you to help.”
“No, Zhen. I insisted on helping.” I met her eyes through the steam rising from lavender-mint tea. “I am well, and Max and the Recorder-doctor have started a new therapy. Additionally, Kyleigh insists that she has developed a design that shall clear my blood.”
In response, Zhen skewered an innocent piece of lettuce with her fork.
Leaning across the table, I touched her arm. “I am as well as I can be. Now, tell me what you found.”
She sighed, then after three seconds, began a recitation of what she had uncovered using the station Recorder’s files and the information from Pallas Station.
The station Recorder had been methodically gathering proof of Christine Johnson’s unsanctioned viral experiments, as Charles Tristram had later suspected.
Once Zhen saw the Recorder’s logic, she extrapolated on those patterns and delved deep into the station’s records, restoring damaged files, piecing together events.
She recounted how, when Christine Johnson realized that the Pallas Station’s Recorder was closing in on their project, she had followed the Recorder late one night while she prowled the halls without her drone. Dr. Johnson had injected the solution and left the Recorder for dead. By the time security found her, it was too late.
When Charles Tristram, however, suspected that her death had not been a heart attack, Dr. Johnson had stopped his investigation, too. Zhen’s face blanched as she summarized what she had seen of Charles Tristram’s murder. I understood. I had seen the aftermath in VVR as Gideon Lorde secured the room.
Shortly afterward, Christine Johnson and Ross had argued, and any sign of cooperation between the two disappeared. Two ten-days later, she stole an access code and broke into Gideon Lorde’s office. His notes revealed that he had found her hair at the murder scene under Charles Tristram’s body and another fragment of long blonde hair caught under a cabinet door, partially stripped by a cleaning bot. Although the investigation was ongoing and he had not uncovered more evidence, that alone was enough to bring his own destruction. Zhen had salvaged a partial recording of Dr. Christine Johnson lacing his dinner with what must have been Consortium nanodevices. Zhen had verified that the drops she had spilled into a water pitcher in a meeting room had come from the lab Dr. Johnson and Julian Ross had illicitly used to create the virus.
Christine Johnson’s assumption that Gideon Lorde would be the sole person to drink that water was incorrect, as was her assumption that citizens did not have Consortium devices in their systems. Within twenty-four hours, person after person had fallen ill. Seventeen others had succumbed, as Gideon Lorde had.
Finally, Christine Johnson had fallen ill herself. In a matter of hours, she went from healthy to a headache to gasping for air. During her final moments, her agitation grew more intense, but it was a mark in Ross’s favor that when she spoke wildly of how “Juls killed me—have to stop him—tell my brother—” no one had believed her.
No one, then.
Neither Zhen DuBois nor I had evidence, but we both suspected that as she died, Christine Johnson had finally told the truth.