PERSONAL RECORD: DESIGNATION ZETA4542910-9545E
PALLAS STATION
478.2.6.02
“So why isn’t she dead?”
Static netted through the unfamiliar soprano that tugged me from what passed for rest. In the stillness after the stranger’s question, air filtration units hissed steadily. I shifted under a blanket unlike the soft cotton bedding in Thalassa’s infirmary. Three seconds ticked past before I identified the material as a thermal blanket.
I blinked. My eyelids scraped over dry corneas. Overhead, lights buzzed faintly, and the word EXIT glowed over the door centered in a grey concrete wall of Pallas Station’s quarantine room.
“What’s different about this case?” the woman continued. “Nothing about her is special.”
A masculine grunt disputed the woman’s assertion, and I rolled to my side, toward whomever had disagreed. Nate sat in a chair next to my bed, glaring at—I glanced over—Williams? She had not spoken.
My attention flickered back to my Nathaniel. Fatigue bruised his eyes. He needed rest.
“Well, she’s the sole member of the Consortium who hasn’t succumbed as soon as she was infected. I’d say human connection might be a factor, but citizen deaths rule that out.”
I searched the room for the woman, but only Nate, Max, Williams, and Kyleigh were present. Given my condition, Kyleigh Tristram should have been wearing a respirator, like the others.
“We’re missing something.” Williams’s gentle voice held an edge. “Something obvious.”
“Exactly,” the unfamiliar woman responded. “The others died.”
An ache swelled behind my sternum, not as sharp as the pain in my head, but as impossible to ignore. My fingers found the bed rail and curled around it as, wincing, I pulled myself upright. Nate braced my back.
The quarantine room was much as it had been, though the omnipresent hum of Pallas’s circulation system was muted by the metal plates that had been bolted over the ventilation opening. Fresh sealant leaked unevenly down the wall, but I could not tell whether the sealant had cured and the sharp fumes had faded or Max’s treatment had impaired my sense of smell. Or perhaps the two filters next to the door and the third one near my bed eliminated the odor as they attempted to purify the air of the virus I carried within me.
Freddie’s empty hoverbed lurked in the far corner, neatly made, and a box emblazoned with the red cross denoting medical supplies rested on his bedside table. Disheveled blankets and pillows cluttered the bed next to Kyleigh’s computer terminal and its old-fashioned keyboard. Kyleigh herself hunched on a wheeled stool, a marine-blue T-shirt hanging on her small frame. Williams, however, sat rigidly at a second desk cluttered with various datapads, and her small computer projected streams of data into the air.
Gloved fingers caught mine, and Nate’s thumb traced circles on the back of my hand. “Easy,” he murmured.
“You’re awake,” Kyleigh exclaimed. She seemed frailer, somehow, which might have been a faulty perception based on her pallor and the circles under her eyes.
Max crossed the room to study my headboard’s readout. “It’s about time you woke up. How are you feeling?”
“Thirsty.”
Williams brought me a bottle of water, and my hands shook as I accepted it.
Max offered me a half smile. “How’s the pain?”
After a brief internal inventory, I confessed my joints felt better but my head still hurt. He turned to retrieve medication.
I startled when the staticky female voice complained, “We need to find a cure. You need to quit dithering with Recorders so we can save people.”
But no one else was present. I searched the room again. Surely, no one had invented invisibility while I had slept.
“Saving her is saving people,” Williams snapped. She took the empty bottle and added under her breath, “It’s a voice link. Zhen got comms working. She’s in the labs on Thalassa.”
Zhen was on Thalassa? Or was the woman? Williams was usually more precise.
“Fine, fine.” A chuff grated through the speaker, and anger slivered through me at her dismissal of my friend. “So what sets this Recorder apart?”
“Could it be something about Thalassa itself?” Williams asked. “Although other than better food, the difference is the cats.”
“Those animals try to get into everything,” the woman complained over Max’s uncomplimentary observation about felines. “Unsanitary. I can’t see how the captain allows it.”
“She helped me with them on the voyage back to New Triton, Dr. Clarkson,” Kyleigh said. “But Freddie and I had spent time with them long before we went into stasis, and that didn’t—” She broke off suddenly, and her eyes watered.
“Good stars! Is Freddie sick, too?” the woman, who must have been Dr. Clarkson, demanded. “At the rate this virus takes out citizens, I don’t see how he stands a chance.”
There was a pause, then Williams said, “Freddie isn’t sick.”
Confusion nearly prompted me to rebut Williams’s implied untruth. Freddie was not sick. He was dead and cremated. Nate’s fingers tightened around mine as Freddie’s request came rushing back—that none of us would mourn, that I would transfer his identity to my first friend so James could escape the Consortium. Did this Dr. Clarkson not know? I gripped the stiff blanket with my free hand. If she could not be trusted . . . if she discovered Freddie was dead and James had taken his place, we would all be in danger. My empty stomach writhed.
Dr. Clarkson snorted. “You had me worried, Williams. You could knock that young man over with the proverbial feather, let alone a real one. Poor boy is nothing but a skeleton.”
“Besides,” Williams put in quickly, “with the cats roaming the ship, the Elder must have had contact with them, as well, and he was sick.”
“But we don’t know what happened to him for certain.”
Her scratchy soprano was beginning to irritate me.
“I told you,” Kyleigh said. “They stole the Elder’s armor, stabbed him, and that horrible man shot a jet injector of the virus into—”
“You can’t possibly know what was in the purported injector,” Dr. Clarkson interrupted. “Without proper testing, you can’t verify that those criminals who kidnapped you were telling the truth.”
“But the Elder was symptomatic,” Kyleigh protested. “I read the reports from Agamemnon and those other ships, as well as from Lunar One. He had a fever, his nose was bleeding, and his eyes . . . He wept blood. It was horrible.”
“You can’t prove it. Where is this Elder now?”
Max’s deep voice rumbled, silencing the disagreeable woman. “Enough, Clarkson. Freddie was there, too, and both he and the Recorder here described the events and the Elder’s symptoms. Given the fact that the Recorder’s virus is confirmed, it seems likely.”
“Freddie told me the Elder did not make it over the rubble blocking the corridor and that the roaches were coming,” Williams said. “No one is going to climb through rocks, concrete, and giant insects to get you samples.”
She did not add that cockroaches scavenged. Even if someone volunteered to venture past the debris, it would be fruitless to search for Lorik’s remains.
“The point, Williams,” Dr. Clarkson said with peculiar emphasis, “is that if he did have the virus and if the difference for this Recorder was the cats, their obnoxious presence did nothing to keep him safe.”
“No,” Williams protested, “it is possible. She was sick on the trip to New Triton. Toxoplasmosis, because of the cats. Could it be the medication used to treat the parasites?”
Max hummed, then clarified, “Pyrimethamine.”
“Founders’ sakes. Fine. We’ll go over it all again,” Dr. Clarkson drawled. “She grew up Consortium. Was on Thalassa on the first trip to Pallas. Found the survivors.” A few taps sounded over the speakers before she continued, “She took samples of the debris. Her drone was destroyed. Oh! Do you suppose it’s the cockroaches? Her suit was compromised. She could’ve inhaled something.”
Nate shifted his weight beside me. “It’s not the bugs.” He glared at the speaker beside Williams’s computer. “You keep saying you want test results, but you aren’t reading them. I have, and there’s no trace of anything insectile in any testing.”
“And what would you know, Timmons? You’re just hired muscle.”
Her disrespect burrowed into my skin like a metal sliver. “He is a pilot and a chemical engineer.”
Nate winked and gave me a brief smile.
“But not a virologist. The problem is that nothing is conclusive. It could be a systemic response triggered by the insects.” A long exhale rattled through the room. “Never mind. Back to the Recorder. She was transported to Thalassa, where Maxwell removed her chip, and she seemed fine. There was her incident with Elliott Ross—”
My face heated. Did the whole system need to know Elliott had kissed me without my consent? Nate squeezed my shoulder.
“And she got sick.”
“She wasn’t sick from the virus, though,” Max interjected. “As Williams said, she contracted toxoplasmosis from the cats.”
Dr. Clarkson grunted. “And we’re back at the cats again.”
Kyleigh tugged on her short curls. “But Freddie and I both had been exposed long before. Max, you said my infection was dormant?”
“True.”
A sharp crack echoed from the speaker, as if Dr. Clarkson had slammed something down. “We aren’t getting anywhere. Maxwell, you need to get your hands on Pallas Station’s records. You’re the only one who’s qualified. Williams is just staff. The marines and security team don’t have the training—or capacity, to be honest—to dig through medical information.”
Incensed by Dr. Clarkson’s belittling remarks, I began to refute her assertions. Nate nudged my shoulder, then rolled his eyes and quirked a dimpleless smile. I fell silent.
Her scratchy voice continued, “DuBois said the self-destruct damaged some of the core, but I’ve studied the plans. There was a deep storage backup, and the information has to be there. Maxwell, you’ll have to leave patching up injured grunts to their field medic and track down evidence regarding the bioweapon’s beginnings. And get some more blood samples from that Recorder—”
“She’s not going to have any blood left, if you keep taking it,” Kyleigh objected.
I could not help but smile at her concern. “An exaggeration. I will be fine.”
Dr. Robert Maxwell’s brows drew together, like they did when he worried. Surely, he could not be concerned they would drain my veins?
“You will be fine, if Williams, Edwards, and I have anything to say about it. But,” he added as he returned to my side, bearing two jet injectors, “you did show signs of parasitic activity again. Your immune system has taken a beating the past few days, so I’ve asked Johansen to bring some pyrimethamine back today.”
“I don’t like your risking Thalassa by sending marines up here,” Dr. Clarkson whined.
Max did not address her concerns but smiled briefly at me. “In the meantime, let’s get you something for the headache and a few extra nanites to boost your ability to fight off viral attacks.” The tip of a jet injector touched my inner arm.
“Wait!” Kyleigh cried out.
Max rotated toward her. “What is it?”
“We’ve been looking in the wrong place!” Her face was ashen. “It’s the nanites! Stars above, think about it! Back on Thalassa before we reached Lunar One and Ross ran off, I came to tell you the Consortium nanotech in her blood had changed.” She spun toward me. “You were all talking about names and—” She stopped and snuck a look at the speaker, then concluded, “It’s the tech.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dr. Clarkson scoffed. “Maxwell removed the Consortium chip from her brain.”
“But even though Max got the chip and the nanowiring, there’s Consortium-specific nanotech in her blood—”
“Kyleigh,” the virologist said, “in case you don’t recall, citizens don’t have chips.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Kyleigh placed her fists on her hips. “After she was sick last quarter, the nanites in her blood were different, both in shape and locomotion. We know Ross used nanotech encapsulation to carry the virus. What . . . what if that was merely the first stage?”
“You showed us a side-by-side comparison,” Nate said slowly.
“Can you pull up your findings?” Max asked.
“The records on Thalassa were damaged when Ross deleted them, but I backed them up on—oh.” She sank back onto her stool. “On my datapad.”
“The ridiculous flowery one?” Dr. Clarkson asked. “You took it with you. You can transmit the information to Thalassa, and—”
“I-I lost it.”
I caught my breath, for I knew she lied. Kyleigh had given me that datapad to create the jamming devices that would free Recorders from the Consortium’s network and protect them from their drones. Whatever other information it had held was long gone. Williams slumped into her chair, and Nate squeezed my shoulder.
“Then that theory does us no good,” Dr. Clarkson remarked. “But whatever ridiculous hypothesis you have doesn’t matter, since citizens don’t walk around with Consortium nanotech in their veins.”
A chill swept over me.
The Hall of Reclamation where I would be assigned if I could not find a way to escape. Rows of tanks full of deceased donors and living Recorders who had disobeyed Consortium directives. Recorders and Elders sentenced to serve the citizenry with their very selves, part by part, until they could serve no longer.
“No,” I said. “In fact, they do.”