PERSONAL RECORD: DESIGNATION ZETA4542910-9545E
PALLAS STATION
478.2.6.02
Internal chaos barred my ability to speak. I sat, open-mouthed, my attention shifting rapidly between my three friends.
“What?” Kyleigh shoved away from her desk and waved her hand in my direction. “We have that, which is all we need, right?” My heart pinched until she continued, “We don’t need a drone. All we needed last ten-day when she made those jamming devices was that datapad’s codes.”
Unjustified hurt lifted, but her statement was not entirely true. I had required parts from my old drone to establish the connection, but again, the explanation stuck in my throat.
“I’m not talking about a jammer,” Zhen began. “We need—”
“Stars above!” Kyleigh put her fists on her hips. “What you need is to leave her out of it and leave the drones alone. Activating one right now is as good as shouting, ‘Over here!’ You’ll alert all the wrong people.”
“You are not entirely incorrect.” James shifted his weight, but his expression remained neutral. “The Elder would have notified the Consortium Center on Krios Platform Forty-One, which is eight days and three hours away. Even if the Consortium did not react quickly when a Recorder’s drone malfunctioned, they would for an Elder’s.”
Kyleigh spun to face him. “If they already know, that makes everything a thousand times worse! They’ll be here soon. We simply can’t risk alerting them by reactivating anything.”
James stared past her at Freddie’s mural. “If his call for assistance went out over the network approximately five days ago, a ship could arrive in three days.”
Zhen drew a sharp breath. “We’re walking a thin line.”
My dull, constant headache swelled, and thought became difficult. “Again, reactivating their drones could betray our intent to hide both former Recorders from the Eldest. It would be better if—”
“Then we won’t.” Kyleigh raised her chin. “But shouldn’t the jammers keep them safe?”
“The jammers merely shut down local communications.” James waited for my nod, then continued, “They hide our neural implants but do not disconnect the network itself.”
“Which makes using a drone dodgy, I know.” Zhen’s jaw muscle jumped. “I don’t like it, either, but we need one.”
Kyleigh pointed wildly at the door. “You can’t haul her out of here as soon as she regains consciousness! Use that drone in the control room, that one she hooked into the computer the first trip down here.”
“As I told Jackson, removing it from any established connections and utilizing it for other purposes will draw suspicions,” I said. “Additionally, I do not know if the Consortium network was disrupted when Thalassa was hit.”
“It sounds to me like avoiding suspicious behavior is already impossible.”
“There is no need to risk our friend and to draw attention to our irregular activity. The jamming devices remain powered.” James withdrew his focus from the mural and met my eyes. “That should suffice when I reactivate my drone.”
“No. We aren’t going to let the Eldest stick you in some organ donation tank,” Kyleigh stated flatly.
For a fractured second, I envisioned James inside a medical tank, the green gel obscuring his silvery eyes. My stomach cramped.
Kyleigh crossed the room to place herself between me and Zhen DuBois. “And you can’t put her in danger, either. I’m not debating saving the system from a bioweapon. I’m saying you can’t haul her off a sick bed and into danger. Not only will Timmons kill you, I will.”
“Kyleigh, listen—”
“She nearly died. Died.” She reached past the glass holding the datasticks and snatched a tissue from the box on my bedside table, violently blew her nose, and tucked the wad inside her sleeve. “Max said she has to rest. Wandering off to deal with drones isn’t resting.”
“Whether or not you like it, we’re getting that drone.” Zhen darted a glance at me and pointed at my tray of food. “Eat, and I’ll explain.”
My stomach betrayed me and growled, despite the colorless tubers on my tray. Resolute, I unwrapped my utensils and, eschewing the flakes of grey fish, took a bite of overprocessed vegetables.
“Please eat, Kyleigh Tristram.” James slid the meal across her desk and waited.
She sighed, trudged across the room, dropped onto the stool, and stabbed a piece of fish with her fork.
Zhen watched us eat a few bites, then began, “After preliminary results on the marines who had roaches drop on them, Jackson put a rush on the medical files and your equipment, Kye. He sent two teams. Neither achieved their objective. Alec’s team went after the equipment. The lock needs a retinal scan, and there’s security even beyond that. Daniel says fail-safes went into effect after the station’s self-destruct activated. If he’s right, we need a drone to access Dr. SahnVeer’s lab, even after Kyleigh’s eyes get us in.”
Kyleigh set down her fork. “‘Neither team’ and ‘that team’ means there’s another one that wasn’t successful. What happened?”
“Daniel was on the first team.” James stared over her shoulder. “I volunteered for the second, but having no experience with weapons, Jackson insisted I stay behind.”
“Jackson made a good call,” Zhen said.
Worry twisted through me. “What has happened?”
“The second team headed down to the station’s deep storage to retrieve information about the virus’s construction. The trip didn’t go well.” Zhen crouched beside Kyleigh’s desk, read the bags’ labels, and carried the slightly smaller one to Kyleigh’s bed. “Tim, J, and the rest interrupted a feeding frenzy.”
Kyleigh gasped, and my utensil clattered onto the tray. I could not summon the words to ask if Nate was—if they were—uninjured.
“Evidently, Julian Voided Ross’s cronies tried to break in, which activated some fail-safes.” Zhen shrugged. “Whoever it was didn’t pay attention to the warnings. One less genocidal murderer to worry about.”
Horrified, I could not speak.
Kyleigh blanched. “It . . . it wasn’t Elliott, was it?”
Bile rose in my throat. I had not considered that possibility.
“Hard to tell at this point.” Zhen unzipped the bag. “Though probably not. The best guess is the fail-safe was what caused the power to flatline last ten-day, and you saw Elliott Ross after that. Anyway, they left whoever it was and ran.”
An incoherent exclamation escaped Kyleigh, and she slumped backward.
“Zhen DuBois,” I managed past the knot which filled my throat.
She pulled the armored suit from the bag without looking up. “What?”
“Has Nate—are they uninjured?”
Her dark eyes flickered to me. “No casualties reported, but they’re not back yet.”
Whatever else happened, I could not do nothing. I crossed the room with as much assurance as I could muster and hefted the remaining bag.
Kyleigh jumped to her feet. “She’s sick, Zhen. You can’t send her.”
“I will go,” James announced. “Kyleigh Tristram is again correct. Our friend is not well enough to leave isolation. You can open a direct communications link and tell me exactly what to do.”
The still-new joy of being called friend flashed as brief and bright as burning magnesium, but I said, “No, James.”
He raised one eyebrow—an act that again stirred petty jealousy since I had not mastered it—but calmly said, “Who else is there? I will not sit idly and allow others to risk themselves when I can be of use.”
“We need her, James, not you,” Zhen snapped. When he flinched, she softened her tone. After she finished laying out Kyleigh’s suit and helmet, she helped me with mine then tilted her face toward the ceiling and closed her eyes. “Moons and stars. I don’t like this. Neither did Alec, for that matter, and Quincy is livid. I don’t want to be around when Tim finds out, but Jackson is adamant. You were training to be an Elder. Could you activate a drone and observe it from here? Maybe give it directions to follow citizen orders?”
“Perhaps,” I said hesitantly, though I could not remember who Quincy was or why his opinions mattered. “Although I would rather maintain control—”
Zhen’s sharp laugh shattered my train of thought. “Wouldn’t we all? I don’t know how to muddle through all this, but you’re the only one who has the knowledge and doesn’t have those blasted neural implants.”
“Your reasoning is solid,” I said.
“Of course it is. Finish eating. We need to go.”
“I know this whole horrible situation is a ‘last ten-day’ kind of thing, and I’m not trying to say it isn’t.” Kyleigh skewered another bite of fish. “But even if we find a solution in the next twenty minutes, we’re still stuck with Thalassa locked above us in synchronous orbit, and the ship still doesn’t have the power to return to New Triton.”
Zhen stood. “If the Consortium ship doesn’t show up, we’ll limp our way to one of Krios’s platforms, and one of their ships can sprint back to the inner planets with what we’ve learned. But we need the information and the equipment for the injured marines Max and Williams have been working on for the past four hours.”
“They were attacked by the cockroaches,” I protested. “No one indicated they encountered the terrorists—Skip and his ilk. They could not have been injected with the virus.”
“You’re right and wrong. It seems—” She closed her eyes briefly, cocking her head to the side, as if listening. Her short lashes were dark against her cheeks. “Alec’s team is back, and everyone’s fine. Tim and J’s team had another brief encounter with bugs, but they’re due back in”—she rotated to check the chronometer on my bed—“an hour.”
“But they are well?” I asked.
“No casualties so far,” Zhen answered. “If we hustle, we can get that drone onto a temporary power supply, get you back here, and set up a computer so you can follow along without leaving home. As safe as we can make it.”
I wiped my fingers clean with a paper napkin, then used it to hide the fish and potatoes. “Very well.”
Zhen studied her gloved fingertips. “I heard about Clarkson being as stupid as an amoeba and refusing to acknowledge the Elder was sick.”
“Clarkson is as sensitive as raw ore,” Kyleigh huffed. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“We have proof now, in a roundabout way,” Zhen said, but her hesitation told me what she did not.
Max had said that the marine named Michaelson was in danger not because of the amputation after a roach had mangled his arm, but because the roach carried E. coli, Streptococcus, and other bacterial strains it had acquired while scavenging for food.
But the Elder, Lorik—the people who had injected me with the nanodevice-born virus had also injected him. He had offered himself as a diversion to allow me to escape with Kyleigh and Freddie so we could live. Those roaches would now carry Lorik’s nanodevices and his infection in their saliva. If my guess was correct, the insects themselves would be bioweapons. My Nathaniel, my friends, the people I loved, faced those insects every time they went out in the station’s corridors.
“The roaches’ saliva carries the virus,” I said through suddenly parched lips. “How many were bitten?”
“Both of them.”
“Stars above,” Kyleigh whispered.
“And we have but one tank and no way of ascertaining if the nanotechnology in it is a blessing or a curse,” I murmured.
The room swayed when I stood to pick up a piece of armor.
Zhen leaned forward and caught my upper arm. “I’m sorry. Truly. I know you’re sick, but we need a drone if we’re to save them.”
I steadied myself and squared my shoulders. “In that case, Zhen DuBois, I will need your help.”