Pip followed Yuang through the vacuum-sealed doors into the Enclave’s vestibule.
Since they’d lost the pod, Yuang had been in a foul mood. He was shouting orders to the grunts to track where the pod had crashed, yelling for someone to get him in contact with the colony, and generally causing everyone to scurry about like rats running from pest control.
Gingerly, Pip stretched his neck. His head and jaw were aching and he felt ill. Yuang had figured he’d helped Rosie’s aunt get loose and as soon as he got to the bridge, he’d blindsided him. Pip hadn’t seen the fist coming before it connected with his head. He’d gone down but got up quickly. He had been mad enough to think about retaliating – Yuang and he were the same height and he was fitter, stronger – but the look in the man’s eye had stopped him. He hadn’t even looked angry. That was the most unnerving thing. He gaze was just cold – cold and deadly – and Pip had got the message. Loud and clear. Yuang could do anything to him and no one would stop him; no one would question it.
“Never betray me again, Pip,” was all he’d said, and Pip had backed off.
When Yuang had discovered that Essie had messed with the weapon guidance system, he’d really tried to become part of the furniture, although that hadn’t stopped one of the grunts from pounding on him just a little, for the heck of it.
He wondered briefly if he had concussion. He’d had it before and remembered it had made him throw up. He really didn’t want to throw up. He’d rather that the first place he saw on his first visit home wasn’t the mediroom. Because that was where he was, he had to keep telling himself: home.
But it didn’t feel the same.
The gardens surrounding the Enclave were thicker, the trees taller, and there were new buildings. The original Enclave, where he’d grown up, was a low hexagon of domes connected by half-submerged corridors, hunkering down in the soil and covered with a radiating substance, which hid them from prying eyes. Now, four smaller clusters of buildings had been added, built behind the original against the high ridges at the foot of the mountains.
It smelled the same – the corridors scented with antiseptic lemon – but it was almost too clean after the murky richness of Earth. He’d forgotten what it was like not to wake up to the odour of decay and sweat, the scent of frying onions embedded in his skin and clothes.
He felt displaced and hated it. He’d wanted to be relieved to be home, to feel cloaked in the comfort he remembered from childhood, but there was no one left here to welcome him. All the children he’d grown up with were either dead or sent somewhere else. Most were dead.
Yuang told him many of them had contracted the MalX.
He felt cheated. Why hadn’t Yuang told him before? Some of them must have been dead for years now. He could have told him.
Yuang stopped at the door into the Enclave proper and turned to the grunts dragging Essie, half conscious, between them.
“Take her to room nine.” His gaze went to Pip. “You go with them then meet me in the refectory. We have much to talk about.”
He pressed his thumb to the lock, the door slid open, and he walked away down the long white hallway. Pip hesitated then followed the grunts. The rooms and corners were familiar to him, yet strangely altered. Everything looked smaller. When they walked by the corridor that led to the dormitories he felt the need to see his old bunk, his room. But he was being watched. Hidden surveillance laced the Enclave like a spider web, every nook and cranny subject to some kind of watchful eye. Yuang would know if he deviated. So he followed the grunts down the silent corridor through more doors and into another hexagon of rooms and halls, but this one was unfamiliar and he figured they must be in the new section.
It wasn’t white. The walls were a dull, pale orange and there were no windows. It wasn’t as clean either. There was something metallic in the scent. They stopped at a door marked with a number nine and dragged Essie inside.
As soon as Pip entered, he wanted to run out again. The room was large. Around the walls were lines of desks and holo coms and all manner of scientific equipment. Machines whirred in a low undercurrent, and at odd moments holo coms would come on, translucent green shapes and graphs hanging in the air. There was no one else in the room apart from them and one other: Rosie’s dad. Clad only in a pair of briefs, he reclined, half upright on a long red chair, eyes closed, in the middle of a totally enclosed transparent tent. Tubes ran from his arms and torso to medibots that hovered near him, monitoring his life signs. His head had been shaved and a series of small pods attached to his skull.
Essie saw him and struggled weakly in the grip of the grunts, swearing at them. Pip moved forward barely hearing her. Rosie’s dad had the MalX; he would recognise it anywhere. His skin was covered in curls of pink rash that formed over his chest and legs like waves, and already his limbs were starting to waste. Pip was horrified. It took weeks to get to this stage. He’d seen him on Earth when the grunts came for him; he’d been fine then. There was only one way he could have become so sick, so fast, and the thought of it turned his stomach. Someone had deliberately infected him with a massive dose and Pip knew exactly who would have done it.