48Stunned silence strikes the camp in the wake of my bald accusation. All eyes go to Zane, who stands frozen in shock at the front of the group. Murmurs of disbelief echo through the crowd, and though it’s clear no one knows what to make of my accusation, a small circle opens up around Zane anyway as those nearest him begin slowly edging away.
“No.” Zane shakes his head in shock and denial. “No, that’s not true.” His gaze goes to the others, eyes wide and pleading as he appeals to each of them in turn, “Trey, Kieran? Jovan?” but none of them move, none of them speak, all caught in some strange limbo that allows them to neither acquit nor condemn.
Panic sparks in Zane’s eyes, and with no help forthcoming, he turns back to me, eyes beseeching, pleading with me to take it all back, to tell the truth.
“Teal, please. Don’t do this.” He edges one foot toward me.
One step is all it takes, and the camp explodes, Trey and Ri going for Zane even as a dozen voices burst out yelling at once. In an instant, he’s is on the ground, arms wrenched behind him as his two former friends force him to his knees.
“Stop! You can’t do this. I’m not infected, I’m not! Trey, Ri!” In vain he fights, but if anything, their grip just tightens, his struggles only serving to confirm his guilt in their minds.
Oblivious to his cries, the two turn to me. “What do you want us to do with him?” Trey asks.
“He betrayed us! I say we shoot him!” someone yells.
“You can’t kill a squatter,” another objects.
“Stun him?”
“Tie him to a tree?”
The suggestions ring out rapid-fire, one barely out before the next one comes, but as eager as some are to condemn, others still hang back, stricken and silent as they watch the proceedings with ill-concealed concern.
“Maybe we should slow down a little?” Mercury ventures.
“Yeah,” Jovan agrees. “I mean, how do we know he’s really infected?”
Swayed by their show of support, a few others begin to second them. “He’s right,” says one, followed by another, “How do we know?”
“Oh, please!” cries Vida. “If Teal says he’s guilty, that’s evidence enough for me!”
Again the tide turns, and suddenly everyone is up in arms, screaming and arguing and shoving as they take sides for or against. Caught in the middle, all Zane can do is bow his head and hunker down, no long pleading his case but simply trying to protect himself from the pushing, jostling, rampaging mob. Body tucked in a crouch, he tries to ride out the storm, and yet with every accusation, he only seems to shrink farther, hunching more and more into himself. A single tear rolls down his cheek.
Hands clasped behind my back, I wait for it all to play out, watching as he crouches within the tempest as the crowd rants and yells and curses and jeers, their anger—no, their fear—turning them into a weapon aimed at a boy who used to be one of our own. Every tear he cries is another sin etched across my soul, every sob a decimator bolt through the heart. I have no illusions about what I’ve done, but now that it’s begun, I can do nothing to stop this travesty I’ve created. Only as the storm abates and voices finally begin to peter out do I reach into my pocket, fumbling for something—a tissue, a piece of candy, any small kindness I might offer to temper my betrayal. All I find is the square of gray jumpsuit I got from Shar. It’s as close to a handkerchief as I’m going to get. Sinking into a crouch, I hold it out to him.
The strangest look comes over his face. Raising incredulous eyes to mine, Zane stares at me as if unable to believe I would have the sheer gall to offer him comfort in a moment like this. Disbelief morphs into fury, and with a snarl, he shoves my hand away. “Frag you!”
My heart plummets, though I refuse to show it. Silently, I stick the little cloth back into my pocket and rise. Taking a couple of giant breaths, he forces the sobs down and scrubs at his face with his sleeve, his anger, at least, serving to stop his tears where my small attempt at compassion could not. I step back a pace, turning my head away that I might at least give him a moment of privacy to pull himself together.
“Teal?” Divya’s tentative voice intrudes upon the stillness. “Is it possible he’s, you know, not infected?”
I glance over at Divya. Her face is stricken, and it’s clear I’m not the only one Zane’s cries have affected. Others are nodding in agreement, never mind that they were calling for his blood only minutes ago, and still others just shake their heads in weary confusion.
Off to my right, Mercury shifts uncomfortably. “She’s got a point. What if he’s innocent?”
“Maybe if we saw the evidence?” Xylla adds.
“Yeah,” Jovan seconds. “Let us all decide if he’s innocent or guilty.”
Hope springs to Zane’s face at their unexpected support. My gaze slides over his tearstained cheeks, and for a moment I’m tempted to drop the whole thing, to say I was mistaken and let everything go back to the way it was—
You shot Mario. How can I not tell them?
—and then the temptation is gone, stolen away as quickly as it came. There is no going back, and never was, because the fact of the matter is:
Zane sealed his fate the moment he dared threaten to shut me down!
My jaw sets, and any pity I felt for him goes up in flames. Grabbing my pack, I pull out the box containing the final dose of Spec 1280.
“You want evidence he’s a squatter? I can do better than that.” I hold the box high for everyone to see. “I can prove it.”
Painfully conscious of every eye on me, I pull out the remaining vial with its matching injector, casually using the box they came in to hide my movements from the others as I pop the lid off the vial with my thumb, exposing the solution to air for just a moment before pressing the top back on again. Shoving the box under my arm, I fit the vial into the injector. It goes in easily, sliding into the slot with an audible click! Dropping back into a crouch, I raise the injector to Zane’s arm.
“Wait.” Zane’s voice stops me at the last moment. “I’ll take your test, and if it says I’m infected, I’ll go quietly, but I want someone else to administer it.”
His gaze meets mine over the injector, challenging and defiant, and my lips curl in a slight smile. With a shrug, I drop my hand and glance around for a likely tester, finally calling up Divya. Handing her the injector, I give her a quick rundown on how to use it.
“So if it turns clear, he’s okay, and if it turns purple . . .”
“He’s a squatter,” I confirm.
Hands shaking, Divya puts the injector to his arm. A hush falls over the crowd as the vial begins to fill with his blood. From off in the distant blue, Avelaine has begun her daily descent toward the horizon, and in the lengthening shadows cast by her diminishing light, a feeling of collective fear rises, passed along from one to the next in stilted breaths and fidgeting hands. My accusations have shaken them to the core, and now there’s nothing anyone can do except wait for the test to tell us if one of our own is still our own . . .
. . . or the enemy.
Still at Zane’s side, Divya slides the vial out of the injector and shakes it. Tendrils of blood mix with the clear solution inside, swirling into a vortex of pale crimson, and everyone holds their breath as they wait for it to resolve into an answer. Only Zane seems at peace, his expression strangely calm though his fate rests in a five-centimeter vial clutched in another’s hands. I wonder that he can be so serene in the face of such a life-defining moment.
The crimson is changing now as the blood is processed by the solution in the vial, and even I can’t help drawing in an unsteady breath as it starts to resolve. Slowly, Divya raises the vial up for all to see. Though the light has begun to fade, the resulting color is unmistakable.
Purple.
Chaos breaks out as everyone reacts to this concrete evidence of his corruption, but I have eyes only for Zane. His mouth has dropped open, and he’s staring at the vial as if unable to believe his eyes. Slowly, he raises his face to mine, and in the moment our eyes meet, I know:
I’ve sealed my fate as surely as I’ve sealed his.
We put Zane down in the abandoned terraforming bunker just as the suns begin their slow descent to bed. High overhead, the planetary net is flickering once again, and in the hazy blue half-light, the landing pad looks dark, feral, even, the platform now little more than an overgrown mass of dull metal blanketed in sickly shrubbery and oozing pools of black sap dripping from the trees above. Nothing like the dusty platform where the Navy left us all those months ago.
Zane stands at the edge of the open hatch, staring down into the endless shaft below. Capsule lights flicker and dance against the steel-gray walls, creating strange shadows in the curved space, and though I’ve been down there twice before, even I can’t help shivering at the sight. I can only imagine how Zane must be feeling.
Presently I speak, my voice quiet and my eyes fixed firmly on the jungle and not on him. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
For a moment, Zane doesn’t respond. Then deliberately turning his head to look at me, he says, “Yes, it is.”
Shouldering his pack of supplies, he crouches down at the entrance of the shaft, grasps the tops rungs of the ladder, and goes down. I watch him for as long as I can bear, staring down at his dark head as he slowly descends. Three meters in, he stops, looks up at me with soulful eyes, as if giving me one last chance to reconsider . . .
Thud! With a ferocious kick, I knock loose one of the stones holding open the entrance. Hydraulics whine as the inner workings of the hatch grind savagely together, and then, with a long, drawn-out sigh, the door slithers closed. The lights around the hatch go out.
Taking a step back, I wait for the guys to jam the pressure points, effectively locking Zane in, before turning to face the others. “We need to get moving. We’re too exposed out here on the platform, and full night will be falling soon. Vi—”
A blaze of blue lights up the platform as a shower of sparks bursts in the sky. As one, we all look up. The net, which has been softly flickering all day, has gone completely ballistic. Sparks are flying from the generators, exploding like fireworks across the darkening sky. Blue lines flash in a mind-numbing symphony, jumping erratically from one section of the latticework to the next, and for one terrifying second, it looks like the net will fail completely . . .
. . . and then it solidifies, glowing steadily across the sky as though nothing happened.
The group takes in a collective gasp. Though a deep sense of foreboding is settling in my own stomach, I don’t allow anyone to dwell on the possibilities. Instead, I snap a few orders, and within a minute, we’re heading out through the forest. Kieran, with his superior navigational skills, takes the lead, while I hang back and surreptitiously scratch at my right palm. The rash I’ve been plagued with off and on for the last several months is back, and now my hand is itching like crazy. Giving it another furious scratch, I glance up at the sky. At least the net’s still holding. For now, anyway. But for how much longer?
As if reading my thoughts, Mercury sidles up to me a minute later. Without looking at him, I give a nod to the sky and comment, “It’s getting worse.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
I stop suddenly, eyes narrowing as I turn to look at him fully. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been analyzing the flickers in the net, compiling data on the length, intensity, and time between fluctuations.”
“And?”
“The fluctuations aren’t random.” I stare at him, uncomprehending, until he adds, “Don’t you see? The net wasn’t just set up to fail; it was set up to fail at a specific time.”
“Wait, are you saying you can use those fluctuations to calculate when it’s going to fall?”
“All I had to do was find the right equation.”
I stand stock still, taking in the information, and then ask, “How long do we have?”
Mercury takes a deep breath. “According to my calculations, the net will fail in approximately twenty-four days, eighteen hours, and three minutes.”
My eyes widen in alarm. Twenty-four days! I knew time was running out, but I had no idea it was running out so fast.
A tendril of panic flutters in the pit of my stomach. We’ve spent months going after the enemy, picking away at their resources a little at a time in the hope that we might eventually destroy their operation for good. Our strategy was sound and our tactics successful, and maybe if we had more time, our plan would succeed, but we don’t. In three weeks, the net will fail, and the enemy will launch into space with an armada full of bioweapons, ready to start their final offensive. An offensive that could be the beginning of the end for the human species unless I can find a way to stop them. The time for small raids and half measures is over.
The countdown has begun.