Neither looked happy about it, but she had asked in the correct manner and they agreed. The three went into the hall, away from the hustle and bustle of the oncoming world.
“I would not have interrupted if I didn’t think this was urgent. I’m sure you have been informed of the two crew members who were found dead in their chambers this morning.”
Troubalene gave a curt nod. “The guards have just told us. Did anything turn up during the preliminary examination?”
“Actually, yes. It turns out that they died in the same manner as Susanna Creighton.” Patricia winced, trying hard not to look at the captain as she said his wife’s name. “Which means that this has to do with Lance. I wondered if you would permit me to examine their room.”
“And why should you be the one to examine their room? What makes you think for one second that you’re even qualified for such an endeavor?” the captain asked in his normal condescending tone.
“Because no one knows how this kid thinks better than I do. Let me try. If it is him, we could lose a lot more by doing nothing.”
“Very well,” he said before returning to the control room.
Troubalene hung back a moment. “He’s not on board, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’ve been thorough. Not to mention all the small aircrafts are equipped with locators. We know where that aircraft is at this moment. Nowhere near this ship.”
“Well, the locator isn’t anywhere near this ship.” Patricia shook her head. “I need a room number or I won’t be able to help. Please.”
“4086.” Troubalene placed a hand on Patricia’s shoulder. “If you find anything out, contact us immediately. We can’t have today marred with death.”
“Understood.”
“Does John know?”
Patricia shrugged. “I doubt it. He’s got enough to worry about. I’m not going to tell him.” Then she pulled away and made her way to the fourth level. Everyone was up. It was a big day, an exciting one. One that they had been planning for. There were little kids running back and forth through the halls. Those were the ones that would be most in awe when they landed. They were the ones who had never set foot on solid ground. It was going to be an interesting sight to see.
When she reached the room, she could feel every eye of those crowded into the hall on her. She felt their stares bore into her skin. Patricia straightened herself up to her full height and activated the door. Then she slipped inside and made sure it was shut before relaxing again. The room looked normal, just like all the other quarters on board. A bed, a couple dressers, a small closet. The floor was clean. The walls were giving off the right amount of heat and the air vent, the small gap between where the wall met the ceiling just above the bed, gave up a steady hum. It was all working and everything looked normal. So where had they picked up whatever it was that killed them. She began to rifle through their things. She pulled all the bedding off the bed, went through the drawers and tore through the closet. There was nothing. No liquid, no food, no out of the ordinary items.
At a loss, Patricia left the room. She made her way to the cafeteria and took a seat at a table with very few people. She didn’t eat, just wanted a place to think. There had to be something that would connect everything so that it would make sense. Maybe it had to do with where they were when he said he killed Susanna. Did he do it from the seventh level while they were talking? Probably, but how.
“Ma’am,” a guard asked.
Patricia shook her head a minute and looked around to see who had said it. “Are you talking to me?”
“Are you Patricia Meyer?”
“Um…last time I checked.”
“Then your presence has been requested on the second level by Miss Xana Zephania. Please, if you could make your way there as soon as possible.”
Patricia smiled. “Of course.”
The moment she entered Xana’s office, she knew something was wrong. “We’ve just been delivered three more bodies, all from separate rooms. This is escalating far too fast and we land soon. Did you find anything out?”
Patricia heard the panic behind Xana’s words, but tried to keep calm as she spoke. “I didn’t find anything in their room, but maybe the other three will prove to have a clue of some sort.”
Xana shook her head. “I don’t think you’re going to find anything in those rooms. You need to go see John. He should be able to hack the systems to find out where the problem is. Obviously, Lance’s killing them without physical contact. It’s not the food source or this would have proven to have far worse results by now. It must be something else.”
“Do you know the room numbers? If they turn out to be a dead end, I will go see John immediately. But I don’t want to bother him without examining every avenue first.”
“Fine. They were all on the fifth level.” Xana wrote them on an electronic memo and handed it to Patricia. “Good luck.”
Patricia took the memo from Xana and left the office. She found the fifth level to be in the same state of chaos as the fourth had been. People were pouring into the halls in anticipation of the big day. Too many people. She had to elbow her way through to get to each of the rooms. And, like the one where they had found the couple, each room was the same. Everything was normal, nothing out of the ordinary, and all systems working correctly. It wasn’t right. There had to be a reason for it. Something had to have caused the deaths. And she was left with but a singular option to solve the problem. John was going to have to help her.
Patricia tried to make herself scarce as she moved through the first level hall toward where she knew she would find her husband; the systems analyst room. There were six programmers inside, including John. Each sitting in front of a projection desk, each working hard to keep the ship on course and everything on board working smoothly.
Patricia quietly entered the room and snuck up behind John, tapping him on the shoulder. He jumped, spinning around for half a second, but the moment he saw who it was he turned back around and continued working.
“I don’t have time for this,” he said.
“Look, I know you’re busy, but we need to talk.”
“Can it wait?”
“Not really. Not if you’d like the crew to land alive.”
John sighed. “This better be important.”
“If you keep up the attitude it’s going to be about me punching you out. Just get up.” She took a deep breath and leveled her voice. “We need to talk in the hall.”
John stood up and dragged his feet out of the room. Patricia followed.
“There are five dead. All found this morning in their beds. All having appeared to have died the same way as Susanna. I need your help.”
John’s attitude changed. “Lance?”
“It has to be.”
“Is he on board?”
“The captain and Troubalene are adamant that he is not.”
“What do you think?” John asked looking through the tops of his eyes.
“I don’t think he is either. I think it’s more likely that he put something in place, like a program or something.”
“Did you find anything in the rooms?”
Patricia shook her head. “No. They were clean. I just can’t figure out for the life of me what he used to kill them.”
“Are we sure that it is definitely related to the captain’s wife?”
“Yes. Xana determined that each had the same elevated levels of a foreign matter that she is unable to identify in their systems. It’s him. You need to check the systems before we end up with an entire ship of dead bodies hurtling toward an inhabited planet.”
“I will. Maybe you should head back up to Xana. She might be able to tell you something else that is useful.”
“Xana has told me all she can. I’m staying here until you know something.”
John scowled. “That might take me longer than you think.”
Patricia smiled. “Maybe, but you’re the only one who is going to be able to fix this disaster at this point. So I’m st
aying with my strongest defense.” She walked behind John back into the room and leaned against the back wall.
Bored couldn’t begin to describe how she felt as she stood back there, glancing at the different models floating up from the desktops. The images were mainly of numbers and non-comprehensible text. There were two crew members working on what appeared to be the exact same thing, they even made the same selections at the exact same time. John’s area appeared to be by far the most complicated. He had at least four different things up. Though Patricia was having trouble keeping track,considering how overlapped the areas became.
She threw her head back and closed her eyes. It was probably a good hour before John yelled for her to approach him.
Patricia ran to his side and looked at what he had been viewing. But she shrugged. “You’re going to have to explain this to me, because I’m lost.”
“I’ve figured out where the problems are.”
“Problems? As in multiple?”
John nodded. “Do you remember me telling you that he updated a few systems recently?”
“Sure.” Patricia didn’t really remember him ever talking about that.
“Well two of them have a virus, a subtle one, embedded within them. He must have implanted them during the last system updates he performed. It’s really quite remarkable how well they are done.”
“Can you admire him later?” Patricia said in exasperation. She took a deep breath. “Can you fix it?”
“No. I need codes. Codes that I don’t have.”
Patricia rubbed her temple trying to stave off the headache. “Can you at least tell me how he’s killing them with the two systems?”
“He’s using the environmental system. Our oxygen supply is provided, in part, by the plants that we cultivate onboard. He’s using the air that is transposed into the rooms to introduce the chemical into their systems.”
“It’s a chemical?”
John nodded. “I did find that code. He used the biological system to get the manmade airborne chemical that would then mix with the normal oxygen supply to each of the rooms of his choosing.”
“So none of us are safe.”
“Not really. We won’t know what room until it’s too late. I’ll keep working. You should go tell Xana what we’ve found out. Bring news back if you can.”
“Alright. But work fast on this. We can’t have anyone else know that we’ve got another disease to worry about.”
Xana was pacing back and forth between the cots when Patricia arrived. “I take it things aren’t any better?” Patricia asked.
“No. In the last hour four more bodies were brought in. All of them having died in the exact same manner. And none of them giving me a clue as to what was used or how it was done.”
“Actually I come with news on the latter. John found a virus embedded in two of the systems. Lance’s using our oxygen supply, but selecting only certain rooms to disperse it into. John said it was a manmade chemical of some sort. He’s working on getting rid of it now.”
Xana stopped pacing for a second, looked at Patricia, and then went back to checking every cot over and over again. “I’ve called in for reinforcements. He should be here any time and he won’t take kindly to seeing you here.”
“Oh, you called the chief,” Patricia said in a whiny voice. “Yeah, he’s not going to want me here. Can you tell me anything useful?”
“Patricia, I’ve been examining these individuals for over an hour and have learned next to nothing. If, for whatever reason, I suddenly have an epiphany at any point, you and John will be the first to know. Now if you don’t mind, I need some time to work.”
Patricia smiled. “Alright, I’ll let you be. Just don’t let the white coat take all the credit for any discoveries you make.” Patricia turned and ran right into Filonius.
“You should not be here,” he said, his arms folded in front of his chest. “You need to leave before you contaminate any evidence.”
“I was just leaving. Just try not to get in her way.”
Filonius narrowed his eyes.
Patricia tried not to laugh as she pushed past him and left the room.
The halls were starting to thin out. Maybe people were realizing that something was wrong or perhaps they were all making their way to the grand room for a celebration. Either way it made it far easier to slip through to the elevators without having to elbow past anyone.
Patricia made her way back up to see John. He was still seated at the same station, fervently swiping and expanding certain areas of the images he was looking at.
“Any luck?”, she asked, sneaking up behind him.
“Great. You’re back,” John said. “Did Xana say anything useful?”
“Not really. And they’ve found four more bodies. So how are you coming?”
John shook his head. “None of this makes sense. He shouldn’t have been able to use this sequence for this system, but he did and I can’t revert it back to its original programming. He has embedded it well. It’s like it’s woven in.”
“So you can’t do anything?”
John spun around and threw his hands in the air. “I am doing all that can be done. That little mastermind has been able to do things that no one in history has ever done before. But, by all means, question whether I will be able to fix it or not.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to question your abilities in the matter.”
He spun back around and continued. “And what kills me is that this appears to have been placed in the original source code. He did this as a kid and has been planning this far before he entered this ship.”
Patricia shook her head. “Why? Why would he willingly board with us if he knew what he’d planned for the crew all along? He knew we were going to die because he’d set that in motion.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he did it as a backup plan in case he needed it later on. The why doesn’t seem to be important at the moment.”
Patricia rolled her eyes. It did seem important, but she was done arguing. “He had to have had a failsafe, right? Wouldn’t that be important in case he was put into an unforeseeable situation or maybe he actually liked it out in the middle of space?”
“Probably, but I can’t begin to tell you where I would find such a thing.”
“He did this as a kid. Early on. It would have been in the system long before we started the flight. Maybe there’s a file that only he would have known about. One that only he could have accessed.”
“That would have been too obvious if only he had access to it. There must be something else.”
“Can you do a search for obscure files onboard? Things that aren’t accessed very often.”
John sighed. He must have been able to do it, but the images all changed to new files. There were dozens of them. “That was far more than I expected to find.”
Patricia scanned through them, reading each of their names under her breath until at last she reached one that sounded familiar. “Can you click that one?”
John did so, clicking the one that was labeled Cynosure. It appeared to be empty. “Why would there be an empty file in the system?”
“Because it wasn’t empty,” Patricia said. “Do you still have that tablet?”
John reached under the station he was seated at and pulled out the tablet.
“Where did you have it?” Patricia asked bending down to look underneath for any sign of a shelf or drawer.
“I stuck it to the underside for safe keeping.”
Patricia rose back up with a nod. “That file is the one that I downloaded for Susanna. Maybe it’s the one we’re looking for.”
“Why would she want it?”
Patricia shrugged. “I thought we decided that the why was no longer important.” She was really trying hard to not sound sarcastic. “Just look and see if it’s what you’re looking for. We’ve probably had a few more bodies turn up since I started talking to you.”
John narrowed his eyes. “I
think maybe you should back off and allow me to work.”
Patricia was finding it harder to bite her tongue, but she did. She took a step back and leaned against the wall once more. It seemed to be taking him a while to decipher the file she had stolen. Plenty of time for her to think. It was hard to say why Susanna had wanted that file. Was she working with Lance at the time? Maybe. But why? He wouldn’t have needed her then. Then what would she have really needed it for. Maybe she had been blackmailed at the time and just began to like his plan more later on.
“Done,” John said.
With a sigh, she approached him once more. “Well?”
“You were right. They were the original source codes without his additions. As well as a reversal code. So I have managed to save the entire ship, again.”
“We’ll make sure you get a medal,” Patricia said. “I’ll go tell the captain immediately and tell Xana that she won’t have to worry any longer about more bodies. Are you sure that it’s safe to breathe the air?”
John nodded. “I’m one hundred percent confident that another epidemic has been averted on this ship. Thanks to me.”
“I’m not sure what your problem is, but you might want to change your attitude before you come back to the room tonight.” She patted him on the shoulder. “I’m going to find Xana first, then I’ll come back up here to talk to the captain.”
Xana was still pacing.
“Anything happen?” Patricia asked. “Did you figure out what he was using?”
“No. Please tell me I won’t be expecting any more for the incinerators. We can’t burn the bodies until we land. The captain doesn’t want to introduce ourselves to a new species while sprinkling ashes behind us.”
“I have news. John was able to revert the codes back. It appears that we shall all live another day in this tin can. Did anyone else die while he figured that out?”
Xana shook her head. “Luckily I did not have any more.”
“Where’s the hairy white coat?”
“He went to get something to eat before we land. He’ll be in the control room as they pass through the barrier.” Xana looked at her watch. “Which should be anytime now. You should make your way to the gathering room.”
The Oceans of Mars Page 25