by James Luceno
Sartoris kept moving, trying to ignore a nagging itch that had spread across the skin of his stomach like a rash. He knew it was only a matter of time before the beast, whatever it was, came after him. It wouldn’t be long before he glimpsed its true face, if it had one. Maybe it didn’t; perhaps it was simply sickness personified, a brainless and ravenous void that sucked in life.
A maze of hallways stood ahead of him, and Sartoris’s pace faltered. He was lost and he knew it. He wasn’t even sure if he was heading toward the thing or away from it. The skin around his abdomen itched worse and he stopped to scratch it and felt something impressed on the flesh itself, like a tattoo or a mesh of wrinkles. His dream-self tugged up his shirttail from his pants and he looked down at the skin of his side and saw that there was in fact something printed on his side, some kind of map—a map of the Star Destroyer. The diagrams disappeared into his flesh, and he realized he’d have to open himself up to read it. Steeling himself, he hooked the first two fingers of his right hand and raked them as hard as he could into the muscle above his hip, ignoring the dry-ice spike of pain and thrusting in deeper to peel back the outer tissue layer. The fat came loose from his flank with a sickening ease. Blood gushed out of his side, hot and steaming, running down his legs and filling up his boots.
When he woke up, a scream at his lips, the knocking had turned into pounding.
He sat up, shivered with a kind of all-over wetness, and for a queasy instant thought he was still bleeding. But the hot sticky moisture clinging to his skin was only perspiration—it pasted his hair to his brow and stuck his uniform to his back. The only part of his body that wasn’t wet was the inside of his mouth; it was bone-dry.
Opening the door of his quarters he saw two guards in orange biohazard suits and masks standing there, looking like refugees from his interrupted dream.
“Captain Sartoris?”
He blinked. “What’s this?”
“Sir, we’ve been instructed to bring you down to the infirmary.”
“Why?”
A pause, then: “Orders, sir.”
“Whose?” Sartoris asked, and made it easy for them. “The warden’s or Dr. Cody’s?”
The guards exchanged a glance. The glare off their face-shields made it hard to say which one responded. “I’m not sure, sir. But—”
“Who gave the order to gear up?” Sartoris asked, but he was already thinking about Austin’s cough and Greeley’s vomiting, and the others, all of them. Too late he wished he’d conferred with Warden Kloth about the other party before going back to his quarters. It had been a small act of defiance that had blown up in his face, another poor decision in a long and self-destructive chain of questionable choices. He ought to have reported back first: swallowed his agitation and just done it.
“Better come with us, sir.”
Sartoris took a step forward to try to identify the men inside the masks. “I feel fine,” he said, and although this was the truth, it felt like a lie, maybe because of the guards’ reaction—when he came forward, they both took one big step back.
“How are Austin and the engineer, Greeley?”
“Austin’s dead, sir. He died about an hour ago.”
“What?” Sartoris gaped at them, feeling gut-punched. “That’s impossible. I was just talking to him.” How long had he been up here sleeping? A new thought occurred to him then—a desperate realization of an eventuality that he might have to face, sooner rather than later. “What about Vesek?”
“I really couldn’t say, sir. They’re all in quarantine. I think …” The guard, whom he’d finally identified as a short-timer named Saltern, was taking another step backward. “Maybe you better just come up and talk to her yourself.”
“Dr. Cody, you mean.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sartoris didn’t ask any more questions. He came out, and felt the guards falling in a step behind him.
“I can find my way up to the infirmary, Saltern.”
“We were ordered to go with you, sir.”
In case I bolt, Sartoris thought, and then: Maybe I should.
But he had told them the truth—he did feel fine. Whatever had happened to the others up on the Destroyer hadn’t touched him. It was a localized phenomenon, and he wasn’t going to let it get to him.
You won’t have a choice.
“Take me upstairs,” he said. “I need to talk to Vesek.”
12/Big Midnight
The Rodians were sick.
Trig looked at them in the cell across from his, sprawled on their bunks, shifting positions only sporadically. As unnerving as it had been when they’d stood there staring at him, Trig found this new development even more disturbing. Their respiration sounded terrible, a clogged rattle. The coughing was worse. Every so often one of them would groan or make a low, desperate whine.
“See anything?” Kale asked.
“Uh-uh.”
A guard hustled by in an orange biohazard suit, followed by two more. “Hey!” Trig pounded on the bars. “What’s happening out there?”
The guards just kept moving. Trig turned and looked back at his brother. “What is all this, anyway?”
Kale shrugged. “Who knows?” He rolled over on his bunk and closed his eyes, and a moment later was fast asleep. Trig listened to him snore.
“Hey there,” a voice whispered.
Trig leaned forward. It was coming from the cell next to theirs.
“Hey,” he said back, craning his neck, but he couldn’t see around the corner. “What’s happening?”
“Your name’s Trig Longo, isn’t it?” the voice from the next cell said.
“Yeah.”
“And your brother … he’s Kale, right?”
“That’s right,” Trig said. “What do they call you?”
The voice ignored his question. “Big price on your head,” it whispered. “Ten thousand credits.”
Trig didn’t answer. Stepping back from the bars, he’d already begun to experience a cold slithery feeling moving into the pit of his stomach. The voice just kept talking.
“Ten thousand credits, that’s big money. Thing is, nobody’s going to collect.”
“Why not?” Trig asked.
“Because I’m the one that offered it,” the voice said, “and I’m going to kill you both myself.”
Trig’s entire body went numb. He suddenly realized that he knew that slushy pronunciation, made all the more inarticulate by the way the mouth had been injured when Kale yanked the piercings out.
“I requested a transfer just so I could be close to you,” Aur Myss’s voice said. “Greased the right wheels, you might say. The second they open these doors, I’m going to rip you and your brother apart with my bare hands. And that’s just for starters.”
“Why don’t you shut up,” Kale said from his bunk, startling Trig. He hadn’t known that his brother was listening, or even awake.
Myss giggled. Trig realized the gang leader was probably the one he’d heard giggling earlier, when Wembly had come through, bellowing for quiet. “How do you want it?” he asked. “Quick and dirty, I’m guessing. We can do it somewhere private. The guards will find your bodies later, but it might be a while. Not that anybody’s gonna care—not any more than they cared about your old man when Sartoris—”
“Shut up,” Kale hissed, springing off his bunk now and joining Trig at the bars, shoving one hand out and groping blindly in the direction of the voice as if there were some way he could swing out and hit Myss.
“Kale, don’t,” Trig said, and by the time Kale seemed to realize what he was doing and tried to jerk his arm back, it was too late. Myss latched on to him now from the adjacent cell, yanking his face up against the bars. Trig could hear him giggling and grunting at the same time, holding on to Kale. In the cell opposite them, one of the torpid Rodians had actually sat up to watch with a vague expression of dazed interest.
“Just can’t wait for it?” the voice asked. “You want it now? Is that it? You want m
e to—”
There was a sharp whack and the voice broke off with a surprised grunt.
“Get your meat hooks back inside,” Wembly said outside the cell. He was wearing an orange suit and mask, the BLX standing behind him, and when he turned to the brothers’ cell, Trig could see his own expression reflected back at him in Wembly’s face-shield. “You still got all five?”
“Yeah,” Kale said, holding his fingers and flexing them. “I think so. He was just messing with me.”
“What’s with the suit?” Trig asked.
For the first time, the guard appeared uncomfortable. The BLX droid standing behind him said, “There’s been a—”
“Just a precaution,” Wembly cut in. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Is it bad?”
“Nobody knows anything. Dr. Cody’s trying to figure it out.” Wembly glanced at the Rodians, who were now back on their bunks again, coughing and making the quiet whining noise that Trig had heard before. “Looks like your neighbors aren’t faring too well, either. Two less that you’ll have to worry about, I guess.”
“Wembly—”
Up the hall, somebody shrieked. Wembly spun around with remarkable agility for a man of his size and saw something he didn’t like. Without another word, he burst into a shambling run in the opposite direction from whatever he’d seen.
Trig didn’t have to wait long to learn what it was. The other guard charging down the hall wore a torn orange suit and no mask. He was still screaming when he slammed face-first into the bars of their cell, spraying a glut of blood through. It hit Trig’s face, shockingly warm and wet on his cheeks and nose.
The sick guard stopped screaming and stood there, eyes wide and totally disoriented. His hands gripped the bars as if forcibly keeping himself upright. Fever blazed from his skin in palpable waves. His breathing was hoarse and raspy and when Trig saw the man’s chest and shoulders rising to force out a cough, he had the presence of mind to stand back. Only after the guard coughed for what seemed like forever, making no effort to cover his mouth, did he finally seem to realize where he’d landed.
“You can’t stop it,” the guard said, in a queer, flat voice—the voice of a man talking in his sleep. “You just can’t.”
“What?” Trig asked.
“There’s no way.” The guard shook his head, his lower lip trembling a bit. Then he turned and started walking crookedly up the hallway in the direction where Wembly had gone.
Trig felt his throat go tight. He was suddenly miserably sure he was going to cry. He was scared, that was part of it, but he was also thinking about his father. Somehow the fact that he didn’t know what time it was—it could be midnight down here for all he knew—made it all the worse. A few months earlier they had been safe at home, the three of them eating breakfast together. How had things gotten so horrible so fast?
“Hey,” Kale said, placing one hand on Trig’s shoulder. “Come here.” He lifted the hem of his shirt and wiped his brother’s face off, the first tears mixing with the guard’s blood. “It’s all right.”
“This is bad,” Trig said.
“We’ve been through worse.”
Trig couldn’t answer. He put his face against his brother’s chest, and hugged him fiercely. Kale hugged him back. “Shh,” he said. “ ’S okay.”
In the next cell, Myss was making noises of his own. He was imitating Trig’s sobs and giggling. In the Rodians’ cell, one of them had started coughing a steady, listless cough that didn’t stop; it just paused long enough for the thing to suck in a breath and keep going.
“Kale?” Trig asked.
“Yeah?”
“Do you feel sick?”
“Me? No, I feel fine.” His brother shook his head right away. “You?”
“No.” Trig drew back and looked Kale in the eye. “If you do, though, you have to tell me, right away, all right?”
“Sure.”
“I mean it.”
“I will,” Kale said. “But that ain’t gonna happen.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Trust me, okay?”
Trig nodded. But he knew he was right. He sat back down on his bunk with his chin in his hands and stared out into the hall at the coughing Rodians.
In the next cell, there was the noise of something taking a breath, rearranging itself into position, and letting out a quiet, patient sigh.
“I’m gonna get you, kid,” Aur Myss whispered. “When the time comes, I’ll be waiting.”
13/Molecules
Zahara was adjusting the air inflow on her isolation mask when she sensed the 2-1B approaching behind her. “Dr. Cody?”
“Not now.”
“It’s important.”
She hardly heard him. The afternoon had been a dark and bloody blur. All around her, the normally sedate infirmary was packed with sick inmates and guards, every bed occupied and more lying on the floor. The room was filled with the sounds of their coughing, rasping breaths, beeping monitors, and constant cries for help.
Whatever the boarding party had brought back with them from the Destroyer had spread so quickly throughout the Purge that she and Waste had already lost track of the new admits. Captain Sartoris had arrived in the custody of his own guards, and the surgical droid had ushered him directly into the quarantine bubble. Knowing that Sartoris was sitting in there waiting for her to examine him was the extra dose of stress she didn’t need right now.
The warden had been calling her constantly from his office for updates. He didn’t understand why she couldn’t at least diagnose what was wrong, if not cure it. Up till now she’d been too busy just trying to take care of the inmates, triaging them and treating their symptoms, which, depending on the species, varied from upper respiratory complaints to fever and GI symptoms to seizures, hallucinations, hemorrhage, and coma. And now the 2-1B was still standing next to her, awaiting her full attention.
“Look,” Zahara said, “whatever it is, it’s just going to have to—”
“It’s Gat,” the droid said. “He’s dead.”
Zahara turned around and frowned. “What?”
“He just had a seizure and went into respiratory arrest. I’m sorry for interrupting. I just thought you’d want to know.”
Zahara took in a slow breath, held it for a beat, and nodded before letting it out. She followed the droid across the infirmary to Gat’s bed. The Devish was lying on his side, pale-skinned, eyes open, already glazed. She looked at the vacant face, the broken horn and slackened jaw. Whatever had been good inside him—the rare element of decency and humor that had made him unique among her patients—was totally gone. She bent down and closed his eyes.
“And the warden is waiting to talk to you again,” Waste said, actually managing to sound regretful.
Zahara knew what Kloth was going to ask. “How bad is it?” she asked the droid.
“Twelve fatalities so far.”
“Including the entire boarding party?”
“With the exception of Captain Sartoris and ICO Vesek,” the surgical droid answered, “yes.”
“And they’re both still in the bubble?”
“That’s correct. Otherwise, the pathogen has already spread throughout the Purge. I’m following several reports of symptoms from all over General Population—inmates, guards, support staff. Rate of infection is nearly one hundred percent. Our medication and supplies will hold out for another week if nothing changes. However …” The droid paused, its voice modulating into a more confiding tone. “I have been unable to isolate the molecular makeup of this particular strain. Dr. Cody?”
“Yes?”
“As you know, my programming regarding infectious disease is quite wide in scope, and yet this current contagion is like nothing I’ve ever seen.” The droid’s voice lowered further, the synthesized equivalent of a whisper. “It seems as though the individual organisms are using quorum sensing to communicate with one another inside the host.”
“Meaning what?”
&nb
sp; “Individual cells don’t activate to full virulence until they’ve reproduced to such numbers that the host can’t combat them.”
“In other words,” Zahara said, “when it’s too late?”
“That’s correct. At this point I’m not even convinced that our isolation gear is an effective barrier.”
Zahara looked down self-consciously at the orange suit that she’d put on immediately after placing the boarding party into quarantine. She didn’t like wearing it, didn’t like the message that it sent to the inmates who had already been exposed, but there wasn’t any choice. She couldn’t help anyone if she was sick or dead. And the droid was right, of course. As of now, it was impossible to say whether the suits and masks were helping—guards who had suited up immediately were already coming in sick, but she herself showed no sign of infection.
Not yet, anyway, a grim voice inside her amended.
From across the infirmary, an alarm went off, a steady high-pitched whine indicating that one of her patients had gone into full arrest. Zahara started to respond to it, and another alarm went off, and then a third. There’s got to be some kind of equipment malfunction, she thought dazedly, but she could see from here that wasn’t the case. Her patients were dying faster now, dying all around her, and the only thing she could do was sign the appropriate paperwork afterward.
“I’ll take care of this,” Waste said. “You need to talk to the warden.”
“The warden can wait.”
By the time she got to the bedside, though, it was already too late. The inmate had collapsed, the monitors feeding back a steady helpless whine. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. The patient to her right was having a seizure, and his alarm went off, too. For the hundredth time that day, Zahara wondered what Captain Sartoris’s party had run across up inside the Destroyer.
She knew only one person she could ask.
14/Bubble