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?”
“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.