Prodigal (36 page)

What are they?

Masir hurriedly clicked through each of the six survivors. Every one of them showed the same changes in physiology, to varying degrees. By far the most advanced state appeared in the one subject Kellean had identified—his name stamped in bold across the top of the display:

THANIS, MARTIN—COLONEL,

SOLAR EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

The Mons virus…

Mortal fear invaded Masir’s soul, even as he tried to deny it. There had been no record of the virus doing this kind of damage—but then no victim had been infected for this long, nor had any been dropped into stasis. If the disease had the ability to spread even at cryogenic temperatures, who could know what else it was capable of?

But the screens came back negative.

So did the biopsy reports. Taken together, there was only one possible explanation.

She must have altered the results.

“Hey, Doc.”

Masir jumped when he heard the voice behind him. Grabbing his chest, he swiveled around to find Eve Kellean standing behind him. Masir had no idea how long she had been there, but got the disturbing notion that it had been for some time.

“Lieutenant,”
he blurted, heart pounding against his rib cage. “You have a singular talent for sneaking up on a man.”

“Sorry,” Kellean said. Her tone implied that she didn’t mean a word of it. “Can I help you with something?”

She cast a suspicious eye on the console behind him. Masir slid over to block her view.

She could not have missed that scan,
he decided.
She has to know.

“Just looking at a few things,” he stammered. “You weren’t here, so I decided to have a go for myself.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That’s probably not a good idea, Doc. The equipment can be tricky.”

“So I discovered.”

Kellean circled around Masir, suddenly anxious to get at the console. He quickly switched it back to standard mode and stepped aside. Kellean sat down at the console and blazed through a diagnostic, then looked in on the containment sphere—as if Masir might have damaged the cryotubes with his sheer ignorance.

“They’re fine,” he lied, “I assure you.”

Kellean turned a harsh glare on him. For one absurd moment, he believed that she might actually strike him.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to verify that.”

“Of course,” Masir replied, stepping aside. He stood by while Kellean pulled an envirosuit out of a nearby locker, observing her with veiled interest as she climbed into the bulky apparatus.

“I transferred my progress reports to sickbay,” she prodded. “You really should get on that. There’s a lot of information that needs your review.”

“Indeed there is,” the doctor said. “You’ve been busy, haven’t you?”

“There’s still a lot of work to do.” The lieutenant finished zipping up, then stood with hands on her hips—practically handling him toward the exit. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get started.”

“Are you certain you wouldn’t want some help? I could assign some additional staff.”

“I can handle it.”

“I don’t mean to imply otherwise,” he told her, hardening a bit to see what might shake loose. “But you
have
logged a lot of hours here, Lieutenant. Sometimes when we work too hard, we make mistakes—do we not?”

Kellean shifted uncomfortably.

“Your reports,” he went on. “Are you certain you didn’t miss anything?”

“Positive.” She swallowed. “I verified everything.”

“That’s good,” Masir said, probing even further. “Because you know how vital our efforts are here. If there’s even the slightest chance that these
things
might contaminate our ship, the captain needs to know—and so do I.”

Kellean stayed mute, agitated.

“Is there nothing you would like to add, Lieutenant?”

Her breathing quickened. Masir had given her one last chance, and she refused to take it.

“Very well,” the doctor said, heading out of the lab. He maintained his composure only as long as it took to turn away. He was afraid to leave her alone in here, but more afraid to stay. Something about her was just
wrong
—and Masir needed help.

“Sir.”

He froze at her command, so close to making his escape. With one hand against the bulkhead, he gathered the scraps of his courage and looked back toward her.

“They’re not
things.
They’re better than that.”

Masir nodded, humoring her.

“I’ll return to see how you’re doing.”

Masir left. With nothing else to stop him, he darted across sickbay, past the empty beds and the flickering monitors and straight into his office. There, he closed the door and punched the intercom on the wall next to his desk. At first, he routed a call to the captain—but then hung up before Farina had a chance to answer.
Are you really so sure?
Masir thought, knowing that the full wrath of the ship’s master would probably land Kellean in serious trouble.
She doesn’t deserve that—not until we know what really happened.

Instead, he called Nathan Straka.

He’ll know what to do. Nathan always does.

“Core,” came the answer.

Masir had never been so glad to hear another voice.

“Core, sickbay,” the doctor replied. “Commander, you had better get down here. We may have a situation.”

“What’s the matter, Doc?”

“Not over the ship’s comm. I’ll explain in person.”

“Can it wait? I really got my hands full right now.”

“It’s
important.
”

Straka sighed. “How soon?”

“Immediately.”

“All right,” the XO agreed. “Five minutes.”

Masir hung up. Grabbing a set of keys, he went back into sickbay and unlocked the dispensary cabinet. Methodically, he began to inventory each drug—if only to give himself something to do until Nathan arrived. After spending a lifetime in combat zones, patching up soldiers on the battlefield, waiting was still the hardest part.

Eve Kellean made sure he didn’t have to wait for long.

Masir caught her reflection in one of the diagnostic panels, her shape distorted into a wraithlike smear. He spun around, half-expecting her to remain that way—more ghost than human, like those abominations back in quarantine.

“Dammit,
Lieutenant,” Masir blurted. “You must stop
doing
that.”

Eve Kellean leveled a hard stare at him, not saying a word. Still in the envirosuit, her helmet dangled loosely off the back of her neck. Devoid of emotion, she appeared more machine than human—like the
jihadi
warriors Masir had encountered during the war.

And every bit as dangerous.

“Eve?” the doctor asked. “What’s the matter?”

Kellean glanced around sickbay, apparently checking to make sure they were alone.

“I always liked you, Doc,” she said. “Too bad you couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

She stepped toward him. Masir took a step back.

“Eve,” he repeated, pleading this time. “What are you doing?”

A muffled scream tore through sickbay.

Nathan Straka stepped off the ladder into a deserted corridor, his own footsteps following him in echo as he made his way down to sickbay. Since the recovery operation, most of
Almacantar
’s crew—himself included, after his last visit—had assiduously avoided this section. Walking down that long, narrow tunnel was too much like the dreams that plagued him. It was the same each time he closed his eyes—a watcher in the darkness, invading the

abyssal spaces

throughout the ship, stealing her life and infusing its own. Even now, with walls and force fields dividing him from the quarantine, Nathan felt those things stirring him on some primal level: a memory of the Mons virus, spreading like particles of Martian dust.

Nathan had overheard the crew talking about it, in the wardroom and on the bridge—loud enough for the executive officer to hear, but quiet enough to escape the captain’s notice. Some of them had the dreams, like he did, while others didn’t remember what kept them awake nights. The whole crew seemed to be infected with a palpable dread, as if they waited on some unknown, inevitable arrival.

Nathan didn’t know how much longer they could go on like this before something really broke. The fear he had heard in Gregory Masir’s voice made him think they might be close to reaching that point, which made him pick up the pace as he approached sickbay.

When he reached the door, a strange anxiety overtook him. Nathan touched the wheel tentatively, an electric tingle guiding his hands as he opened it.

The door popped open with almost no effort at all.

Sickbay was completely silent. Nathan leaned in, but as far as he could tell the room was empty.

“Greg?” he called out.

Nobody answered him.

“Where are you?”

Again, nothing. Nathan stepped inside, his hand still on the door. Something definitely felt
off
—but then he hadn’t really felt right about this place since they hauled those bodies up from Olympus Mons.

“It’s Straka. Anybody home?”

This time, he heard a scuffle toward the back—disconnected words, a muffled cry, scraping sounds. The disturbance triggered his adrenaline, raising the flesh on the back of his neck.

“Doc!”
he shouted, rushing into sickbay. With each step, the sounds he heard before grew louder—a single voice, now babbling, cries mounting into sobs. He still couldn’t track the source, overwhelmed by the insistent thrumming that leaked out of the lab, but kept tearing through until he neared Masir’s office.

Where he stopped dead, a broken vial lying at his feet.

Nathan crouched to pick it up. It was one of many vials scattered across the deck, forming a trail that led straight toward the dispensary. There, a thick red pool expanded around a pair of legs that jutted out from behind one of the beds.

Jesus Christ…

He stumbled backward, landing squarely on the floor. Instinct told him to get up and get the hell out of there—but Nathan didn’t budge. He simply couldn’t turn away, not before he knew. Rising to his feet, one step after another, he crossed the short distance between him and fate.

There, behind the bed, he found Gregory Masir staring up at him. A ghastly smile had been carved into his cheeks, from a crescent slice that severed both sides of his mouth and splashed his entire face with blood. Crimson foam bubbled from the open orifice, hacked up with his last breath only moments ago. One arm lay draped across his chest, the sleeve and the skin beneath flayed from defensive wounds. Nathan couldn’t count the number of slashes. He could only gape at the result, which left gashes so deep across the doctor’s belly that his intestines poked out.

Nathan doubled over, choking on the eruption from his own stomach.

He forced it back down, bile burning the back of his throat. Panic squeezed his heart as each stroke of the knife played out in his imagination—Masir’s screams dying in a gurgle as he pleaded before the lights went out:
For God’s sake, Nathan, where are you?

Forcing his eyes to stay open, Nathan intensified his focus—locking on any detail to occupy his mind, pounding his fists into the mattress. Blood on the deck kept leading him back to Masir, but also to a set of footprints—a gory trail that led away from the body and into the lab.

Where a murderer awaited.

He lurched after them.

Nathan slowed down at the entrance to the lab. He positioned himself just outside, inching closer to the entrance as his senses attuned themselves to every sound, every movement. A stranger to combat, he never knew how hyperkinetic reality could be—but for now, intellect overruled the urge to charge. Instead, he listened, trying to pick out the noises he had heard before and draw a line of attack.