Escape (57 page)

Kieran blinked
—
slowly
—
trying to process all of what Ferrel had just said. It made a terrible kind of sense. “But why would they do that? Where's the motive? What possible reason could the Union have for spreading a nano virus?”

“I don't know, but right now the
why
matters a whole lot less than the
when
. We need to find out how long this has been going on for, and how far it's spread. If we've been in stasis too long
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

“There might not be any escape,” Kieran finished for him.

“Exactly.”

“What's he talking about, Kieran? What leviathans? Where did you see this fleet?”

Kieran turned to Jilly with a bleak look and explained what they'd seen after disabling the lockdown aboard UBER's secret asteroid facility. After which, Jilly's expression was just as bleak as his.

There came a crunch of rubble underfoot, and their heads turned in unison toward the sound. “Hello? Oh, thank the Elementals! I'm not the only one!”

Kieran frowned, his eyes piercing the darkness to see another pair, glowing red like his, but instead of being sunken behind folds of wrinkled gray flesh, there was pale human skin around those eyes, and an expression that looked at least as haunted as theirs.

Chapter 36

K
ieran started toward the man standing at the far end of the crumbling psych ward lobby. The stranger was standing in front of the same corridor which they had emerged from, but they'd taken so many twists and turns through the facility in their desperate getaway that the man could have come from anywhere.

Jilly kept pace beside Kieran as they crunched through the rubble to reach the newcomer. She sent him a quick thought:
be careful,
and Kieran knew from that caution that she'd noticed the same thing he had: their unexpected visitor was wearing a blue patient's gown, meaning he was an escapee from the psych ward
—
who knew why he'd been incarcerated there?

The man began crossing the lobby toward them, and they all stopped beside the circular admissions desk, facing one another. The newcomer offered a shaky smile, and stuck out his hand. Kieran eyed the hand, but made no move to accept the handshake. After what Ferrel had said about handshakes as a means to transfer the virus, he was understandably reticent.

“Who are you?” Kieran asked instead.

“Gallian Fogress,” the stranger said, his smile fading as his hand slowly fell to his side. Kieran looked him up and down, appraising his potential threat level. The man seemed fairly young
—
still had all of his red hair, though it was cropped short; his skin was taut and smooth; and his eyes were wide, and seemingly innocent, despite their now-familiar red color. He was also slightly built, thin
—
his cheeks noticably sunken
—
and frail-looking, as though he hadn't eaten in a month. He didn't look like much of a threat, unless you happened to be a food conservator.

“What were you in here for?” Jilly asked, gesturing vaguely to the corridor behind Gallian.

The man's head turned to look over his shoulder, and his gaze came back looking hurt and confused. “What, no introductions?” He waited a beat, then shrugged. “I guess that's fair. Dementia, to answer your question. Nothing like the maximum security bunch. I just couldn't remember my name anymore
—
or how to dress myself for that matter.”

Jilly raised an eyebrow, and studied the man's youthful features. He couldn't be more than 30 standard years old. “Aren't you a little young to be suffering from dementia?”

“It's a rare, but unfortunately genetic predisposition in my family.”

“You seem fine to me.”

One side of the man's mouth quirked up into an crooked smile, and he nodded. “Funny thing, ever since the plague, I've been getting better. It might be a cruel irony, all things considered, but I've never felt better in my life.”

Kieran sent Jilly a look, and thought,
That makes sense. From what we know of the nano virus, it makes steady improvements to our physiology, making us tougher, stronger, repairing damage wherever it may be. If the virus repaired my heart after Dimmi skewered me with her dagger, it could easily have repaired the damage to his brain.

Possibly,
Jilly conceded.

“That's my take on it,” the man said, reading their private dialogue and proving just how considerably his physiology had already been modified. His head cocked to one side. “Who's Dimmi?”

Kieran turned to him with a frown. “How long since the first reported case of the virus?”

The man's brow lifted and furrowed as he thought about it, seeming to count backward in his head
—
his lips moving, but no sound coming out. Kieran grew impatient after a few moments and tried to read the man's mind for the answer, only to find that he couldn't. Gallian's mind was as blank as it might have been at the peak of his dementia. What good was telepathy if it rarely worked?

“About two weeks ago was the first I heard of it, but I've been a bit out of touch as you can imagine. They were setting up the evacuation protocols, testing people for the virus, and getting all the healthy ones into the isolation centers.”

“The
healthy
ones?” Jilly echoed. Ferrel appeared beside them. Catching the movement in the corner of her eye, Jilly sent him a quick look, just to make sure he wasn't a wrinkled gray monster. Ferrel's eyes were narrowed in thought, his lips pinched and drawn in a look of concern. He absently brushed a sweaty strand of long black hair out of his eyes.

“That's right,” Gallian said. “There were too many infected to contain the virus by isolating them, so the government set up reverse isolation centers where people could go to be tested for nanobodies, and then be admitted for their protection. In a rare, lucid moment I tried to convince the doctors to test me and let me go to one of the isolation centers if I was clean, but psych patients weren't exactly a high priority I guess.”

Kieran shook his head and let out a long sigh. He looked over to Jilly and Ferrel, then said, “There might still be hope. A few weeks ago the virus was out of control. We came in contact with it a few days before we started showing major signs of it. With such a rapid progression, we've been in stasis for a month at most.”

Ferrel shook his head and began ticking off points on his fingers. “A few days to get us to this point; the virus spreads by direct contact with infected individuals
 
.
 
.
 
.
a month is too long. With the initial number of infected and the speed with which they were disseminating the virus, it could be rampant in all of civilized space by now.”

“We don't know that those ships were infected. And even if they were, it doesn't mean they were intentionally spreading the virus.”

“You have a better explanation for their movement patterns? Dropping garrisons along frontier space? That's not even Union jurisdiction. Officially, they have no obligation to police or protect the frontier, so why bother except to satisfy some hidden agenda?”

Kieran grimaced and scratched the back of his neck. “Let's just try to keep from making assumptions for a while, okay? Things are bad enough without imagining that they're worse.”

Gallian was looking from Kieran to Ferrel and back again, his eyebrows bunched in confusion. “I know I'm supposed to be able to read your minds, but I feel like I'm missing something here.”

Kieran shook his head and waved his hand dismissively. “Just pointless conjecture.”

“At least we know that not everyone on Da Shon is infected,” Jilly put in. “They set up isolation centers. Those areas should still have power, food, supplies
 
.
 
.
 
.
” She turned to Gallian. “Right?”

He shook his head. “I don't know. The isolation centers were supposed to be in the lowermost levels of the city. They reused the old tetrillium mines because they were easy to block off from the rest of the city, and because that's where most of the generators are now. I haven't heard anything about the isolation centers for days, except in bitter mentions from the infected staff around here. A few of them were joking about going down there and smoking the defalitas out like the vermin they are
—
I'm quoting by the way.”

“I see,” Jilly said.

“I didn't see them after that, so I think they weren't just shooting plasma. Those of us who got left behind were pretty spaced about it. I mean, after you see your doctor get in a fight with a patient and start chowing down on him, it makes you kind of jaded. We're not that far from animals when you leave us to our own devices, and that's exactly what they did. It was anarchy up here with the whole government gone under ground.”

Jilly raised her eyebrows. “The whole government? None of them were infected?”

Gallian shrugged. “Not the regent anyway, and 'round here he
is
the government. We're a democratic monarchy, which is a creative way of saying we're a monarchy
—
at least we
were
. Now we're a nothing. Who knows what the infernal they are underground. Could be life as usual
—
regent lounging around in his office asking where his slippers are, and who ate the last of the chaviar.”

Jilly began nodding. “That's the best news I've had since waking up this
 
.
 
.
 
.
night
. What do you think?” she asked, turning to Kieran and fully expecting him to read her mind.

“I think we can't go there like this. We need to effect a cure first, then maybe
 
.
 
.
 
.
” He shook his head and shrugged. “It's worth a shot.”

“Right,” she said, then spun on her heel and started crunching across the lobby toward the bay windows where they'd been standing earlier.

“Where are you going?” Kieran called after her, but he already knew the answer.

“Out,” she said. “I have an idea, but we're going to need a few things.”

Kieran traded looks with Ferrel, but he was equally clueless. They caught up with Jilly just as she was stepping through a broken transpiranium door and onto the balcony beyond. Gallian kept a few paces back, obviously still feeling like the stranger he was.

“Care to explain?” Kieran asked, as they stood on the balcony, the cold wind whipping around them, touseling their hair and clothes. Jilly was looking to the left, right, and dead ahead, scanning the catwalks in every direction. A few were crumbling like the buildings, with pieces of railings and floor alike missing, but the majority appeared structurally sound enough for them to proceed
—
carefully.

Jilly turned to him with a faint smile, but Ferrel interrupted whatever she was about to say with an exultant whoop. He was pointing up at the sky, grinning from ear to ear. “Look! Stars!”

Kieran followed the gesture to the artificial sky and saw a vast array of sparkling diamonds shining down on them. It took a moment for him to understand the implications of that.

“There's still power up there
 
.
 
.
 
.
” Jilly marvelled, putting Kieran's thoughts into words before he could.

“Maybe some civilization, too,” Ferrel added. He turned to them with red eyes sparkling. “The upper levels could be safe.”

Kieran shook his head, his eyes still fixed upon the sparkling dome of artificial stars. “No, Ferrel. Look at the buildings up there. No lights. The sky is probably running on a separate grid. It might even be self-sustaining. All it means is that we've got some light to travel by.”

Jilly turned to them, her lips pursed. “It could be more important than that. Rememer the cities on Da Shon exist under shield domes, just in case something slips by the point defense sattelites, many of which were destroyed in the battle. Power to the sky could mean power to the dome shields, which means we don't have to worry about a thousand gravs of rock suddenly dropping out of the
real
sky and obliterating us along with what's left of this city
—
at least not yet. Hey, Gallian.” He met Jilly's gaze with a quizzical look. “How does the dome get the power to run its shields?”

“I'm afraid I don't know very much about that, sorry.”

Jilly frowned. “Well, we'll just have to assume they're about to fail. All the more reason to hurry.” With that, she started down one side of the balcony, to a catwalk which formed a bridge between them and the nearest building
—
a shorter structure whose roof was only a dozen levels above the catwalk.