Immunity

by Erin Bowman

  Coen considered this a moment, trying to find the right words. You have to stop thinking about your thoughts as your thoughts. Nothing is yours anymore, at least not between us—between hosts. If you want a thought to be private, you have to keep it hidden. You have to feel it, not think it. Does that make any sense?

  Dr. Farraday was busy tapping notes into his Tab, so Coen risked another glance at Thea. She’d moved to her cot, wiry forearms resting on her knees and fingers laced together. Her too-thick brows were drawn, and her long, dark hair fell over her shoulders like a river.

  It was Dr. Tarlow, wasn’t it? she said finally. Who forced you to learn how to control it?

  Tarlow, he said. Yes.

  The doctor from Thea’s crew. The woman who’d been infected as a child during the Witch Hazel op, who’d become something more since setting foot on Achlys fifty years earlier and encountering Psychrobacter achli. More strength, slower aging, incredible healing. And of course, an ability for telepathic communication with other hosts.

  Coen had been in isolation when Tarlow’s voice had suddenly plunged into his head. He’d learned quickly that his thoughts weren’t his anymore. That as long as another person like him was in his presence, his thoughts were universal, communal, floating in a cloud.

  He began to mask them, hiding what he could from the doctor.

  But he didn’t want to hide anything from Thea. Not anymore.

  Is that true? she asked.

  He smiled, realizing he’d leaked that last thought to her. He was not as practiced as he let on.

  Yes, he responded. I think the only way we’ll get out of here is if we share everything.

  I agree.

  So we work together. And get out of this. And then you’ll find a cure.

  Hopefully.

  Coen lay back on his cot, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t feel sick or broken, nor did he particularly feel like he needed to be cured. And yet he understood the danger Psychrobacter achli posed to the rest of the population—the dangers both he and Thea did as hosts. Images from Black Quarry flashed through his mind. Nosebleeds and hemorrhaged eyes. The crew attacking each other. Clawing. Spitting. Becoming rabid animals in the hopes of passing the bacteria on to a compatible host.

  Most of Thea’s crew had met the same fate when arriving to help Black Quarry. Thea’s captain, Dylan Lowe, had been only twenty-three and still proved unable to host the bacteria. The same proved true of Toby, the crew’s tech admin who’d been a year out of university. And now all these Radicals on the Paramount—the guards and military personnel, the scientists with Hevetz Industries—were susceptible to infection. Even still, Burke would meddle. He had the research Coen and Thea had salvaged from Black Quarry, including infected blood samples. He was playing with fire.

  What do you think they’re going to do to us? He knew the answer, and yet he longed to hear a different possibility, a reason to hope.

  They’ll study us like lab rats, Thea said, confirming his fears. They’ll try to replicate us, and then they’ll try to control us.

  Do you think they can do it?

  His stomach twisted as she repeated something he’d heard her say before, when they’d fled Achlys aboard the Exodus shuttle and he’d asked her if she could create a cure: Every problem can be solved with enough time.

  Nova Singh opened her eyes. Clamped them shut. Opened them again.

  She blinked, but the image wasn’t changing.

  Dylan Lowe floated before her, suspended in zero gravity, her short hair framing her head like a dark halo. The space station’s emergency lighting cast her face in a pallid hue.

  “Did you hear me, Nova?” the captain said. “You’re in a coma.”

  Nova turned away, pushed off the wall to propel herself down the narrow hallway. A hand braced against her chest, stopping her cold. Dylan. Somehow right in front of her again.

  “You’re in my head,” Nova said. “You’re not real.”

  “Are your thoughts real? Your feelings? ’Cause I’m as real as them, Nova, and I’m the only thing that’s gonna keep you alive.”

  Nova laughed. Dylan was the reason Nova was in this coma to begin with. On Achlys, Dylan had kept info from her crew so she could continue a search for her father. A search that was pointless. Black Quarry was dead, turned wild by the bacteria that had killed most of the Odyssey crew as well. The same infection that had killed Dylan in the end.

  “No, you killed me, Nova,” Dylan said. “You ejected me from the shuttle air lock.”

  “You asked me to!”

  “I was only on that shuttle because you didn’t have the guts to shoot me on Achlys.”

  “Get out of my head!”

  “I’m in your head. Isn’t that what you said a second ago?” Dylan smiled—a rare sight—and held up a patch kit. “You’re stuck with me, Nova. Now let’s secure this place before you end up sucked from an air lock, too.”

  A low, metallic groan sounded out of sight. The space station was failing, according to Dylan. They’d nearly been sucked through a malfunctioning air lock earlier, and now they had to patch up additional breaches.

  It’s in my head. It doesn’t matter what I do. It doesn’t matter.

  “It does, Nova.” Dylan grabbed her at the shoulders. “You have to stay busy, keep your brain active. You can’t slip deeper or you might never come out.”

  Another groan.

  This is a construct of my mind. I can control it. I can make it all disappear.

  Nova slammed her eyes shut again, squeezing tight.

  “I’m still here, asshole.”

  Nova opened her eyes to see it was true. Dylan in her leather jacket. The space station with its flickering lights and groaning metal. A warning panel flashing about a breach in engineering. Droplets of their sweat hung in zero gravity, glistening, morphing.

  It was all so lifelike. So detailed. How was she supposed to break out of a dream that felt like reality?

  “It’s impossible,” she muttered.

  “You once told me that impossible is just an excuse not to try,” Dylan said.

  Nova put a hand on the wall to stop herself from twisting away from the other woman. Dylan was merely a figment of her own mind, so it was only Nova herself telling her this bit of advice. But she was suddenly small again, her father teaching her the lesson for the first time.

  Maybe this wasn’t real. Maybe it was. It didn’t matter. Nova had no intention of spinning in somersaults for all of eternity—or until the air locks failed and she was siphoned into space.

  Fixing the damn station would at least be a distraction.

  She reached out and accepted the kit from Dylan. “Where do we start?”

  A scuffle outside Intensive Care Two drew Amber Farraday away from her comatose patient. Peering through the door’s glass window and into the general medbay beyond, she caught sight of a pair of unconscious teens being dragged toward the hall by a half dozen armed and suited soldiers, her father and Lieutenant Burke overseeing the whole affair.

  Her stomach twisted. This wasn’t what she’d signed up for.

  When her father had proposed an Alternate Enrichment year several months earlier, she’d leapt at the chance. Shadowing him sounded like a lot more fun than another year at Polymire High; she had no doubts that junior year would be just as bland as sophomore year had been. But rather than get some true medical insights from her father, who taught premed at one of Soter’s best universities, she’d been whisked aboard the UBS Paramount for god knew what reason. From what she’d pieced together, her father knew the acting captain, Lieutenant Christoph Burke, who’d called in a favor. Something about picking up “cargo” in the Fringe.

  Amber still didn’t see why her father was needed. Paramount had plenty of medical experts and scientists aboard. Employees of Hevetz Industries, she’d found out. Not to mention all of Burke’s soldiers.

  When she’d asked questions, her father told her it was confidential.

  When she�
�d expressed concerns, and even fear, he insisted she was being irrational.

  When she’d pointed out that a two-month boat hop hadn’t been approved as part of her Alternate Enrichment year, he simply assured her he’d talk to the school board and everything would be fine. Dr. Chesley Farraday was used to the universe bending in his favor, after all.

  She’d given him the benefit of the doubt at first, but this was becoming too much. The mysterious cargo the Paramount’s crew had flown to the Fringe to pick up had turned out to be humans. The first was intercepted early in their transit—a pilot named Powell who was now locked in isolation. Then the second set of cargo just yesterday: the comatose pilot Amber had been charged with supervising, and these two sedated teens being dragged through the medbay.

  One was a scrawny girl with pale skin and inky hair that fell to her chest. The other was a boy, also trim, but with limbs roped in muscle, his skin a light bronze even in the blue-white track lighting of the medbay. Sedation masks were secured over both their faces and neither looked much older than Amber herself.

  They disappeared from view as the guards dragged them into the hall.

  Amber glanced at her patient quickly—the pilot’s pulse had spiked just moments earlier, but was now back to normal—before slipping from Intensive Care and darting through the medbay.

  “Did they talk?” Lieutenant Burke was asking when she burst into the hall.

  “Not that I could tell,” her father responded.

  “Excuse me—why are those patients sedated?” Amber called out, running after them.

  “Is there a reason you left Intensive Care?” Dr. Farraday said, freezing in his tracks. Burke stopped with him, but the train of officers dragging the unconscious teens continued down the hall.

  “I heard a struggle in the medbay and . . .” Amber glanced after the teens, then back to her father.

  His eyes narrowed, his upper lip twitching as though he’d just tasted something foul. This was her father’s usual expression for disappointment. Amber had witnessed it most recently when she’d questioned what business her father had with Lieutenant Burke. Actually, ever since stepping on Paramount, it seemed to be the only expression he shot at her.

  No longer able to hold his gaze, Amber looked down the hall. It was quiet now save for a lone officer jogging toward Burke. “Lieutenant?” He pressed the Radical salute—pointer and middle fingers crossed to form an R in sign language—over his heart. “That surveillance report you were waiting for just came in from the Inansi Desert.”

  “Not here.” Burke’s eyes flashed with warning. “My office. Are you coming, Farraday?”

  “Perhaps I should take care of this and find you after?”

  “Fine. Let’s just make sure these interruptions don’t become a reoccurrence.”

  “Absolutely, sir.” Her father crossed his pointer and middle fingers and quickly tapped them to his heart. Burke trudged off, the officer on his heels. As soon as the men were out of sight, Amber’s father grabbed her at the bicep, his fingers pinching through the material of her medic-in-training lab coat.

  “Where are they taking those kids?” she asked as he steered her back toward the medbay. “And where the heck is the Inansi Desert?”

  “On Casey. Clearly the history professors aren’t covering the Casey uprising at that school of yours.” His lip curled, then morphed into a stern line. “Your focus should be on IC2, Amber. Do you understand me? I don’t want to hear from you unless that pilot is alert. There are things more pertinent than what captures your attention in any given moment.” He was staring down at her. One day she’d win a staring contest, but today she glanced away.

  “I’ll focus on the pilot,” she said. “Promise. Just tell me who those kids are.”

  “They’re not kids.”

  “Fine, teens. Whatever. Who are they?”

  “They’re damaged goods. We planned to keep them quarantined until arriving back in the Trios, but they’re giving us problems. They’ll be in cryo during transit.”

  Amber frowned. “If we’ve begun quarantine procedures, shouldn’t Galactic Disease Control be here? And the pilot I’m watching . . .” Her heart stumbled, beating faster. “Wasn’t she on the same ship as those teens? That means she should be in quarantine, too!”

  “She’s fine for now. The medical bed we have her in is completely secure, and we have reason to believe that if she was jeopardized, she’d have already shown signs, even while in a coma. Besides, she isn’t Burke’s priority.”

  No wonder I’m the one watching her, Amber thought. She must be the unimportant half of the cargo.

  “But if she wakes up,” her father continued, “if her status changes, you call me immediately, because yes, she’ll need to be closely monitored.” He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing reassuringly, but all Amber could think about was how those fingers were the same ones to pinch her arm just earlier, steering her like cattle. “You’ll be a good doctor someday, Amber. But you need to learn to follow instructions. To listen.”

  Her father had always said that good doctors follow their intuition, that hunches and gut feelings were just as important as orders and chart data. Sometimes Amber wondered if what her father really meant was that she’d make a good nurse, doing as a doctor requested; if he wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea of her earning his title and becoming his equal.

  “Where are you going?” she asked as he turned away.

  “I need to talk to Burke.”

  “But Dad . . .”

  “Keep an eye on that pilot’s vitals, Amber. I’m not going to ask again.”

  Amber trudged back to the medbay and into a room labeled IC2. The steady, subdued beep of the pilot’s vitals greeted her. Where a regenerative bed typically sat was a long, secure compartment. A transparent coffin. There was nothing to regenerate for a comatose patient. Instead, all Amber could do was wait. Monitor vitals. Check IVs and fluids. Empty catheters.

  Amber stepped up to the medbed. Beneath the clear lid, the pilot looked as peaceful as ever, mouth relaxed, lips slightly parted.

  “Right where I left you.”

  She bent forward, folding her arms atop the compartment and resting her chin on her forearm as she watched the pilot’s chest rise and fall. The patient reminded Amber of Snow White from the Earth Era fables, with dark hair and rosy lips, but bronze skin instead of ivory. Undeniably beautiful, regardless, and she wasn’t wearing even an ounce of makeup. Some people had all the luck, genetically speaking.

  Amber grabbed the pilot’s chart from the foot of the bed, searching the Tab for a name, even when she knew she wouldn’t find it. The chart contained only recent medical information, not the patient’s name or age or home planet. All things Amber’s father probably knew but refused to tell her, even though talking to the pilot—calling her by name—might help bring her back.

  It dawned on Amber that her father might not want the pilot to wake up. That awake, she just might be another nuisance, like the two unconscious teens being transported to cryo.

  Amber touched the lid of the medbed. “What happened to you in the Fringe?” she asked. “Was it bad?”

  No change in the vitals, no twitch of the pilot’s face.

  “Of course it was bad. You’re in a coma.”

  No response.

  “If you can hear me,” Amber went on, “I think things are only going to get worse. I think your friends might be in danger.”

  The vitals beeped on, unaltered.

  Coen could feel the pressure of the officer’s grasp beneath his underarms, the knock of his calves against stairs, the bump of his heels passing over thresholds. Clearer than any of these sensations was the subtle pressure of the mask around his nose and mouth. The elastic that held it in place squeezed gently along his temples.

  And even while he could feel all this—even while he was being dragged through the ship and to cryo—his limbs were useless. He was limp, leaden.

  He couldn’t even sense Thea in
his drugged state, and that was perhaps the most terrifying of all. He was alone, and it was like being stranded on Achlys all over again, those two months between Black Quarry’s demise and the arrival of Thea’s crew.

  He hated being alone.

  Coen’s feet bumped over another threshold.

  “Put him there. The girl beside him.”

  “Will it be enough to keep them secure?”

  “If the gas is working now, I don’t see why not.”

  Hands moved from beneath Coen’s arms to the front of his torso, his shoulders. Another set grabbed his feet. Their pulses were wild now in his ears. They hated being so close to him.

  Coen’s equilibrium tipped, and then the hands released him.

  I’m in the cryo bed, he thought. I must be.

  The elastic behind his head slipped up, the mask lifted from his face. He heard the door to the chamber slide shut, sensed shadows moving across it. A fan kicked on.

  Just as his eyelids began to flutter open, his body returning to itself after the removal of the gas mask, the sedative of the cryo chamber began to weigh on him. He was trading one state of uselessness for another.

  “I want a dozen guards stationed here for the next forty-eight hours. Make sure they can’t fight this.”

  Coen’s eyelids grew heavy once more. But even as his body became leaden, his mind felt lighter.

  During his trip to Achlys, the Black Quarry crew had undergone cryostasis on Celestial Envoy. It had been sort of like dreaming, a subconscious state in which he’d had thoughts. His mind had been aware that time was passing even when he’d had no way to count the days.

  He felt that way again now, his subconscious surging to life while the rest of his body slept. And in the corners of his subconscious, he was delighted to find that he sensed Thea. Not as crisp as usual. Distant and a bit tinny—like a long tunnel separated them. Muted, too, but there.

  Thea, he gasped out, the relief crashing over him.