by Gwynn White
“Louis, I can’t help you!”
No answer, other than screams. I put my leg up on the table and pull against it with all my weight. I groan with exertion, trying so hard to let go.
What the fuck is happening?
Suddenly, I fall hard on my ass, panting. I try to get to my feet, but I no longer have my right arm attached to me. As if I’m watching a nightmare, I see that it’s still connected to Louis. And something is happening to him.
While he’s still screaming, he moves for the first time since he got the puncture. He flops over the top of the table grasping at the edge of the table with his unaffected hand. It scrabbles for purchase, but even when he gets a hold of the edge, he lets go. The other arm just shakes, like he’s having some sort of seizure.
I kick myself away from the scene, using my legs to scoot all the way to the wall. What do I do? I can’t do anything. And that screaming just keeps on going.
“Louis?” I ask, my voice sounding hollow in my own ears over the screaming.
“Clementine, what is happening?” Orion’s voice cuts in over the din.
“I—I—” I stumble for words, unable to piece together a coherent thought. “I…”
“Clementine, Captain Louis is screaming and his vitals are off the charts,” Orion says, and his voice grounds me.
“I don’t know. My arm pierced him and this happened and—” I’m abruptly cut off as I notice something happening with Louis. His hand comes up and unlocks the helmet and pulls it off.
Now it’s my turn to scream.
As the helmet leaves the rest of the spacesuit, red, white, yellow, and flesh-colored goop drips out of the spacesuit and onto the table, coating it. So much thick liquid covers the surface that it drips down the sides, onto the floor. And stays there.
As for Louis’s head, I watch as it melts into the table.
No.
No, this can’t be real.
This just has to be a bad dream. Right? What a time for my brain to suddenly give me a nightmare.
But I don’t wake up. And the thing that was once Louis falls against the table, its knees buckling as that liquid keeps pouring out, bubbling all over the place. Bubbling with thick veins that appear and pulsate.
I recognize what that looks like. Impossibly, I’ve seen it before.
It looks like the living organism that was on the arachni-lift on the Nova. I remember seeing human teeth and an eye. I didn’t even consider it had once been human.
I didn’t think—for one second—that it would happen to Louis.
The goop streaks its way towards me, and I recoil in horror, getting to my feet. What do I do? How do I stop this?
“Clementine?” Orion asks.
“Something happened to Captain Louis,” I whisper.
“What?”
“I—I—”
Then, the leg of the table twitches. No, not just twitches. It moves. Towards me. Trying to get at me.
I look at the locked door on the other side of the room, the only way out of the quarantine room. It’s my only escape. I’ll get to the showers, and then…and then…
The table lurches towards me again, and I swallow back my scream, hoping to not tempt it. How the hell is it moving? It’s like what used to be Louis assimilated into the table…
Like whoever was around that arachni-life assimilated into it. Became a part of it. Holy shit.
I lunge for the door, jiggling the doorknob for a moment before I unlock the deadbolt with my one hand. I hear the spindly legs of the table as whatever it is starts walking toward me. I turn the knob, and fall out of the room, landing hard on my side. No time to wallow in pain though—I get to my feet and throw my shoulder against the door, shutting it just as the table slams into it.
It hits it again. And again. Unlike the door to the bridge and unlike the mutated arachni-lift, the table doesn’t make a dent.
Breathing heavily, I lock the door from this side.
“Orion,” I murmur as my adrenaline fades, leaving me feeling empty. The knowledge that Louis died—because of me—hits me, and I feel a tear slide down my cheek. “Tell everyone—under no circumstance—are they to enter that room.”
And, dazedly, I make my way to the quarantine showers. Where everything hits me all at once.
13
I sit, crouched in the corner of the shower long after it went cold. The Pícara, it seems, is kind enough to give me hot water, at least until we run out. I’m still wearing what remains of my spacesuit, although I left my glove and part of my arm back in the quarantine room with…
With Captain Louis…
My helmet’s somewhere in here with me. I took it off after I washed with the isopropanol bath. Now it’s just soaking me underneath my suit as it’s pouring down my neck and filling it up. I should have turned off the water a long time ago due to the water rations, but I can’t bring myself to do so.
I keep thinking about Louis and what became of him. How what’s left of him is still in that room.
PC, Daisy, nor Taka were in the showers when I arrived, which is fine by me. I wouldn’t know what to tell them or how to break it to them that our captain is…is…
A sob catches in my throat, and I hug my knees closer to my chest. Oh galaxies, why? Why did it do that to him? Was it some sort of virus? Or something different? What happened to the crew of the Nova?
Furthermore, should we still be worried about it spreading?
There’s a knock at the front of the stall before the door opens. “Clem, you in here?”
It’s PC. He doesn’t sound like his cheery, happy self. Instead, there’s restraint to his voice, like he’s been trying to keep himself from screaming or crying. Amazing how the two are similar.
I open my mouth to answer, but I don’t have the words. Instead, I just grimace and turn away.
“You’re getting your spacesuit wet,” he says finally.
I have visions of the last wet spacesuit I saw—Louis’s as his body drained out of the suit and onto the table. I pick at the broken wires and cables on my right arm. “I don’t care.”
“Yeah, you do,” he says. “You should also conserve water. Our filter’s getting pretty old, and we waste enough as it is.” He palms the shower and it turns off. With the heat of the water, I start shivering.
I think it’s from being cold and not terror.
“What happened, Clem?” he asks, stepping into the shower, his boots sloshing in the puddles. “I saw the video footage, but—”
“Then you saw all there is to see,” I murmur, still not meeting his eyes. “One second, he was talking to me, trying to get my cyborg arm under control, and the next, that happened.”
“What happened?” he asks a little more forcefully. “What happened to Captain Louis?”
I press my lips into a thin line and inhale deeply through my nostrils before leaning my head back with a tired sigh. “He was working on it and it was nearly disconnected, and then, suddenly, it…it…” I take a breath, steadying myself, because I have to get the words out. “My finger slashed open his suit and stuck him.”
PC looks at me in disbelief. “Slashed open his spacesuit?”
I give a mirthless chuckle. “Yeah, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? It’s supposed to be tougher than that.” Then again, we’re using old-ass spacesuits anyway, so maybe we were signing our own death warrants. “But, that’s what happened,” I sigh, “And then you know the rest.”
His gaze turns hard and he sticks his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “So what do we do?”
“What do we do? I don’t know. We’re a ship without a captain, and we’re next to a supermassive blackhole, and our quarantine room has a half-human, half-table in it with the rest of my arm.” I tap my head against the steel wall of the shower and shrug helplessly. “I don’t know, PC, this feels like rock bottom to me.”
PC doesn’t answer me, at least not right away. He comes forward and grabs my left arm in a vice-like grip.
�
��Ow, PC, you’re hurting me!”
“You’re not allowed to give up,” he growls at me. “With Captain Louis out of commission, you’re the acting captain. And as the acting captain, you have five other people’s lives plus an android’s existence in your hands. You’re not allowed to give up on them. On us.” He shakes me roughly. “You need to pull your shit together and figure this out. I was always jealous that you were first mate. Now prove to me why Louis trusted you that much. Get up.”
I meet his eyes, and the vehemence in his voice makes me stop and consider everything. There are people counting on me. I was entrusted with this responsibility by Louis, I have to follow through with it. Suddenly, the panic that I was feeling bleeds away, and I manage to take a breath for the first time in what feels like forever.
“Okay,” I whisper, nodding. “Okay.”
“I can let go of your arm now, and you won’t lose it?”
I nod. Gingerly, carefully, he lets go of me and I sink back onto the floor. We stay like that for a few minutes, with him breathing heavily while I’m still contemplating my next move.
Finally, PC taps the side of the shower, his metal hand making clinking noises. “It was awful to see, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I admit. “I’m…going to have nightmares for the rest of my life.”
“Well, we need to make sure that you live long enough for that to have meaning. And that means not giving up.” He extends a hand out to me. “Are you ready?”
I reach out for his proffered hand and he pulls me to my feet. I’m weak in my knees, even though they’re both metal. I brace myself against the wall and force myself to move. Away, out of the showers. And to face the rest of the crew.
I grit my teeth and keep walking, repeating a mantra to myself. My name is Clementine Jones, acting captain for the Pícara. And I’m not going to let my crew down.
PC takes my arm more gently this time and we start to walk together, leaning on each other for support. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs into my ear.
“For what?”
“I pushed all of us to take the job. And…” His lip curls.
I shake my head. “We all agreed to it. We thought the money was good. That there was no reason why we shouldn’t have taken the money. We had to.”
“I just wish I could have said good-bye,” he says softly.
“I didn’t get to say good-bye either. It all happened so fast, and…” I squeeze my eyes shut. “We need to figure out what that was.”
“How?”
I suppress a shudder at the very thought. “We call our employer. I’ll put 45 million Space Yen on the fact that he knew what would happen.”
“Hey now, you know I don’t like losing. Besides, you should probably change first,” PC says, a touch of amusement in his voice. “You don’t want everyone to see you waterlogged. They may get mad that you wasted that much water.”
And, despite everything, I smile.
The entire crew is on the bridge, even Oliver, who I feel like I should have helped a bit more to get over this. I make sure to walk out there with my head held high and my shoulders back. I need to put on a brave face for everyone. I need to let them know that we aren’t dead in space.
I catch Orion’s eyes as I head toward the captain’s console and take a seat in Louis’s old chair. I sweat, it still feels warm from him, even though my internal thermometer says that it’s no warmer than the rest of the room.
Orion looks…calm. Much calmer than the rest of the crew, which I draw strength from. He may be an android, but there’s something nice about having someone not freaked out like everyone else.
“Clem,” Daisy says softly, but I pointedly ignore her before I lose my nerve. PC shakes his head at her as he takes his usual spot.
“Orion,” I command, my voice wavering slightly. “Set up a com link to Chairman Maas of Syn-Tech. We have some questions we need to discuss. Immediately.”
The android blinks for a moment, processing my request before keying in the call to the Chairman. I hope he picks up. It will be very telling if he doesn’t—I know it will be because he knows exactly why I’m calling as opposed to being busy. If these patents in the /infinity folder are so important to him, he’d be sure to have his com always available in case we need help.
And I’m going to tear him a new one.
The call is accepted and the Chairman’s face fills the screen. Where I once thought was perfectly coifed hair and flawless complexion, I now see the cracks and despise everything I see about him.
“Where is the usual captain?” he asks, his voice filling up the bridge in a more thunderous, commanding manner than I would have thought. He thinks he owns us, like he owns the Lifers for Syn-Tech. Except, in his eyes, we’re expendable. He thinks we’re expendable. Lower than low.
I purse my lips, trying to keep a lid on my fury. “He’s now part of a table inside a hermetically-sealed room, along with the rest of my arm.” I lift up my stump for good measure. “I’m the acting captain of the ship. My name is Clementine Jones.”
“Oh dear,” Maas says, “I’m so sorry to hear that, Miss Jones. Will he be okay?” There’s no emotion in his voice.
“Whatever you had me download on that ship—the Nova,” I say, “there was some sort of weird virus, wasn’t there? Something that I downlooted and it infected Captain Louis and it infected whoever that was on the Nova with us.”
Maas raises an eyebrow. “There was a creature on the Nova as well? We had thought they were destroyed when the Feds attacked the ship.”
That explains the holes and the state that the ship was in when we found it. And that explains why it had been left drifting towards a blackhole. Why waste a perfectly good nuclear weapon when it was already headed towards being destroyed? They must have thought Syn-Tech would have been crazy for trying to recover it.
I guess they didn’t count on Maas hiring space pirates.
“Why would the Feds have attacked that ship?” I ask, even though I can guess the answer. Maas even waits, letting me know that we’re both in each other’s orbit.
“The Nova was a research vessel,” he says. “And it was there on that ship that they developed some of Syn-Tech’s most, ah, inspiring intellectual properties.”
Inspiring my ass. I clench my hand.
“What was that property?”
Maas’s eyes narrow. “I believe you’re intelligent enough to guess.”
I have to swallow back my angry outburst. It’s almost too hard to do so, but I maintain my composure. I can see that PC is about to explode.
“It was in the ‘Infinity’ folder?” I ask in an attempt to keep the conversation moving.
A half smile curves the Chairman’s lips. “Correct. Contained within that is what’s known as the Infinity Virus.”
“And what’s the Infinity Virus?”
Maas clasps his hands, and steeples his fingers as he considers my question. “A lot of that is on a need-to-know basis, Miss Jones.”
Of course. And I hate that he’s calling me “Miss Jones” instead of “Captain.” It’s just another way he’s trying to lord over me with his rank.
“I think,” I say through gritted teeth, “that you sent my crew across the galaxy on a fool’s errand—knowing that there was something dangerous on that ship—and you deemed us not worthy of making it out of there alive.”
“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong,” Maas says. He clicks his tongue in disappointment. “I’m so sorry to hear that you think so low of me. No, I hired the crew of the Pícara because you were able to easily evade the Nautilus’s security systems. Syn-Tech knew that you had the highest chance of survival. And the Infinity Virus is so important to my company.”
I raise to my feet. “At the expense of the crew?”
“You’re not asking the right questions, Miss Jones.” He pauses for emphasis. “What if I told you that there was a cure for this virus? That your beloved Captain Stevenson isn’t beyond our help. Granted, possibly not in t
he same state as he was previously, but he doesn’t have to be bound to a table for the rest of his life. We can retrieve his consciousness and find a host body.”
I narrow my eyes, not believing the words that I’m hearing. “How?”
Maas grins wickedly in return. “We have been working on an antivirus for Infinity. It is incomplete as of yet, which is why we needed the virus from the Nova. Without it, we would have never been able to have finished the cure.”
“Yeah, but with it, you need a cure,” PC mutters under his breath.
I don’t chide him for his outburst, not like Louis did. For however long it will be, I will be my own kind of captain for the Pícara.
“So what must we do?”
“My offer still stands, despite your insubordination,” Maas says. “300 million Space Yen for the return of the virus—in person. And we can cure your captain. And anyone else who may be infected.”
Shit. That means that we still have to make our way to Alpha, which is clear across the Milky Way. And that’s putting us right in Maas’s clutches. And then the last part of his statement catches my attention.
“What do you mean, anyone else who may be infected?”
He chuckles deeply, and the sound reverberates all the way to my bones. “The Infinity Virus is unlike anything the universe has ever seen before.” He sounds damn proud of it too, which sets my teeth on edge. “If you think that it’s safe wherever you have it now, you’re wrong. Once it figures out the makeup of the structures around it, it will find a way out. And whoever downlooted the initial file could possibly be infected. That wouldn’t be your captain, by chance?”
Ice fills my veins at the weight of his words. I was the one who downlooted the virus. I was the one who brought it on this ship. I look over at the remains of my cyborg arm.
“Ah,” Maas says, his voice satisfied, “apparently that was you. And there’s a high chance now that you’ve infected everyone on the bridge with you and everything on your ship. The only way to live beyond this run is to bring the virus to me.”
