A sound like a sob came through the speaker, cut off quickly. Stone continued.
“Vedala’s inhibitor made me think of it. The Andromeda strains ignore each other because they’re all stepping stones on a path that’s leading somewhere. I don’t know why Andromeda is searching for intelligent life, or what it’s becoming now. But if we don’t stop this chain reaction, we are going to find out.”
Stone made his final plea: “I think you know . . . this thing has hurt us both. We don’t have to forgive, but we have to look at it objectively. Help us, Sophie,” he said. “We can’t stop what’s happened. But maybe we can isolate it.”
The speaker hissed in silence for thirty seconds. To her credit, it appeared that Kline was truly considering Stone’s words. Finally, her soft voice emerged from the sea of random static.
“This is your final warning,” she said. “Do not open that door. It would be very dangerous for you . . . and for the other astronauts on board this station.”
Stone lowered his head in defeat. Turning to Vedala, he nodded. Lips pressed tight with determination, Vedala decided to put the mission back on course.
“Dr. Kline, I’m afraid we cannot trust your judgment anymore,” said Vedala. “Consider yourself under arrest. We’re coming in now.”
Reunited
WITH A SHARP YANK, STONE CRACKED OPEN THE hatchway along its lock bar. Planting his feet on the wall, he slid the hatch up and out of the way. Swirling tendrils of smoke began to pour out of the darkness.
Clad in ponderous space suits, Stone and Vedala pulled their bodies through the short cylindrical passageway. Their external LEDs sent fingers of light ahead, illuminating very little.
The Leonardo module contained eleven hundred cubic feet of volume in a cylindrical frame that was the exact size of the Discovery shuttle payload bay in which it had been delivered. The interior walls were flat, made of express racks with rounded backs that fit into the cylindrical module like four pieces of pie. Pale white, the racks were mostly hard metal, bristling with white packing cubes and lined with blue grip bars. On the far wall, a hanging computer monitor glowed. There were no windows.
It had been a utilitarian, almost boring storage module—repurposed as a remote workstation by Kline.
But today, something had gone very wrong. The interior space was engulfed in ominous, swirling sheets of thin smoke. The surfaces of the express racks were stained with soot.
Stone noticed that the far end of the module was darker than the rest—the wall seemed to be made of violet glass. The contamination had clearly spread from the Wildfire Mark IV laboratory module to the Leonardo module, directly through the vacuum. It had come through the hull and into the interior express racks.
Luckily, the infection had begun from the far end of the module. It hadn’t reached up to the hatchway and the rest of the ISS. Not yet.
But where was Sophie Kline?
Stone felt fingers clamp tightly over his bicep. Vedala was beside him, fixed in a kind of primal fear. Following her gaze, Stone caught a glimpse of the end of the world.
“Oh, Sophie,” he said. “Oh no.”
Something that looked like Sophie Kline was stretched out against the far wall of the module. She lay on her back wearing a microphone headset, eyes closed, blond hair splayed behind her. Her arms were floating in the posture of crucifixion. Her legs were not visible—they had been partially consumed, disappearing into throbbing folds of infected metal.
She wasn’t moving.
Stone stared at the infected body, limbs frozen, fixated.
“Dr. Stone, I need you to listen to me,” said Vedala, her voice hoarse with barely contained panic. “Dr. Kline is infected with the evolved Andromeda Strain. She needs immediate medical attention. I’m going to need your help.”
When Stone did not react to her words, Vedala grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him around forcibly. Clinking her helmet into his, forehead to forehead, she made eye contact.
“Dr. Stone. I need your help. Now,” she repeated.
“Yeah, yes,” replied Stone, emerging from his reverie. “Of course. But what can we do?”
Vedala turned to look closer at Kline’s body, thinking practically.
“Our only choice is to amputate her legs. If we can move her away from the infection site, maybe we can buy some time for an interrogation.”
Kline’s eyes opened.
Stone bit down on a shout of alarm. Somehow, Kline was smiling at them through what must have been excruciating pain, her cheeks smudged with soot, marine-blue eyes clear and piercing and alert.
“Very practical thinking,” said Kline. “But it’s no use. I don’t have any revelations for you.”
“Sophie,” said Stone. “You’re dying.”
In the shifting smoke, Stone saw tears shining on Kline’s cheeks. He could make out bits of black soot speckled across her lips and tongue.
“We’re all dying, Jamie. Some of us faster than others.”
“Whatever it is you’ve triggered, it’s spreading with no way to stop it,” replied Stone. “If it descends down the ribbon and reaches the planet’s surface, everyone and everything will die.”
Now Kline was staring intently at Stone.
“Maybe that will happen. Maybe not. We’ve both known death, haven’t we, Jamie? You and I see the truth of the situation. And the truth is that sending humanity to the stars is worth the risk.”
“Sophie, please,” said Stone.
“Not only am I free now,” she said, face flushed with excitement, “but we as a species have been set free.”
Only now did Stone fully understand that it was far too late to save Kline. Most likely it would never have been possible. All the momentum of her life had been carrying her forward on this path, to these final moments.
“This,” continued Kline. “This—”
Kline winced as she turned her head. Moist-looking tendrils of Andromeda were spreading radially from her trapped body, like veins under the surface of the module’s skin. “This is a last triumph over this so-called body of mine. This body that never cooperated, that always tried to fail on me. Now it’s going to become part of what I created.”
Sophie was shivering, her voice ragged.
“I risked everything—gave everything—to destroy the barriers that face our species. I never let this broken body beat me, and I won’t let you either.”
Holding to a wall grip with one hand, Vedala spoke steadily and calmly. “Last time. Can you stop it?” she asked, softly.
Kline blinked. Tears separated from her eyes and floated into the darkness like small, delicate planets. She reached up with a gloved hand and pulled the head-mounted display over her eyes.
As the visor came down, her eyes rolled backward and her lips and fingertips began to twitch.
“She’s passed out,” said Vedala, turning. “We need more information. We’re going to have to wake her up.”
“No,” replied Stone, a hand latched over Vedala’s shoulder. “No, I don’t think so.”
Stone was frantically scanning the walls of the module. He could find no danger. Even so, he began trying to pull Vedala up toward the open hatchway and back to the Unity node. Not understanding, Vedala pushed him away.
“I think she may be seizing,” said Vedala. “Look how the status light on her neural implant is blinking—”
“Something’s wrong,” Stone said, turning away. “We’ve got to get—”
Loud as a gunshot, a mangled metal fist punched into the express rack beside Stone’s head. The blow shattered a set of gauges and sprayed cubes of safety glass across the module. By reflex, Stone shoved off the wall and floated haphazardly toward the other side of the module.
The smooth metal face of the Robonaut R3A4 met his gaze.
Kline had activated the machine and piloted it through the hatchway with predatory stealth. It must have been on board all along, hiding. Stone watched as it leaped gracefully between blue handrails, grippin
g them with insectile, multijointed legs. Unlike the astronauts, this machine was designed expressly for locomotion in a microgravity environment—it was perfectly at home here.
The R3A4 advanced mutely and without hesitation.
“Stone!” shouted Vedala.
The robot launched itself at the off-balance man, one mutilated hand snarled with bits of jagged metal and the other with fingers outstretched. Each digit of the robot’s hand was designed to apply five pounds of force—altogether it could apply over a hundred Newtons, twice the strongest grip of an adult male, and more than enough to crush human bone.
Flailing in microgravity, Stone almost managed to dodge the attack.
The robot caught hold of Stone’s boot with its good hand. Stone shouted in pain as the machine crushed his heel in its grip. Kicking hard, he managed to escape with his boot intact and undamaged, crashing against the opposite wall. Farther down into the module, the walls were pulsing with dark wrinkles of infection. Above him, the face of the robot was silhouetted against dull red emergency lights. Stone was cornered.
Until Dr. Vedala grabbed the Robonaut from behind.
Although the R3A4 roughly occupied a human form factor, its center of gravity was wildly different. With vision equipment located in its relatively light head, processors in its stomach, and a slim backpack full of heavy batteries, the robot occupied an unevenly distributed mass of 330 pounds.
This unexpected difference surprised Vedala as she tried to take hold of the robot’s shoulders. Designed to efficiently maneuver heavy cargo, and under the control of an experienced pilot, the R3A4 had no trouble flipping the scientist and launching her violently across the module.
Vedala’s helmet smacked into the open metal hatchway. Her body instantly went limp, floating halfway into the Unity node.
Moving with a freakish, arachnid-like dexterity, the R3A4 began climbing the wall toward Vedala’s body. Stone noticed how the machine continuously kept an eye on the motionless form of its controller. Kline still lay partially embedded in the depths of the module, her fingertips twitching in their instrumented gloves.
Stone pushed himself up toward Vedala. As he floated closer, he scanned the smoky room for a weapon.
His gaze settled on a long metal tube with bright orange fabric wrapped around its base: a fire extinguisher. Grasping it in both hands, he planted a foot against the wall and swung it as hard as he could into the side of the Robonaut’s head.
It hit with a satisfying crunch.
There was no pause, no need to shake off the blow: the machine was made of rigid carbon fiber, stainless steel, and aluminum alloy. The impact had slightly damaged the neck struts, permanently cocking the head to one side. But it had caused no serious damage.
The robot turned to face Stone.
Sophie Kline had felt the attack as a jarring of the cameras and a newly limited range of motion in her neck. She easily directed the R3A4 to snatch the extinguisher from Stone. He threw himself backward, turning away just as Kline’s robotic puppet pitched the extinguisher back at him like a fastball.
The metal cylinder glanced against the bubble visor of his helmet, shattering the faceplate. A shard sliced open his forehead. The dented fire extinguisher pinwheeled away.
Blinking away tears, Stone choked and gagged on the smoke now flooding into his open helmet.
Blood was sprouting in pendulous beads across the gash in his forehead. As he swiveled his head to get his bearings, the droplets detached and hovered before him like a handful of dark rubies.
On the far end of the module, more tendrils of the Andromeda infection were surrounding Kline. The jelly-like surface seemed molten now, quivering, giving Stone the gruesome feeling of being inside some kind of alien organ.
A few yards away, Vedala had just come to.
“Stone?” she said, her voice still projected from his collar microphone. “Where . . . what’s happening?”
Turning at the sound of Vedala’s voice, the robot continued to skitter along the wall of the module back toward the scientist. Kline seemed to know the location of every grip, moving the robot faster than Stone thought possible. The machine was too far away, too strong, and too fast to stop. And it was headed straight for Vedala.
Stone turned to Kline’s trembling body.
“Sophie!” he shouted. “Stop this! I’m warning you!”
Sophie Kline had no intention of stopping, of course. Alone and dying and fueled by an iron will, she had engineered an unprecedented scientific achievement. Stone knew even as he spoke that she would never, ever stop.
Stone ripped open a Velcro pouch on the chest of his suit and retrieved a small case. Coughing, ears ringing, he could barely see through the blood and smoke.
At the hatchway, the R3A4 had closed in on Vedala.
Still disoriented, the scientist was trying in vain to pull herself into the dark mouth of the Unity node. But she was too slow. The machine caught her neatly by the ankle, gears purring as it twisted her leg in a sharp motion. The ligaments inside Vedala’s right knee snapped.
Vedala screamed in pain and surprise. The sheer brute strength of the machine was impossible to fight against.
On hearing Vedala’s cry, Stone’s face went blank.
In his gloved hands, he was holding a small black case. Inside was a glass vial etched with the word OMEGA. After Peng had found it on the body of Eduardo Brink, she had given it to Vedala for safekeeping. The poison was among the items Vedala had wanted to leave behind. Stone had taken it partially to make sure no harm came to Tupa, but also in case of a darker outcome he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge to himself.
Stone ripped open the case to reveal the vial. He did not issue another warning. Like the machine, he did not hesitate.
Prying off the cap with a smooth flick of his wrist, Stone launched it toward the grotesque remains of Dr. Sophie Kline. The tiny vial sailed across empty space, rotating slightly, venomous liquid escaping the lip of the glass cylinder in a spatter of tiny yellow droplets. For an instant, they formed a miniature meteor shower, all speeding together across the expanse of the module.
Stone heard another shrill scream as the R3A4 began dragging Vedala back into the module by her wounded leg. He could only watch helplessly as it raised its disfigured fist to silence her cries.
Sophie Kline never saw the droplet of neurotoxin that glanced off her lower cheek. Absorbed through the skin, it attacked her nervous system, immediately scuttling the delicate neural connection to the Robonaut R3A4 humanoid robot. Across the module, the machine froze in place with one fist poised to strike.
“Omega,” said Stone, sadly. “The end of all things.”
Kline reflexively yanked off her goggles, eyes locking onto Stone’s. Her jaw began to work silently, trying to get out words, tendons standing out in her neck. A sliver of drool escaped her lips as she expelled a final breath.
“You,” she said.
It was over in seconds.
At UTC 17:58:11 Dr. Sophie Kline, remote scientist for Project Wildfire, expired on board the Leonardo module of the International Space Station. Official cause of death was asphyxiation due to a cutaneously absorbed nerve agent that disrupted control over autonomic functions.
Kline’s body had gone still, and the light had left her open eyes.
Scanning the smoky room, Stone saw Vedala. She was still floating near the exit to the Unity node. Behind her visor, Stone could see she was breathing hard and in extreme pain.
The Robonaut had drifted away. Frozen in its last position, it rotated in place like an abandoned sculpture, bumping gently into an infected wall gone dark and smooth as obsidian. Purplish specks had already appeared on the machine’s Kevlar-reinforced outer fabric.
Stone pushed himself up to Vedala, where she waited at the open hatch leading into the Unity node.
As he approached with his arms extended, the two scientists embraced. Up close, Vedala’s face registered shock at his shattered helmet. In the reflection of
her intact visor, Stone could see his own sweaty, bloody face—and the twin trails of metallic soot streaking below his nostrils.
It was the telltale sign of infection.
“Oh, James,” said Vedala, backing away through the portal. “Oh, I am so, so sorry.”
Goodbyes
STONE LOOKED PAST HIS OWN REFLECTION AND INTO the visor of Nidhi Vedala. She was watching him, oblivious to the emergency lights and smoke. Her eyes were hard and afraid and sad.
He understood.
If the soot was on his nostrils, then he had aspirated the microparticles into his lungs. And whether this was the reverse-engineered strain or its mysterious new evolution, there could be no doubt—he had been infected.
“It’s okay,” he said, keeping his distance. “I know you’re injured, but you can still fix this. Close the hatchway. Free the other astronauts. Decouple the station from the infected modules.”
“No, James,” she sputtered. “No, it can’t . . .”
Stone took hold of the hatchway door with both hands, moving quickly, his mind still numb to what was happening.
“I’m sorry, Doctor. You know the protocol. The infection has to be quarantined.”
As he unlocked the hatch, he heard her trembling words. “Does it hurt?” asked Vedala. “Are you in pain?”
“No. I don’t feel anything yet.”
Considering this, Vedala’s brow knitted. “That’s not right. Normal onset is within a few minutes,” she said. “You should feel it by now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Stone.
Turning, he glanced back at what remained of Sophie Kline. Her corpse seemed to be staring at him, gray-blue eyes wide open, her body fusing with the writhing mass of the far wall. Tendrils of inky-violet matter had roped over her chest, as if a kraken were pulling her under the surface of dark waters.
Kline had finally become one with her creation.
But the infection had not yet reached the hatchway. There was probably still time, but not much.
“You have to go now,” Stone said. “Take care of Tupa, will you? Be sure and find him. He’s going to need you.”
The Andromeda Evolution Page 25
