Europa Contagion

by Nicholas Thorp

  Navya’s voice broke Alice’s fixation on the room, “We need to... get out of this room and get... out of here.”

  Alice thought she heard something behind her and kept moving with Navya, farther into BSL1. As they exited the other side of the room, Alice saw Felix out of the corner of her eye. Felix had caught up. Alice picked up the pace and quickly made it to BSL4. With no time to think, she jumped, pulling Navya with her, into the decontamination room and hit the button to start the decontamination process. The doors turned red and locked the moment that Felix reached them. They stared at each other through the windows as the decontamination process started. Navya leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor.

  Alice turned her attention to Navya and kneeled down next to Navya to see exactly what was wrong. Navya had been holding her sides but now that they had a moment Navya removed her arms and looked at her torso. It was completely soaked in a dark red color.

  “Navya, what should I do?” Alice asked.

  “In the room… bandage shears and sutures...find them and give them to me…”

  The decontamination procedure finished much more quickly than either Alice or Navya would have liked. Opening the inner door, Alice stumbled into the lab pulling Navya along the floor, hitting a helmet that had been left on a nearby counter and knocking it over. Alice immediately began to look around. She quickly found the tools from the previous autopsy and handed the sutures and scissors to Navya.

  “I know what to do here… Focus on figuring out… what to do…” Navya said.

  Alice took a look around the BSL4. This was one of the few rooms in the entire facility that only had one entrance and exit. Then she heard a familiar sound. Looking back at the only entrance Alice saw what she feared: Felix was in the decontamination room. The fear she felt urged her to do something, anything.

  Alice looked around the room again. Navya had dragged herself next to the closet and had cut open her jumpsuit and was beginning to suture up a bloody hole in her abdomen. There was the operating table in the center and various pieces of lab equipment such as the observation chamber, a drying oven, a mass spectroscopy machine, a blue P3 helmet, and other smaller instruments. Sonya’s body sat in the center on the autopsy table. Navya had cleaned up and removed all the tools she had used during the autopsy. There was nothing sharp or even blunt she could use.

  Damn the people who tried to make this place so safe, Alice thought to herself.

  She put her hands on her thighs and began to sit down on a table when her hand hit something. She looked down to see the hydrogen tank she had clipped to her belt while she was in the HRM access tunnel checking the hydrogen valve. That gave her an idea.

  She grabbed the hydrogen tank and walked to the corner of the lab. There, she opened the doors and placed it in the drying oven. She closed the doors and set the machine to run at its maximum temperature of 500 degrees Celsius. She wasn’t familiar with how it operated. Normally, Sonya was the one using it. All Alice knew was that it would almost certainly take a while to heat up that much. But would it work? She saw the blue helmet on the ground and went to pick it up, accidentally hitting one of the oxygen tubes hanging from the ceiling. Normally these tubes hooked up to the P3 bio suits and provided fresh oxygen, but Alice hadn’t bothered with that.

  That’s when it hit her: fresh oxygen would make any explosion even more effective. She reached up and grabbed the hose to inspect it. The hose wasn’t blowing any oxygen because it wasn’t connected to a suit. She pulled the hose down to the floor and hung on it, putting all her weight on the hose. Nothing happened. On Europa, she didn’t weigh enough to do anything. She wasn’t sure she would have weighed enough on Earth to break it, either. The tubes were very tough. She looked around again and found a pair of stirring rods sitting on the counter. She inspected the hose and saw two small indentations around the perimeter of the ring that attached to the suits. Alice jammed the stirring rods into the openings and suddenly the hose opened and oxygen started to flow. She grabbed another set of stirring rods and jammed them in hard, keeping it open. She went around the room and did the same thing to all the hoses. At each hose, she looked back at the entrance and found a set of eyes staring back at her.

  “What exactly… is your plan here?” Navya said. Alice had been so focused on her tasks that she jumped when Navya spoke. But Navya was right. How would any of this work out for them? If the hydrogen tank went off, they would be in the room. It was suicide. Maybe there was some other way to get out of this.

  Alice began to make her way back to the drying oven, but a changing light in her peripheral vision caught her eye. She saw the red light in the decontamination room turn green: the procedure had finished. Felix could get in now. There wouldn’t be any turning back.

  Alice ran to the other side of the room past Navya to the helmet as the door opened. Maybe if she could put it on she could somehow survive the blast.

  Just then Felix jumped straight for Alice while screaming, “You’ll pay for what you did to Navya!”

  Alice brought her fists up and swung wildly. One made contact with Felix’s head but Felix kept moving toward her. The two bodies slammed into each other.

  As they both fell near the corner of the room, Alice knocked over a sample container that had held the radioactive rocks. They scattered across the floor next to both of them.

  “Not. Any. More!” Felix was screaming at the top of his lungs.

  Alice looked at the door to the decontamination room and saw it was closed again with a red light above it. Kicking as hard as she could she pushed Felix off. Felix flew a short way and landed on top of the radioactive rocks.

  Instantly, Felix put his hands on his head and started rolling around on the floor, screaming in pain.

  This was their chance. Alice got to her feet and bolted for the decontamination door. Just as she was about to get to the doors, they opened again. Kato stepped into the room.

  After Felix left the decontamination room to come at Alice and Navya, Kato must have followed Felix into the room and had been waiting for the decontamination process to finish. He had been watching the three of them, waiting with his gun gripped in his right hand.

  Alice turned around and found Felix was still screaming but had gotten up off the floor. Felix was staggering after Alice again. Quickly looking around, Alice saw the helmet on the floor and picked it up. Swinging as hard as she could, she brought her helmet around in a left hook at Felix. There was a loud crack as the helmet made contact with the side of Felix’s head. Felix fell to the corner of the room next to the drying oven. He didn’t scream this time; he must have been out cold.

  Alice began to turn toward the door, but apparently, she had spent too much time fighting with Felix. A strong arm wrapped around her body and she swung around wildly bringing her helmet around with her. Kato had managed to get into the room and behind Alice. He grabbed Alice’s hand and her helmet dropped, rolling away. He then twisted her so they faced each other. Alice had a front-row seat to Kato’s face. It was bloody and horrifying. All the work Navya had done was coming undone: the gauzes on his head were soaked in blood, half the staples in his head were missing, and his eyes looked furious. Kato looked at her with his terrifying eyes as he began to bring his gun up.

  Time slowed down for Alice. She noted the position of Kato’s handmade gun in his right hand, Felix’s body next to the drying oven, the exit to the room, the heavy closet door, and the hidden hydrogen tank ready to explode at any moment.

  Alice grabbed the barrel of the plastic gun and pushed down just as it fired while simultaneously punching Kato’s other, broken arm. Kato hadn’t expected her to react so quickly, but his reaction time was still impressive and he pulled the trigger on his gun in response. Alice felt a warm liquid run down her leg, inside the EMU, and a searing red hot pain in her thigh, but she ignored it and pushed as hard as she could against Kato.

  Even the most experienced and disciplined man couldn’t ignore reality. The i
njuries from his fight with Sonya and Navya’s focused attack on his head had slowed Kato down enough for Alice to get away with her move. Kato stepped back, grabbed his injured arm and roared in pain and anger.

  This gave Alice enough time to turn around and run in the opposite direction toward the specially-constructed chemical storage closet. As she ran, she made it one step, only to trip on the helmet. It had settled on the floor next to where they were fighting.

  She landed hard and her momentum carried her forward, partly into the closet, the helmet sliding next to her. She looked to her side and saw Navya had crawled into the closet. When Alice looked back up at the door she saw Kato bring his gun around and aim it at her. Kato pulled the trigger as Alice grabbed the helmet and rolled all the way into the closet. The bullet hit the door as Alice kicked it closed with her good leg. An extremely bright light flashed and the room trembled. Alice tried to move her leg but there was a sharp pain. She held her leg and closed her eyes tightly. She was exhausted. It felt impossible to open her eyes again and the noises and pain slowly faded to black.

  NINETEEN

  Last Man Standing

  Alice opened and closed her eyes slowly. The pain in her leg began to manifest itself again and remind her that she had been shot with some kind of improvised weapon. She laid on the floor for a few seconds, trying to remember everything that had happened. She stood up in the storage room and found that she could put some weight on her leg, much to her surprise. She limped over and picked up the helmet, bloodied by the previous encounter. It was all coming back to her now. Being chased, setting the hydrogen tank in the oven, being shot. And Navya.

  Alice glanced around the closet and found Navya in one corner.

  “Navya?” Alice said as she placed a hand on her shoulder. Navya didn’t respond. She was pale white and her breathing was shallow. Her torso was still soaked with blood but Alice could see that Navya had done an excellent job stitching herself up, especially considering the circumstances.

  Alice’s EMU had done everything it could to help, but the simple healing ointments, compressions, and even morphine couldn’t completely mask the effects of the cuts on her body, the pain in her leg, or cure her exhaustion. Oddly, she didn’t hear any alarms as she thought she would. An explosion should have set off a myriad of alarms and backup systems in the Habitat.

  She looked at the blue P3 helmet that had made it into the closet with her before she slammed the door. Wiping the blood that covered the visor and sliding it over her head, she twisted the P3 helmet onto her EMU suit. Thanking the mission planners for their foresight, she was relieved that the P3 helmets were fully compatible with her EMU. The helmet made its usual satisfying clunk as it locked into place. The HUD booted up and began to indicate many problems. The anatomical body showed yellow on her arms, torso, back, neck, and head. It showed red on her left leg. Her vital signs weren’t the best they’d ever been either.

  “Warning, multiple traumas detected. Vital signs outside of normal bounds. Administering First Aid. Seek medical assistance immediately,” it said calmly.

  “Yeah, no shit,” Alice said to herself as the computer continued to list the various problems it was detecting. She muted the voice and ignored the visual warnings as she made her way to the door.

  Even though she should have been in a hospital, she felt surprisingly good. The morphine from the suit had helped. With the explosion in the lab, she had stopped her pursuers and now potentially had an exit. She put her hand on the door latch and began to pull, but it didn’t budge.

  “Of course,” she said to herself. “The explosion must have depressurized the lab.”

  The fact that her small closet had air pressure and the lab didn’t, combined with the fact that the door had to swing in toward her, meant that she couldn’t just pull the door open. It was simply physics: the air in the closet wanted to equalize with the vacuum on the other side and was pushing the door in its naturally closed state. It also explained why she didn’t hear any alarms; with no air, there was no sound.

  Alice sighed. “Perhaps I could use this to my advantage,” she said to herself. Looking around, she wondered what she could use to help her. She was surrounded by chemicals and basic lab equipment. Eventually, she settled on an idea.

  Before she got to work, however, she looked more closely at her damaged EMU. The suit had sprayed a film of sealant that had instantly closed the hole after it had been torn open by the bullet. She’d be fine to walk around without an atmosphere without losing any precious air. But what about Navya? Alice looked around the room and found an emergency gas mask. Then, she placed it over Navya’s face.

  It wasn’t the best solution but it was the best she could think of at the moment. Next she grabbed what she was looking for: red iron oxide and aluminum flakes. Putting them together in a ratio of three to one - as best as she could guess - and mixing it in a beaker, she carefully placed the mixture above the hinges on the door. She had just created thermite, a substance that would burn as hot as 8000 degrees Fahrenheit.

  She found a Bunsen burner and small hydrogen can next to it toppled in the corner. Lighting it, she placed the burner upside down in the beaker. Alice walked over to Navya and turned on the oxygen in the mask then shielded Navya’s body with her own. The mixture began to heat and suddenly it passed a critical point. Then it truly began to combust and became incredibly bright. The visor in the P3 helmet reacted and tinted itself to help protect Alice’s eyes. The beaker broke and the searing heat began to pour down along the hinges, weakening them. This time it was simple chemistry at work and it didn’t take long. The door fell off its hinges toward the lab as the air rushed out of her safe haven. The closet was small, and the effect of the air rushing out was minimized.

  She was shocked at the state of the lab. She knew it would be bad, but it surprised her nonetheless. There was debris everywhere. The corner where the drying oven had been, which was normally a pristine white, was now replaced with a large, black scorch mark that ran vertically from the floor to the top of the ceiling. The counters and floor were filled with a filmy white residue that Alice guessed was from the fire suppression system. Dark black and brown burn marks were plastered everywhere. Looking more closely near the source of the explosion, she found what she had suspected might be the case: a crack in the outer wall. No wonder there was no air.

  The extra oxygen from the hoses in the room had done its job. The explosion without the extra oxygen would have caused some damage but the oxygen-enriched room had turned it into a fiery hell.

  There wasn’t time to pause though. Alice grabbed Navya’s body and dragged it across the floor toward the decontamination room as quickly as she could. As she moved, Alice saw that, opposite the source of the explosion lay a charred corpse. The explosion had flung Felix’s body across the room and burned it extremely badly. Alice also saw other burnt body parts. They were probably from Sonya’s body.

  Hopefully, some of those pieces are Kato’s, Alice thought to herself.

  She pulled Navya’s body into the decontamination room and slammed her hand on the decontamination button. For a moment nothing happened and Alice wondered if the airlock could still be functional after a literal explosion next to it.

  The doors then closed and began to pressurize in the next moment; the designers of the Habitat had done their job skillfully. As air began to fill in the room Alice looked back to Navya and was relieved to see that she was still breathing. A few minutes later a green light lit up. As the door opened she saw red warning lights flashing in the hallway. Alice pulled Navya out of the room and walked to the nearest computer and saw it was flashing a warning:

  *Code 14. Hydrogen Alert*

  How long had they been out? Alice wasn’t exactly sure how long until the hydrogen reached a dangerous level in the Habitat. At some point, the entire facility was in serious danger. Fortunately, the explosion in the self-contained BSL4 had not set off the hydrogen that was accumulating in the rest of the Habitat. Ali
ce had seen the valve that had been twisted and left in the closed position. Maybe she could open the valve to vent all the hydrogen out of the Habitat. She’d barely had the chance to look at it before Kato had come in and taken her and Navya as hostages.

  But first thing was first: Alice had to make sure Navya was okay. Even to Alice’s untrained eyes, the bullet that Felix had fired into Navya was without a doubt the problem. But Alice wasn’t trained like Navya was and didn’t know if Navya would need surgery or something else important. Since Navya was unconscious that would make it all the more difficult. Then she remembered what Navya had said earlier: she had fixed the UMAC.

  She pulled up and held Navya in her arms, thanking the low gravity for making it easy to pick up another person and made her way quickly to the medbay.

  As Alice sat Navya down on the UMAC’s operating table, Navya opened her eyes and slowly looked around the room.

  “It’s okay Navya. I’ve got you in the UMAC. I’m going to set it to automatic surgery mode. There’s still a code 14 so I have to make sure I can vent the hydrogen before it reaches a dangerous level.”

  Navya, obviously weak from her injury, blinked and barely nodded her head in understanding.

  On a mission such as this there was a possibility of being alone and getting injured. Setting up the UMAC to its automatic surgery mode was part of Alice’s training. It took Alice only a minute to find the correct menu on the UMAC and set it to automatic mode. She hit the ‘activate’ button and the machine responded. The table that Navya was on retracted into the machine. Once Alice knew that Navya was being taken care of by the UMAC, she left the medbay.