Aftermath

New Pacifica was quiet for a rest day. Everyone who had been sick was still recovering, and everyone who was well was in the hospital, spending time with their children. Devon would have liked nothing more than to shed the shackles for the day and just be with her son, John, and True.

But besides the fact that relations between father and daughter were currently in a state approaching nuclear winter, the epidemic had left its mark. After lunch, she’d reluctantly gotten up, told Uly to get some rest, and gone to the hospital. Now she stood over Angie Ketchum’s bed, looking down at Molly’s sister. The little girl was deeply asleep, almost comatose.

Dr. Vasquez said, "Her system’s been compromised by the virus."

"How bad?" Devon said.

He led them away from the bed, into a waiting area. "She’ll recover, but not fully. I’d say it’s taken months off her life. Possibly a year."

A year was a lot, for a child who had an average life expectancy of seven years and five months. "And the others?"

"Younger Syndrome patients are always--"

"The others."

"It’s taken its toll there as well."

Devon nodded. "You know better than I do, how these children live at risk. If you’d back me up, Miguel--"

"I told you before, I won’t."

"We came here looking for a cure. Why can’t you believe in the one that’s here?"

"It seems to me the cure is worse than the disease."

"You’ve examined Uly exhaustively. How can you say that?"

"We’re talking about alteration at the genetic level, Devon. I won’t do it, and I won’t recommend it."

"You’ve attempted gene therapy before."

"Human genes. Not--monsters."

"They’re not monsters," she snarled, then reined herself in with an effort. "They’re not like us, but they’re not monsters, and the gift of their DNA has effectively healed my son."

"But with side effects."

"Nothing I’m not willing to accept. Uly’s still my child, and he’s alive, and that’s enough for me."

"I took an oath, Devon. First do no harm."

"This isn’t harmful, it’s a cure."

"By means of miscegenation." He pulled his lab coat around him. "I won’t do it, Devon." He strode away, radiating righteous indignation.

So furious she was almost vibrating, Devon started off in the other direction. Astonishing how things changed. Only a few years before, Miguel Vasquez had been the authority on the Syndrome, her only possible choice to head the hospital at New Pacifica, and her best ally in getting the Eden Project launched.

Now, here, he was the most stubborn opponent she had. And there were only eight days until Moon Cross.

Cutting through the doctors’ cubes, Devon stopped when she saw a familiar figure. "Julia? What are you doing up?"

Julia glanced up from her datapad. There was a deep frown line between her brows, and shadows under her eyes still. "Just a little work."

"You did enough yesterday. More than enough. Shouldn’t you be asleep?"

"Like you are?" Julia said, and nudged over an extra chair. "We may have a problem."

Battling a feeling of resignation, Devon sat. "Tell me."

"Do you know anybody named Linsborough?"

Devon mouthed the name a few times, searching for familiarity in the feel of it. She shook her head. "I can’t conjure up a face to go with it."

"You’re sure? Maybe somebody who was hired, then left the project before our departure? From the advance crew? From the medical crew? Even a family?"

Devon kept shaking her head. "The name bothers me, somehow," she admitted, "but I don’t remember a particular person. I knew all the families and all the colonial crew, but the med staff was Miguel’s job. What about him? Or her?"

Julia blew out a breath. "Stay with me," she said. "This gets complicated." She picked up her datapad. At the touch of a button, a 3-D hologram sprang up between them. "Look at this. It’s Ryan McNab’s scan."

Devon looked at the familiar lumpy-ovoid shape of a human brain. As always, it reminded her of a blob of worms that contained a tangle of thin strings. "Um," she said, trying to make it sound thoughtful rather than baffled. "Looks clean? Normal?"

"Perfectly clean and normal. For an eleven-year-old." Julia put her finger right inside the blob’s borders with a stomach-turning casualness, tracing some random-looking lines. "See this? Frontal lobe? Look at the myelination--"

Devon gave up. "Julia, why don’t you assume I flunked Neurology 101 and give me the bottom line."

"This is an eleven-year-old’s brain, but Ryan’s fifteen. Look at the date of upload."

Devon looked at the bottom of the image. Ryan Anthony McNab, it read, followed by the upload date. "A couple of weeks ago. So that means somebody uploaded a fake?"

"I looked in Ryan’s historical data. The scan that should have been taken when he entered middle school is missing. More likely somebody went and tweaked the metadata on it to make it look like this scan was taken along with all the others."

"Somebody named Linsborough."

"That’s who did the last edit. I’ve ordered a real scan on Ryan, to see if the chip is there, but we’ve got a problem."

"Yeah," Devon said, staring down at the faked scan. "I’d say we do."

* * *

Rita took advantage of the day off to call meetings of her support groups. The schedule had become irregular, thanks to work duties and nightly exhaustion, and a day without either was a chance she couldn’t pass up. Her midafternoon group was sparse--only two people turned up at the appointed time, Trent Sadler and Danielle Grant. Danielle passed on the news that Brenda was with her son, at the hospital, along with a rumor that Ryan had to have brain surgery of some kind. "They found something in there," she reported breathlessly. "Something that wasn’t supposed to be there."

Rita thought, Like a brain? but said, "Let’s not speculate in her absence, all right?" Danielle was basically harmless, but she did like to be first with news, accurate or not. "How is Melissa? Is the cold still hanging on from last week?"

"Yes, but her levels are up. She didn’t come down with the virus."

"That’s wonderful. Trent? Max didn’t take ill yesterday either?"

Trent said, "No," distractedly. "I mean, yes. He’s fine."

He looked angry about something. Rita had heard all about Devon’s brutal rebuff two nights before--she imagined there wasn’t one person in New Pacifica who didn’t know about it. About damn time, in her opinion. She’d tried to prepare Trent for the possibility that the life he’d mapped out in his head might not happen, but hadn’t had much success. She could only be thankful that Devon wasn’t part of the group anymore.

On the stations, she had been, but she’d only come to one meeting in New Pacifica. Afterwards, Rita had told her, gently, that it would be better if she didn’t come anymore. She’d made up some comforting words about how her situation was now so unusual that the support group wouldn’t do her a lot of good. However, they both knew that the reason she wanted Devon out of the group was that the number-one the parents needed to talk about was Devon.

The door opened behind Rita, and she turned to see the Ketchums. Darla looked tightly strung, and the lines on Rob’s face had deepened. The faint fug of marital tension hung in the air. "Good morning," she said.

Darla gave her a look that said that was clearly a matter of opinion, and sat down. Danielle leaned over. "How’s Angie?"

"They’re putting her in a suit and chair." Darla bit off each word like a piece of dried-out licorice.

"Both? Now?" Trent asked, clearly shocked. Rita was shocked, too. Children usually got about six months between one and the other.

"That damn virus," Darla said.

"Her system was badly compromised," Rob said, the lines carving themselves deeper yet. "The doctors said they might take her out of the chair if she improves." But from the look on his face, he wasn’t holding out for that possibility.

"Damn it," Darla said.

"I’m sorry to hear that," Rita said.

"At least Molly got the cure," Danielle said.

Darla’s face darkened. "I told her to stay away from those things," she said. "She could have been killed. Or taken away. They could have taken her away with them. Underground."

"Do you really think that?" Rita asked.

"It’s what they do," Darla said. "And Rob--"

"Darla," Rita cut in, recognizing that it could get ugly in a hurry. "I’d like you to use ‘I’ language, and speak to your husband directly."

Darla gritted her teeth. "I feel that you’re not taking Molly’s actions seriously."

"Honey, it’s serious," Rob said. "I’m not arguing with that. But you’re--" he shot a look at Rita. "I feel that you’re overreacting."

"She disobeyed us!" Darla shot back.

"For a reason! What she did--"

"There’s always a reason! I don’t want her near those things under any circumstances!"

Rita opened her mouth, but Trent got there first. "I’m with Darla," he said. "Those aliens--they could have killed her. We didn’t need them. We don’t need anything from this place. The doctors would have found a cure. They were working on it."

"Wait--" Rita said.

"Not quick enough for me," Rob said. "If it had been much longer, Angie would have died."

Darla turned on him like a wild dog. "You sound like you would have sent Molly yourself!"

Rita tried again. "Dar--"

"I’m not saying that," Rob defended himself. "I’m just saying--"

"You’re just saying that it’s all right for her to go out and look for monsters with some little witch from the lower levels," Trent put in.

"That’s enough!"

Rita so rarely shouted that they all stopped cold to look at her.

She continued, more calmly. "I can see this is a source of tension for you, Darla, Rob. Let’s continue this discussion in individual sessions, all right?" Away from Trent, where he couldn’t throw fuel on the fire. Although she couldn’t control what he did outside the group. "Until we get that chance, I’d like you both to think about each other’s point of view."

They both protested, but she said, "Put it in the box and move on. And Trent. We’re not on the stations. Even if we were, I’d say this: that kind of talk is counterproductive. I appreciate that you have reason to resent the Danzigers right now, but please try to separate your feelings from their origins. Agreed?"

She waited until she got reluctant nods from the three combatants before taking another breath. "Let’s move on. We’ve heard from Trent and from Darla and Rob," Rita said, trying to get the group back on to an even keel. "Danielle? Did you have anything you wanted to discuss with us? About recent events?"

Danielle had been taking in the argument with avid eyes. She jumped at being addressed. "Oh," she said. "Well, I--no, nothing really."

"Nothing?" Rita asked.

"Well, not really," Danielle said.

Rita knew that tone. Danielle was thinking about something but reluctant to say it, or unsure how to. She waited.

"It’s just--well--Uly Adair got the virus too."

Everyone looked at her, baffled. Left field was missing a ball.

"Yes," Rita said slowly. "Does that--What do you think of that?"

"The Terrians fixed him," she said. The fingers of her left hand walked slowly over the knuckles of her right. "It was like he was a whole new boy." She cut a glance, sidelong, at either Darla or Trent, Rita couldn’t tell. "Some people even said he was. Like a--a changeling, or something. He was so healthy."

"Get to the point," Darla said in a brittle voice.

"Darla, please. Let Danielle work it out." Rita softened her voice. "Go on."

"He got sick," Danielle said after a moment. "The virus. It got him too. Just the same as all the other kids. He’s better now, though. I saw him at the hospital."

"Yes," Rita said. "I saw him too." Dr. Heller had been examining him. Uly had looked pale and listless, but he’d been up, walking and talking. Much like the non-Syndrome children who’d gotten the virus.

"Melissa had a cold last week," Danielle said. "It’s still hanging on. Just a cold. And Uly Adair is already recovering from that crazy virus."

"Listen to yourself," Trent snarled. "Anyone would think you were going to give Melissa to those things."

"Trent!" Rita said sharply. She didn’t allow personal attacks in group.

"No, of course I’m not!" Danielle cried at the same time. "But all the same, you know . . ." She took a breath. "Well, it makes you think. That’s all. It makes you think."

* * *

Devon and Julia turned the sign-in over to Morgan to see if his computer skills could unearth anything. The medtech Julia had assigned to the scan called her personal line within the hour. The chip was there, all right, large as life and nestled in the same spot as Alex Wentworth’s.

Brenda had to be called, of course. "But how did it get in there?" she kept saying, over and over. "How?" Ryan hadn’t had any operations, he had a perfect bill of health, he hadn’t even been to the doctor for anything but his regular physicals.

While Julia was occupied with her, Morgan called back from the comm station in the gathering space, where the central servers were. "Give me good news," Devon said.

"Sorry," Morgan said. He looked like hell, most of the hair loose from his habitual pigtail. "The sign-in was activated two years before we left the stations."

Devon shifted in her chair, flicking her free eye over to where Julia was still talking to Brenda McNab. It looked like Ryan’s mother was over the shock, as they seemed to be covering the gory details of the chip and what would have to be done to remove it.

"What about security?" she asked Morgan.

"Cleared. All indications are it’s legit." He blew fine strands of hair out of his eyes, which did no good--they floated back.

"Except that the name’s a complete fake. Somebody’s been poking around in the hospital server whenever they felt like it for two years?"

"Poking around a lot," Morgan said, giving up and yanking the cord out of his hair so it fell in a ragged curtain around his shoulders. "Records show that Linsborough views files all the time," he told her, smoothing it back into another pigtail and tying the cord in quick, careless motions. "Not specific ones either--it’s all over the map. Funny thing is, though, they’ve only been cleared for editing for a couple of weeks. It was read-only before that. And that security check is a mess, loose threads all over."

Devon chewed her lip, turning that bit of information over in her head. "Can you dig any more?"

He worried a trailing end of the cord with forefinger and thumb. "I can try," he said. "But--"

"Then try."

Part Sixteen

Part Eighteen

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