I don’t envy Heath and Leo right now, having to fight them off on their way out the door. In fact, I’m not sure they’ll be able to break through that crowd anytime soon.
I buzz Zesi, and he picks up immediately. “Hey, Lindley—kind of a bad time right now—”
“Tell me about it,” I mutter. “Listen, I don’t carehowyou get samples to me, but I need blood from Jaako and Kerr as soon as possible, okay?”
In the background, a frantic voice peppers Zesi with questions. Just one, though, it sounds like. “Who’s with you?” I ask.
“River,” he says. “He’s scared because he can’t find Leo, and he got locked out again.”
“I swear, when I get a spare second, I’m tattooing that code on the kid’s arm.” You’d think, at eight years old, he could remember a six-digit number. “Leo’s here at Portside,” I say. “Just bring River with you, okay? You’re a lifesaver, Zesi, the best. I’ll see you soon.” I rush the words and tap out before he can protest.
The crowd is still thick outside my lab doors, still thick andloud. I need something to drown out the noise, something otherthan the blood rushing in my head. Usually the hum of the refrigerator is enough to calm me down, but now all I hear are their accusations:You said we were safe! You said there was nothing to worry about! You lied about Mila!I don’t know for sure that those are direct quotes—it’s hard to pick out entire thoughts from the chorus—but those are the words I hear.
There’s an old data pod in the drawer filled with music from Earth, but its charger cable has been misplaced for a while now. I have a feeling it’s tangled in the knot of spare cables over at one of the dormant scope stations. Usually I prefer silence while working—still do—so I haven’t bothered to dig the cable out before now. It’ll be a little bit before Zesi arrives with the samples, though, and with how spotless it is in here, I can’t even clean to calm my nerves.
I get to digging. The knot of cables is easy to find, like a lone tumbleweed in an otherwise empty desert. There must be at least fifteen different strands tangled together, thick and thin and barely there. I see the one I need hopelessly woven throughout all the other cables.
It is the perfect project.
I pick and pull, worry at knots, loosen one area just to find another impossible snag. Already, I feel calmer. More capable. If I’d known how effective it would be to sort through this mess—thismeaninglessmess, for once—I’d have done it a long time ago. Perhaps I’ll knot everything back up when I’m finished, for next time.
I’m plugging the charger into the data pod when Zesi arrives. The crowd has thinned outside my door, I realize, now that I’m paying attention again—and it looks like Leo isn’t there anymore. The sliding door opens; Zesi breezes in, leaving River alone on the other side of it.
“Can’t stay,” Zesi says, “but here you go. Leo collected some of this as soon as he found them, and I picked up the rest.” He places an array of samples on my island—not just blood this time, but tubes of saliva and hair samples, too. “Need anything else?” he says, already heading back to the door.
Whatdon’tI need?
“Can you try putting in a call to Shapiro when you get back up to Control?” I ask. “It wouldn’t connect earlier.”
He grimaces. “That... doesn’t sound good,” he says. “But yeah, I’ll check it out.”
“Buzz me ASAP if you get through,” I say. “Leo and Heath tell you we’re meeting at SSL in just under an hour?”
He nods. “I’ll be there.”
And as quickly as he arrived, he’s gone.
I smooth my hair back, adjust the pins, and get to work.
Just as I did with Mila’s sample, I prepare the slides, one each for Jaako and Kerr. These results should be much clearer since the blood is so fresh. It’s sickening and surreal to have blood on the plates at all, but for Jaako and Kerr? Who woke up this morning, just like I did? They were golden, and beloved, and in love.
Not one of us is untouchable.
When the concentrated stain is ready, I immerse the plates and leave them to rest for the requisite ten minutes. I scan the room for something to do while the time passes, but there’s nothing to clean, nothing to untangle. I check the data pod instead; it’s finally holding enough of a charge to turn on. I scroll through the list of artists: Whitney Houston. Michael Jackson. Prince. I pick one at random—“Kiss,” by Prince—and the music fills the room, its poppy beat echoing over all the lab’s hard, sterile surfaces.
It’s so sunny, so upbeat. So stark a contrast to the death on the plates before me, to the darkness I feel. The music defuses my tension in a way silence never has: it helps me focus on something light for once. Helps mefeelsomething light. When it ends, I press repeat and listen to it all over again.
My timer goes off at ten minutes, and I cut Prince off mid-word. If I’m not careful, I could lose myself in an endless loop of sunny distraction. Now, though, it’s time to focus. All the darkness of this bleak reality comes rushing back in when I see the results.
They’re not any clearer than Mila’s were.
In fact, they look exactly the same. Exactly as blurred—exactly as useless.
I don’t know what the problem is, but I know it isn’t with my process. My process is perfection.
I could easily explain away a single failed test, especiallygiven our issues with proper sample storage. But three? With samples even fresher than some of the ones we took during the initial wave of CRW-0001? It’s unheard of in this lab.
This is odd, this is unsettling. This isn’t right.
