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Chapter 1

Kira's wrist hit the door frame, shooting pain up her arm. She paused in shock, and realized she was pounding on the door. Trembling, she backed up a step.



"I am not a prisoner." She forced herself to say the words out loud. As if by articulating them, she could make herself believe them. She took a deep breath, stretching it out as long as she could before letting it slide out again. She took another, and felt her body start to relax; the quivering muscles easing.



Another step backwards and her foot hit something soft. The pile of gray fabric the nurse had thrust at her before leaving her here squished under her heel. She bent down to pick it up. Shaken out, it showed itself as a medical coverall â a diagnostic suit. Putting it on would give her something to do, while she waited for - whomever. She turned her back on the locked door. Hysteria would not help.



She frowned at the suit fasteners as she tried to remember how to put it on. It had been nearly a year since she had last had one on - and that had been the first time she had ever seen one. The slippery fabric flopped loosely as she slid it on, the legs and sleeves nearly a foot too long. She found the self-adjustment button and punched it. The suit obediently began getting smaller. It shrank enough for her to begin to hope, but then stopped, leaving her with a gaping neck and folds of fabric piling up at the ankle and wrist cuffs. She punched the button again, but the suit only quivered.



Suit on, she had only pacing. Three steps brought her to the recalcitrant door, a reversal and five steps took her to the far wall, resplendent in bland ecru. Five steps and turn. Five steps and turn. The rhythm began to soothe her despite the cold air being sucked down the loose collar with each step. The immediate panic of being locked in receded. After the tenth round she began to look around more explicitly, to pay attention to more than just the pulse of her feet.



Between the coverall and the exam room it was obvious she would be getting a medical exam. The question was: why? And why lock her in? Could it be some kind of practical joke - something her classmates had cooked up for finals? She didn't think they could - though they certainly would if the occasion presented itself.



The door pinged, making her jump. It whisked open and a rail-thin woman with short-cropped dark hair swept into the room. Her green lab coat displayed her name over the left pocket: Econsey-Jesek. The lower half of her face glistened slightly â a disposable filter mask. "On the exam table," she said, waving a hand, which also had a faint sheen.



Kira boosted herself onto the exam table. "How long is this likely to take?" She wanted to ask more, but wasn't sure she wanted the answers.

The woman shrugged and moved around to look at Kiraâs back. "Breathe deeply." Her fingers tapped along Kiraâs spine, then pinched the loose collar and pulled the fabric of the back up and smooth. Pressure â her other hand? â slid down the spinal column. She didnât speak again until she moved to Kiraâs left. "Arm, please."

Kira extended her arm, trying not to clench her jaw. Efficiency was a good thing, even if the woman was annoying. Maybe she could make her history test after all. The gloves and mask were worrisome, though. What was wrong with Seri to make all this necessary? Her roommate had left for the infirmary last night with a bad headache, attributable to the long hours they had spent studying these last few days. All Kira had wanted today was to see her.



Another draft wafted by. Little pinpoints of cold bored into her skull as her nodes chilled despite the braid that covered them.



"Arm," said the woman. When Kira just stared at her, she snapped, "Give me your arm!"



Automatically, Kira stuck out her arm,  and Ms. Econsey-Jesek linked her moni to the readout panel on the coverall. "Do you have a headache?"



"Iâve had a headache for a week â itâs finals," snapped Kira. "Everybody has a headache."

"What about muscle-aches?"

"No."

"Cramps?"

"No," said Kira. "Look, if Iâm late for my exam, what happens?"

The med-tech glanced up from her writing and shrugged. Pocketing her stylus, she stepped to the door. "Configuration Q4." She was through the door and out before Kira could ask anything more. When Kira tried the door it was locked again.



This time she managed not to panic.

# # #

It was thirty minutes before the next person came through the door. By that time, Kira was back in uniform, and had paced the length of the tiny room several hundred times watching it transform. The lighting was softer now, the walls more beige than off-white. The exam table had lowered and broadened into a bed. It all looked warmer and cozier than it had at the start, like a place someone was intended to stay. The warmer and cozier it got, the more she wanted to scream. Especially since Seri still wasn't answering her moni. On a sudden hunch she pinged a mutual friend. There was no response. Kira wondered whether someone calling her would get an answer or not.



When the door slid open, she was on the far side of the bed. This time the nurse who had left her originally walked in. "Why haven't you keyed yourself into the room?" he asked, before Kira had even opened her mouth.



"Keyed myself in?"



"Registered with your room," he said, as if it were obvious. "Naz quarantined you. You need to link your monitor with the room so we can track and treat." Now Kira noticed the sheen on his hands and face, identical to the tech's.



"Quarantine? She didn't say anything about quarantine." Naz could only be the rude technician. "What about my finals? I have history in half an hour."



Fabric shifted over his shoulders as he shrugged. "That would be Naz for you. Never say a word when none will make people more confused." He tapped a square panel on the side of the bed. "Put your hand here. Don't worry about finals, we have exceptions for medical orders."



She laid her palm flat against the warm surface, then jumped as her moni snapped the inside of her wrist like an electric shock.



"You felt that?" Lan eyed her sidelong. "Most people don't notice it."



Kira's moni now had a lump on the underside that hadnât been there before. Even as she watched, the lump shrank and disappeared.



"Thatâll help with your headache,â Lan said. âPlus itâs an anti-pyretic."



"Anti-what?"



"Pyretic," he said. "If the panel flashes green just place your palm on the screen. If you want to know what medication youâre getting, thereâs an information screen on your console that will tell you."



"Right." Kira said. "Is there any way I can see Seri?"



The nurse shrugged. "Iâll see what I can find out, but weâre discouraging Edelmanâs patients from moving about â trying to minimize the spread." He moved back toward the door. "Go ahead and get comfortable. Weâll bring lunch in about an hour." With that he walked off, leaving her staring at a room that by now looked remarkably like her dormitory room, only without as much interest. No clothes, no personal items, the closet on inspection proved to have various medical supplies and machines â mysterious and vaguely alarming. The bed and chair were the only furniture.

Inspecting took Kira about two minutes. Then she sat down, keyed on the console, and started pulling up medical data. None of the infirmary files were open to her, so she logged into the station library looking for Edelmanâs Disease. She found nothing. Frowning she asked for alternate spellings; then looked for Edelmanâs Syndrome, or any other medical reference for Edelman. The library kicked out the names of several doctors, but no disease references. She sat back, eyeing the uncooperative console. Why would he tell her she had a disease that didnât exist?



"What is Edelmanâs?" she demanded when Lan tapped on her door ninety minutes later holding a tray. "I canât find any references to it in the library."



"Thatâs because itâs new," he said. "By next month, Iâm sure Naz will have everything up there down to the gene map, but right now weâre too busy dealing with it to publish about it." He set the tray down with a thump. "Eat your lunch. Then study, or play a game, or something. Sitting there obsessing isnât going to help anything." Kira eyed him as he left. He seemed more uptight than he had been before.



Lunch proved to be an entirely uninteresting sandwich. Hunger wasnât high on her list of problems right now. Dutifully she nibbled on it, trying to ignore the pasty texture and lack of taste. She was still cold, so when she finished as much as her stomach would allow, she switched from the chair to the bed, and pulled up the blankets. She reviewed her history for a while then switched to a game when she couldnât stand planetary reviews any longer, finally turning it off when the colors got blurry. She pulled the covers up and closed her eyes, thinking to ease the strain, and fell asleep almost immediately.

Evil dreams chased her back awake. Indistinct dreams of screaming, running, and falling. The clock showed about two hours had passed and now there was no denying that she was ill. As she jerked awake, a cramp seized her left calf, and would not let go. Even as she reached for her foot, there was a green flash from the bed panel. The band around her wrist dragged her hand over to the railing panel. It clicked into place, then released. She tried to straighten her leg and force her foot back, but the cramp defeated her. She punched the call button, and struggled with her leg, teeth clenched to stop the chattering.

The woman who answered the call wasnât familiar. She was also wearing an opaque mask over her lower face, and held a small medical stunner. "Leg?" she asked, holding the stunner over Kiraâs calf. Kira nodded, and then gasped in relief as the nurse applied the stunner and the leg went numb.

"What did the system just give me? Something specific for this?" Kira asked, trying not to let her teeth chatter audibly. Surely the Academyâs labs, which could whip up a cure for most diseases in a couple of hours, wouldnât be stumped for long.

"Unfortunately not," replied the nurse. "It was just a muscle relaxant. Once the muscle spasms start, theyâre only going to get worse, and weâd rather not stun you indiscriminately. A cure is our highest priority, though." Her eyes were large and dark, the expression sympathetic. âIâm afraid youâre in for an uncomfortable time until the lab comes through. The medications will help, but nothing weâve found yet really stops the muscle cramps. Weâve had to sedate several students entirely." She tucked the blankets back up around Kira briskly. "You do your best to stay comfortable. Sleep if you can, watch something if you canât. Weâre monitoring your band from the main desk now, so even if you canât punch the button weâll come if somethingâs wrong."

The statement was plainly intended to be comforting, but wasnât. Kira watched the nurse walk back out of the room. When she checked, she found that library medical files were no longer accessible. Games were out of the question; her hands were shaking too much. She tried to watch something comic, but gave it up in minutes. Slowly she noticed the medicine taking effect. Her shivering eased, and muscles she hadnât noticed tightening started to relax again.

An alarm jerked her awake, but by the time she realized what had awakened her it had stopped. She drifted off again as feet pounded by her door. Everything ached, but it seemed unimportant.

Nightmares chased her again. Alarms rang in her ears, but she couldnât respond. The ghouls had found her. Knives carved her body, removing hunks of meat from her arms, her legs, her chest. She screamed, and thrashed trying to fight them off, but they came back, and hacked away again. Kaigen found her again, and plugged her nodes into his AI. She fought. She refused to navigate, but he used Deeks, her only friend, to plunge her into a world of ice, that stabbed her even as she froze. Navigation problems appeared in the ice spears that pierced her, and frantic she danced, and called on Deeks, and solved them. They vanished, but more appeared, and more and more until she could dance no more. Finally the ice spears vanished, and she floated in some nether world of Deeksâ devising. The AI eased her fear and her pain, and she fled into its embrace, drifting in forgetfulness of her human self.

She drifted for a long time in the familiar world. Little by little, urgency established itself. It was only a little nudge, but something different, important, something she needed to remember. Deeks would know. She tried to ask her friend, but was met with only silence.

Kira opened her eyes. For several minutes the walls refused to come into focus. She kept expecting Kaigenâs ship. Then she remembered. Kaigenâs ship was no more, and Deeks was gone with it - destroyed in the accident that had freed her, and almost destroyed her. She no longer lived inside its circuits, no longer navigated between the stars. She wasnât a ghost dancer any more. Once she stopped trying to impose the walls of the cargo hold on it, the beige walls of the infirmary room finally focused around her. Her hair was sticky and damp. The hand she raised to check it trembled violently, but it was from weakness, not chills. Her head felt clear, but the fever dreams were receding into hazy memory even as she tried to recall them. She remembered only that they had included the DX-6. She hadnât dreamed about him for years, and she mourned the renewed loss.

She hadnât been awake long when her door opened, and Naz walked in. Far from the brisk stride she had used at the exam, her shoulders slumped and her feet dragged. She had a multi-use injector in her hand. She reached for Kiraâs arm but jerked back when she realized Kira was awake and watching her. Without a word she turned and stumbled back out the door. Kira tried to call out, but her voice wouldnât work, and all she produced was a rasp. She stared after Naz in complete bewilderment.

She was left alone for a long time after that. She tried the call button once, but it wasnât answered. Her one attempt at getting up left her sweating and trembling. The best she could manage was to adjust the bed to a sitting position. Eventually she managed to pull the console over, but was unable to contact anyone with it. No one answered their codes, and the medical data was still barred.

Finally the door slid open again. Professor Anderson walked in carrying a tray. Kira stared at him now completely confused. Her history professor looked barely better than Naz had, with the pouches under his eyes nearly black with fatigue. He set the tray on her beside table and dropped into the chair.



"Eat up," said her professor. "The auto-feed on the bed is empty, so youâll need to eat." Kira picked up the container of soup with both hands. After a couple of sips, she tried speaking again. A few false starts later she managed a hoarse whisper.

"Whatâs. Going. On?"

Anderson had been slumped in the chair, his eyes focused on nothing. He jerked upright at her first word. "Whatâs going on? Oh. You mean, why am I here?" The haunted look deepened. "Pretty much everyone still healthy has been drafted into victim care. They sent me because I know you. We thought it would be better than having a stranger."



"Victim?"

Anderson scrubbed his face with his hands. "Right. Plague victim. I forgot you wouldnât know." He took a deep breath. "The illness you had was a manufactured plague. We donât know where it came from, or who made it, but it was deadly. The medical lab only came up with a treatment about a day ago. Weâve lost a lot of good people."

Kira cleared her throat. Her voice seemed to be coming stronger. "Seri?"

"Your roommate?" Kira nodded. "Iâm sorry, child. Of all the plague victims, youâre the longest survivor. And youâre the only one who has survived without the treatment." There was a tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth. "Ms. Econsey-Jesek was quite spooked that you woke up before she injected you. I think she may want to dissect you to find out what makes you so different."

Tears were rolling down Kiraâs cheeks. "How many died?"

Professor Andersonâs face closed again. "I donât know for certain. Hundreds. Probably more than half of the first years, and dozens from the other classes, faculty, staff, everyone." He rose out of the chair. "Iâm sorry to leave you like this, but there really is no medical staff right now. I need to get back to work." He patted her damp cheek awkwardly. "I am very glad you came through. I would hate to have wasted all that tutoring effort." He made an effort at a smile, but she could barely see it through the weariness creasing his face.

After he left, Kira leveled the bed again, and stared at the ceiling. Hundreds. Half of her class. Seri dead. Everyone who had been in the infirmary when she got there dead. She had no idea if she had any friends left alive. And all from a manufactured plague. Someone, somewhere, had made this disease, had deliberately made something that killed her friends, her classmates, her professors. Someone was going to pay. The tears slowly dried, and a slow burning anger lodged in her chest. Whoever had caused this, whoever had created this nightmare, she was going to make sure that they never did anything like this again.