Noemi’s come to second-guess so much about Genesis on this mission—but she remembers what her world can be at its best. “Thank you.”
Ephraim gestures toward the hyperwarm jackets. “You can thank me by putting those on already! We need to move.”
She and Abel exchange a look. Abel still seems wary, but when she reaches for her jacket, he follows suit.
Fever blurred her memories of arriving at the hospital. Everything after the landing pad is nothing but whirling confusion. Noemi feels as if she’s only now about to see Stronghold for the first time. The hospital corridor looks ordinary enough; so does the service area Ephraim rushes them into.
But going outside is worse.
As they walk out into the cold air, Noemi’s breath turns to fog as she looks upward. The dark gray sky looms low over Stronghold as though it were a dome built to keep them in.
“Has quarantine been necessary in the past?” Abel keeps staring at Ephraim with the same steely focus he gave the Queen mech when she last attacked. “There are so few habitations nearby. No roads. No town.”
“When Cobweb first went around—” Ephraim shakes his head as he turns up the collar of his jacket against the chilly wind. “It’s nasty stuff. Earth says we’ve got it contained, mostly, but they’re not fooling anybody. We’re never more than one outbreak away from another pandemic.”
Pandemic? How many more horrors of the past thirty years will she discover?
We left humanity with nowhere to turn, she thinks, guilt settling over her like a cloud. And no better world than this.
Their gravel pathway leads between the stone facades of two buildings in the hospital complex but offers a narrow glimpse of the world beyond. Noemi sees gritty gray soil, grass that’s more silver than green, and a few trees that must be native to this world. The trunks and branches bend in so many directions that it looks like it’s been tied in knots, and its round leaves are pure black.
“How does anything live here?” she murmurs.
Although she’d meant it as a rhetorical question, Ephraim answers. “Anything that survives on Stronghold gets strong fast. The native flora and fauna—they evolved out of bitter soil and a hostile sky. They’re mean as hell and twice as ugly, but they’re tough. Those trees over there, you can’t even cut them down for wood. You’ll pound your ax to metal shavings before it takes more than a few scrapes to its bark.”
“I can’t tell whether you hate them or admire them.”
“I can do both at the same time.” In his voice she hears both chagrin and a strange sort of pride.
She quickens her steps to keep pace; she’s still wobbly from the aftermath of Cobweb, and Ephraim’s a tall man with a long stride. Abel stays by her side, obviously ready to help if needed. Yet he remains unusually quiet, not saying a word. She asks Ephraim, “What about the people who live here? The colonists? Are they just as tough?”
“They get to be.” Ephraim realizes how hard she’s working to keep up and slows his steps. For all his anger, all his secretiveness, this guy is still a doctor at heart. “You have to be sturdy just to get through screening. Doesn’t matter if you’re a musical genius, or if you can tell good jokes. Doesn’t matter if you’ve got a face like Han Zhi. If you’re not strong, or can’t at least get strong fast, it’s back to Earth for you.”
Noemi thinks of the little boy at screening and wonders whether his family got through or not. What would it be like, taking your children to the one place in the galaxy where you thought they might have a chance to grow up, only to be turned away?
Ephraim continues, “I was born here. But I’ve never been… a man of Stronghold, I guess you’d say. Seems to me like there’s got to be a better way than this.”
There is a better way, on Genesis, she wants to say, but stops herself. How can she brag about the wonders of her world when there’s no chance Ephraim will ever get to share in them?
As they crest the hill, Noemi sees a metal framework serving as a dock. Nearly a dozen medtrams are suspended within, awaiting emergency calls. Those she recognizes from yesterday—long, almost cylindrical white capsules with pointed noses and inset rings of red lights. “So we steal one of these,” she says. “And no one would stop a medtram, right?”
“We’d better hope not,” Ephraim says, his voice tight. When Noemi and Abel look over at him, he holds up his wrist. The comm bracelet around it is blinking red. She knows the truth before Ephraim speaks the words: “They’re coming.”
30
ABEL DECIDES THAT EITHER EPHRAIM DUNAWAY HAS SET a very elaborate trap or underestimated the difficulty of their escape. In neither case is the outcome positive. “Who’s coming?”
“The authorities.” Noemi seems wholly convinced of Ephraim’s honesty. “They must’ve figured out we’re gone.”
Ephraim points. “Medtram. Now.”
Noemi dashes down the hill, with Ephraim just behind. Abel paces himself to follow Ephraim, the better to see whether there’s any sort of clandestine signaling going on. However, Ephraim shows every sign of running as fast and hard as he can; the threat from the Stronghold authorities must be real.
Abel quickens his pace, dashing past Ephraim and Noemi. He attunes his superior hearing and peripheral vision to scout for any potential sign of the authorities. Even the bravest humans can be affected by emotion at times of great stress, whereas he can remain focused on this moment alone, on any subtle changes in their situation and cues. As Abel reaches the launching pillar for the medtrams, he quickly scrambles up the side, angling himself to reach the closest medtram’s door. The security lock on the side is easily broken, and within four seconds, Abel is inside.
Yesterday his attention had been focused almost wholly on Noemi, but he calls upon his recorded memories of the journey here to retrieve necessary details. His hands copy those of the paramedic pilot from yesterday as the dashboard screen lights begin to glow; the whine of the engines slides to a higher pitch as he steers the ship from its wire hangar to the ground, where Noemi and Ephraim are waiting.
Noemi’s beaming. Ephraim’s staring. As Abel opens the door for them and they hurriedly climb in, Ephraim says, “How the hell did you manage that?”
“I’m good with vehicles,” Abel says, which technically is not a lie.
“How do we avoid detection?” Noemi asks Ephraim as she takes the seat next to Abel. “If they’re looking for us, and they realize a medtram’s gone missing—”
“I can conceal our computer signature,” Abel points out. “The railway lines nearby offer us a chance to disguise our flight pattern.”
Ephraim frowns. “What? The old coal trains? How are those going to help us?”
“Watch.” With that, Abel pushes the accelerator, and the medtram takes off, zooming low and fast across the rugged gray terrain. The sand and rocks race by beneath them, and the black hills in the distance seem to loom larger by the moment. “Now, Dr. Dunaway, I need you to explain.”
“To explain what?” Ephraim says, and Noemi glances over at Abel, puzzled.
“Your true agenda.”
Now both Noemi and Ephraim are staring at him in what Abel thinks is dismay, or perhaps even anger. He’ll analyze his peripheral vision data later, when he doesn’t need to focus so sharply on keeping the white bullet of the medtram as close to the ground as possible without crashing them into the rubble.
With a sound halfway between laughter and exasperation, Ephraim says, “Excuse me—agenda?”
“Precisely,” Abel says, never turning from his controls. “Why have you fixated on Noemi so strongly?”
Noemi puts one hand on Abel’s arm, as if to placate him. “No, Abel, you don’t understand. Ephraim realized from my blood work that I’m from Genesis, and the people of Genesis helped his mother—”
“Your blood work would have been processed last night.” Abel keeps his gaze on the controls. “But Dr. Dunaway had taken special notice of you well before that—as soon as he undertook your care, in
fact. He made a point of performing tests that should’ve been the Tare’s responsibility. We need to know why.”
Noemi stares at Ephraim, more shocked than she should be. “Wait. That whole story about your mother was a lie?”
“Absolutely not.” Ephraim bows his head. “What your world did for her, the debt I owe—it’s all absolutely true. Why do you think I’m risking my job and maybe my life for this joyride? Because it’s so much fun?” Given the danger levels of their escape, the relatively rough ride in the medtram, and the barren landscape before them, Abel attributes this question to sarcasm. “But yeah, I wanted to get in on your case even before I knew where you were from.”
“Then why?” Abel demands.
“What the hell does it matter? I’m helping you two, aren’t I?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” But now they’re coming up on the coal train routes, and Abel can no longer afford to divide his attention. “Neither of you have yet put on your safety belts. I suggest you do so immediately.”
“Abel, what are you—” Noemi’s breath catches in her throat as the medtram swoops toward the train tracks—and the train chugging along atop them. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“No.” With that, Abel heads straight for the train.
Yesterday Abel had been surprised that the train tracks here on Stronghold aren’t remotely modern but instead resemble those found throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The trains seem old-fashioned, too; their exterior design has a lean, stripped-down effect, but they belch the same smoke Earth residents would’ve seen in the 1800s. Then he realized such old-fashioned trains are ideal transportation on a world with more metals and coal than all of humanity could use in ten lifetimes: easy to build, easy to fuel, easy to fix, and reliable for decades on end. The more complex machinery can be saved for mining and processing if transport is kept low-tech.
He also noticed yesterday that while most of the train cars were big bulky ore transports, a few were lower and flatter—perhaps for hauling necessary equipment. With any luck, this train will have a few such cars. If it doesn’t, their capture is imminent.
“Abel?” Noemi puts her hands on the dash, bracing herself against what must look like an inevitable collision. They’re getting closer to the train, on track to intersect within thirty seconds. “What are you do—Abel! ”
Her shriek doesn’t distract Abel from the task of suddenly shifting the medtram sideways, so that it slides over the train—with approximately half a meter of room, perfectly adequate as a margin of safety, if alarming to humans. Abel then pulls back on the speed so that the train seems to snake out from under them, until he glimpses a low, empty platform car. Accelerating again, he catches up with the platform car, matches the train’s speed, and carefully lands the medtram right there.
Now they are just one more piece of cargo on this train, effectively making the medtram invisible to radar or other motion detectors. For the time being, they’re not only hidden but also headed back toward the area where the Daedalus waits.
“How did you—” Ephraim stares out the windshield, then looks through a small side window. “You hit that exactly. I never knew somebody could fly like that.”
“As I said before, I’m good with vehicles.” Abel cares little for Ephraim’s praise; what matters is how Noemi’s doing. Her skin remains too pale, and her breathing is rapid and shallow. With one hand he brushes her black hair back—a curious instinct. It can’t help in any medical sense. But maybe he felt the urge to do that because it might comfort her. Many mammals are soothed by grooming rituals. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. You just—whoa.” Noemi shuts her dark eyes for a second, and when she opens them, she’s focused again. And her glare is for Ephraim Dunaway. “So how about we go back to the part where you have another agenda?”
Ephraim’s eyes study them, as if he’s taking their measure all over again. Finally he says, “Cobweb isn’t what people think it is. A virus, yes, but the things it does—why it exists—that’s been hidden for a long time. Too long.”
Abel nods. “The Cobweb virus is man-made.”
Both Ephraim and Noemi stare at him this time, but within an instant she gasps. “The radiation.”
“Exactly. No organic viral agent has ever affected radiation levels. Rendering one capable of doing so would require the most sophisticated genetic engineering imaginable.” Abel wonders if Mansfield had something to do with this. Or Mansfield’s daughter—she was studying genetic science, hoping to develop bionic implants for humans—
Ephraim gestures at Abel. “I don’t know how this guy put it together that fast, but yeah. It’s man-made.”
Noemi sits up straight, once again the angry warrior of Genesis that Abel first met, the one who’s prepared to kill. “Are you telling me it’s a biological weapon? Is Earth going to poison everyone on Genesis and then take the planet?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows. That’s what we have to find out.” Ephraim sighs. “Whatever Earth scientists were trying to do, they screwed up. If it’s a weapon, it escaped into their own population before they were able to use it against yours. But it might not be a weapon—it’s not always fatal, and you’d think any bioweapon would be.”
“If sufficiently engineered,” Abel says. Human engineering efforts are often flawed—and in this case, he’s grateful for the flaws.
Noemi says, “It sounds fatal enough. It felt fatal enough.”
“Many people survive,” Ephraim confirms, “but three out of five don’t.”
Abel hadn’t heard the specific odds before. He turns back toward Noemi, as if she might collapse again at any minute. Despite her pallor, however, her thoughts are only on the others affected by the disease. “Children. The elderly. People who are already sick—”
“—and people who already built up antiviral drug resistance,” Ephraim finishes. “Cobweb kills them off more often than not. You were young and strong, so we knew you had a good chance, but when you threw it off like that? Proved you hadn’t been exposed to an antiviral once in your life? That stood out.”
“To you,” Abel says, “and soon, to others as well?”
Ephraim nods. “I don’t doubt it. Earth’s desperate to cover up this mess. For a while they thought they had Cobweb under control—we hardly even saw it at all for the past four years—but just in the past few months, a new outbreak got started. People are scared. If word got out that this disease was created by Earth, we’d have mass rioting on every world of the Loop, unrest beyond what’s already going on. Once the authorities figured out you were from Genesis—that an enemy had the proof of what they’d done, right there in her veins—” He shakes his head. “You’d never have made it off this planet alive.”
Noemi shudders in what Abel first thinks is relief. Instead her eyes narrow as she stares at Ephraim and says, “So that’s where Remedy comes from. It began with the doctors who knew the truth about Cobweb. You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
Of course. Abel hadn’t analyzed in this much depth yet; he’d been too busy running risk assessments specific to Noemi. But he sees the truth immediately. Ephraim not only wanted to study Cobweb—he wanted proof of Earth’s wrongdoing, for the entire resistance to spread around the galaxy. Noemi—a young, strong survivor of the disease—could’ve helped serve as that proof, no matter what planet she was from.
Ephraim pauses a few long seconds, obviously loath to answer. Finally, however, he nods. “Sometimes I wonder whether I still want to call myself a member of Remedy any longer. But yeah, we began as a group of doctors who wanted to call out the Earth scientists who set Cobweb loose on the galaxy. But the group got a lot bigger. A lot more dangerous. Now you have psychos bombing music festivals, claiming that’s proving some huge point, when all it does is make people think that anyone who objects to Earth’s rule has to be psycho, too—”
“They’re not psychos,” Noemi says, surprising Abel. “They’re wrong to resort to terrorism. T
here’s no justification for that—there can’t be—but we met one of the Kismet bombers. She wasn’t insane. Just angry and desperate and wrong. She didn’t see another way.”
“You met one of the Kismet bombers?” Ephraim gapes at them.
“We don’t know her current location.” Abel hopes that will put an end to any inquiries about Riko Watanabe.
Noemi looks over at Abel. For the first time since their reunion, her attention is all for him. “Thanks for taking such good care of me when I was sick, by the way.”
He should brush this off by telling her it’s only his job, his duty as a mech. Instead he inclines his head. “You’re welcome.”
At that moment the train dips down into a tunnel. Darkness closes around them all, lit only by a dim bulb attached to the back of the train.
Question already forgotten, Ephraim gestures for them to stand. “Get ready. We have to get out of this medtram and hop off about a hundred meters before the end. From there, it’s easy to get to a service elevator, head up to the landing area.”
“How do you know all this?” Noemi asks.
Ephraim’s bashful smile is unexpected on such a large man. “Even on Stronghold, kids figure out how to have fun.”
When Abel opens the door of the medtram, the wind rushes past quickly enough to steal sound, enough for him to put one arm around Noemi’s waist, bracing her. This much is logical, but he finds himself reluctant to pull away even when the train has slowed. Can this be justified by concern for her health, when she is so clearly improved?