Illuminae

Down on Deck 49, Anna-Lucia and her gang of fifteen are creeping through the corridors, checking corners, praying silently. There’s no available cache for them—the afflicted more or less gutted this section of the ship early on, and stealth is their best hope. They creep on tiptoe toward an emergency stairwell, trying not to make a sound.

Four afflicted are lurking by the stairwell, and Anna-Lucia pulls back from her peek around the corner, biting her own tongue to muffle her gasp. The three men and one woman rocking back and forth and growling softly in the backs of their throats are her friends. Colleagues. Comrades. Their faces are daubed with blood, like a mockery of camouflage.

She waves her group back, and they try for the elevators instead. Her maintenance guys are able to force the doors, and they climb down the cable, one after another. So silent, so quiet.

There’s nothing silent about McCall and Corron’s group—the original twenty-nine of them now reduced to fifteen. Up above them, the merged groups from Decks 130 and 142 are dying, their screams echoing through the stairwells and the ventilation shafts. They never had much hope, up there. They had the furthest to travel.

Grant is sobbing, screaming instructions as she watches them die on camera, one by one. Run, run. Stop, go left. Leave her, go!

She guides them, trying to watch forty-two screens at once, then twenty-three, then eight, as the groups merge or die. Her voice is hoarse and cracking. Her hands are fists.

Anna-Lucia is first out of the elevator shaft, and suffers the same fate as the three after her—a girl from supply who mostly repaired uniforms is waiting in the shadows, a pair of bloody pinking shears in hand. Anna-Lucia’s throat is snipped open like a pair of old combat fatigues before she can cry out. She cries as she dies, though.

Danny Corron stumbles from exhaustion and McCall grabs his arm to stop him falling.

“Left, McCall!” Grant screams. “Go left, take the next stairs!”

“Bad idea, Princess,” McCall grunts in reply, pulling Danny with her until he regains his feet. “Bloody footprints leading in there. Smells brown. Find me another way.”

Grant scrambles for an alternate path, and as McCall hits Deck 81, the merged groups from 99 and 91 are waiting for her, armed to the teeth and jumping at shadows. They leave a trail of dead—afflicted and simply murdered—in their wake, as they battle forty-nine floors down to the launch bays. Gunfire and bloodstains. Screams and whimpers. Clawing and blasting and punching, all the way down. Down to the shuttles, and the chance of sanctuary.

McCall is screaming instructions, and she can’t hear Kady anymore, but it doesn’t matter—she and Danny stand at the entrance to the bays as healthy crew in cumbersome hazmat suits lumber past them, pouring onto shuttles. Hundreds of them. Of the 1,097 survivors, 659 have survived the hour-long fight for their lives.

“That’s it,” Kady gasps. “That’s it, go. There are no more coming.”

“Go!” McCall barks to Corron, who peels away to help the last few up gangways, slamming doors while the former first lieutenant guards the doorway, rifle at the ready. Every shuttle is full. Packed to bursting. Even the stolen 49A that bore their savior to the Alexander.

“Lieutenant,” Corron calls, standing in the doorway of the last shuttle.

“What about you, Princess?” McCall asks quietly.

“Your lovers from the Lincoln will be here soon,” Kady replies, soft, her voice raw after an hour of screamed pleas and instructions. “I’m staying to help slow them down.”

“That’s suicide.”

“That’s what the AI wants. That’s its price for letting you go. Run. Tell your story when you get there.”

McCall is still a moment longer, glancing up as a howl spills in from the corridor outside. “I’ll tell your story, too,” she whispers. And then she’s running up the gangway, Corron slamming the door behind her. Her face is visible until the moment it seals. Every death she’s witnessed written on it, clear as day.

Something tells me she won’t forget what she’s seen for a long time.

Something tells me I won’t either.

COUNTDOWN TO LINCOLN INTERCEPTION OF ALEXANDER FLEET:

10 hours: 46 minutes

CURRENT DEATH TOLL ABOARD BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER SINCE ATTACK AT KERENZA:

2,366

PERCENTAGE OF REMAINING BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER PERSONNEL AFFLICTED BY PHOBOS VIRUS:

99.89%

COUNTDOWN TO FAILURE OF ALEXANDER LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS:

13 hours: 42 minutes

COMMAND TRANSMISSION SENT 07/31/75 05:02

ALEXANDER HAILS HYPATIA: COMMANDER’S SECURE FREQUENCY

ALEXANDER: Hypatia, anyone home?

HYPATIA: Identify yourself.

ALEXANDER: Kady Eleanora Grant. Shuttle 49A. Miss me, Captain?

HYPATIA: I can’t believe you’re still alive.

ALEXANDER: Trust me, it’s even more surprising than you think. Now, listen up. Don’t shoot those shuttles you’re about to see incoming on your long-range scanners.

HYPATIA: What?

ALEXANDER: Ow, don’t shout, the dampeners on comms aren’t what they used to be over here. Those shuttles are full of healthy Alexander crew in sealed hazmat suits.

HYPATIA: How in the name of …

ALEXANDER: You need to stop being surprised by things I tell you. It’ll save us a lot of time.

HYPATIA: Why are you sending them here?

ALEXANDER: AIDAN agreed to release them.

HYPATIA: To what end, Miss Grant? The Lincoln will be here soon, and I don’t think it’ll matter much which ship they’re on when it arrives.