“Mikoru and I think we ought to stay for the time being.” He glanced around. “As long as we’re inside the Pod, we’re safe. Nothing can get to us. And the Pod provides us with everything we need to survive. We’ve got the hydroponics, and we can import anything else from the mainland. Surely, if the animals on land are edible, we can supplement from the sea. We just need to do the necessary research in the lab to see what’s poisonous before we put it on the plate. I think we can survive here just fine. And when we begin to figure this place out, we can even thrive.”

“We’ve got five dead!” Bill Martin almost exploded where he stood in the kitchen door. “What part of dead don’t you get? And that’s your boy up in the isolation tent.”

“He’s going to be infected here or at Port Authority,” Mikoru shot back. “Anna says he’s starting to get some of his motor control back. Vik’s working on it. Yosh and I, we think there’s a better chance of us figuring out the infection here, with our lab equipment, than back at Port Authority, where they don’t even have a scanning electron microscope that still works.”

Yosh added, “Come on, people. Think it through. We’re scientists. Our biggest assets don’t lie in the subs and UUVs, they lie in our brains. I have to believe that we’re smarter than Donovan.”

Dik slapped a hand to the table. “I don’t want to piss on your pride, Yosh, but Donovan’s winning. What part of ‘we’re being picked off one by one’ don’t you get?’”

Kevina, her eyes puffy from crying, flatly said, “If he were here, Kim would tell you to stay. Damn it all, I don’t believe this. He and I, we just had this conversation yesterday. ‘Kev,’ he said, ‘so, if something happens to me, don’t let this place beat you. Nothing comes for free, and this place is the future.’”

“And what if Felix turns out to be infected like Toni?” Bill Martin asked. “You still think that he’s—”

“He is,” Vik Lawrence called as she walked into the room. “They all are.” She stopped by Michaela at the front table. “Every one of the children test positive for TriNA and prokaryotes in their blood and cells. And there’s a lot of it. Don’t ask me what it means, I still don’t have a clue. Neither does Raya Turnienko at the PA hospital. According to her, however, it’s highly unlikely that it’s life-threatening. So, I know this was a meeting to figure out what we’re going to do next, but if you’re thinking about leaving as a way to protect the kids from what Toni got, you’re too late.”