Michaela added, “Think about this from the children’s perspectives. They only knew Ashanti. That was their world, and lord help us, with the Unreconciled down on Deck Three, it wasn’t the most stable of environments in which to raise kids. Then, magically, they’re here. Like an entire frame and paradigm shift. And no sooner are we moved into the Pod than people start dying in horrible ways. Sometimes it’s their parents, but everyone who was killed is like an aunt or uncle. Shin, Lara, Jaim and Varina, Lee, these are people these kids have lived with and counted on for their entire lives. And we’re all afraid . . . all of us grieving and scared. Then we tell the kids they’ve been infected. That there are alien molecules living inside them. Think of the psychic shock to those developing brains and personalities. It’s a miracle they aren’t screaming in the hallways.”

“Tomaya was just staring into space,” Odinga agreed. “I mean, sitting there on her bed, her arm raising and lowering, hand pronating and supinating. I asked her, ‘What are you doing?’ Took me three tries to get through. Like Vik said with Sheena, I finally touched her, and she came back. When I asked her what she was doing, she said, ‘I’m not doing anything. It’s just my arm. It’s learning.’”

“Learning?” Ruto had a strained look on his face. “She told me the same thing about her leg the other day. Said it was learning how to walk. I told her that was interesting, because she’d been walking since she was two. She told me it was ‘learning by itself.’” He shrugged. “You know how kids are at that age.”

Kel said, “Hey, well, an arm or leg ‘learning by itself’ is harmless compared to what happened to Bill.”

Michaela raised a hand for their attention. “No matter what we find out, people, we’ve got to start keeping a better eye on our children. We may be carried away with our own tragedies and loss, but at least we can process them. For the kids? Raised as they were on a single deck in a starship? This whole experience has to be terrifying. We owe it to them to be . . .”

Michaela stopped as Casey came striding into the room, her face ashen, cheeks tear-damp as if she’d wiped them before entering. The woman’s mouth was working, her gray eyes as terrified as Michaela had ever seen them. The UV blacklight was still clutched in Casey’s right hand, a child’s underwear in her left.

First Casey fixed on Kevina, then she glanced around the room, her gaze ending with Michaela.

“What have you got?” Michaela placed her hand to her suddenly pounding heart. Her breath seemed to have vanished.

The moment was caught in her memory, crystalline, every detail so precise.