“What about the infection inside us?” Michaela asked. “Do we ever get rid of it? I mean, what if these cells start accreting inside us, creating an intelligence that lives in our muscles and brains?” She couldn’t say Takes us over like it did Felix?

Could she stand that? To be a spectator while some alien intelligence used her body like a robot? Was there a more terrifying version of hell?

I won’t let it happen. I promise!

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Vik said woodenly. “Last I talked to Raya Turnienko, she wasn’t very positive. Told me that Donovanian TriNA exists in most of the population on the planet. Some, like Talina Perez, show signs of the infection; in others the TriNA is just present in their blood. But that’s just single molecules. Not cells that can accrete into an organism. As far as our situation is concerned, we’re off the map.”

“It’s doing something to my little boy,” Mikoru told them. “He has wounds at the base of his neck. Swelling. His skin is turning green. Anna has no clue what it means, and she said that Dr. Turnienko has never seen the like.” A pause. “I want my little boy back.”

Michaela massaged her brow. The headache was going to be a killer. “We all want the kids back. My bottom line—as Kel tells it—is that the supports under the Pod are going to fold. When that happens—assuming the drop into the sea doesn’t compromise the Pod’s integrity—we’re going to just float away to whatever fate the organism has in store. Right?”

Kel nodded. “We could use cable, anchor the Pod to the reef, but the first big storm that comes along would probably tear us free. In the end, the result will be the same.”

“Then I say we shoot for the mainland. See what the Supervisor has in the way of abandoned stations that we could inhabit.”

“Die there as easily as we could here?” Casey asked caustically.

“Dead is dead,” Yosh muttered. “As I understand it, we’re talking no chance if we stick with the Pod, but a slim chance if we try the mainland. I vote slim chance.”

“I second that,” Kevina said. “I say that we pack up the seatrucks and abandon ship.”

A nagging thought penetrated Michaela’s growing headache. “Something to consider, people. To date we haven’t lost a single child. Why is the organism keeping them alive?”

Vik—in that listless tone of voice—said, “I’d guess that it is planning something.”

74