That wasn't what had stopped it, though.

Lubin landed fifty meters up the road and approached from behind. His inlays performed the usual schematic vivisection as he drew near, cluttered up his vision with icons and wiring diagrams. His gut rebelled at the mere thought of tuning out usable intel from any source, but sometimes it distracted more than it informed. He shut down the display in his head; the Fugitive dropped back into the real world, seemed to flatten somehow, luminous guts vanishing behind dirty plastic skin.

A blonde mocha woman sat in the driver's seat, forehead against the wheel, long straight hair obscuring her face. She seemed oblivious to his approach.

He tapped on the window. She turned apathetically at the sound. He knew immediately that something was wrong: her face was flushed and shiny with perspiration.

She knew something was wrong, too. Lubin's isolation skin would have pretty much given that away even if she hadn't been sick.

Three days, he thought.

The door was unlocked. He pulled it open and stepped back.

"They told us...it was a cure," she said. It took her two breaths.

"Do you have any left?" Lubin asked.

She gulped. "Some. Spread most of it around." She shook her head. "Gave some to Aaron, too. Couple of days ago."

A transparent bladder lay on the seat beside her. It had been drained almost flat. The culture that remained, sucked into creases and wrinkles in the deflated bag, was no longer amber in color; it was dark and gray as anoxic mud.

"What happened to it?" he asked.

"I don't know. Changed." She shook her head tiredly. "She said it would last a week..."

He leaned forward. She still had the presence of mind to look vaguely startled when she saw him up close. "You were one of them. You were one of them. I saw you there..."

"I need to know where you seeded it," he said. "I need to know everyone you've been in contact with since Freeport, and how to get in touch with them."

She held up one limp-wristed arm, showing off her wristwatch. "Aaron's in here. We split up. Thought...we'd cover more ground..."

He took the watch. Its phone feature wasn't much use without the earbud, but he could deal with Aaron later.

"I was talking to him just this morning," the woman managed. "He's not—not doing too well himself."

He circled the Fugitive and climbed in the passenger's side. Nav was offline—a precaution left over from the previous week, when the ether had been enemy territory. He brought up dashboard GPS and scaled the map to include the coast.

"Everywhere you stopped," he said. "Everyone you met."

"I'm sick," she sighed.

"I can get you to a hospital. A real hospital," he promised, sweetening the pot. "But you have to help me first."