When she got back to Miri's rear panel, the diagnostic cycle had finished. Rickets was suffering from a broken cheekbone, a hairline fracture of the left tibia, second-degree concussion, borderline malnutrition (better than average, these days), two impacted wisdom teeth, and a moderate roundworm infection. None of that was life-threatening; most of it could be fixed.

The diagnostic suite did not include a scan for Seppuku. Seppuku didn't exist in the standard database. Ouellette had cobbled together a hasty, separate subroutine in the wake of her discovery. It didn't do much—no helpful breakdown into first/second/end-stage categories, no list of associated macrosymptoms. No suggested course of treatment. Just a blood count, really. Clarke didn't even know how to interpret that simple number. Was there such a thing as a "safe" level for Seppuku?

Zero, she assumed. She tapped the icon to start the test. Ricketts twitched in the little spycam window as Miri drank a few more drops of his blood.

It would take a while to run the analysis. Clarke forced herself to focus on Ricketts's other problems in the meantime. The roundworms and the teeth could wait. Targeted vasodilators and calcium suppressants eased the concussion. Broken bones were almost trivial: plant microcharge mesh into the affected areas to crank up osteoblast metabolism. Clarke had been doing that almost since the day she'd become a rifter.

"Hey!" Rickett's voice sounded tinny and startled through Miri's intercom. "I can't move!"

"It's the neuroinduction field," Clarke told him. "Don't worry about it. It just keeps you from jerking around during the cut-and-paste."

Beep.

And there it was. 106 particles per milliliter.

Oh Jesus.

How long had he been wandering around in the woods? How far had he spread it? The person who'd beaten him up: was he spreading it now, had he invited Seppuku in through the raw oozing skin of his knuckles? How many days before he discovered how much he'd really paid for a lousy motorbike?

Isolate the vector. Call in a lifter.

A lifter. It seemed so strange to even contemplate. She had to keep reminding herself: they're not monsters after all. They're not fire-breathing dragons sent down from the heavens to burn us out of existence. They're working for the good guys.

We're on their side now.

Still.

First things first. Ricketts had to be—

decirculated

—isolated until someone came by to collect him. Problem was, there weren't too many ways to do that. The MI would be useless for other field work as long as it kept him sequestered, and Clarke seriously doubted whether Freeport had had hot-zone isolation facilities even before it fell into ruin.

He can't stay here.

She watched the monitor for a few moments, watched Miri's jointed limbs and laser eyes putting Humpty together again. Then she called up the anesthesia menu. She chose isoflurane.

"Go to sleep," she whispered.

Within moments, Ricketts' wide, nervous eyes fluttered closed. It was like watching a lethal injection.