I led Xiomara and Baqir farther into the hidden maze between levels. I had kicked up to the door to a computing access room on Level 5, wrested it open, then passed it by for a maintenance tunnel between Levels 5 and 6. Let them think we fled into Level 5. Let them waste time searching. I knew this ship. We could get away.

Ariana was infected.

It shouldn’t be possible, but I had no doubts. Lago’s virus was supposed to be a modification of Zeffir-1, a biological weapon designed to denature after its host died. Infect quickly, kill quickly, vanish quickly. But SPEC’s conclusions had been wrong. The hallucinations, the panicked outburst, the sudden lash of violence, even the swift, eerie calm to follow—it was all the same. The virus, whatever it was, was still here.

That cage of metal tools we had squeezed by, where Ariana pricked herself. There must have been sharp points bloodied by an infected victim. All it had taken was a scratch. Dried blood was still blood. The virus had found a new home in Ariana’s bloodstream, and it was flourishing again.

The maintenance tunnels that had been endlessly exciting when I was a kid were significantly more claustrophobic now. The space between each level was about two meters high, most of which was taken up with machinery and conduits, wiring and ducts, filters and heaters and coolers, water filtration and antistatic and demagnetization systems. The machines were labeled with codes of numbers and letters. L6 for the level. S for the ship’s starboard side. Arrows, numbers, symbols. I had memorized the code as a child. I had been so proud of myself for sneaking through places I was not meant to be.

I stopped at a junction and moved to the side so Xiomara and Baqir could join me. I checked the suit’s environmental readout:

98 kPa 5.7 C 80/20 12% humidity

Still cold, but warmer than the ship’s corridors and rooms.

I lifted a hand to keep them quiet, held my breath, and switched on the radio.

“. . . did she go?” Dag.

“We’ll find her.” Zahra. “She’s not important right now.”

“You don’t know what she could be doing.”

“She can’t escape. She can’t access the radios. What can she do?”

They had lost Ariana.

“Please, everybody, please. We can’t fight each other.” Panya.

“We’ll recapture the hostages later. It will be trivial when we get control of the ship and its surveillance systems.” Zahra again. “Malachi?”

“I told you. I can’t do that here.” Malachi.

“You said you would be able to.”

“I know. I’m sorry, I know, but I can’t. We have to get to the bridge.”

They were still at the mainframe on Level 4. They had failed to hack into the ship’s computer.

I turned off the radio and exhaled slowly, then reached up to take off my helmet.