Baqir grabbed my wrist. His voice was muffled by his faceplate, but his words were clear enough: “What the fuck are you doing?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s warmer here.”

“It’s not safe!”

“The virus isn’t airborne,” I said. “It’s passed through blood contact only.”

“How do you know?”

“My mother figured it out, and some of the others, before they died. She watched how people got sick. There was always violent physical contact. And I was never infected, even though I was breathing the same air as everybody else.” My breath was misting in the cold, pushing small clouds between us. “It was never in the air, okay? I didn’t say anything because they don’t know, and I wanted to find out what else they’ve missed.”

Baqir looked at me for a long moment, then opened his helmet seal and pulled it off. “Then why the fuck did SPEC let everybody think it was airborne?”

“I don’t know. I was unconscious in a hospital bed when word got out it was Zeffir-1. By the time anybody asked me, they’d already distributed the vaccine. Lago was already dead. I guess they didn’t think it was worth backtracking on their claims and letting everybody know they had no fucking idea what happened here.”

Xiomara snapped her helmet off. “I don’t fucking care what SPEC did or didn’t do. We need to help Ariana!”

It was what she had been shouting for several minutes, only now the words were loud enough to make me wince. “We can’t.”

“We shouldn’t have left her. We have to—”

“We can’t,” I said again. “There’s nothing we can do. It’s too late.”

“You don’t know that! You just said nobody has any fucking idea what happened here!”

“Don’t shout,” Baqir hissed. “They’ll hear us.”

“I don’t care! Can we get—” Xiomara’s voice broke, and her face screwed up with the effort of keeping the tears at bay. “We can get help. If we can get her to a doctor . . .”

“It’s already too late,” I said.

“Fuck you,” Xiomara spat. She shoved me with both hands. “I am not giving up. I am not going to fucking let her die.”

I let her push me. I understood why she was angry. But I also knew there was nothing we could do.

“You knew about this. You could have said something,” she said.

“Don’t be stupid,” Baqir said. He grabbed her arm to yank her back. “Like these people would listen.”

“Not to them,” Xiomara said. “Before! To everybody! You knew what it was like here. Why didn’t you tell anyone? Fuck SPEC. You could have told the public.”