Yahya dropped to his knees, fashioning a cot under Bek. His vitals and health telemetry data displayed immediately. His temperature read 41.4°C. His limbs began to tremble again. Stacia cradled Bek’s head to keep it still, willing through her touch to communicate that she was there. How much she loved him. She wanted to fight for him, but there was nothing to punch or shoot or rage against. Only an unfeeling virus leaching away her son’s life.

“Med lab one!” She commanded the medi-cart. “Hold on, baby, hold on.”

The hallway lights dimmed. Red flashed along the right of the passageway, alerting crew members to clear that side to allow the medi-cart to whisk past them to the medical unit. Doctors waited at the entrance to receive them.

“I want full-spectrum diagnostic analysis!” she screamed.

“We have him, Stacia.” The doctor checked the scanners while another held Bek down.

“I’m the captain, and I gave you an order.”

He leveled his eyes at her, unflinching in the face of her heat. “No, here, you’re the mother. And we need you to stand down so that we can treat your son.”

Yahya placed a hand on her shoulder. She shook it off and stomped toward her briefing room.

“Aren’t you going to wait here?” he called after her.

“You wait.” She refused to turn around. “You heard them. They don’t need me. And I’m not going to wait around here like I can’t do anything.”

She stormed about her chamber, throwing a dish against the wall before overturning the table it once sat on. She slammed her hand into the wall, allowing it to hold her up while she refused to cry. Once she composed herself, she sent a link to the Science Councils on Titan and back at the Dreaming City. Within the hour, their leaders’ faces filled holovid screens, almost a collage of the leading living scientists throughout Muungano.

“Why did you wait so long to bring us into this case?” A thick set of locks coiled from the lead Titan scientist’s head. She stared over her glasses at Stacia. Or down her nose.

“I thought we could handle it. We have a top team of scientists here, too,” Stacia said, both shamed and defensive.

“And now?” A bald man with a thick white beard analyzed her reports while talking to her, never meeting her eyes. He had the softness about his edges of someone who spent too much time wandering the halls of the Dreaming City.

She summoned all the disdain and restrained fury to her tone. “And now my son is in med lab one, barely clinging to life.”

“I see.” As if remembering his humanity as an afterthought, he offered, “I’m sorry.”

“Save your sorries, I need answers,” Stacia snapped. “His symptoms make no sense.”