Draft 2

Month 3: Dead Zone Continued

Helen sat at the desk in the quarters she shared with John. The sedative did exactly what the doctor promised, dulling the sharp edges of her recent panic attacks. Even with the heat and the rotting fruit smell coming through the vents, she remained steady. She focused on the burner phone resting next to the computer terminal.

She unrolled a canvas tool pouch she kept in the room. Pulling out a titanium spudger and a micro-driver, she wedged the flat edge into the seam of the phone. The plastic cracked open. She peeled back layers of standard circuitry, hunting for a hidden corporate cipher that simply did not exist.

Unit Seven rested on his charging port beside her.

“Seven, run a decryption algorithm on this microchip.” She held up a tiny square of silicon to his sensor, waiting for the familiar sweep of his scanning laser.

The drone twitched, and his rotors whined before cutting out. “Madam, I have analyzed the power cell. The lithium-ion degradation suggests this device has a battery life of exactly four hours and twelve minutes. Statistically, this is insufficient for long-range encrypted communication.”

“I didn’t ask about the battery.” Helen set the chip aside. “Look at the processor. Tell me who manufactured the board.”

“The probability of spontaneous combustion in unregulated lithium cells increases by twelve percent in high-humidity environments. Would you like me to engage fire suppression protocols?”

“No, Seven. Just stay on the charger.” The drone was barely functional, trapped in a loop of useless diagnostics. She reached out and gently tapped his cracked outer shell. “I’ll get you fixed up soon, I promise. As soon as we figure out what John is hiding, I’ll pull your primary board and reset your gyros.”

“I shall hold you to that, Madam.”

Frustrated by the dead-end hardware, she turned her attention to the wall terminal. She stared at the blank screen for a long moment, feeling guilty. This was John’s personal terminal. Logging in meant crossing a line, but the image of John and Ingrid whispering together in the cockpit pushed the guilt away.

Because this room belonged to the Captain, the system possessed master-level access to the ship’s internal network. She logged in. If the phone wouldn’t give her answers, she would trace its connection history through the mainframe and see exactly who her husband was talking to.

She opened the command prompt, preparing to bypass the standard encryption. Before she could execute the search protocol, Seven extended a delicate leg and physically interfaced with the terminal’s data port. His optic blinked.

“Madam, I am detecting an erratic sequence of emergency protocols originating from the medical wing.”

“Are the climate controls failing in the Med-Bay?”

“Negative. The life support systems report optimal function. However, the internal security triggers are registering elevated movement and a quarantine request. The request is incomplete.”

“Show me.”

She routed the security feeds, pulling up the Med-Bay camera.

Helen stared at the monitor. Janet was completely unhinged. The usually grounded, maternal doctor paced the room with frantic movements. Her gray hair was pulled loose and wild, and the collar of her blue scrubs was torn. She swatted at the air around her face, dodging invisible obstacles. The medical officer gestured aggressively at the corners of the room, speaking rapidly to someone who wasn’t there.

“What is she doing?” Helen whispered. “Seven, can you give me audio?”

“Attempting to sync the room’s microphones. Stand by.”

Static came through the terminal’s speakers, followed by the sound of breaking glass. “. . . crawling under the plating,” Janet’s voice sobbed over the feed. “They’re in the vents. Can’t breathe, the walls are breathing . . .”

On the screen, the paranoid doctor shoved her arm under the bio-scanner. Then she drew a vial of blood, jammed it into the refrigerated centrifuge, and waited. She paced the floor while chewing nervously on her thumbnail. She scratched at her own forearms, leaving red welts across her skin.

The machine chimed. When the datapad displayed the results, Janet let out a scream. She dropped the device onto the counter and backed away, her hands shaking. Helen leaned over the keyboard, manually zooming the camera feed in on the datapad screen. Bold red text warned of an unidentified, rapidly multiplying biological toxin present in the bloodstream.

Helen had been right. The fog in the lower decks. The smell of rotting fruit. Janet had said it was just Dead Zone fatigue, but the blood panel proved otherwise. They were being poisoned.

Janet lunged for the emergency wall intercom, slamming her hand against the panel to call the bridge.

Before the connection was established, the video feed went black. The audio cut out with a pop.

Helen jumped. “Seven, get the visual back. Reroute through the secondary cameras!”

“I cannot, Madam. Internal communications for the entire medical sector have been completely disabled. I am locked out of the optical relays.”

“A system failure? Did the power grid trip again?”

“Negative. A deliberate isolation protocol. Someone has severed the digital connection at the root node.”

Helen quickly pulled up the network routing logs on the Captain’s terminal. She understood the ship’s wiring the way a surgeon understood veins. If someone cut a connection, they left a digital scar. She scanned the descending lines of code.

“If they shut off the comms, they had to route the command through an active terminal,” Helen said, typing a trace program. “I just need to find the point of origin.”

“Madam, I must warn you, the code structure is highly sophisticated.”

“It’s just plumbing, Seven. Water flows from the open valve.” She bypassed a layer of dummy code, stripping away the false error messages. She found the administrative footprint. The command hadn’t come from the bridge, and it hadn’t come from a failing fuse.

The firewall came from the Science Lab. It had to be Claude who had trapped the poisoned doctor in the Med-Bay, cutting her off from the rest of the ship before she could sound the alarm.

Helen is watching Janet frantically pace around the Med-Bay.