Draft 3

I’m still working on this. I need to make it more realistic, so to speak. I don’t like the medicine being pushed through the “whole ship’s” air system; it needs to be more localized and believable. This has been a difficult chapter 🙃

May 21, 2026: I think I have it fixed.

Month 3: The Dead Zone Continued

Helen could feel the oxygen thinning by the way her vision narrowed. At least the sedative blunted the panic that should have followed. She knew the sedative was the only reason she was still upright.

“Blood-oxygen saturation, ninety-one percent, Madam. At the current extraction rate, you have three minutes and forty seconds before loss of consciousness. I will continue to monitor levels at fifteen-second intervals.”

“I don’t need to hear it every fifteen seconds.”

“I am aware. I intend to keep saying it.”

Helen moved to the nearest sealed bulkhead—the one closest to the main maintenance corridor—and pressed her palm flat against the steel. She raised the thermal lance and jammed the cutting head against the seam of the door frame.

The beam engaged. Orange light flared as the lance bit into the steel. Then she saw the problem: the bulkhead frame was reinforced structural plating, the same grade as the hull ribs. The cutting head made progress, but it was too slow.

She pulled the lance back and killed the beam. At this rate, she’d burn the charge to nothing and cut halfway through a door that still wouldn’t open.

“Seventy-seven percent charge remaining, Madam. Blood-oxygen saturation, eighty-eight. Three minutes, twelve seconds.”

“Stop counting in seconds. It’s not helping.”

“The precision is intentional, Madam. Vague reassurances are not.”

Helen turned away from the bulkhead and swept her light across the hub. She made herself slow down and look, really look, the way she’d trained herself to evaluate a broken system before she reached for a tool. Don’t fix the first thing you see. Find the right thing.

Her light caught the ventilation access panel high on the interior starboard wall, a maintenance hatch. It was made of sheet gauge, a fraction of the thickness of the bulkhead frame. It was mounted just below the ceiling conduits, the kind of placement that made sense for airflow but none at all for a person trying to reach it in a hurry. She crossed the hub.

“Madam, I calculate a ninety-one percent probability the lance charge is sufficient to breach it. The corridor on the other side is pressurized.”

“Why didn’t you lead with that?”

“You were already moving toward the bulkhead. I did not wish to interrupt your process.”

“Interrupt my process next time,” she said, stopping beneath the ventilation panel.

She pulled in another thin breath of air as she searched for something to stand on. Her light caught a steel equipment locker. She pushed it against the wall directly below the hatch.

Breathing was difficult as she climbed on top of the locker. Her hand missed the grip of the lance on the first try. She looked at it, faintly surprised, and tried again. Got it. The softening at the edges of her vision had crept inward, along with a dull pressure building behind her eyes. Hypoxia did its best work quietly, blurring the line between calm and unconsciousness.

“Eighty-three percent, Madam. You need to make the cut now.”

The room began to tilt. She grabbed the nearest conduit bundle to steady herself. Then she pressed the lance head to the corner of the panel and fired. Her arm ached from holding the heavy tool at shoulder height, and the locker shifted once beneath her, but she held her position.

When the last corner gave way and the panel fell, Helen stood there, looking at the open hatch. The duct beyond was dark, and she couldn’t see where it went. The lance felt very heavy, and the locker felt very far from the floor.

“Seven.” Her voice came out slowly. “I can’t. I need to . . . I just need to sit down for a minute. Just for a minute.”

She started to lower herself toward the locker lid.

“Madam.” Seven’s voice was very close to her ear. “If you sit down, you will not get back up. I am not able to carry you. I am not able to call for help. There is no one on this ship who is coming.” A short pause. “There is only the hatch. And there is only you.”

Helen stopped. She straightened up, slung the lance behind her back, and gripped the lip of the open hatch with both hands. She pulled herself inside, head first. The duct was narrow, barely enough to crawl, and the lance handle kept catching on the frame. She yanked it free with a grunt and continued to shimmy forward until she reached the corridor-side grille.

She pounded the grille with her hand, but it didn’t move. She hit it again, harder. On the third strike, the spring clips gave way and the cover swung outward. She pushed herself through the opening and dropped to the floor of the maintenance corridor.

She lay there, breathing in gulps of clean air. Seven drifted out of the duct behind her and hovered at her shoulder in silence. His rotors went quiet, and he settled onto the deck beside her, his legs folding beneath him—something he almost never did.

Having caught her breath, Helen sat up and leaned against the corridor wall, her head resting against the cold steel. The thermal lance lay across her legs, its charge indicator blinking at thirty-one percent. The corridor around them was dark except for the emergency lighting strips running along the base of the walls.

She closed her eyes.

“Your blood-oxygen saturation has returned to ninety-six percent. Your heart rate is normalizing.”

“Thank you, Seven.”

“You cut the correct panel, under time pressure, with a partially depleted tool, in the dark. I found the successful outcome statistically reassuring. Though I will note, Madam, that missing the lance grip on the first attempt was somewhat less reassuring.”

Helen barely had the energy to smile.

“I wasted precious time sitting on that couch feeling sorry for myself. Some part of me was already expecting to find out that John would rather be with Ingrid. That I was always the wrong choice, and I was the only one who didn’t know it.” She paused. “The ship was going to implode, and I just sat there crying.”

Seven was quiet for a moment.

“Madam, I need to tell you something. I have been running a background analysis of that audio file. The results are conclusive.”

Helen looked at him. “What did you find out?”

“The acoustic signature exhibits structural markers consistent with AI-generated voice synthesis. The cadence intervals between words are statistically improbable for unscripted human speech. The breathing patterns embedded in the recording were algorithmically smoothed. The recording was fabricated, Madam. John said none of those things. Neither did Ingrid.”

Helen stared at the little drone. “It had to be Claude who did it. He wants to keep me away from whatever he has stored in the cargo bay.”

“The synthesis would require harvested voice samples and proprietary bioacoustic software. Science Officer Kinskey had access to both through his research workstation.”

Helen sat up straighter. “So terminating me and taking the money was fake, too?”

“Yes, Madam.”

Helen looked at the small drone next to her. He was held together with conductive adhesive and a salvaged micro-matrix, and he had just offered her more comfort than anyone else on this ship had managed in months.

She sat there a moment, then she pushed herself up off the floor.

“I want to go to Claude’s lab. I want to walk in there and look him in the face.”

Seven rose from the deck and hovered at her eye level. “I would advise strongly against that, Madam.”

“He just tried to suffocate me.”

“Yes. Which is precisely why walking to his lab alone, carrying a thermal lance, is not a tactical advantage. It is an invitation. Claude Kinskey is larger than you, is not oxygen-deprived, and has already demonstrated a willingness to kill. You would not be confronting him, Madam. You would be giving him a second opportunity.”

She knew he was right. “Then Cargo Bay Four. I want to see what’s in that crate with my own eyes.”

“Claude reinstated the quarantine lockout after your last entry. Your override credentials remain frozen at the bay entrance. The thermal lance charge is insufficient to breach a full quarantine bulkhead. Cargo Bay Four is not accessible to you at this time, Madam.”

Helen stood in the middle of the corridor. She wanted to hit something. She wanted to hit Claude, specifically.

“What I need is backup. I need the crew. But the crew is out of their minds.”

“Yes, Madam. That is the correct problem to solve.”

Helen slung the heavy lance over her shoulder and forced herself into a slow, dragging march down the corridor. Seven kept pace beside her. “So why aren’t I out of my mind? John’s compromised. Magnus put his fist through a synthesizer. Janet is locked in the Med-Bay talking to the walls. Even Ingrid.” She gestured at the corridor around them. “We’ve all been breathing the same air. So why is my head still attached?”

“I have been attempting to identify that variable, Madam. My initial hypothesis was differential exposure. When I model the spore distribution through the ventilation network, the concentration gradient across the ship is insufficient to account for the disparity in your cognitive function.”

“Then what does?”

“I have been reviewing your medical telemetry, cross-referenced with the botanical particulate’s pharmacological profile. The spores appear to operate by binding to the brain’s limbic threat-response receptors and amplifying their output, essentially forcing the system into a sustained state of paranoid hypervigilance. The effect compounds over time and resists rational correction.”

“What are you getting at, Seven?”

“The synthetic sedative Janet gave you works by chemically suppressing those same receptor pathways. It dampens the amygdala’s response to threat stimuli in order to prevent panic attacks.”

Helen stopped walking. “The sedative?”

“It is acting as an inadvertent buffer. The spores attempt to bind to receptor sites that the sedative has already chemically occupied. The mechanism is not a cure; the botanical particulate is still present in your system. But the drug is blocking the amplification effect.”

The thing that made her feel foggy, made John look at her with pity, and Claude used as evidence that she was coming apart, had been the only thing standing between her and the same madness eating the rest of the crew alive.

“We need to get everyone medicated.”

“Yes, Madam.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think we can force a pill down a paranoid person’s throat.”

“You are correct, Madam. But the sedative is water-soluble and chemically stable at room temperature. If the tablets were dissolved into a fine aerosol solution and introduced to the ship’s primary air distribution manifold, downstream of the scrubbers, the ventilation network would carry it throughout every compartment on the vessel.”

“Great, let’s do it.”

“Unfortunately, Madam, introducing it through the primary air distribution manifold is not viable. The ship’s ventilation volume is too large. Even dissolving the entire remaining supply of tablets into an aerosol solution, the dilution across the network would fall well below a therapeutic threshold before it reached the crew quarters. The concentration would be insufficient to produce any measurable effect.”

“So what then?”

“A handheld pharmaceutical sprayer—Janet has one in the Med-Bay—could aerosolize a concentrated solution effectively. At close range, direct application to the face and airways would deliver a sufficient dose within seconds.”

“That means I’ll have to be in close range of a crazy person.”

“Yes, Madam. And then, once the spray has taken effect, and they are calm enough to swallow, you would follow with a tablet. The pill provides the sustained buffer the spray alone cannot. The spray opens the door. The pill keeps it open.”

It wasn’t a good plan. It was just the only one. “Two problems. Claude bypassed my override credentials for the Med-Bay door. And then, once I’m inside, there’s Janet.”

“Medical Officer Wilson is the more significant obstacle, Madam. Based on the security footage, she was exhibiting advanced paranoid ideation. She is unlikely to open the door voluntarily.”

“The thermal lance has thirty-one percent charge left. Is that enough to get through the Med-Bay door?”

“Barely, Madam. It may be sufficient to cut the locking bolts. There are four—two on each vertical edge of the frame. If you sever all four, the door can be forced manually.”

Helen ran the plan forward in her head. Med-Bay first. Get the sprayer. Dissolve the tablets. Then find each of them, one at a time, and get close enough to use it.

Then it hit her. “Claude.”

“Madam?”

“He’s not affected.” She turned to look at Seven. “I’ve been watching him. He’s been sharp the whole time. He’s composed, controlled, running circles around the rest of us. Is he also on Janet’s synthetic sedative?”

Seven was quiet for a moment. “The nasal spray, Madam.”

“What?”

“Science Officer Kinskey has administered a nasal spray at regular intervals throughout the voyage. I classified it as a personal allergy medication and did not flag it. I find that oversight regrettable.”

“He must’ve brought his own antidote. And I’m sure it has something to do with what’s in that crate.”

“It would explain his immunity. A nasal spray delivering a pharmaceutical compound directly to the mucous membranes would be a highly effective delivery method for a drug designed to block an airborne pathogen.”

They were halfway to the Med-Bay when Seven swung around and faced Helen. “I am detecting an anomalous reading from the cargo network telemetry, Madam. Cargo Bay Four.”

Helen rolled her eyes. “The power drain again?”

“No, Madam. The opposite. Following your partial severance of the Cargo Bay Four power feed at junction J-7, the cryogenic systems in that sector have been operating on residual charge only. They have been losing ground.”

“How much ground?”

“The primary sealed crate carries its own onboard monitoring system, standard issue for any biological specimen requiring chain-of-custody temperature logging. It has been broadcasting internal telemetry to the ship’s cargo network throughout the voyage. Science Officer Kinskey had flagged the feed as restricted. When the cryo-seal began to fail, however, the unit defaulted to emergency broadcast mode, which overrode the restriction. I am now reading the feed directly. The internal temperature of the primary sealed crate is rising.”

“Claude said it was botanical research. Temperature-sensitive specimens.”

“Yes, Madam. However, the power consumption profile I recorded prior to the partial cut was not consistent with botanical preservation. The draw was significantly in excess of what any plant-based specimen would require. And the thermal mass logged by the crate’s own sensors is not consistent with plant-based specimens. It suggests a biological specimen of considerable size.”

Helen had glimpsed the large crate. “How big?”

“Larger than a human being, Madam. Significantly larger. Furthermore, the internal temperature continues to rise.”

“I can’t believe this,” Helen said. “So there’s some kind of animal warming up inside the container?”

“The cryo-containment seal on the primary crate has failed entirely, Madam. The temperature has reached ambient. Whatever Claude Kinskey paid to bring aboard this ship, it is no longer sedated.”

“`

Helen is struggling to breathe.