The Exodus Towers #2

A bottle of merlot was uncorked. Two glasses was all it took before Vanessa drifted off in one of the oversized, cushioned passenger chairs.

Ana eased the seat back for her until it became a bed and then found a blanket to cover the woman with. The cabin lights were dimmed, and Skyler led Ana back to the cockpit.

The girl climbed into the co-pilot’s seat without a word, and Skyler took his place in the pilot’s chair. Despite the exotic, high-end equipment, the position still fit him like an old comfortable shoe. The basic controls were exactly where he would expect, and with a bit of fiddling he even found he could reconfigure the various screens around him. He tried moving some of the information around to more familiar positions, but it was tedious. Then he spotted the option to completely realign the displays to mimic other aircraft.

To his surprise and delight, the database was enormous, and in less than thirty seconds he had the entire cockpit looking exactly like the Melville’s. The graphical representation was remarkably accurate.

Another option on the screen was “setup.” Skyler tapped it and found where he could set a name for the aircraft. An idea came to him. “Would you like to name her?”

“Name who?” Ana said.

“The bird. This plane.”

Her eyes lit up, then her nose wrinkled in concentration. In the soft amber glow of the cockpit lights, she looked rather striking, Skyler thought.

“La Gaza Ladra,” Ana said.

He loved it simply for the way she said the words. As he tapped in the letters, he asked, “What’s it mean?”

“The Thieving Magpie. Something Papa used to play on the guitar.”

“Perfect,” he said to himself, grinning. “Perfect.”

Next to him, Ana beamed. “I’ve never seen you so happy.”

“Doesn’t get much better than this,” he agreed.

“Hmm.” Ana stood. “I forgot something.”

“What’s that?” he asked, his attention firmly on the readouts that rolled across the screens before him.

His view was suddenly blocked by her hips, her torso, then her face. She slid onto his lap, arms around his neck. Before he could protest her lips met his and she kissed him.

Skyler resisted, but there was nowhere to go. Her fingers tangled in his hair, sending a ripple of electricity down his spine. When her tongue darted in between his lips, Skyler gave in and kissed her back. The world around him melted away, and he put his arm around her waist, pulling her close.

Ana turned and adjusted her legs until she straddled him. The kiss went from gentle, to passionate, to urgent. The warmth of her mouth, her body, drew him in. When her hands began to work at his belt buckle, Skyler pulled away.

“Slow down, slow down,” he breathed.

Ana let out a nervous half laugh and swept her hair behind her ears. She bit her lower lip in frustration, then leaned in and kissed him again. A quick, sensuous move that she let linger just long enough to get his pulse racing again.

Then she leaned back. “Sorry. I got carried away.”

“No need to apologize.”

She stayed where she was, her legs wrapped around his. The position soon became uncomfortable in the narrow pilot’s seat.

“Um,” Skyler managed.

Ana put a finger to his lips. “Don’t say anything. I made the first move; you can retaliate anytime you like.”

He grunted a laugh at her choice of words. “It’s just …”

“Just what?”

“I’m too old for you.”

She looked at him with total confusion. Then she shook her head vehemently. “Those rules don’t apply anymore, Skyler.”

“Don’t they?”

“No,” she said, her tone flat, very serious. “Not now. Not after everything that’s happened in the world. It’s like this aircraft, Skyler. La Gaza Ladra. If you find something you need, you take it.”

“Yeah, but who needs who?”

She glared at him, playful but no less intense. “Are you saying you don’t need me?”

A dozen answers flew through his mind, and beyond them were all the vague warnings of camp politics, impropriety, and his already rocky friendship with Tania Sharma. Vague shapes in the Builders’ hazy cloud, one and all.

Skyler pushed the ghosts away and kissed her.
Darwin, Australia

25.DEC.2283

“IT’S FREAKY HOW quiet the city is now,” Skadz said.

Sam pushed the last remnants of her dinner around the Styrofoam bowl. Rice plus some kind of mystery meat. A freeze-dried, preservative-laden dish of salty mush, made only slightly better with a healthy dash of chili sauce.

They sat side by side on the hangar’s roof, under a plastic tarp propped up by two old ladders. A light rain tapped away on the surface and rolled down the sides in tiny streams.

Skadz cleared his throat. “Grillo’s really coddled the place, hasn’t he?”

She paused mid-bite, the food gone from edible mush to inedible ash. Coddled doesn’t even enter into it. It had been over a month and she still hadn’t been able to speak about what she’d witnessed in Lyons. The topic of Grillo, through her body language alone, had become off-limits around the airport. She’d done her best to avoid the man himself lest he somehow sense a change in the way she looked at him. A hint of disgust or fear she knew he’d find in her eyes.

“You’re talkative tonight.”

Sam set the bowl aside and filled her cup with runoff water dripping from the side of their makeshift tent. “Going out tomorrow. I’m just thinking through the logistics.”

“What’s the mission?”

“The mission is f*cked-up, that’s what,” she said. “Grillo always, always, has us going for soil and seeds and shit.” She took a drink, sloshed the water around her mouth, and spat it out. The salty taste of fake chicken remained, and she repeated the process.

“Charming,” he said.

“Bite me.”

Winking red light from an approaching aircraft caught both their attention. As they watched, the craft crept up on the airport from the southeast, and soon the howl of its engines could be heard above the rain. The craft slowed until it hovered, and then descended to its designated spot along the row of landing pads that covered the original strip of asphalt.

“This mission, today’s,” Sam said once the engine noise receded, “is guns. Rifles, handguns, grenades. Body armor, helmets. The works.”

Skadz grunted. “Merry f*cking Christmas, eh?”

“Hah.”

He grew thoughtful. “What’s that mean, then? Is Blackfield back in control? Sounds like one of his lists.”

“I don’t know.” The prospect made her shudder. She had other theories but couldn’t quite bring herself to voice them. Skadz had resumed his role of friend easily enough, but she’d not gone so far as to consider him a confidant yet. He disappeared for days at a time into the city. With all the Jacobites around, who knew what might be overheard. Skadz had a penchant for gab, a gift for boasting. If she told him about Kelly, or the strange Builder device she’d recovered for Grillo, or the butchery she’d witnessed, word could get around. So she said nothing.

Skadz had yet to try to return to his role as a scavenger, and she suspected he might never.

Sometimes, late at night, she could hear him battling nightmares. Whether or not he was haunted by the girl he’d let die, or something that happened while he was out walking the desolate lands beyond Darwin, she had no idea. He’d avoided the topic and said little of what happened during his walkabout. Despite his nonchalance, Sam only had to look at his eyes to see the pain there. Something had happened out there, something that drove him back.

“So,” Skadz asked, “are you going to do it?”

“What?”

“The mission. Guns for Grillo.”

“I have to.”

He barked a laugh. “Shit … have to. Bloody hell, Sammy, you don’t have to do anything. Fly out of here and never come back. Who could stop you?”

Lightning danced on the horizon, each brilliant line bringing her visions of Grillo’s knife stabbing into that helpless, broken man in the hospital lobby. She saw herself, crouched behind the counter with a book tucked under her arm, a book he’d sent her across the continent to find, a book that everyone knew had burned years ago, lost to history.

Sam waited for the thunder to roll by before answering. “Grillo could.”

By midafternoon the next day, Samantha found herself falling to Earth. Wind screamed past her ears and rippled the skin on her cheeks as Malaysia raced to meet her.

She guided herself toward the familiar air base and tried to ignore the looming megalopolis of Kuala Lumpur to the south. The massive city stretched from horizon to horizon, and still hid under a cloud of smog five years after SUBS had relieved it of its plague of humans.

The layout of the military compound below her rushed back into her mind and she angled herself toward the large warehouse complex in the southwest quarter. Above her, strung out like climbers on an invisible space elevator, the other four members of today’s crew followed her lead. She hoped so, anyway. It wouldn’t do to look back.

Sam landed with textbook precision between two huge gray buildings, stark and windowless. Her feet touched ground at a trot, and she let the parachute drift over her and onto the cratered asphalt surface. With little wind to speak of, the giant nylon sheet settled onto the ground with a whisper.

“Clear,” she called into her headset. “Ocean Cloud, circle with minimal juice until we’ve secured a landing site.”

“Copy that,” came the response. The pilot, at least, was one of hers. A pudgy man named Pascal, who’d been flying in and out of Darwin since long before the Elevator arrived. The ground team were all Grillo’s men.

Her companions landed in sequence. They were clumsy compared to her, stuck inside environment suits, and lightly armed. Jacobites all, they’d said little on the flight out from Darwin, and though they knew how to strap on a parachute, she could tell none of them had made more than a few training jumps in their day.

Sam ordered them to spread out and hold the area, then she climbed a maintenance ladder on the side of one warehouse and found a place on the roof where she could see most of the base. She scanned the perimeter with a pair of high-power binoculars. As with the first time she’d been here, almost a year ago, the place was quiet. A barbed fence ringed the base, and there was a wall closer in that secured all but the VTOL pads.

Everything seemed to be intact, and she saw no evidence of subhumans inside the wall, other than the corpses of those she’d killed the last time out. They lay where they’d fallen, so many months ago, on the grid of landing pads to the north. She still remembered her argument with Skyler that day. “Land by the f*cking warehouses,” she’d told him. Just saying it seemed all the reason he needed to do something else. He gave her some bullshit line about how the landing pads were built to handle aircraft, whereas the asphalt wasteland that surrounded the buildings would just crumble under the Melville’s weight. Even now she felt heat rise in her cheeks at his insistence on always doing things anything but her way. Jackass.

She missed him so badly that tears welled. Sam laughed at her own mopey ridiculousness and drew a sleeve across her eyes. As she climbed back down the flimsy ladder, she wondered for the hundredth time if she’d ever know what happened to him. If he lived or not, where he’d gone. Anything. Most of all: Had it all been worth it?

At her orders, Ocean Cloud dropped down from the sky like a rock, blasting her thrusters on full power at the last moment to break the fall. At thirty meters above the ground she settled into a hover, and the pilot lowered the rest of the way with ample caution.

The asphalt held, and soon the engine howl changed to a purr, then a dim whine of electric current.

“Told you, Sky.”

She led her companions into the nearest warehouse, the same one she’d looted before. The Melville’s cargo bay couldn’t hold more than a few crates, and they’d left dozens behind on that mission.

Sam left the three men to search for what they needed and went back outside to guide Ocean Cloud to its landing. Pascal set the old hauler down with expert precision, right in between the two warehouses. He waved at her from the cockpit with little enthusiasm. His body language since the moment their Jacobite friends had boarded said what he thought of their sect.

“You and me both,” Sam mouthed, and waved back. She offered the words to build camaraderie with the fellow scavenger, but in truth she found it more and more difficult to hate the zealots. Old habits die hard, but her distaste had been eroded now that they’d pacified most of Darwin. The city might be bland and quiet now, but at least one could walk through the Maze without constant fear of a knife in the back.

And their success under Grillo had all but eliminated the need to continually spew sermons from every rank alcove in the city. Success spoke for itself, and across the city people were joining the cult for the protection and privilege it provided. The pattern had been repeated throughout history—join the group in power and receive all the benefits, or refuse and suffer the life of an outcast.

One of the men emerged from the building, boarded Ocean, and a minute later drove down the rear cargo deck in a small electric cart. Two steel arms extended from the front of the vehicle, allowing it to lift and move heavy pallets with ease.

Sam followed him inside to help. Her “crew” worked with surprising drive and organization. In just a few minutes, they’d laid out at least fifty small wooden boxes on the floor and were sorting them when she came in.

“I’m going to walk the perimeter,” she told them. “Keep an eye out.”

“You’re supposed to stay with us,” one said. None of them stopped their work, and she couldn’t tell who had spoken. In their suits they all looked the same. The bulky hoods blocked her view of their faces, making them seem like automatons.

“Just around the building,” she added. “Someone should keep a lookout.”

One waved at her in acknowledgment.

Sam did a lap around the warehouse, then crossed to the one opposite their target and circled it, too. Halfway around she stopped to study the distant skyline of Kuala Lumpur. From here the skyscrapers looked like jagged teeth, the color of ash. They barely stood out against the dirty sky that loomed over the city. She’d wondered about that sky on the last visit, too. Other cities they’d flown into or over in the Melville had cleared up. Five years without people did wonders to a metropolis. Sydney, Tokyo, even Saigon … all clear. Kuala Lumpur must have some runaway processers still throwing pollutants up. Factories that ran on autonomous programs. No one had had time to turn off the lights, and ample supplies of raw materials meant the factories could soldier on without the need of human oversight.

That those gray teeth were once gleaming office towers and teeming apartments was hard for her to imagine. Now they were just tombs. She wondered how many millions of corpses lay within those buildings. Twenty million? Thirty? And so close to Darwin, she thought. What a f*cking shame.

She turned back and saw the rear door of the warehouse. On a whim, she tried the handle and found it to be unlocked. A mixture of boredom and curiosity drove her inside.

The layout was identical to the building across the drive. Row after row of metal scaffold shelves, rising up into the darkness. She flipped on a flashlight and swept it across the aisles. At least half the space was empty. In a few places she saw boxes spilled out on the ground, and in one aisle she almost tripped on two skeletons. One wore a Malay army uniform. The other had on ragged civilian clothes. She stepped over them without a second thought.

Farther on she spotted a familiar logo on a series of shoe-box-sized plastic containers. SONTON. Sam grinned. The handgun manufacturer had been the dominant supplier of high-end weapons right up until the apocalypse. She set her flashlight on a nearby shelf and thumbed open one of the boxes. Inside she saw the dark sheen of brushed tungsten. The gun rested in a bed of form-cut packing material and had never been used, as far as she could tell. A tag still hung from the trigger guard. Two clips were nestled into pockets below it, and next to those, a laser sight.

She compared it to her own gun and decided now was a good time to upgrade. It didn’t take long to find ammunition of the right caliber, on the next aisle over. Samantha loaded a single magazine and pocketed the leftovers, the extra clip, and the sight. Then she slid the gun into her holster and discarded the old one.

On another aisle she found the grenades.

They were grouped by type and size, most the size of a lemon and of the fragmentation variety. But toward the end she came across smaller versions. These were no bigger than a cigarette lighter. Most were marked in a language she couldn’t read, but a few were labeled in English. High-yield antipersonnel. Sonic demobilizers. Sam smiled and, after a quick guilty glance at the door through which she’d entered, she slipped a few of each into her vest pockets.

It hadn’t been stated directly, but she knew that her crew of Jacobites were also tasked with keeping an eye on her and wouldn’t be too happy if they knew she’d brought such weapons back with her.

Satisfied, and nervous about being gone too long, Sam returned the way she’d come and reentered the first warehouse.

“Find anything?” one of the men asked. “You were gone awhile.”

“I had to take a shit,” she said casually. “Needed some tissue.”

That seemed to settle the matter.

She watched them for a while. They loaded crate after crate of weapons and associated equipment onto the cart, driving four loads out to the waiting aircraft. Sam made a mental tally as they went, and when the men declared their work finished, she realized they’d neglected anything larger than a snub-nosed submachine gun.

“That’s it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s none of my business,” Sam said, “but the stuff you took is all for girls. There’s much better weapons in here.”

The Jacobite inclined his head. He hesitated before responding. “You’re right,” he said. “It is none of your business. Let’s go.”
Black Level

12.DEC.2284

“TO THE … WELL, screw it. To the Builders!”

Greg lifted his glass, that ever-present grin on his face somehow even wider.

Marcus echoed the motion, white wine sloshing in his own cup as he raised it. Marcus wore no smile. In fact, Tania had never seen him smile, and it wasn’t for a lack of humor. If anything he was an even bigger goof than Greg, and that was saying something.

“To the Builders,” Tania said with a shrug. Why not? Like them or not, understand them or not, the unseen alien race had certainly had their impact on the world. More so, she thought, than any human ever had, except perhaps through acts largely mythical. She clinked her glass with theirs and looked to Zane Platz and Tim. Tim joined the toast without a word, though she could see the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

Zane, on the other hand, didn’t move. His eyes were set on the drink in front of him, the remnants of dinner beside it. He seemed deep in thought, as he had that entire day. The anniversary of the Belém Elevator’s arrival, so close upon the date marking his famous brother’s death, had really thrown the man off his usual affable manner.

“Zane?” she asked. “You okay?”

Her question took a second to register. Zane jerked slightly, as if he’d been asleep. He turned to her and shrugged, a movement so slight she almost missed it. “Feeling a bit under the weather,” he said.

“You look pale.”

“Do I? I feel it.”

“It’s Greg’s cooking,” Marcus said, deadpan as always. “Only the strong survive.”

Greg laughed maniacally. “Fools!” he screeched, like some cartoon villain. “It was poison all along. Soon this station shall be mine!”

Tim laughed and Tania found herself smiling as well. She’d been on Black Level for two weeks, with little to do except enjoy the silly antics of Greg and Marcus. If anything, the time in near isolation aboard the partial space station had only served to increase their penchant for joking around. In two short weeks Tania had laughed more than in the entire year before.

Zane’s expression didn’t change. He let out a small burp and put a hand over his abdomen. “Ugh …”

Tania put a hand on his shoulder. “You should rest.”

“Or purge that slop Greg prepared,” Marcus said. “Seriously, what did you make that with? Roach droppings?”

“Do roaches poop?” Greg asked.

“Never thought about it until now.”

“It’s a good question.”

“Do they even have an anus? I wonder.”

“We’ll discuss it later,” Greg whispered out the corner of his mouth. “Seconds, anyone?”

Zane groaned again. He clutched at his stomach with one hand now, while his other hand covered his eyes. His chair made a chirp sound as he pushed back from the table with sudden violence.

“My God, Zane,” Tania said, taking his forearm to steady him.

Tim stood to help.

Suddenly Zane doubled over. His head hit the edge of the table with a deep thud that rattled the place settings. Tania tried to hold on to him, but he fell limp and weighed too much for her to overcome.

Zane hit the floor with a grunt and went still.

“What’s wrong with him?” Tania asked. Panic welled inside her, and her gaze went to his neck, looking for the rash. Is our Elevator defective, too? The possibility that what happened in Darwin could also happen here had never occurred to her until now.

But she saw nothing. Nothing except the collapsed, unconscious form of Zane Platz.

Only thirty people lived on Black Level. The station was not equipped for more, being just a single ring that had detached from the much larger Anchor Station. It had no kitchen, no recreation areas, and no medical facility.

The skeleton crew improvised as best they could, Tania thought, but it wasn’t enough to help Zane Platz.

At least he’s alive, she thought. Unconscious, but a pulse was there and he seemed to be breathing well enough.

She’d spent the night at his side, in the cabin she herself used to occupy. Other than the gentle rise and fall of his chest, he hadn’t moved since the collapse at dinner.

A number of video calls were made between Black Level and Melville Station. One of only two medical doctors in the colony did all she could to diagnose the patient remotely, but in the end the process proved too slow and inefficient.

“Move him here,” the doctor, Loraine Brooks, said. She’d been a private physician on board Platz Station before the crew fled. Her specialty was children, but like all doctors she had basic training in other areas. “He seems stable enough, and a climber car can’t be much worse than that cabin in terms of space and air quality.”

“We’ll come back right away, then,” Tania said.

Tim, listening from the doorway, said, “I’ll get some people to help move him.”

She nodded at him and took some comfort in the half smile he offered her. While she fretted and worried he’d taken control of the situation, she reminded herself to thank him for that. His presence, not just here but within the colony in general, was a wonderful piece of luck, she now knew.

In the hallway behind him, she heard Marcus. “The climber will be ready in a few minutes.”

“Good,” Tim said. Their voices receded down the hall.

The doctor on the screen gave Tania a sympathetic look. “See you soon, Dr. Sharma.”

“Thank you, Dr. Brooks.” Tania switched off the terminal.

Her old cabin, which appeared to be untouched since she left it almost a year ago, held little sentimental value. All her fond memories, nights spent sipping wine with Natalie over a board game or puzzle, were hidden behind the last days aboard Anchor Station. When she looked about the room now, she saw only a prison cell.

Tania shuddered, then turned her focus to Zane.

“Please stay with us,” she whispered. “You’ve been my rock since we arrived. The only person I can talk to anymore.” It should have been Skyler in that role. She hated herself for thinking that. She hated herself more for the lame words coming out of her. She’d heard better dialogue in those horrible old romance films the sensory chamber loved to recommend.

The truth was, when Tania looked at Zane she was always trying to find some hint of Neil hiding in there. She had no doubt that if he were here now, the colony would not be fiddling around with pouring concrete and fixing up the nearby dormitory. They would be laser focused on the Builders. Exploring the site in the forest, establishing plans and backup plans for every contingency of what may come next. Already the colony had squandered half the time before the next event, assuming the schedule she’d calculated was accurate.

Everything, she realized, that Skyler had been urging they do. He’d asked a hundred times for permission to find the other missing towers. Permission he didn’t need. Especially now that he had an aircraft.

And a lover, a voice in her head said. She pushed that visual aside with a cold shiver. “Will you ever forgive me?” she muttered, holding back tears. Another bad line from a silly romance. Tania felt like slapping herself.

Footsteps outside. “In here,” Tim was saying. “Tania, step aside. We’re ready to go.”

She gave Zane’s hand a squeeze and pushed away from the bed to let the others in. They’d brought a folding table to use as a stretcher, but it wouldn’t fit through the door. So the group lifted Zane in the blanket upon which he lay, carefully moved him through the narrow entry, and laid him on the table. Someone, not Tania, had the presence of mind to fetch a pillow to put under his head. Such a simple gesture, she thought, and yet more useful and caring than any of my stupid words.

The climber slipped out of Black Level’s meager docking bay ten minutes later and tugged on the cord until it reached a cruising speed of 1,500 kilometers per hour. Even at that blistering pace, it would take more than a day to descend down to Melville.

Once cruising, there was no illusion of gravity to be had. Tania and Tim moved Zane’s stretcher to the opposite side of the cabin, so that when they decelerated at the other end he wouldn’t be on the “ceiling.” After that, there was little to do except wait.

The farm platforms flew by every few hours. They were spaced out along the cord, their altitude determined by the crops grown. The higher up on the Elevator, the more sunlight received during a rotation of the planet below. Unlike Darwin’s Elevator, though, there were no other stations to pass. No Hab stations, looking like orbital hotels. No quaint little Midway Station, that smallest of facilities that had been built as an emergency stop-off should anything go wrong. It had rarely been used, as far as Tania knew. She’d certainly never stopped there during her time living above Darwin.

“Should we give him some water?” Tim asked, halfway through the descent.

Tania looked up from the book she’d been reading, a worn paperback she’d found in the climber’s “boredom box.” “I’m not sure how we would in zero-g, but we can try.”

Zane looked peaceful in the absence of gravity. Not that he hadn’t before they’d left, but now he seemed younger, more vigorous somehow. His cheeks were fuller, buoyed as he floated against the belts that held him to the table.

His lips, though, were dry and cracked. But try as they might, squeezing water into his mouth from a foil packet did not work. Without gravity, the fluid just dribbled out and floated away in small spheres. Tim waved a hand towel around to capture the liquid before it found its way into anything important.

“Even if it stayed in,” Tania said, “he’d still have to swallow it.”

They gave up, and waited. And waited.

Finally, hours later, Tania felt the tug of gravity. It woke her from a light nap as the straps of her harness tightened against her shoulders.

Slowing the climber took almost as long as the acceleration process had, the progress display moving with frustrating sloth on the monitor by the airlock. “C’mon, c’mon,” Tim muttered.

When the hatch finally opened, Dr. Brooks waited just outside with a team of apparent volunteers. “Take him to the infirmary,” she ordered. With a nod at Tania and Tim, the doctor drifted inside and checked Zane’s vitals as the others began to wrangle the makeshift stretcher.

“Go with them,” Tim said to Tania. “I’ll get Karl on the comm and let him know what’s happened.”

“Thanks.”

Tania followed the main group down a spoke to the outer ring, then along a blur of corridors interrupted by the occasional bulkhead.

At Brooks’s direction, the team worked with modest efficiency to get Zane transferred to a bed. The doctor hooked up an IV to his arm and began a series of checks. “Our equipment is basic,” she explained as she held one of Zane’s eyelids open and flashed a light across his pupils. “We may have to move him down to Belém, or move equipment up here.”

“Whatever it takes,” Tania said. “Just tell me what you want to do.”

“For now,” she said, “let me work. I’ll come get you when I have something.”

Despite a desire to stay, Tania read the woman’s tone and body language, and departed. The last thing she saw was Brooks pressing her hands against Zane’s abdomen.

The doctor looked worried.

When the news came that Zane was in a coma, Tania was not surprised. She couldn’t imagine any other explanation for his present condition. The cause, however, remained unknown.

Dr. Brooks provided a list of equipment she needed, either installed on the station or accessible on the ground. “I’m loath to move him, though, and it might not be a bad idea to have the infirmary here more fully provisioned.”

Tania agreed and relayed the list to Karl. He said he’d get the scavenger crews on it immediately. With Skyler’s newfound aircraft available, they’d search nearby cities as well if the situation required it.

Zane remained stable, and as the days turned into weeks, Tania gradually focused on her duties again. She still visited with him every day. Sometimes once in the evening, other days she would make frequent stops.

Time dragged on with no changes, though. Dr. Brooks began to make more and more frequent mentions of the possibility that he might never wake up. If he’d suffered some kind of embolism, for example.

Skyler’s crew suffered a series of failed missions attempting to recover the equipment necessary to do a thorough scan of Zane’s internals. Despite herself, Tania began to wonder if there were any alternatives. When a few weeks passed with no results she even began to consider going down to Belém herself and joining the effort. But then Karl and Skyler called her with the first good news in what seemed like an age.

“We found it,” Skyler said. “Well, Ana did. She deserves the credit.”

“Please thank her for me, Skyler. Tell me what you’ve got.”

“I should have thought of it myself weeks ago. We had a similar problem once, back in Darwin. Someone needed parts for a very specific X-ray machine, and all the crews were searching hospitals without luck. Prumble and I had the idea to look for warehouses or distribution centers used by the manufacturer.”

“That’s smart,” Tania said.

“Yeah, well, if only I’d remembered my own brilliant technique. Luckily Ana thought the same thing and started searching shipping and receiving instead of the surgery wards. Long story short, we’ve got the equipment you need. Brand-new, factory sealed, never touched.”

Tania wanted to hug him through the screen. With that news she felt she could even embrace Ana. “I’d love to thank her in person, next time I’m down there,” she said instead.

“Just doing our job,” Skyler replied.

“When can you have it delivered?”

Karl spoke up then. “It’s a big crate, very heavy, and all the way on the other side of town. But we’ve got a team on it, and we’ll get it on a climber as soon as they bring it to Exodus. You should have it in two or three days, Tania.”

Tania’s patience was already stretched to the brink, and the wait that still remained felt even worse. But true to Karl’s word, two days later the equipment arrived.

Dr. Brooks was unfamiliar with the specific machine they’d fetched, and anyway she’d only been trained how to use such an instrument, not how to install it. Manuals were read; engineers and technicians were pulled off other duties. At one point Dr. Brooks had to ask Tania to leave them alone so they could work.

“I’m fine,” Tania said. “I’ll help in any way I can.”

“You’re hovering,” the doctor said. “Second-guessing. Pestering.”

Tania stared at the woman in surprise. “You … you’re right. I hadn’t thought about it. God. I hate it when people do that to me. Hover, watch over my shoulder.”

“Exactly,” Brooks said. “Attend to your other duties; we’re working on this as fast as we can.”

“I know. You’re right.” She took a moment to walk around and personally apologize to anyone she could find. Then she left and forced herself to find other things to do.