Luca hadn't slept. Every time he'd closed his eyes, he'd seen that smear of red on Ryan's lips, heard the wet rattle in his chest. By 0530, he'd given up pretending and headed straight for the infirmary without even stopping for coffee.

  The lights were dimmed for night cycle, but Joey was already there, hunched over Zoe's bedside monitor. Joey looked like he'd aged ten years overnight. He looked pale, with hollow eyes and was moving like someone fighting exhaustion.

  "How is she?" Luca asked quietly. "Have you been up all night?"

  Joey turned, and Luca caught the slight tremor in his hands. "Not good. Her fever spiked to 39.7 degrees around 0300. I've been trying to bring it down, but..." He gestured helplessly at the readouts.

  Luca moved closer to Zoe's bed. Her dark skin had a grayish pallor that made his stomach clench. Sweat beaded on her forehead despite the shivering that wracked her frame. Her lips moved constantly, mumbling incoherent words... fragments of sentences that made no sense, the kind of fevered rambling that came with high temperatures.

  "Delirious?" Luca asked.

  "Started about an hour ago." Joey wiped his face with a shaking hand. "Her brain activity is all over the place. I've never seen patterns like this."

  With his heightened senses, Luca could pick up the irregular flutter of Zoe's heartbeat through the mattress, through her ribs, a chaotic rhythm that made his own chest tighten. Her pulse was racing, skipping beats, fighting against whatever was burning through her system.

  This isn't dehydration. Joey knows it, I know it, we're all just pretending because the alternative is admitting we have no fucking clue what's wrong. And why does Joey look like he's about to collapse? When's the last time our doctor actually slept?

  "Joey," Luca started, but alarms suddenly shrieked through the ship.

  MEDICAL EMERGENCY - GYMNASIUM

  Joey lunged for the wall panel. "Pull up camera feed."

  The screen flickered to life, showing the workout area in harsh emergency lighting. Chris was on the floor, his body convulsing violently. His back arched unnaturally, muscles rigid with spastic contractions. Foam bubbled from his mouth, stained pink with blood. His eyes had rolled back, showing only whites that reflected the strobing alarm lights.

  And standing over him, helpless and terrified, was Ryan, doubled over a blood-soaked towel, barely able to stay upright.

  Blood-soaked. And Chris is seizing like he's been electrocuted. What the hell did we bring back from that planet? And why didn't anyone think to quarantine us properly? We suited up for unloading cargo but spent six hours breathing the same air as Danny's contaminated wounds.

  "Fuck," Joey breathed. "I can't leave Zoe. She's barely stable—"

  "I'll go." Luca was already moving. "Keep her alive."

  "Luca, wait! Chris is having a seizure. Don't try to restrain him, just—"

  The infirmary doors cut off Joey's voice as Luca sprinted through the corridors. The emergency alarms echoing off the walls, that chemical smell still hanging in the air.

  Keep it together. Chris first, then figure out the rest. But what if Joey collapses while I'm gone? What if Zoe's heart gives out? I should have insisted we quarantine after the surgery, and I should have put everyone in isolation the moment we saw chemical burns.

  The gym doors opened to reveal a nightmare.

  Chris's seizure had evolved into something that looked more like a fight with an invisible enemy. His muscled frame jackknifed off the floor, tendons standing out like cables under strain. The foam around his mouth was definitely blood-tinged now, and the sound... the sound was wet, tearing, like something vital was ripping apart inside his throat.

  Ryan knelt beside him, one hand pressed to Chris's shoulder, the other clutching a towel to his mouth. When he looked up at Luca, his face was ghost-white, eyes wide with panic barely held in check.

  "I don't know what to do," Ryan gasped, then doubled over as another coughing fit seized him. The towel came away dark red, and Luca caught the metallic smell of fresh blood mixed with that damned chemical smell that made his enhanced senses recoil.

  "How long has he been seizing?" Luca dropped beside Chris, fighting the urge to grab him as Joey had warned.

  "Maybe a minute? I found him like this when I came for my morning workout." Ryan's voice was getting weaker, more strained. "I tried to call Joey, but then I started—" Another cough, more blood. "Fuck, Luca, what's happening to us?"

  The sound of Ryan's breathing was wrong; each inhale carried a wet, tearing quality that made Luca's skin crawl. Like tissue paper being slowly shredded. The blood on the towel wasn't just droplets; it was substantial, indicating serious internal damage.

  He's drowning. Ryan's drowning in his own blood and trying to hide it from me. My enhanced Perception is picking up every detail of my friends dying and I can't do shit about it. We're supposed to be this hotshot crew, and we can't even figure out what's killing us.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Chris's convulsions began to subside, his rigid muscles slowly relaxing into unconsciousness. The foam around his mouth was still pink, but his breathing was steadying into an exhausted rhythm.

  "I need to get both of you to the infirmary," Luca said, pulling out his comm. "Emily, I need you to bring a medical gurney to the gym. Now."

  Static, then Emily's voice was slurred and strained: "Luca... I can't... my head is splitting and I can't see straight..."

  Through the comm feedback, Luca caught the sound of her pulse spiking, the slight electronic distortion that indicated her heart rate was dangerously elevated. Her breathing was shallow, rapid, panicked.

  Emily never panics. Emily's the one who keeps us all calm when everything goes to shit. If she's down, if our Chief of Staff can't even stand up... Christ, what am I supposed to do? I'm a captain, not a doctor. I don't know how to fix this.

  "Em, talk to me. Where are you?"

  "Engineering. I tried to get up, but everything's spinning and—" The sound of something heavy hitting a bulkhead. "I can't make it."

  "Stay put. I'm coming."

  MEDICAL EMERGENCY - MEDICAL BAY

  The automated alert cut through their comm channel. Joey. Something had happened to Joey.

  Luca stared at Chris's unconscious form, at Ryan swaying on his knees and barely conscious, at his comm unit crackling with Emily's labored breathing. The ship was falling apart around him, his crew collapsing one by one, and he was—

  He was fine. Completely, utterly fine.

  Why am I the only one unaffected?

  The thought hit him like cold water. Everyone else was sick! Zoe delirious with fever, Chris seizing, Ryan coughing blood, Emily incapacitated, Joey collapsed. But Luca felt perfectly normal. His senses were working better than ever, picking up every detail of his crew's suffering with crystalline clarity.

  Everyone but me. Everyone but the fucking captain. Why am I fine when my entire crew is dying? What makes me different? The enhanced Perception isn't protecting me from disease... it's just making me hyper-aware of every way they're falling apart. Unless...

  I've been inoculated before. The memory surfaced unbidden—the mandatory vaccinations before they'd left Earth, the additional boosters for portal exposure, the—

  Wait. The boosters. Did everyone get the same ones? Shit, I can't remember. But if that's it, if that's why I'm still standing... then I'm the only one who's going to stay conscious long enough to figure this out.

  The infirmary alarms were still screaming.

  "Ryan, can you walk?" Luca hauled his friend to his feet, supporting most of his weight.

  "I think so." Ryan's voice was barely a whisper.

  They made it to the infirmary in agonizing minutes, Ryan leaning heavily against Luca's shoulder, blood speckling the deck plates behind them. The doors opened to reveal absolute chaos.

  Joey was crumpled on the floor beside Zoe's bed, his medical scanner still clutched in one hand. His skin had the same grayish pallor as Zoe's, and Luca could see the fever flush burning in his cheeks.

  Chris they managed to get onto one of the empty pods, his unconscious form still twitching with residual seizure activity. Ryan collapsed onto another bed without being asked, oxygen mask descending to cover his blood-stained face.

  Zoe was worse than before, shivering so violently the entire bed frame rattled. Her fevered mumbling had become more urgent, fragments of words that made no sense, as if she was trying to communicate something vital through her delirium.

  Emily stumbled through the doors just as Luca was checking Joey's pulse. His heart was beating fast. She moved like someone navigating in the dark, one hand pressed to her temple, her face twisted in agony.

  "I made it," she said, then immediately slumped into the nearest chair, head in her hands. "God, it feels like someone's driving spikes through my skull."

  Luca stood in the center of the infirmary, surrounded by the wreckage of his crew. Chris unconscious on bed one. Ryan on oxygen, blood soaking into his pillow. Zoe burning with fever, lost in alien delirium. Emily incapacitated by pain. Joey collapsed on the floor where exhaustion and whatever was killing them had finally claimed their doctor.

  This is what leadership looks like when you fuck up. Six people counting on you, and you led them straight into a biological nightmare. Should have quarantined after the surgery, no, during the goddamned surgery. Should have isolated Danny's contaminated wounds. Should have done a hundred things differently.

  But standing here feeling sorry for myself isn't going to save them. If I'm immune, if I'm the only one left functional, then I have to figure this out. The medical scans, the symptoms, the progression, there has to be a pattern. There has to be something I can do besides watch them die.

  And on the main monitor, the alert he'd been trying to ignore all morning continued its relentless warning: CELLULAR RECONSTRUCTION STALLED.

  Six people down. One left standing.

  Why am I the only one still conscious?

  The question echoed in his mind as the infirmary alarms screamed around him, and Luca realized with crystalline clarity that he was completely and utterly screwed.

  The alarms finally fell silent, leaving only the steady beep of monitors and the hiss of oxygen masks. Luca stood in the center of it all, his crew arrayed around him like casualties of a war he didn't understand.

  Think. THINK. What the fuck is going on?

  He moved methodically from medical pod to bed, looking for anything he'd missed. Emily slumped in her chair, face pale as parchment, breathing shallow. Joey on the floor where he'd collapsed, fever flush burning his cheeks. Ryan unconscious behind his oxygen mask, blood still seeping onto the pillow. Chris twitching with residual seizure activity. Danny floating in his pod, the reconstruction process completely stalled.

  And Zoe...

  Luca stopped dead beside her bed. Pixel was curled up against her side, the small creature's iridescent fur shifting colors with each breath. The kitten seemed unaffected, sleeping peacefully despite the chaos around them.

  Black lines spread outward from her nose and mouth. No, wait, not completely black. Green. Deep, forest green tendrils that looked almost organic, spreading across her gray skin like some kind of infection. As he watched, they pulsed slightly, growing longer, branching into smaller veins that traced delicate patterns across her face.

  "What?" he gasped, leaning closer. "What the fuck..."

  The tendrils were raised above her skin, not just discoloration but actual growths. Spidery networks that moved with her pulse, spreading in real time as he watched. They followed the path of her blood vessels, creeping toward her temples, down her neck, disappearing beneath the medical gown.

  Fuck.

  The Vireling.

  The memory hit him like a physical blow, that fucking flying creature that had tried to slice him open back in New Dawn and had infected him. The green spores, the way it had attempted to burrow into his skin. This looked exactly like the early stages of infection, the same organic tendrils trying to spread through a host's circulatory system.

  That's why I'm immune. The Vireling exposure. It had infected me, before Ryan... but the process must have left me with antibodies. Natural immunity.

  His hands shook as he backed away from Zoe's bed, the pieces falling into place with horrifying clarity. They'd brought something back from Midnight Veil. Not chemical contamination, rather, something biological. A variant of the Vireling organism, something that could survive in the ship's atmosphere and spread through airborne contact.

  The petals. Where are those goddamned petals?

  The antidote samples they'd collected in that portal, the organic compounds that had neutralized the Vireling's infection. If he could find them, if they were still viable...

  "Danny?" Luca whispered. "Where did you put them?"