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  “No, just take her to medibay!” Hanto shouted at one of the voices and Rosie would have smiled if she could.

  CHAPTER 2

  Pip slammed his fist into the training bag set up in his bedroom near the windows. It shuddered under the impact and he drew back and did it again and again, then delivered a savage round of kicks. Sweat soaked his shirt and ran into his eyes, making them sting. He didn’t care. Rosie had been gone a month and he was no closer to finding her, or getting a cure for the MalX. The scientists here could replicate his blood cells easy enough, but it was the hard to isolate magic property that carried the MalX immunity they were struggling with. The protein, or whatever it was, kept disappearing like sand slipping through his fingers. He punched the bag again. The frustration was hard to fight.

  Outside, a fierce wind bent the trees and blew debris against the pillars of Kev’s house. Inside, the temperature controls were struggling to contain the humidity.

  A storm had ripped through the community overnight, damaging two of the water quality sensors and a lightning strike had hit the house, puncturing the shielding and shorting the AI. Par for the course this time of year. The damage suited his mood. He attacked the bag again, sweat flying, imagining it was Dalton’s face. He still hadn’t forgiven Dalton for waiting a week to tell him he’d known where Rosie had gone, and by that time, it had been too late to track her.

  “You going to go at that all day?” Cassie said.

  Pip paused, chest heaving. He hadn’t heard the door open. “If I feel like it.”

  She came a few steps into the room, arms folded. Her pale blond hair was pulled back from her face and she appeared cool and totally unaffected by the heat. “You’re supposed to be in the lab.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll swing by in a bit.”

  “How about you come now? And stop pretending that bag is Dalton.”

  “Who says I’m not imagining it’s you?” He smashed the bag with another right hook. Cassie was nonplussed.

  “You should be less pissed at me and Dalton, and more angry at Rosie; she’s the one who made us promise not to tell you.”

  “Sounds cosy, the three of you making plans behind my back.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Wasn’t it?” Pip stopped pummelling the bag and faced her. His muscles trembled from the workout and he ripped off the thin impact gloves with difficulty and threw them on the floor at Cassie’s feet. “What was it like then, Cass? ’Cos that’s how it feels. The two of you let her go running into the arms of the people who will probably kill her without so much as an argument.” He stalked past her to the water dispenser, pouring himself a glass and taking large gulps, heedless of the way it made his guts cramp.

  “And I suppose you would have talked her out of it,” Cassie said.

  “Goddamn right, I would.”

  “Which was exactly the reason she didn’t tell you. She wanted to go, and maybe, just maybe it was a good idea.”

  He slammed the glass down and spun to face her. “Good for who exactly? You and your brother’s cause?”

  Cassie’s expression closed up. “I thought it was your cause too. Besides, she needed to go; it’s important.”

  “Needed to? What does that mean?”

  Cassie suddenly seemed less cool and controlled. She flicked her head so her ponytail swung. “Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything, except that she had a bargaining chip, the only bargaining chip, and she used it, that’s all.” She picked up his gloves, avoiding his eyes and threw them in the clothes hatch, slamming the chute closed. “Getting into Helios is our chance to find out what they’re up to, to bring them down from the inside and Rosie knew it. That’s why she went. Riley probably would’ve thought it was a great idea.”

  Suspicion pricked at Pip. Cassie was acting weird. Why did he get the feeling she wasn’t telling him something? “So, you think Riley–”

  “Christ, enough, Pip!” She raised her voice, hands on her hips. “She’s gone, deal with it. Now are you coming to the lab, because we’ve got some results through on the latest volunteer to go over.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be here, would I? The tech head won’t show me without you there, so are you coming?”

  “In a minute. I’ve gotta change.” He turned his back on her and pulled off his shirt, taking it to the clothes chute and using it to wipe the sweat off his chest. She was still there. “Going to watch, are you?”

  She blinked like he’d caught her out. Her lips thinned. “Don’t flatter yourself.” She left, slamming the door behind her.

  Pip arrived at the medicentre ten minutes later, breathing hard. He’d had to sprint the whole way. A sudden rainstorm had come down as soon as he left the house, like it was waiting for him. The water was bad though, a front blown down from the southern Asiatic States full of residues. It would take a month for the filters to clean it. It tasted of bitter chemicals where it hit his lips and he spent a good few minutes spitting and washing his face and mouth with cleanser. He’d forgotten that happened this time of year and Kev’s wife, Lakisha, gave him an earful of why he should remember to wear protection.

  “The coats are in the house, Pip, right by the door,” Lakisha said. “It’s not hard to remember. Do it again and I’ll make you stand out in it for a full five minutes. Even my kids aren’t that stupid.”

  “I’m showing them what not to do,” Pip said.

  “Always with the smart mouth.” She tossed the cleanser back in the drawer.

  There was no animosity in her tone though. Lakisha was a tiny woman, barely reaching Pip’s armpit, but she was head doctor of the medicentre and few argued with her. Her dark-eyed stare could reduce most to mumbling children and she pushed Pip away from her desk and across the open floor towards the laboratories. “Hurry up then, they’ve been waiting for you.”

  The medicentre was busy this morning with people who’d been caught out in the storm the night before. Pip followed Lakisha between the hurrying staff members and wandering patients to a code-locked set of doors that led through to the labs.

  Beyond the soundproof doors it was suddenly very quiet and cool. The wide corridor took them past plasglass-walled labs where members of Lakisha’s staff worked on various projects ranging from outer planet vaccination to health contracts for the global government, the United Earth Commission. Gondwana Nation’s medical expertise was second only to Helios in its efficacy, and Lakisha’s centre was one of the larger complexes in Nation.

  “That woman Sulawayo sent has been nothing but trouble since she arrived,” Lakisha said to Pip as they walked. “If it wasn’t for the tech she brought, I would have kicked her sorry arse out weeks ago. Today, she’s been complaining about the rain. Like she knows what it is, bet she never sees much of it down south.”

  “Well, she is a kind of Helios agent,” Pip said. Lakisha scowled. He knew how she felt. The woman she was referring to was the Helios rebel, Raina Pont, a medical expert Sulawayo had sent up with the equipment that was supposed to help them make a MalX vaccine – part of the deal Rosie had made. Rosie had come up with it when Pip had been captured by Sulawayo’s rebels at the secret Helios base here in Gondwana. He still blamed himself for that, should have been more careful, but Sulawayo’s crew had surprised them. They’d turned up just when he thought they’d sorted out stopping the whole Equinox Gate project, and things had got messy. Sulawayo’s lot had got him, and Rosie had offered herself up to save him. An exchange. His freedom and the tech to cure the MalX for the gate plans on her implant and her joining the rebels. But Cassie had blown the bombs they’d set around the gate and they’d got away before the deal could go through. At least that was what he’d thought, until Rosie had gone and honoured the deal later anyway.

  If only he hadn’t been captured. Guilt and bitterness rose like bile in his throat. Didn’t mean he had to accept things though, did it? The one time he’d seen Sulawayo since, he’d tried to argue with her against
sending someone up with the tech, but she would only send them together. He hated how they needed it. The only leeway they’d got was that Pont was under twenty-four hour guard by a Yalgu Warrior. Only one, but that was enough. One warrior was like five Helios grunts. And the woman, Pont, was scared of hers. With good reason. The Yalgu were Gondwana Nation’s army of sorts. Men who lived by their own code, dangerous but tied to protecting the Nation in a way that was as spiritual as it was physical.

  He followed Lakisha around a corner and down another corridor and through a final set of coded doors into the oversize lab they’d been using for the MalX tests.

  It was a huge long room, part of it sectioned into windowed quarantine cubicles for the volunteers who wanted to be part of their program, and another wall of it taken up with lab stations and equipment. A staff of four worked it, including Cassie and Lakisha and two assistants. And him, he supposed, if he could be considered an expert.

  “You took your time.” Cassie was seated at a flat holo display, frowning at whatever it was showing her.

  “Rainstorm,” Lakisha said shortly. “He needed seeing to.” She and Cassie exchanged a look, and Pip’s shoulders tightened, but neither of them said anything.

  Raina Pont was sitting next to Cassie, swiping her fingers on the holo display, working the machine. Thin, and in her thirties she radiated efficiency with her glossy short dark hair and a perpetual line between her brows. A few metres behind her, standing preternaturally still was her Yalgu guard, Budjardin. Wiry of build and dressed in the rough brown pants and loose shirt favoured by the warriors, he appeared to be gazing with stoic boredom at something in the air beyond Pip’s head. But Pip was sure one suspicious move by Pont would result in her being swiftly detained and most likely unconscious. Budjardin carried only a sheathed knife at his belt, no gun, but then he didn’t need one.

  Pip had seen Yalgu Warriors move faster than should be possible, faster than any grunt on enhancers, that was for sure. Despite their status within Gondwana as protectors and security, no one was particularly comfortable around them and no one controlled them. They lived on the spiritual fringes of the lands, coming and going like ghosts when needed. The Yalgu and their ability to make people disappear had been the basis of the night-time horror stories he’d heard in the dorms of the Helios Enclave on Mars. Now they were his allies. Funny how life turned out.

  “We have made some progress this time,” Raina Pont said, pausing in her work. “Your latest volunteer showed some signs of a surge in immunity for a while.”

  “A while?” Pip went to join her at the display and she swiped at the holo, bringing the results up in a shimmer of three dimensions to hover in his line of sight.

  “You see here?” She pointed at a row of equations and results that Pip didn’t understand. “His immune count is high, and it stayed that way for nine hours.”

  “That’s better than last time,” Lakisha said.

  “But it didn’t last.” Cassie placed a finger into the holo lights, pushing the first lot of results over, so the next group spiralled up. “See, it dropped down again forty minutes ago.”

  The spark of hope inside Pip faded. “So, basically, he’s dying again.”

  “Unfortunately, yes. Patient thirty-four is another terminal result.” Raina sounded like she was talking about a plant, not a person.

  Pip’s jaw clenched. “His name is Ayo.” He headed for the quarantine cubicles on the other side of the lab.

  “Pip …” Cassie began, but he ignored her. He stopped to stare through one of the plasglass partitions at Ayo. Ayo was a Feral volunteer and he’d only brought him up from Newperth a week ago. The man was not even thirty. Too young to die. He had a girl down south, waiting for him, hoping to see him again. Ayo lay on the wide bed, eyes closed, his partly emaciated body covered in swirls of red rash. Next to him, a monitoring machine kept track of his vitals. One of the young lab assistants, Henry, was in there, reading to him, dressed from head to toe in protective shielding. Henry sensed Pip at the glass. He must have seen something in his eyes, because he powered down the book and jerked his chin at him in acknowledgement and left the cubicle.

  “Get me a transfuser,” Pip said, without turning around.

  “You gave over half a litre yesterday to send south,” Cassie protested, “and you’ve been on that stupid bag this morning. You’re too dehydrated.”

  “Then hydrate me and get me a transfuser.”

  “It doesn’t sound sensible,” Raina said.

  “Who asked you?” Pip shot her a look that shut her up, but Cassie wasn’t about to back down.

  “Seriously, Pip, don’t be so stupid. You’ll run yourself dry and we need your blood for more tests. You can’t save them all, not like this, you–”

  “Cassie,” Lakisha interrupted, “get what he needs.”

  “I–”

  “Now,” Lakisha said. “The rehydrators are in the store cupboard with the steriles.”

  “I know where they are.” Cassie shoved her chair back and went to a set of cupboards against the wall. She approached Pip with a self injector and transfuser. “Push up your sleeve.” Her face was hard as Pip offered his left shoulder. She deftly swabbed it then pressed the injector against his skin sending the rehydration fluid into his veins. “Give it a minute before you use this.” She slapped the transfuser into his palm.

  “Would you rather see him die?” Pip said.

  “How can you ask that? It’s just …” She shook her head. “This is not the way to save everyone, you can’t spread your blood across the whole planet.”

  “Watch me.” He went into the quarantine room and waited in the space between the two doors for the air to purify before he went to Ayo’s bedside. No shielding necessary for him, the immunity man, he thought sourly.

  He sat in the chair Henry had been in and took a minute to set up the transfuser, taking Ayo’s hot fragile arm and gently inserting the needle before attaching the other end to his own. Then he watched as the bright healthy red of his blood carrying the MalX immunity slipped from his veins to the other man’s. He thought of Rosie as he did it. How he had healed her in the same way, and her dad and aunt. She would never have said a word against him doing it, not like Cassie. But she wasn’t here, was she?

  He closed his eyes and leaned back, head spinning. He hadn’t waited long enough for the rehydrator to kick in, but he couldn’t seem to care because that hollow feeling had come back. It hit him like this sometimes, out of nowhere like a punch to the gut. Rosie had left, telling Cassie and Dalton but without a word to him. It was a fact and it hurt too much. It made a hole in his world that wouldn’t fill, no matter how many lives he saved. If anything, he had to find her, and get her back, if only for her to tell him why. He’d be okay with it, whatever her reason. Maybe. It was the not knowing that was the killer.

  Later, well after dark, he sought out Budjardin standing guard outside Pont’s villa. He’d already left a note for Cassie. She’d be pissed, but with the failure of the last vaccine testing he had no choice. Besides, it gave him an excuse for his other priority.

  Budjardin nodded at him as he approached. A short tilt of the head. “You looking for Inja?”

  “Yeah. He be here soon?”

  The warrior glanced up at the cloud dark night sky. “’Bout ten minutes, I reckon. I called him soon as I saw you cure that fella. Figured on your course.”

  They waited together in silence and soon a shuffle of fallen leaves signalled Inja’s arrival. He came out of the darkness like he was part of it.

  “Another trip then?” Inja said. He was shorter than Budjardin, shorter than Pip, but stocky. His dark curls were pulled back by a sliver of copper wire and a tattoo marked his neck down one side. He carried a pack over one shoulder and Pip glimpsed the butt of a pulse pistol under his storm coat.

  “Gun’s for you, if you want it,” Inja said as he handed Pip a coat.

  “Might do. The bikes ready?”

  “Parked out
back.” Inja pointed with his chin behind him. “Got a jumper ready to get to the border, fit the bikes as well.”

  Pip slipped on the coat as the warriors said something to each other in their language. Then they were off, Pip following Inja into the dark. This wasn’t the first time the Yalgu Warrior had agreed to go with him. For reasons of their own the Yalgu had taken to him, a handy fact Pip didn’t question, but one for which he was grateful. The protection of a Yalgu was a valuable thing considering who were hunting him, and it had paid him back many times already on the two previous trips he’d made. Without Inja he probably wouldn’t be as free as he was. And with his help, with any luck, they should be in Newperth this time tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 3

  The slow beep of the medibot tracking her vital signs irritated Rosie’s throbbing head, but she kept feigning sleep and listened to the doctor moving around the room. She’d been too distracted by pain to observe properly where in the Enclave the medibay was, but she thought they’d taken her in through the cafeteria and through a door that led to a complex of rooms. She was guessing she might be in the operatives’ wing.

  Rosie squinted through her lashes at her surroundings. She was on a bed set back against a wall, one in a line of four, the others all empty. A doctor was working on something at a bench across the room. On either side of him was all manner of equipment: medibots, surgical robots, trolleys stacked with a variety of tech and, in the centre of the room, several medical machines were suspended from the ceiling. Rosie couldn’t discern their use. The back wall on her right was entirely taken up by an enormous holo screen with a podium of a bio integrator nearby. It was a lot like the machine Cassie had used on her in Gondwana Nation to access her implant. Only this machine was larger and clearly more advanced. It had a flat bed under it, like an operating table, and the suspended orb that hung over the bed glowed a pale blue. Swirls of lights glinted inside it. Could that be what she needed for the implant?