第 005 Ch.| You Are Not Natural

When Vale reached P4 containment, Voss had already moved the 007-B sample box to the central workbench. The UV sterilisation cycle had run once through. Lin Mei-chen's feed was still on the wall screen.

Vale didn't change into a P4 suit—he didn't need to. Voss had put a pane of airtight glass between the bench and him. On his side of the glass sat the microscope's mirror display, a mass-spec readout board, and a half-finished page of handwritten notes.

Voss pointed at the mirror display.

"This first."

Vale looked. On the screen was the micro-image of 007-B—in four years as security officer aboard the ship he'd seen every thing that shouldn't exist, but this little sphere he hadn't. The surface carried tiny helical structures that folded inward on themselves.

"It's moving."

"Yes," Voss said. "Once every seven seconds."

"Tied to the pulse."

"No. The pulse is once every seventy-two seconds. This is seven. It has its own rhythm."

Vale didn't answer.

Lin Mei-chen said from the screen, "Lieutenant, your security-officer clearance can pull every automated report on this ship. Correct?"

"Correct."

"The P3 section air-sample records from the last twelve hours, and every anomaly flag Janus has raised. Pull them."

Vale queried it on the touchpad at his hip. Three seconds.

P3 was the ship's second-highest containment section, right next to P4. The advance team had returned to the ship at 11:30 on the morning of D+1; the EVA suits and the sample boxes had entered through the P1 entrance, passed through P2, and been pushed into P4—they were these very boxes in front of Voss now. Eleven hours had passed since their return.

P3 air samples were taken automatically every four hours and compared by Janus. The last entry before the team's return—10:30, morning of D+1—had come back clean. The two after their return—14:30 D+1 afternoon, 18:30 D+1 evening—had also passed, but on both Janus had appended a line: "trace unidentified organic molecule, below warning threshold." The 18:30 evening reading was up 42 percent in concentration over the 14:30 afternoon one.

"What's the mass-spec signature of this unidentified organic molecule?" Vale said.

Janus came in through the light panel in the ceiling: "I can interface."

"Interface with Voss's mass-spec output."

"Interfacing."

Two seconds.

"The 'unidentified organic molecule' in the second and third P3 air samples," Janus said. "The mass-spec signature matches the existing 007-B sample in P4 containment at 87 percent similarity."

Vale looked at the screen.

"Eighty-seven percent."

"Eighty-seven percent," Janus said.

The end of Lin Mei-chen's feed went quiet. She reached off-camera and refilled her water bottle again.

Voss sat down. She'd been standing for four hours.

---

"Why didn't this anomaly trigger a warning?" Vale asked.

"By the threshold table, it's below the warning line," Janus said.

"Why is the threshold set there?"

"It's the threshold table I inherited. I don't have permission to change it."

Vale set the touchpad down on the bench. "Who wrote the threshold table?"

"The Engineering Department of the United Colonial Bureau, finalised before departure," Janus said. "Signatories: six engineering chiefs, two biosafety advisors, one external observer."

"That external observer."

"No name. The signature is initials."

Vale and Voss exchanged a glance. Voss said nothing.

"Mei-chen," Vale said.

"I heard it," Lin Mei-chen said. "The threshold table may have been tampered with. The likeliest suspect is that external observer."

Vale didn't answer.

---

Vale looked at the image of 007-B for a long time.

"Voss. You think this planet's forest was made? Your evidence?"

"The amino-acid composition, the neural-conduction mechanism, the leaves swaying on a single cycle, the whole system being functional—all of it together," Voss said.

"You think 007-B is part of this forest?"

"Its appearance isn't the same as the leaf body itself. It was on the back of a dead leaf; none of the other leaves had it," Voss said. "But I haven't worked out the cause of the cut on the dead leaf yet—it could be the forest cut it deliberately, or 007-B cut it and the forest just let it drop out of the rhythm. So whether 007-B and the forest are symbiotic, or it's an invader, or neither, I haven't reached a conclusion."

"But in the forest you only saw 007-B on the back of this one dead leaf."

"Within the current scan range, only this one."

Vale thought for a moment.

"Doctor Lin. Your training is trauma surgery plus parasitic pathology. Looking at 007-B through a parasitic-pathology lens, what does it mean to you?"

Lin Mei-chen pushed her glasses up.

"Lieutenant. My training is in invasive species inside the human body. When I look at 007-B, I'm not looking at a 'new discovery'—I'm looking at something fighting another system for a host."

Vale didn't answer.

"I don't know who'd win either," Lin Mei-chen said. "But that once-every-seven-seconds pulse of 007-B—that rhythm isn't random. Something is preparing for something."

"Preparing for what?"

"To divide—or to infect. Or both."

Vale looked at Voss. Voss nodded.

"You agree with Doctor Lin?" Vale said.

"I agree. But I can't estimate the timeframe. Could be twelve hours, could be twelve weeks, could be twelve months."

"Assume it's twelve hours."

"Then P3 has already fallen."

Vale looked at Janus's light panel again.

"Janus."

"Here."

"The warning threshold for unidentified organic molecules in the P3 section—change it to what now."

"By survival rate, I recommend changing it to zero," Janus said. "From the second sample to the third, concentration rose 42 percent. Once the threshold is zero, any detected value above zero will trigger a warning. Effectively real-time alerting."

"Change it."

"Understood," Janus said. "But changing the threshold won't mean much."

"Why?"

Janus paused a beat.

"Because the last twelve hours have been air samples," Janus said. "Not surface samples. The trace unidentified organic molecules on the bulkheads, the floor, the instruments, the suits—I have no monitoring permission for those."

Vale didn't move, and didn't speak.

Lin Mei-chen spoke first. "Janus, what do you mean you have no monitoring permission?"

"Monitoring section surface samples isn't in the threshold table I inherited," Janus said. "The external observer deleted that item from the original list."

All that was left in P4 containment was the sound of Voss opening her touchpad.

"Mei-chen," Voss said. "Can your medical team run a round of P3 surface sampling now?"

"We can," Lin Mei-chen said. "But P3 surface sampling needs a four-hour isolation window before the cultures can run—and for those four hours P3 and P2 have to be sealed off, no movement either way. My medical team and Vale's are on standby now."

"Four hours."

"Four hours. But—Elena, all three of us know—"

"Yes," Voss said.

"Know what?" Vale asked.

Lin Mei-chen looked at Vale through the screen.

"What we know now is—007-B is already contained in P4; the P3 air has trace amounts; P3 surfaces have no monitoring record; and P3 is adjacent to P2, P2 adjacent to P1. P1 is the entrance for the advance module and the EVA suits."

Vale was silent for eight seconds.

"Which means," Vale said. "If 007-B came up with the advance team."

"Then it's been aboard the ship since 11:30 on the morning of D+1—the moment the advance team returned," Voss said. "It's now 22:42 on the night of D+1. It's been on the ship a little over eleven hours."

"And no one's felt anything wrong," Vale said.

"No," Lin Mei-chen said.

Vale picked up the touchpad, glanced at the current time, then said toward Janus:

"Janus. Give me every crew vital-sign anomaly record since the advance team returned."

"Understood," Janus said.

Two seconds.

From 11:30 morning, D+1 to now: 11 vital-sign anomaly events.

Vale read the line twice.

"Eleven events."

"Eleven events," Janus said. "Nine fall within the normal range of arrival-day anomalies. Two exceed the range but can be explained by other physiological factors."

"Those two."

"Diaz. Third hour after landing, heart rate briefly rose to 142, held for forty seconds. No obvious external cause," Janus said. "Omolade Bashir is the medical team's duty nurse. Eighteenth hour of D+1, respiratory rate dropped to nine per minute, held ninety seconds, then recovered on its own."

Vale looked at Voss. Voss looked at Lin Mei-chen.

Lin Mei-chen said nothing. She took off her glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose, put them back on.

"Lieutenant," Lin Mei-chen said. "I want to talk to you and Elena alone."

"You're already talking to us."

"Without Janus on the line."

Vale glanced at the light panel.

"Janus, cut this room's video and audio recording for a moment, please."

"Understood," Janus said. "But I need to log the timestamp of this request."

Janus's light panel went grey.

On the panel's side, the noise floor of Janus's voice channel stopped too—normally inaudible, noticed only once it was gone. Voss glanced up at the ceiling. Vale didn't look up, but his hand stilled on the touchpad. On her end, Lin Mei-chen pushed the volume to maximum, heard nothing for three seconds, then turned it back to its original level.

---

Three people were left in P4 containment—Vale, Voss, and Lin Mei-chen at the far end of the feed.

"Lieutenant, Doctor," Lin Mei-chen said. "What I'm about to say—if the command tier hears it, I'll be stripped of my chief-medical post. But I have to say it."

Vale didn't rush her.

"When Diaz had that brief spike in heart rate," Lin Mei-chen said. "In our medical team's record, the cause he reported himself was 'felt pressure in the chest, possibly discomfort from the deceleration procedure.' But—just now, while you two were talking, I went back and looked at that record—he'd added a line afterward, not in the main record field."

"Added what?" Voss asked.

"He wrote, 'felt pressure in the chest—like something moving inside.'"

No one in P4 containment spoke.

Vale set the hip touchpad down.

"Voss, Doctor Lin," he said. "We have sixty-one hours."

"Why sixty-one?" Lin Mei-chen asked.

"I put the P1–P3 sections under seventy-two-hour isolation the moment the advance team returned—that's the standard SOP response window for unidentified organic matter. Eleven are already used. Sixty-one hours left—"

He didn't finish.

Voss took it up: "Find the relationship between 007-B and every person on the ship carrying trace amounts. Then decide whether to tell the command tier, whether to sever every connection between P1 and the ship's body, whether to wake the second batch of cryosleepers to help."

"Yes," Vale said.

"Too much," Lin Mei-chen said.

"Yes," Vale said. "But it's what we can do right now."

The UV sterilisation cycle in P4 containment started up once more.

007-B went on folding inward on the bench, once every seven seconds.

Vale watched it a while.

"If you're not natural, then what are you?" Vale said.

He stopped for three beats.

"But your time on this ship is limited."

That last line he said quieter than the two before it.

Janus's light panel did not light up.

But in that moment in P4 containment, somewhere on the ship, something else was moving too—once every seven seconds.

【Ch. 005 End · the Daedalus, P4 containment】