Ch. 006| The Line in the Log Entry

D+2, 06:42, the Daedalus medical section, P3 nursing station.

Olamide Bashir wasn't wearing an isolation cap. The P3 surface sampling had finished four hours ago, the results came back under the warning line, Janus was holding at amber, and inside the station the nursing staff were cleared to go uncapped. She sat behind the desk with two screens in front of her — on the left, every secondary anomaly from the night shift that hadn't tripped an alert; on the right, the queue of items waiting to go up to the medical chief's morning briefing.

She was getting ready for the 07:00 handoff.

She'd picked up this night shift at hour 18 of D+1 and had been on it twelve hours and forty-two minutes now. Somewhere in the middle she'd eaten a dehydrated protein bar, drunk a cup of hot water, used the bathroom once.

The ceiling was nearly black. At this hour the ship's night cycle ran down to its lowest, and the only light at the station came from the two screens on the desk.

She'd been doing nights for four years. She knew that in light like this, people started to feel things they didn't feel the rest of the time.

She hadn't been paying attention to her breathing.

No. She had.

The pulse and respiration of every medical staffer on duty were fed back to Janus automatically, around the clock, through the sensors in the duty suit. On top of the sensors, every two hours you had to file a manual log entry — the night-shift self-check, mandated under SOP chapter eight, section three. Bashir had never missed one. Her self-checks read normal.

But she remembered the first hour of her shift, when her breathing had dropped briefly to nine a minute and then righted itself ninety seconds later.

The automatic sensor entry she couldn't block — that data went straight to Janus, where it had been parked under the amber line and never escalated to the captain's level. What she could block was the manual one, the night-shift self-check.

That manual entry she hadn't written.

Why she hadn't written it, she couldn't remember.

What she'd been doing during those ninety seconds, she couldn't remember either. All she remembered was sitting alone at the station, her left hand around the cup, looking up at the light in the ceiling.

The light had been the same as always.

She hadn't written the entry then. She hadn't gone back and written it later. She didn't know whether it was because she'd forgotten, or because she'd decided not to report it.

Now she was about to press "end night shift."

Footsteps.

Two people. P3 entry suits, combat boots. From the distance in the sound she could tell they'd already cleared decon at the P2–P3 buffer door, crossed the lounge, and reached her end.

Vale, security officer, captain's rank. Behind him a junior on his team — Park Yu-min, security squad leader, back from the forward module only yesterday.

"Nurse Bashir," Vale said.

"Captain."

"I need to see all of Diaz's medical records from yesterday. Personal portal, every unsent draft, and the handoff logs you keep here at the station."

Bashir pushed her chair back half a step.

"Is something wrong with him?"

"His condition's stable right now," Vale said. "But I need to see every word he wrote."

Bashir nodded.

She keyed Diaz's medical number into the terminal. Three folders came up.

"Public records, signed log entries, and unsigned drafts," she said. "Which does the captain want?"

"All of them."

---

Diaz's public records she'd already read — heart rate up to 142 in the third hour after landing, back down on its own forty seconds later, his own report reading "pressure in the chest, presumed discomfort from the deceleration sequence."

One signed log entry: "Feeling pressure in my chest — like something moving in there."

"The captain's seen this one," Bashir said.

"Yes."

"Then it's the third folder you want."

"Yes."

Bashir opened "unsigned drafts."

Over the past fourteen hours Diaz had opened seven draft entries, written in them, and never hit send. Each one was timestamped.

"Seven?" Vale said.

"Seven," Bashir said.

She didn't ask why these seven mattered so much to Vale. She started reading off the timestamps and word counts.

"D+1, 14:22. Seven words."

"Read it," Vale said.

"'It's bigger today than yesterday.'"

Vale didn't answer.

"D+1, 16:08. Twenty-four words."

"Read it."

"'I counted. It's in the chest cavity, not the abdomen. The position moves up half a centimetre an hour.'"

Vale set the touchpad from his hip down on the desk. "Next one."

"D+1, 18:45. Nineteen words."

"'It's not pressure. It's being pushed out of the space. But I have nowhere to push it to.'"

Park hadn't moved from the doorway.

"D+1, 20:33. Thirty-three words," Bashir said. "'Got my heart rate taken on shift tonight by Nurse Bashir. She didn't ask me where it hurt. I didn't say. She's a good person.'"

Bashir paused a beat.

She read that one a second time, lips not moving, only inside.

"Next," Vale said.

"D+1, 22:14. Eleven words."

"Read it."

"'It has a rhythm.'"

Vale looked up.

Bashir saw his eyes. Normally Vale's eyes had only four settings: listen, look, decide, hold still. This wasn't any of the four.

"Next line," Vale said.

"'I counted,'" Bashir read.

"Last line."

"'Once every seven seconds.'"

No one in the station spoke.

Vale picked the touchpad up, set it down again. He did this twice.

"Next one," Vale said. His voice a notch quieter than the last.

"D+2, 02:11. Twenty-seven words."

"'When Dr. Voss is back I'll go and ask her whether she can—'"

Bashir stopped.

"Where does it break?" Vale asked.

"'—whether she can tell me what this is,'" she finished. "But it wasn't sent."

"Last one."

"D+2, 04:36. Four words."

Vale waited for her to read it.

"'I can hear it,'" Bashir said.

The UV sterilization cycle in the station finished a pass and beeped once.

---

Vale didn't move.

He looked at the seven drafts on the terminal for maybe twenty seconds.

Bashir noticed him do two things. One was that his left index finger tapped the edge of the desk once — just once. In four years on the medical shift she'd learned when officers tapped a desk edge: it was when they'd heard something that shook them.

The other was that his right hand dropped to his hip again, to where the sidearm went — still no weapon there, his fingers resting on the spot.

She didn't ask him why "once every seven seconds" mattered to him. She knew she shouldn't ask.

But she remembered those ninety seconds in the first hour of her shift, the ones she couldn't account for. She remembered counting, earlier, a faint vibration on the inside of her ribs — a vibration that shouldn't have been there.

Once every seven seconds.

She hadn't put it in the record.

She was the same as Diaz.

"Nurse Bashir," Vale said.

"Captain."

"I want these seven copied, encrypted, no log of it," Vale said. "Once they're copied, leave Diaz's draft area alone. Don't touch it."

"Understood."

"After you finish this handoff, don't report any of this."

"Understood."

"Tell me the last time you mentioned these seven drafts to anyone."

"I haven't," Bashir said. "Diaz's draft area defaults to him only. The reason I can see it is that after his routine medical check when the advance team came back yesterday, he attached a supervision flag to our medical team himself. He set it for seventy-two hours and never pulled it."

"Seventy-two hours."

"Yes. Set just before noon yesterday."

"Which means in another fifty-three hours this draft area locks itself back up."

"Yes."

Vale nodded.

"The automatic sensor raw data for your heart rate and respiration on the night shift — hand it to me," Vale said. "The normal data too."

Bashir looked at Vale.

Vale looked at Bashir.

She nodded and sent the full automatic-sensor raw file to Vale's touchpad. She didn't filter it, didn't hold back the entry from the first hour of her shift — respiration at nine, ninety seconds.

Vale finished receiving it and moved the file, encrypted, to Private Bay 14B.

"Where's Diaz now?" Vale asked.

"Off shift, back in his personal quarters resting," Bashir said. "His next duty is hour 14 of D+2."

"Page him. Say it's Dr. Lin doing routine follow-up, and ask him to walk to Isolation Room 3 in the medical section himself — no rush," Vale said. "I'll notify Dr. Lin right away."

"Understood."

"After your handoff, you go to Isolation Room 3 yourself," Vale said. "Dr. Lin will see you."

"Understood."

"Park," Vale said.

Park stepped one pace in from the doorway.

"After she pages Diaz, you wait in the corridor outside his quarters. When Diaz comes out, you walk with him — call it 'escort follow-up,' he won't ask," Vale said. "Bashir, when you leave the station after your handoff, Wu Hui-lan from the medical team will be waiting for you in the P3 corridor and walk you to Isolation Room 3. Park reassigned her; the cover is 'routine head-nurse handover.'"

"Understood."

"I'll put in to Janus for tightened access control on the P3 perimeter for the next six hours, cover reason 'routine decon maintenance.' Between quarters and the isolation room, Janus will track positions for you and Diaz for me. Until I've seen enough, anyone going in or out of Isolation Room 3 clears it with me first."

"Understood."

"Captain," Bashir said.

"Yes?"

"Diaz's line, 'I can hear it' — will you look into that for him too?"

Vale held three beats before he answered.

"I'll look," Vale said. "But I can't promise I can tell you."

"I understand."

Vale and Park went out of the station. The footsteps didn't stop until the P3–P2 buffer door.

---

Bashir stayed alone at the station.

She pressed "end night shift." The system sent her handoff record automatically to the next person on duty — Lin Mei-chen's deputy. She didn't write any log entry.

She sat without moving.

The window of the station looked out on the P3 inner main passage. Someone from the engineering team walked by drinking synthetic juice, waved at her, kept going.

She knew the woman. Konova Mendes, deputy lead of the electromechanical engineering team. She'd gone down to the surface yesterday too — through a different module, not Diaz's.

Konova walked perfectly normally. Drank her juice perfectly normally. Her breathing was fine too — in the second she waved, Bashir counted it automatically.

Bashir waved back.

As she waved, her left index finger pressed lightly against the side of her own ribs — the spot that didn't hurt, didn't swell, didn't ache.

She counted, in her head.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Somewhere inside her ribs, a very faint vibration happened once.

She kept counting.

Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

Again.

She didn't send it to the screen.

The clock at the station ran perfectly normally.

【Ch. 006 End · the Daedalus medical section, P3 nursing station】