She looked again at the dry-erase board, hoping for inspiration, and found it. In one corner was listed a shift rota for the week ahead. Grau, Kiera, and David’s names were written in different colours. Between the doctor and his two nurses, they assured an almost continual presence in the medical centre, in normal times. Grau was out of it, Kiera was dead, but Janice had completely forgotten about David. She knew he had been taken to deck eight suffering from paralysis not long after Kiera had gone down with the virus. Since then she had heard nothing. If he was still alive, there was a chance he would know where to find the sick list.

Janice shot out of the medical centre and back towards the lift. The ship was deserted. Everyone was either sick or hiding in their cabins, terrified of getting sick. The lift was waiting for her, unused by anyone since herself.

Cabin 845, the centre of operations, was also quiet. Two of the new nurses occupied it, talking in hushed whispers when Janice walked in. They nodded at her, acknowledging her presence.

“I’m looking for David,” she said without introduction. “The nurse, the guy who worked with Kiera.”

“Oh, right, of course. You’ve come to take him away for the post-mortem,” the older of the two nurses said.

“Post-mortem? You mean, he’s….”

“Dead? Yes. Didn’t someone ring down and tell you? He died half an hour ago. He kind of, well, you know. From what I understand he died the same way Scott did.”

Janice felt the last glimmer of hope evaporate. She knew her only chance now was to return to the medical centre and trawl through the hundreds of paper files one by one on the off-chance she would happen across a transplant patient who was on board this particular cruise.

“He’s in cabin 861,” the nurse said kindly. “I’m sorry. Did you know him?”

Janice shook her head, and left without saying another word.

She walked slowly back towards the bank of lifts. The spring in her step had gone. The likelihood of her finding a suitable drug before Jake died was now so slim as to make no difference. She had failed him, and probably many others too. If David had died, that meant tens, probably hundreds of others were on the brink of death too. The nurse had suffered no complications, and he hadn’t been injected with the antiviral. He was potentially the first regular victim of the virus.

Shortly before reaching the lift, she glanced up and saw she wasn’t far from cabin 861. She considered stopping by and seeing the corpse. It probably couldn’t tell her anything new, but her professional curiosity was strong. It would only take a minute to pop in and see how the first patient to die solely from the virus itself had passed away. She counted down the cabin numbers, looking for the right room.

And that’s when it hit her.

“907!” She shouted the number out loud. “It’s a cabin! It’s not a code, it’s a cabin!”

• • •

Deck nine looked an awful lot like deck eight. Some of the accent colours used in the decor of the public areas were different. More yellows and oranges made it seem brighter than the dull shades of brown and beige used on the level below.

The place was just as deserted as the rest of the ship. There were only staterooms up there. Like deck eight, these were accessed by two passageways that ran the entire length of the ship. Most of the inner rooms had balconies overlooking Palm Plaza, the huge open park space that occupied the centre of the Spirit of Arcadia.

Cabin 907 was towards the front, an outer room with a seaward-facing balcony. Janice stood at the door, drew in a deep breath, and knocked.

At first she thought there was nobody inside, or nobody who was in any fit state to come to answer. Then she heard a voice. It sounded like someone grumbling to themselves. The cabin door swung open and she found herself face to face with an elderly gentleman; tall, and with thinning white hair.

“Yes?” he grunted.

“Hi. My name is Doctor Janice Hanson. I think you might possibly be the most important person on board this ship.”

Janice had rarely used her title since she had retired, but she knew from experience that it often helped command respect, or at the very least a level of attention that was more difficult to attain without it.

“Well of course I am,” the man replied. “What of it?”

“Sir, this may sound like a bit of a strange question, but have you recently undergone surgery?”

“Of course I have!”

“Was it transplant surgery?”

The man rolled his eyes and sighed, wheezing slightly as he did so. “Kidney. Didn’t he tell you this already?”

Janice could feel the excitement rising inside of her. She had found her man.

“And you’re taking medication? To stop your body rejecting the new kidney?”

“Hmph,” he grunted. “If you ask me, it’s nothing of the sort. I feel perfectly fine. The kidney was donated by my own son, why would I reject it? You doctors, fill me up with drugs to keep me under control. I know your game.”

“Could I look at them? The drugs, Mr—”

“Sanderson. Tom Sanderson. You can call me Mr Sanderson.” He shuffled off into his cabin. “Well come on then, if you’re coming. And close the door behind you; you’re letting the warm air out.”

Janice didn’t need to be asked twice. She scuttled in after him, following him over to a bedside cabinet. Tom pulled open a drawer to reveal half a dozen little white-and-blue boxes. Janice grabbed one, hardly daring to believe what she was seeing.

“Orthoclone OKT 3. You’re injecting?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! That’s what the doctors are for. Doctor Lister has been administering my injections. Once a day, every day. He’s a good chap. If it wasn’t for him signing me off, they wouldn’t have let me come on the cruise. Promised he’d look after me, he did. Company man, see. Haven’t seen him today. That’s why you’re here though, isn’t it? He sent you, to give me my injection?”

“Mr Sanderson, it will be a pleasure to give you your injection. And then, if you don’t mind, I will take some of your Orthoclone down to the medical centre. You’re about to save a lot of lives!”

• • •

Surgeon Lieutenant Russell Vardy was not prone to panic. His training and experience in the armed forces had prepared him for stressful situations. All of that capacity for remaining calm under pressure was being tested to the limit as he watched Captain Jake Noah writhe and flail on the bed. He hadn’t personally witnessed the last moments of Kiera’s life, but it didn’t take years of medical practice to know that Jake was on the brink of death.

He had done all he reasonably could. From somewhere, one of the remaining nurses had produced a tranquilliser, although it had had little effect. Russell had tried to make his patient comfortable, and now he looked on, utterly helplessly, as Jake’s body destroyed itself, cell by cell.

“Vardy!”

He looked up to see Janice galloping down the corridor. She arrived in the room, breathless and sweating. Unable to speak, she thrust a box into the surprised doctor’s hands.

“Orthoclone? This is powerful stuff, Janice. We wouldn’t use this without a course of glucocorticoids first. The risk of cardiac arrest is too high. A shot of this could kill him.”

Janice, still trying to catch her breath, looked at Jake, then at Vardy. She didn’t need words, and he understood at once that she was right. Without the drug, Jake was as good as dead. There was nothing left to lose.

Vardy sprang into action. The box contained single-use hypodermic needles in sterile packaging, as well as five tiny vials filled with the drug. With steady hands, he prepared a dose.

Jake’s twisting body presented the same problem Kiera’s had, just hours before, but Vardy wasn’t messing around. He grabbed the captain’s neck and with a deft action, pierced the skin and pressed down on the syringe. The clear liquid disappeared into Jake. Vardy extracted the needle, and let out the breath he hadn’t until then realised he was holding.