“Do you know how long before we’ll know?” Janice said, wheezing.

“No idea. I suggest you stay with him. I’m going to get a dose of this into Miss Levin. And then I need to get the machine configured to make more of this stuff. Where did you find it?”

“Long story. But there’s more. Enough to treat another twenty of the most urgent cases while we wait for your machine to do its thing.”

Twenty-Nine

JAKE’S HEAD FELT like it had been removed from his shoulders, spun at high speed in a liquidiser, then poured down his own neck. He liked the feeling; it meant he was probably alive.

He was vaguely aware of sound. The sound had structure. His brain made an attempt to decode it, make sense of it. It was hard work. As much effort went into focussing and directing his attention as went into the actual processing of the noise.

Eventually something clicked into place. It was voices. The sound he could hear was voices. He knew how to understand voices, he just had to remember. The knowledge was scattered among neurones that seemed to have become disconnected. The effort required to forge new pathways between them was too great. His thoughts spun, and everything faded away.

The next time he became self-aware, the pain was no longer restricted to his head. His whole body felt as if it was on fire. He liked this feeling even more, because it meant he probably still had a body. He had the impression that time had passed. During that period, his neurones must have got together to form some kind of order because now he could think a little more clearly. When someone next to him spoke, he could discriminate individual words, although deriving any kind of meaning from them was still beyond his capacity. It wasn’t long before the strain of trying once again overloaded his exhausted mind, and the world he was briefly aware of faded away a second time.

The third time Jake came round, the pain was agonising. He didn’t like it any more, and it made him grunt and moan.

“He’s awake! Did you hear that? He made a noise!”

The words ricocheted around inside his head. He didn’t hear them clearly; they were accompanied by the kind of white noise he associated with a badly tuned radio station, or a poorly maintained ship-to-shore radio.

Ship-to-shore. The thought sparked something inside him. He was on a ship. His ship.

That single observation was a key. It unlocked a flood of memories from childhood through to the moment he had found Russell, Janice, and Mandy working in their deck two laboratory. A tsunami of memories so potent that it threatened to overwhelm him yet again. But the world didn’t fade away. The agony was too intense. The waves of pain pulsing through every molecule of his wretched body meant there was to be no further respite in unconsciousness.

“Jake, can you hear me? It’s Janice. You’re in the medical centre.”

He wanted to respond, to make her understand that yes, he could hear her. He wanted her to know he was in terrible pain. If only he could make some part of his body bend to his will, she would understand and would help him.

He fixed his attention on his eyes, pouring every ounce of effort he could muster into opening them. Surely, he thought, the physical effort of opening an eyelid was far less than any other bodily movement he could attempt? It might have worked, had he been able to gather a minimum level of concentration, but his body had other ideas. The constant stabbing, burning, piercing pain battered its way into his thoughts, leaving no room to mount a positive action.

The frustration he felt caused another grunt, an involuntary reflex that forced air through his windpipe.

“You were right! I heard that! He definitely made a noise. I think we should up the dosage of the tranquilliser.”

“Agreed.”

There were more words, technical words, but he didn’t hear them because mercifully, the pain had started to abate. And with it, his grip on reality.

• • •

He forced open his eyes.

“Jake?”

He blinked.

“Hey, how are you feeling?”

It was a fair question, and he hadn’t yet assessed himself adequately to give any kind of answer. He remembered waking up before, and the pain that went with that. Time must had passed since then; how much he had no idea. Now, his whole body ached as if he’d just swum the English Channel with a life raft tied to his waist. It was a strange thought, because he seemed to remember that he had been swimming with a life raft.

“Lu…” He tried to speak and found that it was more difficult than he recalled.

“Lucya is going to be okay. She’s on the same medication as you. She hit her head, but it wasn’t serious.”

His eyes were slowly adjusting to the light. He could see a figure standing over him. Two figures. Vardy, and Janice. They were both here. Why were they here? Shouldn’t they be helping the people with the virus?

“Vi…rus,” he managed.

“There’s a cure, Jake,” Janice said. “Sort of. It’s not perfect, far from it in fact. But it will get the job done. We’ve been testing your blood for the last two days. The virus is inactive, and the mutated antiviral too. Your body is flushing them out. Another week and they’ll be entirely gone.”

“Others?”

“Yes, we’re treating the others too. Thanks to the machines you found on the base, Russell has been able to synthesise more drugs in much greater quantities. It’s going to take a long time, but we are going to beat this virus.”

Jake grunted. He had a thousand questions, but now wasn’t the time. All he really wanted to do was sleep.

Thirty

JAKE HADN’T MOVED for hours. He knew he should try and walk; the doctors had insisted it would help. Getting his blood moving would help flush the virus out of his system, and it would also help rebuild the muscle tissue he had lost when the infection had swarmed through his body, boosted by the well-intentioned but ultimately deadly antiviral. But he didn’t want to move. He wanted to remain exactly where he was, sitting right next to Lucya.

He had been sitting there most of the day every day since he could get out of bed. It had been eight days since Janice had found the miracle drug, the drug that had been under their noses the whole time. His recovery had been remarkably rapid, but he knew it would be a long road back to full health.

Besides, he was lucky: he had survived. Maryse, Scott, Kiera, and David had all lost their lives to the dreadful virus, as had seven others whose names he hadn’t known. At least five more patients, including Grau Lister, were still in a critical condition. The effects of the virus were so far advanced, so much damage had been done to their internal organs, that it was far from certain that they would ever recover.

Lucya had also been lucky, at least as far as her injection of antiviral was concerned. The dose she had self-administered had been very small, and therefore had done little to reinforce the virus already present in her bloodstream. Ironically, her collapse and subsequent lack of consciousness had helped her. Without any physical exertion causing her heart rate to increase, and in turn pump the antiviral around her body more quickly, it had remained confined. The immunosuppressives had done their job, shutting down the T cells so vital to the survival of the invader, leaving it to flounder and die. They had done nothing to bring her back to consciousness though. In fact it seemed they had plunged her into a coma, which was one of the side effects that Vardy had warned of.

Jake had maintained his vigil by her bedside, keeping an eye on the monitoring equipment that Ewan and his colleagues had salvaged from the second lab in the base.