At the end of their lunch break the little group split in two. Alexandr and Admiral Whitsun set off back in the direction of their quarters, while Nina and Professor Matlock prepared to return to the laboratory. As they approached the door one of the PMCs on duty was muttering into his radio headset. He stepped into their path.
"I'm sorry," the PMC said, "but you have to return to your quarters."
"Sorry?" Nina was taken aback.
"Major Alfsson's orders. All of you have to go back to your quarters and remain there until further notice."
"But why? Has something happened? Is everything ok?"
The PMC stared into the middle distance, refusing to make eye contact. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I can't discuss that with you. Please return to your quarters."
Nina gave a sigh of frustration. "Can't we just go and get the notebooks we were working on first? Please?"
"Nina…" Professor Matlock touched Nina lightly on the arm and shook his head. "Come along. We can resume our work later. We might be best not to argue."
Annoyed, unwilling, and full of questions, Nina let herself be led out of the refectory and back up the stairs. Each door they went through fell heavily, permanently shut.
Nina sat on her bunk, kicking her heels. The thought of those notebooks, full of information that she needed, sitting on the workbench doing nobody any good, was driving her mad. She had gone alone to Sam's room earlier and tapped on the door to see if he fancied a smoke, but there had been no reply. Probably still sleeping off the effects of an evening with Alexandr, she thought. She considered the possibility of seeking out the Russian's company, but she was more in the mood for Sam's down-to-earth cynicism than Alexandr's unpredictable flights of fancy and sudden plunges into melancholy.
Approaching Admiral Whitsun for a chat was tempting — she was eager to know more about his father's connections to the ice station, but considering her link to Charles Whitsun it seemed more tactful to leave Matlock to acquire that information. All of which left Nina with no option but her own company. She rummaged in her backpack, pulled out a dog-eared copy of The Turn of the Screw and did her best to settle down and read. She had no idea how long had passed before she heard the tapping on her door. She opened it to find Fatima looking red-eyed and shaky.
"Fatima! What's the matter? Come here." Nina pulled Fatima into the room and into a tight hug. She felt her friend's shoulders shake as she buried her face in Nina's shoulder and sobbed silently. "Sssssh. It's ok. Sssssh now. Come on, tell me what's wrong. I wish I had some tea to offer you."
She led Fatima over to the bunk and made her sit down, then crouched beside her and held her hand while she cried it out. Nina had never seen Fatima in a state like this, not even during the most stressful moments of their finals year.
"Oh god, Nina, it was horrible," Fatima choked the words out through her tears. "That poor kid…"
"What kid?" Nina asked gently. "Do you mean the soldier? Private Hodges? What happened to him?"
"He's sick," Fatima whispered. "Really bad. He's the reason why they needed our help… but Nina, there was nothing we could do. I've never seen anything like it! They've got him in this little room up in the PMC quarters, it's like a padded cell but there's a window, floor to ceiling, completely transparent and… unbreakable, seemingly. Private Hodges kept beating his fists against it, again and again, his hands were a mess of bruises and I think his fingers were broken, they looked like they'd been snapped like twigs. He kept throwing himself against the glass every time we went near it and I could hear the noises, oh god… his bones. They were cracking. I think he fractured his skull, Nina. But he didn't stop.
"His face was covered in blood and he didn't stop! And every time we backed away from the glass he would stop lunging at us and instead he would start noticing the damage and trying to move his fingers or touch his head and he'd scream in pain and then I'd go closer and try to communicate with him and then he'd throw himself at the glass again and… oh, god. Oh god! It's just… he was in so much pain, Nina. I could see it. His face… rage and pain and hate. He's losing so much blood, but we couldn't get near him to help. I couldn't even tell what was him hemorrhaging and what was him bleeding from his injuries." She sobbed again.
"Here," Nina grabbed a bottle of water and handed it to Fatima. "Sip this. Do you know what's wrong with him?"
"Kind of," she said, swallowing a mouthful of the water. "They had taken some blood from him before he got this bad. We took a look at it. It's not really my field, viruses that occur in humans, but I still remember enough. It's definitely some kind of virus, like a mutation of Ebola. I guess it's the thing they were trying to develop here to put on that missile."
A cold thrill of fear shot through Nina's spine. "Does that mean it's going to spread? Ebola's pretty virulent, isn't it?"
Fatima closed her eyes and pressed the heels of her palms into them. "Yes," she said, her voice quiet with despair. "I think it's spreading already. The two soldiers who took the blood sample… they were in the room next door. Same set-up. They're both unconscious, or at least they were when we left. Major Alfsson said that's what happened to Hodges too. He had a violent outburst, then he was out cold for a little while, then when he came to he was… like that."
"Is there a vaccine? Can we do anything about it?"
Fatima's face collapsed into a look of devastation, answering Nina's question. For a long moment neither of them spoke. They clung tightly to each other's hands. "I asked them to let me see if I could find an antidote," Fatima said. "It was a long shot, I know… but I didn't want to just do nothing. He's just a boy! I don't want to leave him to die… But they wouldn't let me back into the labs. They just brought us back up here and said we have to stay here until further notice." She gulped. "Sorry. I'm not dealing with this very well. But if you think this is bad, you should see Jefferson — he's really taking it hard. He went really pale and just kept saying he's got a son about Hodges' age and there had to be something he could do. Alfsson had to physically drag him out of the medical bay in the end."
"Oh, Fatima…" Nina sighed. "This is such a mess. How the hell did we get here?"
"It gets worse," said Fatima, unconsciously twisting her engagement ring around in circles on her finger. "Aren't you wondering why I'm not in quarantine? Because I sure as hell was, until I realized the answer."
Puzzled, Nina waited for Fatima to explain what she meant. Fatima remained silent, angry tears welling up in her eyes. After a long, long silence, she finally spoke. "They think it's airborne." Her voice was flat, all traces of her anger and frustration carefully suppressed. "If they're letting me and Jefferson walk around after being exposed to Private Hodges' blood, it's because they already think it's in the ventilation system. They think that we're already dead."
Nina felt her stomach drop. She had always known that this expedition might be dangerous. While she was preparing she had considered all sorts of possible ways in which it might result in her death. Most had involved plane crashes or freezing to death. She had never considered the possibility of dying trapped underground, having fallen victim to a failed attempt at biological warfare. She pictured life in Edinburgh, strangely normal yet extremely weird without her.
She pictured some other group finding the ice station decades later, stumbling across their skeletons. Has this happened before? she wondered. Those bone fragments that Alexandr found… I thought there must have been an accident. What if there was an outbreak before and they burned the bodies? Then what? The survivors left? They must have, or we'd have found them too… I wonder how far they got. I wonder if they knew. What do you do when you're waiting to die? How does that work? Do we just sit around and wait to see if we're infected? Is it definitely fatal? I'm not just going to take this.