Chapter 8
KIT
LUMARIA
The past two weeks have been a blur. Kit is unsure what day it is or what time it is.
Every waking moment has been spent either tending to sick patients or hunkering down in her lab, examining new samples under the electron scope for red blood cell abnormalities and unusual protein aggregations.
She’s trying to piece together the constituent parts of the Fever so they can better understand why traditional treatment options aren’t working.
She’s also trying to understand why two of her patients have made a full recovery, while others have continued to worsen, despite being given the same treatment. Nevis thinks Kit has something to do with it, but Kit remains skeptical.
Finally, she’s attempting to understand what it is about the pink salt that has neutralized the virus for a period. It hasn’t cured it entirely, but it seems to halt its progress temporarily.
She’s in her lab now, bent over her scope as she looks at the blood sample she just added to a slide. It’s a rare moment of quiet, and she cherishes the temporary peace.
Earlier, she’d had the unfortunate luck of running into Major Canmore in the ambassador’s room. He’d watched her from his perch on the wall, arms folded across his chest, right leg crossed casually over the left.
He made her uneasy, so much so that she’d dropped the vial of Brontium she was carrying, shattering it to pieces on the floor beneath her.
He’d made no move to help her as she bent down to clean it up, instead giving her a wide berth as she picked up glass shards from the floor, asking her if she was really the best Luminary they had.
Rage coils in her stomach as she recalls him sneering at her, questioning her abilities. It was his fault. If he wasn’t loitering, staring at her in that unnerving way, she would be able to do her job just fine.
She refocuses on the scope in front of her. She’s only just magnified the specimen when she hears the door slide open behind her, spitting Luminary Ellsworth into the room.
Her hair is a bit wild and her jaw set. “We’re evacuating.”
Kit gasps, shocked, dropping the syringe she’s holding. “What do you mean?”
“The minister has ordered it.”
“They’ve never evacuated before,” Kit says, reaching down to pick it up, trying to remain calm.
“It’s never been like this,” Luminary Ellsworth explains, pushing her hands through her hair.
She’s not wrong. Over the last week, over ten thousand people have succumbed to the illness.
Over the last several hours, over five hundred patients have come in, and it’s clear the infection is spreading at an exponential rate.
The Aclesius Center can’t keep up. They’re doing everything they can, and it’s not enough.
The hospital is at 80% capacity, and every Luminary is tending to at least ten patients, double the normal ratio.
They’ve had bouts of illness before, of course, but there has always been a cure or an antidote.
Part of Kit feels that if they had more time, if they weren’t overextended trying to care for the infected, they would be able to find one.
Almost every single Luminary across Lumaria has been called to duty; those that usually conduct research are fighting on the front lines.
Kit has seen new faces in the Center these last weeks, but has barely had time to make their acquaintance beyond asking them for a pair of scissors, to start a new line, find a different vein, grab the Restart.
More people have coded than Kit has ever seen, and it’s all she can do to keep the loss sealed away, packed into a cardboard box and shoved onto a shelf in the deepest recesses of her mind.
She’s meant to help people, make them better, but over the last few weeks, she’s essentially just given them a dignified death.
“You’re to go to Port Ro, where one of the ships to Nexarium will be waiting.”
Kit doesn’t want to ask, scared of the answer, but forces the question out. “How many ships are there?”
“Ten,” Luminary Ellsworth says, “with four hundred each on board.”
“Only ten?” Kit is shocked, and quickly tries to do the math. Four thousand people. Only four thousand will get off this planet.
She nods once. “The rest will stay.”
“And die?” Kit nearly shouts.
“We’ll work to find an antidote.”
“There will be no time to find an antidote if you are simply trying to stop the infection from spreading!” Kit pauses, considering her words from a moment ago. “What do you mean we’ll?”
“I won’t be going,” Luminary Ellsworth says, crossing her arms over her chest.
“What do you mean?” Kit asks, trying to remain calm, but feeling anxiety build inside of her.
“I’m to stay here, with the patients and several other Luminaries. Continue the research to find a cure. Use the patients we have to continue our tests.”
“Then I’m not going either,” Kit says. She can’t believe the minister has ordered her to be packed away on some ship to Nexarium instead of staying here, where she could actually be useful.
In the last weeks, she’s managed to bring back two people from the brink of death.
Sending her off with a ship full of non-infected is the worst possible use of her skill set she can think of.
“You’re going,” Luminary Ellsworth says, no room for discussion in her tone. “The people on the ship will need medical personnel, and you’ll be traveling with Ambassador Remulus. You’ll need to tend to him.”
“They’re putting an infected person on the ship?” Kit is incredulous. The entire point of this backup plan was to get uninfected citizens off the planet, keep them safe, not put them at risk by confining them with the infected.
“It was a condition of the latest agreement between Lumaria and Nexarium,” Luminary Ellsworth explains.
“There will be a quarantined part of the ship, on an entirely different level. It will be secured. Others on the ship won’t have access.
And of course, the ship itself will be quarantined as well.
Nobody on or off until you reach Nexarium, where you’ll go through a full testing and decontamination process before unloading. ”
Kit’s head is spinning. “I still can’t believe Nexarium and Lumaria are taking that kind of risk.”
“He’s their ambassador. He’s nobility, and from what I understand, has a very specific skill set that Governor Dormius requires.”
Anger flares in Kit’s stomach. She can’t believe that the leaders of their two planets are being so selfish, placing the life of an ambassador over the lives of the others that will be trapped on that ship with him.
That they would put the entire population of Nexarium at risk for his skill set. It seems like an idiotic choice.
“This is absurd,” Kit says, shaking her head. “Utter insanity.”
Luminary Ellsworth cuts her a look, silently telling her to keep her voice down.
“Even if I were to agree with you,” she says quietly, “there is nothing that can be done about it. It’s happening.
We’re in the midst of a potential mass extinction event.
The ships are to leave this evening. And you, as one of our most skilled Luminaries, are going to be on one. ”
Kit swallows down her protest. She is both honored by Ellsworth’s words, and has a difficult time accepting them. She doesn’t feel they’re deserved, not after her mother.
“I would trust no one else with this,” she says, another knife to Kit’s heart.
“I don’t want to leave you all here to die.”
“Then help us figure out how to stop it,” Ellsworth says.
“We will remain in communication. You will have access to the ambassador, and to a research facility. We’ll get you whatever you need.
You can help us from afar. But we need people alive and uninfected in order to fight this.
” She puts her hand on Kit’s arm, looking at her with a softness in her brown eyes that Kit so rarely sees, and her stomach hollows out. “You can do this, Kit.”
Kit waits as a mass of people are shepherded through the doors to the large ship station near their apartment, looking for her brother and father in the crowd.
Port Ro is one of the larger stations, complete with bookstores, cafes, and a lounge area.
It boasts a large mosaic of windows on one end, through which sunlight pours in.
The bright weather contrasts with the dread building in her stomach and the chaotic scene unfolding before her.
Kit taps her foot anxiously as she scans the faces of the people pouring in from the second level, making their way down the stairs.
The vaulted ceilings of the station are high overhead, and although there are several large, circular openings by which ships can enter and exit, they’re currently sealed, leaving them trapped in an enclosed space.
She thinks that this is probably not the smartest place to gather people and test for infection when it spreads so easily. But she supposes the government has been doing the best they can with the limited information they have.
Kit knew this was theoretically the next step, but it still doesn’t feel real.
Can’t believe they have already gotten to the point where the only viable solution is to take people off-planet.
But she also understands, to some extent.
Lumaria has been dealing with population decrease for years now, and a pandemic where casualties are stacking up faster than they can bury the bodies has created a state of emergency.
If Lumaria has any hope of surviving, they need to call in this favor as a part of their alliance with Nexarium.
They’ve sent a platoon of Guardians from Nexarium to help organize the transition, load uninfected people on to the ships.
The rest of the population will be left on Lumaria, ostensibly to die out, while those that are put on the ship will be brought to Nexarium, to live out their days away from the pandemic and hopefully jump-start repopulation efforts.