Murmansk-13

“There was six of them, the scout party. Big guys, mostly. Healthy, ex-army. We thought; even if it was something from the ship, they’d be OK. But within days we were providing palliative care. They deteriorated so fast. At first it was just the flu, raised body temperature, aches and diarrhoea. Within two days they’d all become unresponsive. Some were still conscious, but they weren’t there anymore. Just vacant eyed husks. The few doctors left on station came to the district, performed CT scans on one of the guys and found that his brain tissue was degenerating at a startling rate. On the way back from the scan he grew agitated despite his sedation. They were placed in the quarantine ward and shut down. Blue lighting seemed to calm them, but we couldn’t get them to eat.

“On the fourth day,” Katja paused and fought back a dry heave, tears trickled from her moist eyes with the effort. “On the fourth day their bodies began degrading. Arty thought it was necrotizing fasciitis, their flesh began to blister and discolour. The room smelt of piss, shit, vomit and rotting flesh. That was the last day we tried to feed them. One of them had tried to bite Nikita, the other girl with me, and the guards had pulled us out.

“I think on the fifth day, they were all dead.”

The room was preternaturally hushed as Katja sank within herself. Tala silently prayed, for Peralta and for Mihailov. Tala hadn’t turned to God in a long while, not since her father had found her kissing her best friend. She thought of the girl who’d died in the ring, Tala hoped that was the last of God’s punishments.

The thrum of the generation seemed oddly distant.

“You think?” Tala asked meekly.

“I didn’t go back to quarantine after that. I began packing and preparing to go home. Six men were dead and I had a leaving party. I got wrecked. That was the sixth day.” Katja hissed through the coverlet her face was now pushed into.

Tala watched as Katja rocked herself back and forth over the roll mat. She wondered if prying further would unravel the girl. Tala supposed she didn’t need to ask, she could complete the picture herself, but she wanted Katja to finish her story. Hoped it would provide a release and allow her to focus on the present. After four years placed in primitive cryo, Tala felt the girl was still trapped in the same limbo as the station. “Then what happened?”

Katja stopped rocking, her round face conveyed anger poorly but her eyes were cold and savage. Tala was not sure if the anger was directed at herself or the memory. “There was a power surge and the electronic locks failed. The scout party escaped into the station and began attacking the staff of District Three. I didn’t know this at the time, I went looking for my muster station and by some miracle didn’t run into them.

“Arty found me wandering the corridors, I was still drunk and I’d become disorientated in my panic, I think. He dragged me into the quarantine control, told me that Central Command had tried to lock down the whole station when District containment was lost. Instead one of the mustered parties got jumped, started a mass evacuation of the station.

“We didn’t know the Soviet had deployed destroyers. I don’t think I was ever destined to leave this place,” Katja balled the coverlet between her fists. “Our standby vessels were neutralized then they began neutralizing the civilian lifepods.”

“They shot down lifepods?” Tala shook her head, “That’s illegal.”

“Arty said they wouldn’t let us leave, that they’d ‘dropped the concrete sarcophagus on us,’ like in Chernobyl. I guess he thought if he put us in a medical coma and locked us away in the morgue we’d be safe. I don’t remember much after that. I have flashes of memory. Arty saved me and now he’s dead like everybody else.”

The memories seemed to exhaust Katja more than the trials she’d faced since waking. Her eyelids drooped, threatening to return her to slumber when a light wrap of the door startled both of them. Tala shot Katja a silencing glance as she jumped to her feet.

“What’s wrong?” Whispered Katja, scared. “Where are we?”

Tala brought her finger to her lips and peered over Katja’s shoulder to where Gennady’s prison uniform lay, indicating for Katja to look. When she turned, she quickly drew the coverlet over her body, pinning it, still clenched, she brought her fists to her breast.

The door was knocked a second time, slightly harder.

Tala sidled behind the door, unsure of an appropriate course of action and bereft of a plan. She and Katja were trapped.

“Girls, you in there.” The voice was deep and warm. American. “You’ve been asleep a long time.”

“It’s Jamal,” Tala was suddenly aware of the tension building across her shoulders. “What should I do?”

Katja’s face twisted, trying to recall. “Jamal? The black man?”

“I can hear you in there, just let me in.”

Tala sighed, what good would escaping be anyway. Reluctantly she opened the door, to Jamal and the incessant thump of the generator.