“I promise,” Clarke told them with exaggerated patience.
“It’s just that it’s dangerous to get near the radioactive materials,” her mother called out from where she stood in front of the mirror, fixing her hair. “Especially without the proper equipment.”
Clarke repeated her promise until they left and she was finally able to return to her tablet, though she couldn’t help wondering idly what Glass and her friends would say if they knew that Clarke was spending Friday night working on an essay. Clarke was normally indifferent toward her Earth Literatures tutorial, but this assignment had piquew ent haded her interest. Instead of another predictable paper on the changing view of nature in pre-Cataclysmic poetry, their tutor had asked them to compare and contrast the vampire crazes in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.
Yet while the reading was interesting, she must have dozed off at some point, because when she sat up, the circadian lights had dimmed and the living space was a jumble of unfamiliar shadows. She stood up and was about to head to her bedroom when a strange sound pierced the silence. Clarke froze. It almost sounded like screaming. She forced herself to take a deep breath. She should have known better than to read about vampires before bed.
Clarke turned around and started walking down the hallway, but then another sound rang out—a shriek that sent shivers down her spine.
Stop it, Clarke scolded herself. She’d never make it as a doctor if she let her mind play tricks on her. She was just unsettled by the unfamiliar darkness in the new flat. In the morning, everything would be back to normal. Clarke waved her palm across the sensor on her bedroom door and was about to step inside when she heard it again—an anguished moan.
Her heart thumping, Clarke spun around and walked down the long hallway that led to the lab. Instead of a retinal scanner, there was a keypad. Clarke brushed her fingers over the panel, briefly wondering if she’d be able to guess the password, then crouched down and pressed her ear to the door.
The door vibrated as another sound buzzed through Clarke’s ear. Her breath caught in her throat. That’s impossible. But when the sound came again, it was even clearer.
It wasn’t just a scream of anguish. It was a word.
“Please.”
Clarke’s fingers flew over the keypad as she entered the first thing that came to her head: Pangea. It was the code her mother used for her protected files. The screen beeped and an error message appeared. Next she entered Elysium, the name of the mythical underground city where, according to bedtime stories parents told their children, humans took refuge after the Cataclysm. Another error. Clarke tore through her memory, searching for words she’d filed away. Her fingers hovered above the keypad. Lucy. The name of the oldest hominid remains Earthborn archaeologists ever discovered. There was a series of low beeps, and the door slid open.
The lab was much bigger than she’d imagined, larger than their entire flat, and filled with rows of narrow beds like in the hospital.
Clarke’s eyes widened as they darted from one bed to another. Each contained a child. Most of the kids were lying there asleep, hooked up to various vital monitors and IV stands, though a few were propped up by pillows, fiddling with tablets in their laps. One little girl, hardly older than a toddler, sat on the floor next to her bed, playing with a ratty stuffed bear as clear liquid dripped from an IV bag into her arm.
Clarke’s brain raced for an explanation. These had to be sick children who required round-the-clock care. Maybe they were suffering from some rare disease that only her motherof y her m knew how to cure, or perhaps her father was close to inventing a new treatment and needed twenty-four-hour access. They must’ve known that Clarke would be curious, but since the illness was probably contagious, they’d lied to Clarke to keep her safe.
The same cry that Clarke had heard from the flat came again, this time much louder. She followed it to a bed on the other side of the lab.
A girl her own age—one of the oldest in the room, Clarke realized—was lying on her back, dark-blond hair fanned out on the pillow around her heart-shaped face. For a moment, she just stared at Clarke.
“Please,” she said. Her voice trembled. “Help me.”
Clarke glanced at the label on the girl’s vital monitor. SUBJECT 121. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Lilly.”
Clarke stood there awkwardly, but when Lilly scooted back on her pillows, Clarke lowered herself to sit on the bed next to her. She’d just started her medical training and hadn’t interacted with patients yet, but she knew one of the most important parts of being a doctor was bedside manner. “I’m sure you’ll get to go home soon,” she offered. “Once you’re feeling better.”
The girl pulled her knees to her chest and buried her head, saying something too muffled for Clarke to make out.
“What was that?” she asked. She glanced over her shoulder, wondering why there wasn’t a nurse or a medical apprentice covering for her parents. If something happened to one of the kids, there’d be no one to help them.
The girl raised her head but looked away from Clarke. She chewed her lip as the tears in her eyes receded, leaving a haunting emptiness in their wake.
When she finally spoke, it was in a whisper. “No one ever gets better.”
Clarke suppressed a shudder. Diseases were rare on the ship; there hadn’t been any epidemics since the last outbreak they’d quarantined on Walden. Clarke looked around the lab for something to indicate what her parents were treating, and her eyes settled on an enormous screen on the far wall. Data flashed across it, forming a large graph. Subject 32. Age 7. Day 189. 3.4 Gy. Red count. White count. Respiration. Subject 33. Age 11. Day 298. 6 Gy. Red count. White count. Respiration.
At first Clarke thought nothing of the data. It made perfect sense for her parents to monitor the vitals of the sick children in their care. Except that Gy had nothing to do with vital signs. A Gray was a measure of radiation, a fact she well knew as her parents had been investigating the effects of radiation exposure for years, part of the ongoing task to determine when it’d be safe for humans to return to Earth.
Clarke’s gaze settled on Lilly’s pale face as a chilling realization slithered out of a dark place in the back of Clarke’s mind. She tried to force it back, but it coiled around her denial, suffocating all thoughts except a truth so horrifying, she almost gagged.