Chapter 3

"I know what you're trying to do!"

He had expected something like this. The moment they sat him down in this windowless room, surrounded by badges and uniforms, he knew exactly how this day was going to go.

To the gasps of his onlookers, Nick snatched the marker away from Doctor Williams. He could feel their eyes boring through him, but he focused on Williams and held the ink end up in his face. "Don't think you can fool me. I see through this little scam. This proves nothing."

His rage had flamed after one look at the board, which was all he needed to find the mistake, though he knew that wasn't what it was. They'd only let him see it if he agreed to their proposal, they'd told him. A trade, only fair. It was a tempting offer, and they had made the first move. They were giving him a chance. Instead of waylaying him at the start, they were giving him a way out. How generous. They'd told him what they were doing; now he wanted to know how they were doing it. So, he'd agreed. And oh, they'd made a show of it, hadn't they, parading in the victims of all his misdeeds, sitting them down in a neat little row, all facing him, waiting for him to give them the thing they wanted most. And a part of him had wanted to. There were some faces he couldn't bear to look at; it was almost enough to make him concede. But this…he hadn't anticipated something so shameless, so obvious, and it was an intolerable insult to his work.

Williams stammered for a moment. Not what you were expecting? "It proves you could have dialed Earth," he said, emphasizing each word. Nudging. Prompting. Nick would have no part in it.

"No, it proves you are incompetent! Or you think I am!" He reached up and circled the offending formula, then drew a line through it. "You can't divide by zero! Try it again!" He threw the marker back at him. As Williams fumbled, Nick pointed into the crowd at a weasel-faced man in the middle. "Are you to blame for this?" he asked, but Rodney McKay did not answer, only staring gobsmacked, stiff and blank as a concrete wall. "You're all insane if you think I'm going to just stand here and let you take her away from me."

This wasn't how it was supposed to go, he knew they were thinking it. They had an understanding. Now he was surrounded by wide eyes in bloodless faces, and he felt an abysmal sort of satisfaction at having beat them at their own game, even though he knew he had truly, truly lost.

"Rush-" Williams whispered, eyes darting from him to the others.

"No! I'll have none of it! Do better!" He wanted out. Get him back to the ship. This was a joke. He turned his glare back to the white board.

And blacked out.

Then came back.

There were sounds. Voices, probably. Whispered and echoing but familiar. Johansen. Young. He was back on Destiny.

"…back of his neck."

"Progression?"

"Pretty far…fever and internal bleeding…I want to do some more tests to be sure, but Colonel, if it's the same disease…"

"I know. But let's not panic until we're sure of something."

As awareness heightened, he became conscious of an ache somewhere in his body. Maybe his stomach. Maybe his head. He groaned.

"He's up!" shouted a voice that could only belong to Eli.

Not quite. Suddenly there was pressure on his head and a light blazing into his eyes. He pushed it all away and tried to sit up. "What just happened?"

Colonel Young was standing at his side. "We had to cut the connection early. Something went wrong."

His head was pounding, and he felt like he'd been rammed in the stomach by a bat. He tasted metal. "What?"

"You got sick," said Eli, sitting in a chair by his feet. Lieutenant Johansen raised the back of the bed and handed him a cup of water. He realized he was wearing fatigues. He always found it vaguely disturbing whenever he came off the communication stones and discovered that whoever he'd switched with had changed his clothes, but that thought was far from him this time as he focused on Eli's scrunched up face and wide eyes. "Your body threw up all over yourself. Then you blacked out."

That explained a lot. "Well, what did Telford eat?"

"Water," Young said flatly. Nick thought he detected an edge of something in the colonel's voice. Worry? Fear? He couldn't be sure. "But it wasn't water that came back up."

He swung his gaze to Johansen, who hesitated. Possibly to keep from crying. Her eyes looked a bit red. "It was blood," she told him. "And quite a bit of it."

He slowly took that in, not because he didn't already know it, but because now they knew it too. He began to pretend that the material the sheets were made of was thoroughly fascinating.

"You've got a fever," Young went on. "Telford was complaining about feeling sick."

"Colonel Telford complains about a lot of things." But he still put a hand to his forehead.

"Rush."

He exhaled. "Yeah."

"When did you get bitten?" Johansen wanted to know.

That was a loaded question. He felt himself shake a little as he sighed, bringing his eyes back up again. "Am I the only one?"

"Rush-"

"No, please, please. Just answer me. Am I the only one this is still happening to?"

Johansen nodded. "Yes, as far as we know."

He didn't realize how anxious he was until he allowed himself to relax under that consolation. His head was still throbbing, but it no longer pulsed all the way down his neck. "Good. That's good."

"Doctor Rush," Johansen said firmly, "when? And why didn't you say something?"

He leaned against the raised back of the bed and crossed his arms. He didn't want to talk about this, not with them, not right now. He felt cornered. But he'd hid it as long as he could, and he had known all along that eventually they were going to find out. "It was a little over a week ago," he confessed. "I found one of the insects in my quarters."

"I thought we got them all," the colonel said.

Nick shrugged. "We must have missed one. I imagine we probably weren't as careful as we should have been. I managed to kill it, but it was too late by then." He shifted his eyes to Johansen, who had drawn in both of her lips and was biting on them. "And I didn't tell you because there isn't anything you can do. There was no point in causing a disruption when we know what this is and we know we can't fix it."

Eli raised a hand into the air, like a student trying to gain his teacher's attention. Nick looked to him and resisted the instinct to nod at him, the way he used to do for his students at Berkeley. "So, what's going to happen?" Eli asked, a fretful edge on his words. The hopeful, fearful look in his eyes was enough to make Nick avert his. He shrugged.

"It should be obvious, Eli. I'm gonna die."

—

Tamara stood silent. Things were going just too well, weren't they? She could feel the colonel's eyes on her face. She ignored him, staring instead at Doctor Rush, waiting with held breath for him to take it all back.

But he didn't.

"That is the most unfunny joke anyone has ever made!" Eli shouted, and his shaking voice betrayed his anger.

"It isn't a joke, Eli," said Rush, turning his eyes back to the young man. "I wouldn't joke about something like this."

Eli gaped at him, speechless.

She finally located her voice. "You should have told me."

"What for? There's nothing you can do about it."

"That's not the point!" She wanted to slap him. "This is about more than just you, Rush! This affects every person on this entire ship! You were given the vaccine. Everyone was. If you're sick, if the vaccine failed…"

She allowed herself to panic now, implications and consequences swirling through her head so fast that it made her dizzy. If the vaccine didn't work then that meant that everyone would be sick within a matter of days. They'd have to find an alternate treatment, but who knew if there would be any between here and the planet? If there weren't then they would all be in serious trouble, especially since they had no idea what this organism might be sensitive or resistant to. She looked around the infirmary at the empty beds of those who had become sick at the start. She could still see them, listless in their cots, plagued by weakness, confusion, pain, nausea. She hadn't been able to fully understand exactly how this disease functioned, how it affected the body, which symptoms were primary or secondary, or what risk factors were involved before they began administering the alien venom they believed would be a cure. Without intervention, they all would have died. She knew that. The human body is not equipped to fight off alien parasites, and the degree to which these people deteriorated showed her that it simply would not have gotten better on its own. This was not the flu. And now their cure had failed? It worked in the petri dish. Why not the bloodstream? Had it worked at all? Had it only mitigated the symptoms, suppressing the effect without affecting the cause? How much time was left? Who had the strongest immune system of them all? Who was most likely to survive to Earth? Who would-

"Lieutenant."

"Not now, Rush," she said. She began rooting through a box of supplies, not even knowing what she was searching for. Was Vanessa sick again? She'd had the first exposure. Was anyone else showing signs? She hadn't noticed. Couldn't remember. Had she missed something?

"Lieutenant, the vaccine works."

She turned to him slowly, absorbing and processing all of those words. Then she frowned as understanding descended, and she came a step closer, even going as far as pointing a finger at him. "You didn't take it," she said, and it wasn't a question.

He shook his head. "No, I didn't."

"Rush," she said, powerless against the hysteria rising in her voice, "why didn't you take it? You know how important this was, and if this has anything to do with your phobia, I swear-"

"I don't have a phobia," he said with an exasperated sigh. "I made that up. I didn't take it because I gave it to you."

"What?" That made no sense. "What are you talking about?"

He stared at her, probably knowing she'd work it out on her own. Jerk.

"How?" she asked.

He shifted. "It's easy when you're asleep in the infirmary."

She gaped at him. "You snuck in? While I was asleep?"

He shrugged.

"But why?"

"Because you needed it."

"That's not what we agreed!"

He shrugged again.

"Wait," Colonel Young jumped in. "T.J., what's he talking about?"

Tamara knew she was glaring at Rush. Rush just stared back at her. "There wasn't enough of the vaccine for everyone," she admitted. "I...stretched it as far as I could, but there just wasn't enough alien venom left. We ended up a dose short."

The colonel stared at her. "Just one," he said in disbelief.

Eli snorted unhappily, probably thinking of the stasis pods. "Typical."

"No, not just one," Tamara said. "When I realized we wouldn't have enough, I started cutting the doses in half. Honestly, I wasn't sure how effective that would be, so I didn't want to reduce it even more. We would have had enough, but…"

When she didn't finish, Young raised his eyebrows. "But what?"

She sighed and almost answered, but Rush spoke up instead. "Some of it went missing."

Tamara glanced at Rush. He was still looking at her.

"What?!" said Young.

"Someone came into the infirmary and stole one of the vials," she said miserably.

"Who?"

"We don't know. There's no way to know."

"What about the kinos?" Eli suggested.

"We've already looked," said Rush. "None of them caught anything."

Young's face was pink, and he pointed at Rush. "Why does he know all this and I don't?"

"I asked for his help with the kinos," she said.

"And it didn't occur to you to tell me?"

"I didn't want you to worry," she said. She knew it was a dumb, inadequate excuse.

"It is my job as your commanding officer to worry!" Young shouted. At the tone, Rush stiffened. The colonel took a deep breath and a step back. "You should have told me."

"I know. But there's nothing you could have done anyway. Whoever took it would never admit to it, and they probably just used it on themselves for good measure. It's gone." She glanced over to Eli, who looked crushed. She knew where his mind was going. It isn't your fault.

"So, what, T.J.?" said the colonel. "You were bitten?"

She nodded, reaching up to touch the welt behind her ear. It was smaller now, less painful. Healing.

"And you were just going to not take vaccine yourself, and die? Did you plan to tell me that either?"

She felt her throat closing up as she stared at Rush, ignoring the colonel's question. "We talked about this."

"Yeah." He shrugged. "I lied."

Indignation flared. "By telling me you had a phobia?"

He looked to the side. "I may have lied about that too."

The colonel looked annoyed again at not having an inside to this conversation. He started drumming his fingers on his arms, a sure sign that he was trying to contain his temper. "What are you talking about now?"

She had moved on from shock. Now she was angry. "He was the only one I told about the missing dose," she said accusingly. "I wanted to give one to him, but he said he didn't like needles. He told me that he was more comfortable giving himself the injection…so I let him take it out of the infirmary." She said the last part very quietly, unable to lift her eyes. It didn't matter. She could still feel the colonel's gaze on her.

"You did what?"

"Please, Colonel, let's not waste time repeating ourselves," Rush said. "What's done is done. Rejoice and be happy."

Young gave him a look that Tamara could not interpret, something between a glare, a gape, and a snarl. "So what now?" he said. "What can we do?"

"Nothing," Rush said simply. "The vaccine is gone. It can't be helped."

"How can you be so blasé?" Eli demanded, throwing his hands in the air. Rush rolled his eyes, and Tamara got the feeling it wasn't the first time Eli had asked him that. "You're really not joking?"

Tamara watched Rush hold Eli's eyes before dropping his head without an answer. It was enough. Eli stood up and left the infirmary. Rush slid off the bed and moved for the door, muttering, "If there's no point in me staying in here, I'll be on the bridge." No one stopped him.

When he was gone, Tamara rested her elbows on her knees, put her forehead in her hands, and closed her eyes. She sensed the bed dip beside her under Colonel Young's weight. Felt him put a hand on her shoulder.

"Look, T.J., I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you."

She nodded and didn't answer.

"This isn't your fault," he murmured.

He was just being nice. "Yes, it is. I shouldn't have let him talk me out of it. This is my job. I should have just given him the injection."

"Do you think he would have taken it if you'd forced it on him? You probably would have had to chase him around the ship."

"I could have gotten Greer to pin him down."

There was a pause. "You don't really do that, do you?"

She sighed and shook her head, knowing he was trying to be funny, but not feeling at all amused. "No. But I should have in this case."

A beat. "Why didn't you?"

She didn't know how to answer that. She straightened and shook her head. "I just believed him, I guess. He's a good liar."

The colonel grunted. "Yeah, he is."

"Maybe for some reason I just didn't think he'd lie to me. Not like this. And now look what I've done." She leaned forward again, hiding behind her hands. They were very quiet for several minutes, but then the colonel spoke again, very softly.

"You said something about an agreement?"

She cringed, shaking her head. "Don't ask me about that. Please, Colonel, not right now. Don't ask."

She couldn't see him, but she heard him sigh. "All right. But I don't want to lose anyone this close to Earth. Is there anything we can do? Anything at all?"

She swallowed, hard. "I have no idea. I could try to study it, figure out how it operates, but we have almost nothing left here. We're down to the bare bones of supplies. Even if I do learn how it works, there's no way to tell if any upcoming planets will have what we need to fight it. I don't even know if Earth does."

"Barring a cure, how long do you think he has?"

She looked over at a piece of diagnostic equipment and shuddered. "I don't know. The parasite is growing. It's multiplying. It's what parasites do. He's already past the incubation period. He's bleeding internally now, and that's a sign of many things, and none of them are good, and there are very few of them that I'm able to treat here. And his emesis looked…thick." She winced. "I think I know what that means, but I don't know for sure. But he probably has more symptoms he's not telling us about, so I don't know how far it has progressed."

"Maybe Earth can help him," he said, rubbing her shoulder.

There had been times in their lives when they could communicate without words, and she turned to look at him now, hoping this could be one of them. When he gathered her into his arms and hugged her close, she knew that he understood.

Rush didn't have that long.