The Lonely Orphan (The Lost Planet 5)

“Is everyone else all right?”

“So far, it’s just the one infected, but Lyric…we’ve never seen anything like this before. It came on so quickly.”

Illness doesn’t seem like a threat compared to the monsters we just faced, the guards we once overtook. That’s the only explanation I have for the relief I feel…until I glance over at Hadrian and find, if at all possible, that his face has bleached of what little color it has. His skin is ghost-white, and if I couldn’t see his chest rising and falling with each inhalation, I would have thought he was dead.

“Hadrian?” I breathe, terror clutching at my throat.

“Take me to the sick one,” he says in a voice wholly unlike his own. It’s as ghastly as his expression. “Lyric, I need Theron, please. Lock us up, put us in chains, whatever you have to do, but I need him…and so do you.”

The ghost of a shiver courses down my spine, its bone-dead fingers clicking against each of my vertebrae. I cannot voice the fears that have lodged in my brain, so I nod to Willow, who leaves without protest. It’s the begging that has undone me, the naked terror in his eyes. It tells me what I don’t want to hear, screams the name of a foe I’d rather not meet.

We wait in silence until Willow returns with an apprehensive Theron, who grows even more grave at the expression on Hadrian’s face. “Is it true?” Theron asks, his eyes on Hadrian. “Is it true what this one has told me?”

“I don’t know for certain.” Hadrian turns to Willow and me. “Where do you keep your sick?”

Willow’s lips are dry, and she licks them before stuttering, “In the infirmary on the basement level. That’s where she is.”

“Take us there,” Hadrian requests with infinite calm and surprising gentleness. “Please.”

Willow meets my eyes and nods at the request in them. She’ll stand watch in the command center. I turn on my heel and the two behind me follow in step without another word. Theron’s uncharacteristic silence unnerves me. In the time he’s been here, he’s been talking, teasing, or laughing.

He isn’t laughing now.

The doors to the elevator spring open once we reach the level for the infirmary. We haven’t had much use for it after we locked the guards away. There were very few wounds to tend once there was no one to brutalize us. Now, Zoe uses it mostly to patch scrapes or treat colds. Nothing like the misery that had been here before.

Nothing like the scent of disease that clings to it now.

I observe Theron and Hadrian sharing a wordless glance that I ignore as I travel deeper into the open space full of hospital beds to the isolation unit on the farthest wall. There’s a single light on inside and Zoe sits on a chair holding watch just in front of it. She gets to her feet when she hears us approach and I know, without a doubt, something is wrong by the lack of fight in her voice. Just like I’d known with one look at Willow.

“You’re back,” she says dully. She doesn’t even glance at Theron and Hadrian.

“Yes. What’s wrong here? What happened?”

Zoe gestures toward the isolation unit, where a woman is asleep on the bed in a cocoon of blankets.

“It’s Lena. She came down with a fever after you left. I dosed her with fever medication, but nothing seems to touch it. If anything, it’s gotten worse.”

I wish I had the knowledge to tell her what to do next, but I’m no doctor. Zoe is the only one of us who has any sort of medical training and if she’s stumped…I push that thought aside.

“Keep giving her the medication. A pain reliever, too. Maybe it will go down in twenty-four hours.”

Zoe tries to smile, but it falls short.

“It won’t go down,” Theron says from behind us.

“What are you talking about?” Zoe asks.

“A fever that burns so hot it almost singes the hand. Comes on quick and brutal, remorseless. There will be others. You must isolate them as soon as possible to contain the threat. After the fevers, there will be sores, all over their bodies. Then madness.”

“What is he talking about?” I ask Hadrian.

He meets my eyes and there’s desolation in his. Death.

“It’s The Rades.”

10

Hadrian

“Hadrian,” Lyric whispers, her fingers biting into my bicep. “What do we do?”

The terror in her eyes matches my own. Everyone is looking at me for answers. Even Theron. I don’t have answers. I have instinct.

“You and I can start assessing everyone,” I tell Lyric. “We’ll be looking for any signs of illness. Fever, dizziness, confusion. They’re stage one.” Then, I point to Zoe. “Anyone who has fever and is developing sores will need to be treated by Zoe. They’re stage two and can remain in the infirmary until stage three.”