Mass Effect

Therion: “It is a virus, is it not, Yorrik?”

Senna’Nir’s stomach curdled. Any quarian’s would have. They lived in fear of infection, even in clean rooms where no virus dared to tread, even in their suits. Centuries on the Migrant Fleet had left their race with immune systems about as effective as holding an old handkerchief to your mouth. What were the chances of this happening at the same time as the ship’s systems suddenly going haywire? This was bad. This was horrendously bad. And on his watch. What had he done to deserve this? They were almost to Andromeda. Why couldn’t that lizard have waited another couple of decades to drop dead?

“Depressed: Affirmative, Anax Therion.” Yorrik turned to the quarian suit hanging next to the male drell body and intoned flatly: “Affectionate entreaty: ‘O good Horatio, absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story.’”

The painted fluorescent smiley face stared back at them. Yorrik made a small, embarrassed sound through his slats and keyed something into the arm. The flipped faceplate lit up with information, readable to all of them instead of only to the dark interior of the suit. Words and numbers scrolled up and down, framing the visual field, a crawl of data monitoring and status updates cycling along the chinline, just like Senna’s own interior display. He felt oddly naked with the others peering in at the view quarians saw every day. It felt private.

“Report, Medical Specialist,” he said gruffly. This was getting disorganized. He needed to take command of the situation, and he was tired of waiting. “Then Team Who, then Team How. Go.”

Yorrik inclined his elephantine head toward the mess of hollowed-out trash on the autopsy tables. “Informative address: Chemical Specialist Ysses and I took blood and tissue samples from each subject using the lab’s native equipment. This concluded our use of the lab’s native equipment. Using a broad-spectrum fluorescent dye test, we were able to determine fairly quickly that none of the three victims suffered from any appreciable blood toxicity.”

“This one spared us the task of listening to the microscope. This one witnessed the illumination of the blood and was able to interpret the gradations of color necessary for diagnosis with its naked eye,” Ysses hummed with a tinge of pride. “As vain as all such efforts to preserve order must always be,” it added quickly.

“Irritated: Yes, you did very well. Anxiously moving on: The krogan microscope called us miserable piles of klixen dung and ordered us to do one hundred pull-ups, but we were able to use it, barely, to rule out bacterial infection, again through visual confirmation. This left few possibilities. I affirmed the presence of a virus through a dye injection test. As I have explained to the others, viruses are too small to be seen under a normal microscope; however, they cannot absorb dye through the surface membrane, and therefore it is possible to verify the presence of viral cells when there are undyed structures in the tissue sample. Translation: To see what is there by seeing what is not there. It was at this point that I instructed the ship to initiate quarantine procedures. It was also at this point that a more efficient method of diagnosis occurred to me. I had only intended to use Horatio as a virtual test subject to synthesize possible treatments from the curative capabilities of the suit. Apologetic: I am not overly familiar with the specifications of this technology. We then injected Horatio with a blood sample from the drell female. The hydraulics were immediately overwhelmed with an antibody flood; however, it has not been effective so far. More importantly, in order to manufacture antibodies, the suit had to recognize the virus. It did. Dramatic revelation: The cause of death was a highly contagious infection called Yoqtan.”

Irit Non coughed and spluttered. “Impossible! You are lying in order to implicate the volus. Yoqtan has never killed anyone! The treatment is a couple of soothing baths and a mother’s love!”

Anax Therion interjected: “Yoqtan is volus chickenpox. Their species all get it when they are juveniles. It is almost a rite of passage. The symptoms match up: a rash of dark-blue sores, swollen tongue, high fever, chills, and in severe cases, persistent nausea. Only the weakest of children do not survive Yoqtan. It should not have killed a thirty-year-old drell.”

“It should not even be possible for her to have it,” snarled Irit Non. “She doesn’t have the right glands. And anything that could thrive in our blood should turn hers into a half-frozen milkshake. This isn’t a quarian ensemble,” the volus gestured at the elegant fiber mesh covering her body. “We don’t wear them because our immune systems are too precious to withstand a strong gust of wind. Our normal body temperatures are nothing like yours. Outside of Irune’s high-pressure jungles or my suit, our bodies would blow up like a balloon, split open and whatever was left would desiccate immediately in your toxic goddamned atmosphere. And if the completely insufficient pressure didn’t get us, we are allergic to oxygen. Your blood is full of it. Yoqtan just could not survive in a drell. It needs the same things volus do to live and replicate. Why are you lying, elcor? I didn’t think elcor could lie!”

“Insulted: We can act, can’t we? Furious indignance: Look at Horatio. You can see I am telling the truth. Or do you think I can program this damnable tuxedo to do anything it doesn’t want to do? Attempted explanation: Please look for yourself. You can see the electron analysis and RNA sequencing. It is Yoqtan.”

Anax Therion glanced at the concave faceplate. “91% Yoqtan,” she observed.

“Acknowledgment of mutual understanding: Correct. The rest I cannot positively identify without proper equipment, but it seems to be an assortment of junk RNA. Presumably, this is what allowed

it to infect a drell in the first place. It clearly began in the drell, and runs its course much more quickly in a drell host. Disconcerting implications: However, as I said before, drell and hanar physiology bears almost no comparison. Very few viruses mutate sufficiently to jump between species. It is rare enough that the names of those that do are well known: measles, Ebola, Marburg virus, Sangelian hemorrhagic fever, Teukrian flu. I cannot think of one that commonly afflicts both drell and hanar, and neither can the ship’s computer.” Yorrik paused. The poor man was clearly deeply disturbed. “Inevitable conclusion: Either we are witnessing the birth of a new life form, or this is a manufactured virus, deliberately engineered.”

“Who could hate the drell so much?” Senna said softly. They didn’t conquer other races, they didn’t outbreed or outgun anyone. And thanks to Kepral’s Syndrome, fewer and fewer of them were left each generation.

“Regretful admission: I have no explanation as to how multiple drell came to be infected to begin with, or how hanar could contract the Yoqtan pathogen when the cryopods are self-contained systems. We have no patient zero. We have no model for the progression of the disease, only its end stage, and we are unlikely to develop one, since we can only detect new infections when the victims have already died, by the telltale ‘freezer burn.’ We have only a name. Yoqtan. Hollow optimism: The good news is there is no reason to think any other species will be affected. If we follow standard quarantine procedures, we should still be able to dock with the Nexus and let them find a cure.” The elcor’s enormous shoulders relaxed. He settled back slightly on his haunches. “Authoritative command: Airlock these bodies immediately. We have all the samples we need. Do not open the remaining cryopods under any circumstances. Deep fatigue: This completes our report to date. The rest is silence.”

Senna’Nir, first officer of the Keelah Si’yah, clenched his jaw. “How many of those sanitary collars did we stock in medbay, Yorrik?”

“With full knowledge that the answer will not satisfy: two.”

Senna rested one long arm against the glass and buried his face in his elbow. Everything hurt. He hadn’t known eyelashes could hurt. The universe was truly full of wonders. He shut his eyes and frowned beneath his mask. He happened to know, because he had told K to pin the information to his display, that in the seven hours since the Radial, six more hanar and thirty-four more drell had expired in their pods. Keelah Se’lai, will there be any drell left by the time we reach the Nexus?

“Yorrik, if what you’re saying is true, this is a fatal virus—”

“It isn’t,” insisted Non.

“—an apparently very fatal virus and you are trapped in a confined space with it.” All elcor hated confined spaces. It was the reason so few of them took to interstellar travel. But Yorrik was an exception, as he was to many things elcor. “Why aren’t you panicking?”

The elcor droned emotionlessly: “Panic: I am panicking.”

“There is no need for panic. This one is serene, despite the knowledge that the elcor is safe, while this one will almost certainly die in this very room,” crooned Ysses soothingly.

“That’s quite enough out of you, you overgrown flashlight,” Borbala cut in, fingering the firing mechanism on her shotgun thoughtfully. “Keep talking sweet to that superbug and I’m going to start thinking you had something to do with it.”

“This one respires and excretes innocence. This one would rather both galaxies burned from end to end than see the slightest harm done to the one called Kholai, who lies rotting before you. This one merely admires the tools the Enkindlers use to achieve their holy purpose.”

The batarian grimaced. “Right,” she said slowly. “Well, that’s just spectacular, Ysses, thank you so much for opening up to us and sharing your insight and unique point of view. Please never do it again.” She blew into her hands and rubbed them together to stay warm. “Listen up, you filthy farmers. Team Who makes it two for two on results.”

The drell stirred and snapped into an authoritative tone and posture. Senna had never seen anyone listen more vibrantly than she did. Anax explained about the shadow they had found on the cryobay footage. “It appears first about one hundred and fifty years ago. Whatever is happening has been happening much longer than we initially theorized. Similar shadows turned up on other parts of the ship: the mess hall, briefly, once on the bridge, a few times in engineering, twice on the residential decks. Never more than a shadow. A flicker. We almost missed it. We did miss it. We had to run back through years of recordings to find the other shadows once we saw the first one.” Her green brow furrowed.

“What is it, Therion?” Senna coaxed.