Dr. Mara Okafor hadn't slept in forty hours. On the quarantine moon Cessil-9, eleven mine workers had each spoken one strange word into the comms log, then gone quiet. When they woke, they answered to other names and wept for cities nobody had ever heard of. Their blood was clean. Whatever this was, it wasn't in the blood. It was in the voice. The comms log blinked on her screen, waiting to be played.

Mara skipped the audio and went to the infected. In the med bay, Worker 7 sat calmly. "I'm Aanvi," he said in a voice that wasn't his. "My daughter is waiting in Halix City. Please, let me call her." There was no Halix City. There never had been. But he believed it with his whole heart.