Illuminae

Kady reaches out to Ezra via chat within four minutes. Ezra asks Kady to help him find Jimmy. Kady acknowledges it’ll be hard with the change to ship to ship communications but agrees to help. She says it’ll take a few hours. Ezra has to go to work in the VR machine again.

Ezra checks in on Kady, and she sends him a file broken into five parts to avoid suspicion. She needs him to put the files onto a mem-chit and attach it to the security system. Ezra is worried about the consequences if he’s caught, and Kady bluntly says he can do it or just say prayers for Jimmy. Ezra asks what a mem-chit is, but Kady says he wouldn’t understand. Ezra agrees to do it.

A surveillance footage summary of the Alexander shows Ezra bumbling to install the mem-chit. He’s apparently not good at sneaking around but is very lucky to avoid people when he does. Ezra starts out on Deck 231, situated in the Alexander AI cluster with lots of damaged towers and cables, in an envirosuit. He looks sick and unused to space.

It takes Ezra 30 minutes to wade through the wires to Deck 230 with a red glowstick in his hand and another 45 minutes, with Kady’s help, to open the door. He gets inside and has help in seven-minute bursts from Kady. When the SecTeam approaches, he hides in a closet, and they don’t notice him. He bursts out and sneaks past other SecTeam members, who happen to be looking away. He finally reaches his destination, the tertiary node, where he launches the backup processor, plants the mem-chit and a Trojan infection within 30 minutes, even though he clearly has no idea what he is doing. This signals a fire alarm on Deck 231, getting rid of all the personnel. Ezra uses this cover to sprint to the elevators, which Kady has kept open for him, and returns to the habitat zone and back to his bunk, where he closes the door.

Ezra’s anger issues are evident when “[h]e cracks his head on the same stanchion twice getting inside, punches it once he’s finally through” (139)

Zhang chats with Kady to see if she’s found anything, and Kady shares what she knows about AIDAN compelling the Cyclones to shoot Copernicus and go rogue. Then, she sends him the documents she got from Ezra’s mission.

The following section is composed of the files Kady managed to get from Ezra’s heist. The first file is a memorandum from Dr. Teresa Shteyngart to Captain Ryker. Dr. Shteyngart writes about her examinations of all 1,896 survivors of the Kerenza attack on board the Copernicus. BeiTech used a biochemical weapon on the refinery, which was near where Copernicus was stationed. Flight crews didn’t follow quarantine protocols, and many civilians reported symptoms of PTSD as well as racing hearts, nausea, and headaches. This didn’t seem unusual to their crew because they had just undergone a traumatic assault. However, others who didn’t see the attack directly started to report these symptoms as well. The doctor notes they’ll send a list of the sick passengers and crew.

In the next file, Copernicus’s Chief Engineer Kurt Heyder writes a memorandum for Captain Ryker informing them that the Copernicus’s filtration system isn’t equipped to combat an airborne biochemical weapon or prevent that kind of disease from circulating on the ship. He’s furious that the quarantine protocols weren’t followed because the only ways he can think of to combat it probably won’t work as it spreads person to person. One common symptom is known as the Shakes, though Heyder doesn’t detail what this is. He’s angry at the Cyclones for letting the shuttles into the hangar bays to infect the rest of the population.

The next file is a flier with large, bold font that reads “Hey, Kids!” The flier was written by Copernicus medical staff and contains brief guidelines to protect against the biochemical agent by wearing a face mask, washing their hands, closing doors, and informing crew of illness or symptoms, such as the Shakes.

The next file is from Dr. Teresa Shteyngart to Captain Ryker again and is part of a longer thread on the pathogen, though the full chain of communication isn’t included in the files. So far, she has determined the virus is airborne and that there are differences in the symptom timing. They also aren’t sure if their initial assessment of a 24-hour incubation period is correct. The big takeaway she found is that the virus is mutagenic because people are reinfected easily. The doctor thinks the virus is a prototypical bioweapon, which they are calling Phobos. She adds a postscript that she missed him the night before and wants to know if they can get together soon.

Sergeant Blythe Randall and Corporal Adler on the Copernicus filed a report summarizing the details of Mark Morton’s arrest in a temporary domicile. Mark Morton was found with a pipe wrench and screwdriver in an agitated state with the bodies of his wife Maryanne (29) and children Stephanie (12), Oliver (8), and Julian (4). All the children were missing their eyes, and although no drugs or alcohol were found in Mark’s system, he seemed to be experiencing psychosis and was paranoid. Despite the officer’s repeated attempts to subdue him, he managed to get close enough to engage in hand-to-hand combat. He severely injured Corporal Adler, but Randall was able to subdue him with the help of backup. The report contains an image of the crime scene.

The comic page, titled “Missy and Gizmo in: How Does Space Travel Work,” is five panels of cartoon cats with space suits on. The space cats discuss the concept of wormholes as ways to move through space quickly due to the curvature or weak points in the universe. They also discuss the speed of light. The text of the speech bubbles on the comic is difficult to read in places because the page has handwriting all over it, which becomes increasingly dense toward the bottom of the page, with the final panels almost unreadable. The handwriting contains notes from a young girl to her father, who leaves to go on the ship. She repeats what her father tells her but complains about missing him and promises to be a good girl. She wants him to stay forever, and as her pleading note goes on, it becomes more desperate. The size of her writing gets bigger, and the lines of the letters are repeated many times with underlines and doodles of a moon with a star and an angry sun.

In a memorandum to Captain Ryker, Dr. Teresa Shteyngart tells him Phobos is mutating due to the enclosed, populated nature of the Copernicus. She also says that she believes BeiTech’s intent was to use this bioweapon to target the portion of the brain that controls fear to induce complacency when they invaded, but instead the virus targets the synaptic gap and serotonin reuptake mechanisms, which causes permanent psychosis. She also tells him she won’t be able to see him tomorrow and says that she misses him.

The laboratory report, written by Dr. Tobias Salinger, covers a patient, Subject 72, with Phobos Alpha. The report is divided by the hours of observation, but it also notes Dr. Salinger’s descent into the disease after the lab assistant accidentally breaks the vials of Alpha B blood. The symptoms of the disease begin with seeking comfort from loved ones and an attempt to minimize or deny their illness. Hour 27 finds the patient paralyzed, but the body begins to fight the virus around Hour 28. Dr. Salinger is infected at Hour 22 in the report and becomes increasingly agitated, paranoid, and nonsensical, his symptoms following the progression of the virus until the report ends with “STOPLOOKINGATME” and what’s presumably a blood spatter (158).

Kady asks Zhang over chat if he read the files she sent him, and he just replies with curses. The situation is horrible, and the cut to communications aligns with the outbreak of the beta variant. Kady reveals that she had thought her mother died during the Copernicus incident, but now she worries that she’s trapped in the shuttle in Bay 4. She needs to talk to Ezra about it.

Kady messages Ezra and tells him she found something on Jimmy and that it isn’t good, but she doesn’t think it’s time for him to read. Ezra argues that Jimmy is his best friend and was there for him when she wasn’t. He feels that he has a right to know, so Kady makes him promise he won’t do anything foolish and sends him the files.

UTA Marine First Lieutenant Winifred McCall’s after-action report details the Hangar Bay 4 incident. The Sigma Squad was given hazmat suits and authorization to kill to break up a riot protesting their lockdown. Because there are engineers in Bay 4, there are fears the sick will be able to disable the security to infect others on the Alexander. They don’t have the option of flushing Hangar Bay 4 because the afflicted already disabled the Alexander from doing so.

In an effort to protect her team, McCall decides to only bring in the most experienced members. She leaves everyone else to guard the door. If their hazmat suits were breached, they would be killed as a precaution. The senior Sigma crew members enter Bay 4’s final door and find naked bodies arranged on the floor in a pattern that reads “HELP US” (166). They are on alert for the killer when they hear a young girl, who is being pinned down by adults, shriek. The Sigma Squad kills all the adults. The girl runs into Jimmy’s arms, and when they hug, she stabs him and breaks his hazmat suit. She goes after others, and the commotion results in a bombing from above. Most of the Sigma Squad is lost. McCall and Jimmy make it to the exit, but Jimmy can’t leave because of his hazmat suit. He stays behind and requests that McCall deliver a message to Ezra. McCall recommends Jimmy for the Silver Star for Bravery.

Kady checks on Ezra via chat after sending the files, and he is devastated and angry. Ezra immediately wants to rescue Jimmy and is infuriated they’d leave him for dead. Eventually, Kady is able to de-escalate him by stating she’ll help him in a practical way, but breaking into that area is impossible and foolish. She also tells him she loves him, and he promises he won’t do anything that would put him in danger. They’re way beyond their seven minutes for chatting, so they have to leave.

The Captain of the Hypatia, Ann Chau, messages General David Torrence to ask him to loop her into what’s really going on and to see if they need help. They need the AI back online if they have any hope of surviving the Lincoln when it reaches them, which will be in around 70 hours now that they lost their lead due to stopping to resupply. She offers a message of urgency and solidarity.

In response, General Torrence emails Captain Chau the military files they’ll need to proceed but warns that any misuse of files will subject her and her crew to military law. He also warns her that they have a long fight ahead of them.