Chapter 90

#Day 25 - 7:30

The morning light was cold on the aft deck, the wind carrying the bite of southern seas. Vivienne paced the length of the rail, her boots striking the deck in a rhythm she couldn't stop. Her hands were clasped behind her back, her jaw tight, her eyes fixed on the horizon where the Mother Mercy would appear.

Today was the last batch. Today, Alexis would call in her deal.

Should the captain risk herself and the ship for a deal? The question had circled her all night, through the hours she lay awake, through the morning when she dressed without speaking, through the walk down to the deck where she had made the bargain that now hung over her like a blade.

She had made a promise. Thirty strangers would live because she had promised. And if she broke that promise now, if she refused the date, if she let the deal dissolve—who would trust her again? Not the fishermen. Not her crew. Not anyone who needed to believe that her word was worth something.

She stopped at the rail, gripped it, and forced herself to breathe. The cold air burned her lungs, but it steadied her.

A shape appeared on the water. The lifeboat, low and slow, carrying the last of Emeka's crew. She watched it approach, her stomach tight, her hands cold despite the gloves.

When the boat bumped against the platform, Emeka was the first up the ladder. He moved with the same steady calm he always had, but Vivienne saw the bandage wrapped around his forearm, the fresh blood seeping through. Behind him, his crew climbed onto the deck—four men, all bearing the marks of violence. One had a swollen eye, purple and half-closed. Another moved with his arm pressed against his ribs, wincing with every step. A third had his lip split, the wound still red.

They looked like they had just crawled out of a bar fight. Or something worse.

Vivienne crossed to Emeka, her voice low. "What happened?"

He shook his head, his eyes on his men as they were led toward the decontamination area. His jaw worked.

"It is very difficult," he said, "to control the people who have been treated. The presence of women excites them. Some have turned to other men for..." He stopped, searching for the word. "Favor. They are not homosexual. But whatever they got from Alexis turns them into rabid dogs."

He looked at her, and she saw something in his face that she had not seen before. Shame. Guilt. The weight of a ship that was tearing itself apart.

She thought of the women on Blue Oasis, the ones who had been to the spa, the ones who returned with glazed eyes and hungry smiles. She thought of the council's compromise, the rules they had made, the careful containment she had believed would be enough.

What will happen to the Blue Oasis if more people are treated by her?

The men followed security toward the spa, their steps quick, their eyes already fixed on the doors where Alexis waited. Emeka did not move.

Vivienne watched him, waiting.

He looked at his wrist, where the Dawn Meter Iqbal had given him a few days ago glowed faintly. Forty-two percent. Not critical, but below the safety line. She remembered his reading when they first met—fifty-five, the same as many of her crew, the slow creep of the virus that everyone carried.

"You're not going with them," she said.

He shook his head slowly. "I need a clear mind. Or the situation on my ship will get out of control." He looked at the spa doors, then away. "My brother does not have the trust to command. No one else does."

She hesitated, then asked the question she already knew the answer to. "Have you been drinking Adaeze's milk?"

His eyes welled. She watched him fight it, watched the tears gather and hold, watched the iron control that kept them from falling. He shook his head.

"I had no choice. The ship needs me." His voice was rough. "I blindfold myself. I do not touch her, except with my mouth. But I can feel Chidi's heartbreak." He looked at her, and she saw the grief beneath the stoic mask. "How do you manage this perversity on your ship? How do you live with it?"

She turned to face him fully. The wind pulled at her hair, and she let it, because there was no room for vanity in what she was about to say.

"It started the day after the bombing in Nice. Captain Verne was alive then." She kept her voice steady, the way Verne had taught her, the way she was still learning. "We had only Zhao as a vector, and over eighty women. No food that fought the virus, just sex drugs we used for emergencies. Aida and Mei-Lin formed the treatment team with Zhao, but still—the women had to break their comfort zone. Homosexual contact was almost unavoidable."

She paused, remembering those early days, the fear, the shame, the women who cried afterward, the ones who couldn't look at each other. "The treatment team made it bearable. They were clinical, patient, never judging. Slowly, the women began to accept it. A culture grew—not perfect, still needing work, but it kept us alive. Captain Verne held us together until she couldn't anymore."

She reached out and touched his arm, just above the bandage. "Only by staying alive can we hope, someday, to make our own rules in the new world that will emerge from the ruins of the old." She squeezed gently, then let go. "So do your best to stay alive, Emeka."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded, once, and turned back toward his boat.

The balcony of the treatment suite had become Aida's office in the weeks since the world ended. She sat there now, wrapped in a heavy robe, the tablet on her knee, the morning light pale and thin. The air was cooler than it had been a few days ago—they were drifting south, and even though summer was approaching in the southern hemisphere, the higher latitude brought a chill. Neither the Blue Oasis nor the Mother Mercy was equipped for cold.

She pushed that thought aside. There were other things to worry about. Carmona, for one, who had not made her move, who was either afraid of Chen or laying a trap somewhere down the line. She filed that away, let Vivienne and Zhao worry about it. Her job today was the numbers.

The Dawn Meter readings glowed on the tablet, names and percentages scrolling past. She had let her focus slip, she knew. She and Mei-Lin had poured so much into Chen that treatments had been canceled, appointments postponed. The numbers had piled up.

Forty-three women with readings above fifty. Some approaching sixty. The core crew was among them—Victoria, Linh, Elena, Maggie, Iqbal, Saanvi, Sophie. The names glowed orange, waiting.

She closed her eyes. Mass treatment is the only way.

The submarine all over again. Zhao, who had not fully recovered. No sex drugs, not unless she went to Alexis. Her milk and Mei-Lin's, still needed for Chen until Vivienne started lactating. Forty-three women, and only three of them to treat them.

Does she have to grovel and beg Alexis again?

She opened her eyes, looked at the list. The core crew. Should she treat them first? The council's rule said they could not seek Alexis—they were too important to risk. But if she treated them first, if she used Zhao's limited strength on them, the others would wait longer. Their numbers would climb. Some might cross into danger.

Unfair, she thought. But fairness is a luxury they cannot afford.

She began to group the names. Ten people a day, four days. It would be brutal. Zhao would be exhausted. But it was possible.

She was adding Victoria to the first group when the screen flickered.

A name turned green. Then another. Then three more.

Aida stared. The numbers were dropping—rapidly, impossibly. Five women, their readings plunging from the high fifties to the mid-thirties, low enough to show green, far from the critical level.

She knew what it meant. There was no other explanation.

Alexis.

She set the tablet down, her hands cold. She had seen what Alexis's treatment did to the fishermen—the wild eyes, the uncontrollable arousal, the men who lunged at women, who attacked each other, who came back from the spa with their bodies bruised and their minds blank. She had seen Emeka's crew this morning, fresh from the treatment, already torn apart by what had been done to them.

If the Blue Oasis crew became like that—

She stood. She had to see.

The corridor was quiet when she left the suite, but as she descended toward the spa, the sounds began. Muffled at first, then clearer. Moaning. The rhythmic slap of skin against skin. The low, wordless sounds of pleasure that she had heard a thousand times in her life but never like this—never in the open, never where anyone could walk past.

She passed the observation deck and stopped.

Two women were pressed against the corner, their bodies tangled, their clothes pushed aside or abandoned entirely. They did not see her. They did not seem to care if anyone saw. One was on her knees, her face buried between the other's thighs, and the woman standing had her head thrown back, her mouth open, her eyes—

Those eyes.

Aida had seen that look before. On the fishermen, after they came back from the spa. On the women who had been to see Alexis, the ones who returned with glazed expressions and hungry smiles. The look of something that had been taken, or given, or lost.

She forced herself to keep walking.

The spa entrance was ahead. Two women from engineering and security were there, arguing with Victoria, who stood with her arms crossed, blocking the door.

"—can't afford to lose our security team for days," Victoria was saying, her voice flat, final. "Carmona could show up any time. You know that."

The engineer—Aida recognized her, one of Kim's junior techs—gestured wildly at her wrist. "What good is a security guard when she does not have the strength to protect? My meter is at fifty-eight. Fifty-eight. The treatment team ignores us. They only care about the blind girl now."

The other woman, from security, nodded. "We've been waiting. We can't wait anymore. The council said we could come here if we wanted. Why are you stopping us?"

Aida stepped forward. "I'm sorry."

They turned. The engineer's face was red, her eyes wet. The security woman's jaw was tight, but she was trembling.

"I'm sorry," Aida said again. "We've had difficulties. The fishermen, the critical patient—" She did not name Chen, but they knew. Everyone knew. "We are planning mass treatment. Four days. Everyone will be seen."

The engineer's voice was sharp. "When? Today? Tomorrow? We've been watching our meters climb while you spend all your time in that suite with your family."

Aida had no answer. The truth was there, ugly and unavoidable. She had chosen Chen. She would choose Chen again. But that did not make the women standing before her less right.

Victoria's voice cut through the silence. "You heard her. Treatment is coming. Now get back to your stations."

For a moment, no one moved. Then the engineer turned and walked away, her shoulders rigid. The security woman followed, her steps heavy.

Victoria watched them go, then turned to Aida. Her face was pale.

"How many?" Aida asked.

"Eight inside. Some of them are repeats. They've been before. They come back." Victoria's jaw tightened. "They can't get enough of her."

Aida stared at her. Victoria Elise, who had taken on twenty of Carmona's best alone, who had survived on a derelict ship for days, who did not frighten easily—she was worried.

"There were more earlier," Victoria said. "The spa opened this morning, and they were already waiting. Most of them are within the rules—not core crew—but the way they look at her..." She stopped. "The rules don't matter when your meter is climbing and there's a woman who can fix it with a touch. They'll keep coming back."

Aida looked at the door. She could hear them inside—the sounds of pleasure, the low murmur of voices, the splash of water. She knew she should go in. She was the treatment coordinator. This was her responsibility.

Her hand reached for the door and stopped.

Fear. Cold and sharp, closing her throat, freezing her fingers. She had faced down dead men and monsters, had walked into the submarine pressure chamber with thirty dying women, had held Chen while she shook through her first orgasm. But she could not open this door.

The woman inside is made to be consumed. And she will consume anyone who comes near.

Victoria's hand closed over hers. She did not pull away. She did not mock. She simply held, steady, present.

"I'll go with you," Victoria said.

Aida nodded. She could not speak. But she could walk.

They pushed the door open together.

The spa had been transformed. The soft lights were dimmed to amber, the steam thick and heavy, the air a mess of scents—the sharp tang of arousal, the sweetness of sweat, the faint undertow of the oils and soaps that had been there before, all layered together into something raw, animal, primal.

Three baths were occupied, women tangled together in each one. Eight women total, scattered across the baths, their faces slack, their eyes glassy, their skin flushed. Aida recognized some of them—the blonde from hospitality who had been the first to visit Alexis, the dark-haired woman whose career had ended before it began, others she knew by name, by face, by the quiet dignity they had carried through the worst of the pandemic. Now they were naked, open, their bodies given over to something she could not name.

And at the center of it all, Alexis.

She stood in the largest bath, the water lapping at her thighs, her body a beacon in the dim light. Two women were at her front, their mouths working on the strange organ that rose between her legs. Another was pressed against her back, her hands cupping Alexis's breasts, her lips on Alexis's neck. A fourth knelt at her side, her mouth open, catching the milk that streamed from Alexis's nipples in fine white arcs.

Alexis saw them. Her eyes found Aida's across the room, and she smiled. It was the smile of a woman who had been waiting, who knew that eventually, everyone came to her.

Aida looked at the Dawn Meters on the wrists of the women in the baths. Green. All of them green. The virus was suppressed. They were safe.

But at what cost?

She stood at the threshold, Victoria solid beside her, and she watched. The women moved in their private ecstasies, their bodies given over to something that was not healing, not treatment, not anything she had ever learned to name. They had come to Alexis because they were afraid. Because the treatment team had been too slow. Because the numbers on their wrists were climbing, and the woman in the spa could make them fall.

And she had let them. She had been so focused on Chen, on her family, on the small circle of people she loved, that she had forgotten the rest. The women who were not her family. The women who needed her.

Green, she thought. All of them green. And what has it cost them?

She did not know. She was not sure she wanted to know.

Victoria's hand tightened on hers. "What do you want to do?"

Aida looked at the women in the baths. At the glazed eyes, the slack mouths, the bodies that moved without will. At Alexis, watching her, waiting, her smile a promise and a threat.

She did not have an answer. Not yet.

But she would find one.