Bloodlines

Chapter Three: The Sleep of the Living Death

"No," said Victor, "I have no clue how this could happen."
"None?" the Captain asked.
The doctor shrugged, "What do you want me to say? In the 200 years since cryobiology was invented and put into action and refined...no. Not a single case of anyone slipping into a full blown coma. Deaths, yes...in the early days. But nothing like this."
Vincent sounded angry, and spit his words out with venom. He was visibly shaken and had sunk into his chair in defeat as his tirade came out.
"One thing I know: he for sure did not give himself the cryoserum. The A.I. corroberates my findings. The computer did not do this procedure. There are no logs and it was done...well, not wrong...but not by protocal."
"That really only leaves one option, Vinc," Jerome said softly, then went on, "Someone else was awake and did this to him."
"But how? And why?" Varley asked.
"Not sure about the how, but the why seems obvious: to keep us from knowing who was awake." Joann said. She looked at the three men and each nodded.
"Same with the power outage. Whoever it was knows a bit about our A.I." the Captain added.
"How did they do this to him?" Varley asked.
Vincent looked at each of them, rolling his thoughts around. Then nodded to himself before saying, "How much do you know about cryobiology?"
The others' looks said all he needed.
"Let's get the other three here before I get into this. I'm not doing it twice."
With a slight grin, the Captain went to the intercom and pressed a button, "George, Lorna, Gina. Report to the MedBay. Something weird is going on here and the Doc is not in the mood to repeat things." He waited a few moments as the three acknowledged then stepped back.
"This is just crazy though." Varley blurted out. "It doesn't make sense."
"No, it doesn't. Not until we know the reasons." Jerome said. The Captain rubbed his eyes and let out a small sigh of frustration.
They stood or sat in silence, any further thoughts on the matter anyone had were kept to themselves.
Joann felt the unspoken fear in the room. It chilled her flesh and rose up her neck. She reached up and rubbed it, trying to put some heat back. She pulled her hand away when George and the others came shuffling in.
She studied them, each one seemed to feel the same fear. She watched eyes widen when they saw Jung's seemingly lifeless body on its exam table.
Vincent got up slowly, his energy sapped. He walked over to Jung and touched the side of his face, "I'm so sorry..." He whispered.
Turning away he looked at the others a moment. Joann could see him steelng himself.
"Alright." He paused, seeming to forget his words. He glanced at Jung again and his face became hard, the weariness torn away by a deep anger. He gritted his teeth, then continued, "For those just joining us, Jung is in a coma. In a state so close to death the line literally blurs.
Let me explain this. When we are put into cryo-sleep, we are really put into a chemically induced coma, our blood removed, put into cold storage and replaced by what we call cryoserum. Cryoserum is, for all intents and purposes, synthetic universal blood. It cools our bodies, inducing hypothermia, and causes us to shut down. It also slows the aging process. This is actually a side effect, but it led to crybiology and cryostasis pods for intersteller travel." He watched some of their faces and couldn't help a slight grin, "Normally, when we are pulled from a pod, our blood has been reheated, the cryoserum drained and our blood recirculated through our bodies. After about an hour, the coma breaks and we wake. Often there are residual traces of the cryoserum in our bodies, which can impair parts of our system as it is flushed.
However, in the case of Jung here...he simply refuses to wake. His body is at 95.7 right now, which is normal for him. No, it has not been an hour, but I tried to wake him early and he failed to respond. He is alive. His brain scans show there is no damage. He just can't wake.
This has quite literally never happened in the history of cryobiology. I am at a loss as to what is wrong."
He fell silent as he looked down at his hands, which were fisted and white as he shook in anger.
"He did not do this himself, he could not have. He has no experience or training in cryobiology. This was done to him. To what end, we can only guess." He sat back down, his body sagging into the chair.
"Right." Jerome said, "from now on, we are going to work towards figuring this out."
"I might have something, Captain." George said. At a nod from Jerome, he continued, "I found a code fragment in the A.I. that seems to be part of a script to autoshutdown and restart the power core. I'm still trying to find out how it got there and how the A.I. didn't discover it. Its not easily done. I don't know how they got passed the security protocols."
"Just like the cryo-stasis. They knew what they were doing." Vincent said quietly.
Jerome mulled over his thoughts, something tugging at him. He slammed hia fist on the doctor's desk, "No one else gets taken out of cryostasis until we figure this out. Not. One. Person."
"We're just going to leave the rest of crew and the colonists in cryo-sleep indefinitely?!" Lorna demanded.
"You're goddamn right we are." The Captain snapped. "One of them is behind this. You really want fifteen-hundred suspects running around? No, until we get this figured out not one person is thawed."
Joann felt the sudden urge to laugh despite the situation. The word 'thawed' to describe waking a person from cryo-sleep struck her as strangely funny. She quickly hid her face in her hands and rubbed them up and down to cover a slight chuckle.
When she looked up, Captain Jerome had one eyebrow raised and was looking at her pointedly. She shook her head at him.
"Well, Doc," Jerome said, turning to look first at Vincent, then at the prone Jung, "We have a lot to do. Keep me posted. You others get to work on Jung's cryo-pod, see if anything was done to it and see of you can get some answers from the A.I.." this last he shot at George, who visibly flinched.
The Captain strode out of the medical bay. Joann started to follow, but decided to walk with George. He took that pointed order pretty hard.
They walked in silence a while, George seeming to not know what to say.
"How many cruises have we done together, George?" She finally asked.
He looked at her askance, "I lost count."
She grinned, "Exactly. And how many of those were with Jerome as Captain? Nearly half? Maybe more?" He nodded, "He knows its not your fault. He'll likely come apologize to you. He's under a lot of pressure. We all are."
"I know. But its..." He trailed off.
They fell into another silence. Not a strained one, but companionable. They walked along for a few more minutes before Joann realized they were not heading to engineering again.
"Where are we going?" She asked.
"Computer core. Anita's backup logs are stored locally there. Only place to get to them."
"Anita?" She asked, a smile on her lips.
He flushed, "Its too weird calling the A.I. 'computer' or 'A.I.' or 'it' and her acronym spells Anita after all."
"So it does." Joann replied. Of course she'd noticed that. Who wouldn't? But it had never occurred to her to call the A.I. that.
"Its silly, I guess." George said, "But I work with Anita pretty much the whole time during my wake cycles."
"Nah, its not silly." Joann remarked and clapped him on the back.
"Thanks." He said shyly, his cheeks coloring.
The image of this man, with his faintly Viking like braided beard and stout build blushing and looking down at his shoes, even as he inerringly kept walking, was endearing to Joann, though she knew better than to tell him that.
They reached the doorway to the computer core ante-chamber. George keyed in his number and the voice of the A.I. -Anita, Joann corrected herself- greeted him.
"Hello, Mr. DiCrazzie." a slight pause, "Greetings Major. How are you?"
The voice was stiff and mechanical. It held no emotion, and yet....Joann mentally shook her head. It sounded curious about her.
"I'm fine, Anita. Thank you for asking." Joann replied, "Please, call me Jo."
"Anita? Only George calls me that. I...like it." Despite the mechanical nature of the voice, Joann detected a warmth in it. "Thank you for calling me that, Jo."
The door slid open and they stepped into a room filled with a soft ambient blue light. It took Joann's eyes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. George was already at a console bringing up the logs.
"We're not actually going into the core itself?" Joann inquired.
"First, I wanted to look at some log files from around the time Jung stopped filing reports. The core has a separate logging system for backups and internal checks. Right now I'm reviewing cryobank logs."
Joann just stared blankly, as she bary understood any of that. Computers were not her area. Sure, she liked skimming the datanets and playing games, but further than that...she was suddenly struck by the thought: There will be no datanet here, unless we build our own. The idea surprised her with how much she felt a pang of loss.
"Hmm, this is interesting." George said.
"What?"
"Not quite sure...let me dig deeper." He responded.
"Oh crap!" He cried just moments before the lights went out and they were plunged into darkness.