Quarantine (The Shadow Wars Book 7.5) by S. A. Lusher

a few seconds, he realized he didn't have the stomach for it. Giving Duncan a wide berth, he walked around him and made his way back to the airlock. His vision was swimming by the time he cycled back through.
    Duncan was gone, dead now, attached to the surface of an isolated plague ship by his magnetic boots. Again, he expected to feel fear, loss, misery...instead he felt hollow and lonely. Worst of all, he felt an encroaching hopelessness. He was alone now. Somehow, he didn't expect Hunter to still be alive. But there were a few more things he had to do. Allan sat back down at the communications workstation and fired it up. He spent several minutes trying to get a distress call out, but could find no way to actually make a live connection with the Atonement ...or anyone, for that matter. After several frustrated minutes, he finally found that he could send out a distress beacon. He programmed it only to transmit to the Atonement , something he could do, and then sent the beacon out. When that was finished, Allan sat back in his chair.
    He heaved a weary sigh. Exhausted, he was utterly exhausted now. He felt drained and spent, and honestly didn't know if he could make himself get up and walk to the main lab. Was there even enough time? Duncan had turned, full-blown turned, before he had, and they'd both been exposed at about the same time. What did that mean? Was he going to turn any minute? Or did it depend on the person? No answers, only questions.
    Allan forced himself to sit up, call up a map of the ship, find the main lab and then plan a route there. At least it wouldn't be that difficult of a route. When he finished memorizing it, Allan stood up, swaying slightly.
    Get to the lab, find the cure, wait for-
    His radio crackled. “Gray...you still alive?”
    Hunter. His pulse quickened.
    “Yes...I'm the only one though. Where are you? What happened?”
    A pained sigh. “I got jumped, lost my radio, my weapons. I'm hurt, think I broke my arm, I'm laid up in an infirmary somewhere. Not sure.”
    Allan spent several minutes getting her up to speed as he hunted through the bridge again for a better weapon. At the end of it, he found nothing, forced to rely on the little combat knife he'd picked up. It would have to do.
    “So you want to meet at this main lab?” Hunter asked at the end of all this.
    “Yes. Quickly, too.”
    “Fine. I'll meet you there.”
    Allan felt something like hope.
    He might actually get out of this alive.

Chapter 08
    – The Slow Burn –
     
     
    Paranoia was creeping in.
    Allan had left the bridge five minutes ago, and already he was feeling worse, obsessed over his symptoms. His throat was dry and his head was pounding. Terror was welling within him, filling him up, making him jump at every sound. All he had was the damned combat knife. What was he going to do if he ran into more than a single enemy? Allan had faith in himself, at least in his combat abilities, but even that was waning. This sick, this scared...the odds were looking worse all the time. He wanted to talk to Hunter over the radio to make himself feel better, but somehow he was keeping his mouth shut. He didn't want to seem weak to her.
    So, he stalked on, clutching at a combat knife, making his way through blood-soaked, flickering corridors on a plague ship floating in the middle of nowhere. How far was he from the nearest planet? Space station? From the nearest ship ? He and Hunter might be the only living, sane individuals for a billion miles. The thought was terrifying. Allan made himself think about other things. For a moment, he wondered what he could possibly think about to make himself happy. What did other people think about to make themselves happy?
    The future, he decided. The belief that tomorrow might not suck as much as today. Was it true? Rarely. In Allan's experience, tomorrow was about the same as today, which was usually only marginally better or worse than yesterday. Rarely were there particularly shitty or