Dr. Jett Mintaka

At Neptune Shores, carnage is strewn all over the floors of the concourse. Red stains streak the walls, smears of blood and soft tissue dried and matted. Limbs litter the dark tiles, ripped from the bodies of the people who were immune or hadn't got sick for some obscure reason. The dead by cannibalism, and the infected killed by the living make it difficult for Dr. Mintaka to run through the wide corridor. He zigzags, making a desperate push for the office of Grayson Flux.

Under normal circumstances when invited to Flux's office, the door unlocks at Mintaka's approach, he being granted temporary clearance for a meeting or a wellness report on the station. But now with the resort descending into a viral meltdown, he finds the passage secured and impenetrable aside from having a battering ram.

Mintaka bangs his fist on the door, the raps echoing in the expansive concourse. The sound spooks him from a daze. He peers left and right. No sign of the living or the infected. He gathers himself and presses the touchscreen to the right of the door. The monitor glows with the tiny full-body hologram of the resort manager standing in front of his desk.

"What do you want?" Flux demands.

"I need access to the comm system and I also need to be allowed inside your office for obvious reasons."

"The arrays are still down, and I can't let you in."

"I'm not infected," Mintaka says. "Which means I'm immune."

"Or a bloody carrier of the dreadful infection. I can't risk it. Sorry. You'll have to survive on your own." Flux throws back a shot glass of an amber liquid.

Mintaka drives his fist against the door. "How long until the repairs are complete?"

"I wish I knew." Flux folds his arms and leans against his desk. "Last I heard, one of the astronauts sent on the space walk had vomited inside his helmet and turned into one of those things. As you can imagine, he hindered the repair efforts. To make the situation worse, I've lost communication with the engineering deck, so I haven't a clue what's transpired of late. All I know is I can't call Earth or anyone else for that matter."

Further down the concourse, out of sight, someone or some thing emits a raspy groan.

Mintaka forgets about his conversation with Flux. His wild eyed attention switches to the corridor. Sweat begins to bead on his forehead, prompting him to wipe his brow.

"You should find somewhere to hide," Flux says and belches. "Excuse my manners. I'm not holding up well under the stress."

Mintaka looks behind him, sees the shut down Chinese Cafe with the grated metal curtain pulled to the floor and locked from the inside. Through the slits in the metal links, an elderly woman stares at him. She's probably been watching the entire conversation with Grayson Flux.

The groan he heard moments before, turns into a series of guttural sounds, drawing closer to his location. He'd made too much noise. He should have known better.

"Like I said," Flux says, "you better get somewhere safe, but not here. Maybe the cafe owner will let you in?"

Mintaka peers back at the woman. She wags her head.

That isn't going to happen.

Down the length of the concourse, three infected guests round the corner, growing more agitated and picking up speed. One of the infected is a teenage girl with dyed gray hair. She stands out from the two boys who follow in her wake. Mintaka turns back to the holographic screen. The display switches off and Grayson Flux is gone.

He spins around, having one other location he might be able to hide...the security office at the end of the concourse...but he'll have to get by the gray haired girl and her teenage entourage first.

Mintaka starts toward the group of infected teenagers but has second thoughts. He hustles over to the Chinese Cafe and shakes the metal curtain. It clinks under his weight as he presses his body against it, but it doesn't give way.

The Asian woman on the other side backs away, saying, "No, no, no. You no come in here. Go way."

Mintaka grumbles under his breath and says. "Let me in or I'll die."

She shakes her head again.

With resignation, he bursts into a full sprint toward the infected teenagers. As he runs, he removes his lab coat and coils the ends around his clenched fists, holding out the jacket in front of him.

Mintaka reaches the girl first, her arms outstretched and eyes bloodshot and white. She lunges for him and tries to latch onto his arm, but he counters by folding the jacket around her wrist and jerking her forward. With the girl off balance, he steps aside and flings her body into the handrails that cordon off the concourse, separating the food court area from the beach below. At the moment, it's nighttime, the water dark under a holographic moonlit sky. The girl sails over the top rail and plunges headlong to the sandy beach.

Mintaka doesn't have time to watch her hit the ground. He pivots around as the teenage boys draw near. Planting his right foot, he drops his center of gravity to the floor and whirls his left foot around in a leg sweep, knocking the feet out from under both of the infected boys. They bounce off the floor and roll over on their sides, recovering faster than normal, their inhuman hunger fueling them, driving them to attack again.

Before either of the boys can rise, Mintaka vaults to his feet and strikes one of them with the heel of his shoe. The other boy manages to stand, but Mintaka pounces, looping his lab coat around the lad's neck. Repeating the same maneuver as with the girl, he yanks the jacket tight and sends the boy flying over the rail to the beach below...with a thud.

Twisting the end of the jacket into a rat tail, Mintaka pops the second teenager in the face with his coat like a bull whip. The snapping action draws a dribble of blood from the infected's cheek. He has to dispense of the boy or he'll face him again if he can't get into the security office. Void of emotion, Mintaka does what he must. He snatches the boy by the collar and hurls him over the handrails. This time he allows himself to peer over the edge at the results of his handiwork. All three infected teenagers are down and out, their limbs sprawled out in unnatural positions.

Mintaka walks away from the handrail, his curled up jacket in one hand, dragging the floor behind him. Slowly, he comes to himself, allows himself a breath of relief that he'd been able to fend off the infected with relative ease. But they were young. They weren't that strong.

At the end of the concourse, the security office comes into view, and beyond it, is the open space leading into the debarkation bay.

Mintaka increases pace, approaching the office with determination. He raps on the holographic monitor beside the door. It springs to life with the three dimensional image of the nearly bald Maxwell Armando.

"I'm not letting you in, Mintaka," Armando says. "Not a chance."

Somewhere in the distance, Mintaka hears the commotion of more infected. As a matter of fact, the sounds are coming from behind him, down low, from the beach area. The noises grow louder. They're riding the escalator up to the concourse level.

"The quarantine has broken down. You can open the door."

"It may be chaos out there but I'm safe in here, and I'm not about to open the door so you can bring the virus into my office."

"I know what caused the outbreak," Mintaka says. "It's the only thing that makes sense. I have to send a message to HQ, so let me in."

An infected man reaches the top of the escalator and stumbles out onto the concourse floor. He shrieks when he catches sight of Mintaka.

"Comms are down," Armando says. "Go find your own place to ride this thing out. I'm not leaving this room."

Behind Mintaka, the man limps along, dragging an injured foot behind him.

"I'll bring charges against you if you don't let me inside."

Armando responds by ending the conversation with a blank screen.

Mintaka shoots off in the only direction he can go. The debarkation bay.

Out in the open he's vulnerable and his talk with the security chief has drawn the attention of more sick people. Children, parents, grandparents. A hoarde of them from every direction. Mintaka starts to the right, in the direction of the tour guide meeting room, but an infected Nassan Jondu blocks his path. The tour guide supervisor's normally dark skin has turned pale and his eyes are as white and bloodshot as the teenage girl he'd thrown over the handrail to the beach.

Jondu sprints toward him; he'll reach Mintaka before the hoarde. The man is big and strong and would be incredibly difficult to dispatch of like he did the group of teenagers.

Mintaka angles for the main airlock. It's his only alternative.

His chest heaving, he activates the touchscreen control panel next to the hatch. He jabs his fingers over the option tabs and hits the one that opens the door. The hatch opens with a whoosh of air.

Mintaka rushes into the short passage that serves as the main airlock for ships docking at the station. Using the panel inside, he closes the door behind him and turns and stares at the gathering crowd of infected people pressing against the clear polycarbonate plastic. Nassan Jondu is the only one he recognizes in the throng.

Mintaka sighs and slinks to the back of the airlock, leaning against the rear hatchway. Then he realizes his mistake. His chin sags as an unsettling feeling creeps into the enclosed space and squeezes his chest, pressing him against the back hatch making it difficult to breathe.

At any second, one of the infected people could bump into the control panel and open the rear door behind him. It would be a better fate than being eaten alive, he decides.

The outbreak is his fault. It was the inoculations. The AG Sickness injections could be the only cause for the infection that spread so rapidly through the space station. If that's the case, the Celestial Sea will suffer the same fate.

Wait a minute, he thinks. It isn't entirely his fault. It isn't his fault at all. Electra Draco is to blame. She deserves to die for what she's done.

This calls to memory the transmission he sent to his wife concerning what Bella Starr's dad had been trying to expose before his untimely death. It could lead to an investigation that might prove he didn't die of natural causes. When communication is reestablished with Earth, the message will send. He sent it to his wife because she's the only one he can trust.

A red light flashes over his head as the hoarde compresses against the airlock door. And then it happens, the back hatch flies open and the enclosed area depressurizes, sucking Dr. Jett Mintaka into the vacuum of space. His bodily fluids boil beneath his skin and just as fast, that same skin flash freezes. Before his eyes glaze over with ice crystals, and he fades to blackness, he thinks of his son, and hopes he will succeed where he failed.

Then he's gone.

Forever.