Fifty sols. It would be enough to buy a fortnight's groceries if he shopped in the about-to-go-stale section at the supermarket. If he was lucky, he might be able to scrounge some bread out the baker's waste bin, soak it in powdered milk and water, and make a pudding. If he was really lucky, he might be able to pull some wild blackberries from the brambles at Blackpoint lookout, so long as they hadn't been poisoned. Wait. No. It was too early for Blackberries.

He checked his Palm Pod and gave a sigh of relief. His pay had come in as well. Two hundred and sixty-five sols for two weeks' work. And Stanley had even included the remainder of his last shift. Maybe he'd had a flash of guilty conscience after Dec's outburst.

He tapped the screen and dragged the funds directly into the City Hospital account. A gentle ting and a notice of receipt flashed in his inbox, along with an invitation to bring Adele back for observation. He brought up Mel's number. Before he could hit connect, the LED backlight flashed with an incoming call. It was Mel.

"Hey," he said, descending the emergency stairs two at a time. "I was just about to call —"

"When did you leave home?" Mel said. He could tell from the tone of her voice, something was wrong.

He ducked under the exposed scaffolding and picked up his pace. "I didn't. I'm on my way home now."

There was silence on the other end.

"Mel?" he said. "What's wrong?" But he didn't catch her answer because at that moment, he rounded the corner of the new university building and saw Chook up ahead, getting out of his ute. "Shit," he muttered.

"Dec?" Mel said, urgency rising in her voice. "Are you even listening?"

Dec ignored her and increased his pace, heading for the street before Chook could bail him up. Too late.

"Fuck's sake," Chook said, blocking Dec's escape. He looked between Dec and Teegan's apartment. "You."

Mel spilled a stream of frantic words in Dec's ear, to which he ignored. "I'm going to have to call you back," he said.

"Wait! De—"

He hung up. By this time, Chook was within grappling distance, his expression taught.

"I walked her home. That's all," Dec said.

Chook looked him up and down. "You expect me to believe that?"

Dec took a step towards the road. Chook shoved him back onto the footpath. "Did you hear me?"

Dec held up his hands. His palm pod was alight with another call from Mel. He ignored it. "We had a cup of tea."

"If I find out you've fucked my girlfriend." He made a pulverising motion with his fist, grinding one hand into his other palm.

Dec knew what would come next if he said or did anything too ___TV worthy. "Do I look like I could pull off a quick tea and a fuck?" Dec gestured down at his baggy t-shirt, threadbare canvas shoes. "Don't flatter me."

Chook narrowed his eyes, and for a second, seemed as though he might go ahead with his threat to pulverise Dec's face. Then, his lip curled. "You're right. She'd never go for a dust collector like you."

He turned and sauntered towards the old science block, taking the rickety scaffolding stairs adjacent to the emergency stairwell to Teegan's apartment and her open window on the third floor. Dec watched him go, relieved to have forgone a beating in exchange for a rather interesting insult. Dust collector. He hadn't heard that one before. He had to give it to Chook, it was more creative than he'd expected from the grappler.

His palmpod flashed with another call from Mel, which he cancelled and quickly replaced with Teegan's number. The line rang once before she picked up.

"Dec?"

Dec cut in, "Chook's on his way up to your place. He saw me leave. He's pretty pissed."

"Oh," Teegan said. "Thanks for the heads up. Did he ... are you ... ?"

"I'm fine." Silence. "Let me know if you ... need anything."

A pause. "Dec, I'm a mad scientist remember. I've got a few tricks up my sleeve. And besides, Chook's all talk. He's a push over when it comes down to it."

Dec hesitated. He should stick around and make sure Chook didn't do anything stupid. But then there was his sister. And his mum. Something was up. And as Teegan said, she could handle herself. "Okay, well, I'd better go."

There was a moment's silence and then, "Dec?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks." She hung up.

He called Mel.

"What the fuck was that?" Mel blasted in his ear. "Weren't you listening? Mum's not here. I don't know where she's gone. "

Dec tripped on the curb. "What? Did you try calling her?"

"She left her palm pod on the kitchen table."

"Shit."

Mel growled. "Exactly."

"Okay, I'm coming home now."

"Don't bother. I'll stay here just in case she comes back. You've gotta go and look for her."

"How long do you think she's been gone?"

"No idea."

"And her drugs?

"Left them here."

"Shit," Dec said again.

"Yeah," Mel said. "And Dec, I've got a bad feeling about this. She must've figured out how to change the station on the projections. The news was on. They were talking about how they think the desert sickness has ... mutated. How the new mutated version can't be monitored by sedatives. Those who are affected only have a few weeks at best." She paused to let this sink in. "And they also think it can now be passed between humans. They're putting all known cases into ... quarantine. It think that's why she left. The police called her palm pod before. I answered and said she was in the shower. They said they're going to be here just before Changeover to transport her to the hospital. I didn't tell them she was missing."

"Shit," he said again. "Shit." He sounded like an old SolStore lamp spazzing out.

"And you know that guy, your supervisor at Overlands who you hate?"

"Tim?"

"Yeah. His mug was on the news too. Apparently he admitted himself to hospital last night with severe hallucinations. Died from the mutated virus this morning."

Dec should've been shocked, but like a towel wrung dry, he didn't have a single drop of adrenaline left to feel anything. Once again, his intuition had been right. Tim had had more than just an unseasonable summertime flu.

Mel was still speaking. "They want to test the whole company for the virus. Actually, I'm surprised you don't know anything about it. I thought they would've called you."

Now was not the time to tell Mel that he probably didn't receive a call from Overlands because he'd been laid off before the alert. The memory of Tim's bloodshot eyes, and the way he'd been unable to finish a sentence without coughing, turned his extremities cold with dread. All the surety with which he'd convinced himself that the voices, his headache were the result of lack of sleep, dissolved. His headache returned with a vengeance and he began to imagine his throat was drier than usual.

He concentrated on his footsteps, told himself he was being ridiculous. Mel had gone quiet on the end of her line, as though she could hear his thoughts. He took a deep breath and said, "Don't worry about mum. I'll find her. And all the other stuff. We'll figure it out." He didn't know whether he was talking to Mel, or himself.

Mel was silent again. This time, he could hear her apprehension through the line. "Okay. Call me if you find her ... and Dec?"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful."

He hung up before he could dwell on the thousand different things that could go wrong and took a sharp turn towards the western side of the city, past the cemetery, towards the apartment block where they used to live before the resettlement. Adele had disappeared there once before, on the night she'd been diagnosed with the Desert Sickness. She'd gone to the top floor of the building, accessible by a set of external stairs to a maintenance level, then an emergency ladder to the top where a balcony opened to the sky, and spent the night looking over the city.

Dec had only thought to look there that time because he remembered how she used to sneak to the balcony to have a quick smoke when Dec and Mel were younger, thinking they wouldn't be able to smell them on her clothes when she came back down. They'd found her used butts under a ceramic pot in the corner and tried to smoke the rest of the tobacco out themselves.

He could almost taste the bitter foulness of those Falcons now as he stumbled down the street, spurred by a relentless buzzing of his beetle senses, worse than he'd ever had before. Through the pounding of his heart in his ears, he heard his mother's voice, captured like a feather on the breeze drifting down from the sky—I can't do this anymore—and was suddenly moved to gut-wrenching nausea, not from the sudden interference from the voice, but from the knowledge that something very bad was about to happen.