There are lines drawn everywhere in Atlantis, four-centimeter gaps that circumscribe whole corridors as if someone had chainsawed right through the bulkheads at regular intervals. The gaps are flagged by cautionary bands of diagonal striping to either side, and if you stand astride one of them and look up to where it passes overhead, you'll see why: each contains a dropgate, poised to guillotine down in the event of a hull breach. They're such convenient and ubiquitous boundaries that parties in opposition have always tended to use them as lines in the sand.

Parties like the half-dozen corpses hanging back at the junction, too scared or too smart to get involved. Parties like Hannuk Yeager, dancing restlessly on the far side of the striped line, keeping them all at bay fifteen meters upwind of the infirmary.

Lubin shoulders through the chickenshit corpses, Clarke hobbling in his wake. Yeager bares his teeth in greeting: "Party's four doors down on the left!" His capped eyes narrow at their corpse escorts.

Clarke and Lubin pass. Seger tries to follow; Yeager catches her around the throat and holds her there, squirming. "Invitation only."

"You don't—" Yeager clenches; Seger's voice chokes down to a whisper. "You want…Gene to die…?"

"Sounds like a threat," Yeager growls.

"I'm his doctor!"

"Let her go," Clarke tells him. "We might need her."

Yeager doesn't budge.

Oh shit, Clarke thinks. Is he primed?

Yeager's got a mutation: too much monoamine oxidase in his blood. It breaks down the brain chemicals that keep people on an even keel. The authorities tweaked him to compensate, back in the days when they could get away with such things, but he learned to get around it somehow. Sometimes he deliberately strings himself so tight that a sideways glance can send him off the deep end. It gets him off. When that happens, it doesn't matter all that much whether you're friend or foe. Times like that, even Lubin takes him seriously.

Lubin's taking him seriously now. "Let her past, Han." His voice is calm and even, his posture relaxed.

From down the corridor, a groan. The sound of something breaking.

Yeager snorts and tosses Seger aside. The woman staggers coughing against the wall.

"You too," Lubin says to Rowan, who's still discretely behind the striped line. To Yeager: "If it's okay with you, of course."

"Shit," Yeager spits. "I don't give a fuck." His fingers clench and unclench as if electrified.

Lubin nods. "You go on," he says casually to Clarke. "I'll help Han hold the fort."

It's Nolan, of course. Clarke can hear her snarling as she nears the medbay: "Ah, the little fuckhead's gone and shit himself…"

She squeezes through the hatch. The sour stench of fear and feces hits her in the face. Nolan, yes. And she's got Creasy backing her up. Klein's been thrown into the corner, broken and bleeding. Maybe he tried to get in the way. Maybe Nolan just wanted him to.

Gene Erickson's awake at last, crouching on the table like a caged animal. His splayed fingers push against the isolation membrane and it just stretches, like impossibly thin latex. The further he pushes, the harder it pulls; his arm isn't quite extended but the membrane's tight as it's going to go, a mass of oily indestructible rainbows swirling along lines of resistable force.

"Fuck," he growls, sinking back.

Nolan squats down and cocks her head, birdlike, a few centimeters from Klein's bloody face. "Let him out, sweetie."

Klein drools blood and spit. "I told you, he's—"

"Get away from him!" Seger pushes into the compartment as though the past five years—as though the past five minutes—never happened. She barely gets her hand on Nolan's shoulder before Creasy slams her into a bulkhead.

Nolan brushes imaginary contaminants from the place where Seger touched her. "Don't damage the head," she tells Creasy. "Could be a password in there."

"Everybody." Rowan, at least, is smart enough to stay in the corridor. "Just. Calm. Down."

Nolan snorts, shaking her head. "Or what, stumpfuck? Are you going call security? Are you going to have us ejected from the premises?"

Creasy's white eyes regard Seger from mere centimeters away, a promise of empty and mindless violence set above a grinning bulldozer jaw. Creasy, it is said, has a way with women. Not that he's ever fucked with Clarke. Not that anyone does, as a rule.

Rowan looks through the open hatch, her expression calm and self-assured. Clarke sees the plea hidden behind the confident façade. For a moment, she considers ignoring it. Her leg tingles maddeningly. At her elbow Creasy makes kissy-kissy noises at Seger, his hand viced around the doctor's jaw.

Clarke ignores him. "What's the deal, Grace?"

Nolan smiles harshly. "We managed to wake him up, but Normy here" — an absent punch at Klein's head— "put some kind of password on the table. We can't dial down the membrane."

Clarke turns to Erickson. "How you feeling?"

"They did something to me." He coughs. "When I was in coma."

"Yes we did. We saved his—" Creasy bumps Seger's head against the bulkhead. Seger shuts up.

Clarke keeps her eyes on Erickson. "Can you move without spilling your intestines all over?"

He twists clumsily around to show off his abdomen; the membrane stretches against his head and shoulder like an amniotic sac. "Miracles of modern medicine," he tells her, flopping onto his back. Sure enough, his insides have all been packed back where they belong. Fresh pink scars along his abs complement the older ones on his thorax.

Jerenice Seger looks very much as if she wants to say something. Dale Creasy looks very much as if he wants her to try.

"Let her talk," Clarke tells him. He loosens his grip just slightly; Seger looks at Clarke and keeps her mouth shut.

"So what's the story?" Clarke prompts. "Looks like you glued him back together okay. It's been almost three days."

"Three days," Seger repeats. Her voice is squeezed thin and reedy under Creasy's grip. "He was almost disemboweled, and you think three days is enough time to recover."

In fact, Clarke's sure of it. She's seen torn and broken bodies before; she's seen multiarmed robots reassemble them, lay fine electrical webbing into their wounds to crank healing up to a rate that would be miraculous if it weren't so routine. Three days is more than enough time to drag yourself back outside, seams still oozing maybe but strong enough, strong enough; and once you're weightless again, and sheltered by the endless black womb of the abyss, you've got all the time in the world to recover.

It's something the drybacks have never been able to grasp: what keeps you weak is the gravity.

"Does he need more surgery?" she asks.

"He will, if he isn't careful."

"Answer the fucking question," Nolan snarls.

Seger glances at Clarke, evidently finds no comfort there. "What he needs is time to recover, and coma will cut that by two thirds. If he wants to get out of here quickly, that's his best option."

"You're keeping him here against his will," Nolan says.

"Why—" Rowan begins from the corridor.

Nolan wheels on her. "You shut the fuck up right now."

Rowan calmly pushes her luck. "Why would we want to keep him here if it weren't medically necessary?"

"He could rest up in his own hab," Clarke says. "Outside, even."

Seger shakes her head. "He's running a significant fever—Lenie, just look at him!"

She's got a point. Erickson's flat on his back, apparently exhausted. A sheen of perspiration slicks his skin, almost lost behind the more conspicuous glistening of the membrane.

"A fever," Clarke repeats. "Not from the operation?"