The dull grey, rounded hull of the Venus-class ship that had once belonged to Council researcher Franklin Bennett sat quietly in the distance, partly shrouded by indigenous shrubbery. A relic from the past that the Edenites would never have found had it not been for Morgan Martin's still unexplained VR encounter, the ship was now Devon's sole means of survival.

Julia hoped that was about to change. With Alonzo and John, she made the short trek from their camp to the ship; the Morganite specimen secured in a heat-proof pouch. Alonzo led the way as he released the locking mechanism that granted them access to the interior. Single-file, the trio descended into the darkened innards of the craft.

It took a few moments for their eyes to adjust to the lack of light, although several display panels produced some illumination, punctuating the dimness with bright dots of colour.

Julia felt a pang of guilt as she viewed the empty chambers that had held the members of Bennett's crew. All except Franklin and Elizabeth had died during the re-animation process, and she had been unable to stabilize their metabolics because of her complete unfamiliarity with the dated systems. She'd watched helplessly as pod after pod failed, and as life signs plummeted and flat-lined.

All three members of the Eden Advance crew stood in silence, gazing upon the banks of empty pods, their former occupants now buried in marked plots near Eben's little grave. Slowly, they at last turned to face Devon's chamber, not whispering a word by some tacit agreement. The walking stick Uly had placed as if to guard his mother was still propped up against the door to her chamber.

Devon's still, frozen form was wrapped in a white robe, visible through the frosty, reinforced glass panel. Her skin tone appeared a pale and sickly blue due to the glow of the pod's interior lighting function. Her eyes were closed, and her face looked peaceful and worry-free. It was at complete odds with the turmoil Julia felt stirring in the pit of her stomach.

The doctor took a deep breath, nearly gagging on the still musty, stale air of the ship. After being shut for so long, there hadn't been much opportunity for fresh air from the planet to circulate.

John folded his arms and hung back in the shadows, not wanting to get in the way. His eyes, however, never left Devon's face.

"Alright," Julia said, "let's see if the Terrians' advice will work for us." She activated her VR Gear and brought the scanner up to the pane of Devon's cold-sleep chamber.

"Ready?" Alonzo asked.

"Yes," Julia said with a decisive nod, knowing he was referring to her readiness for the Morganite.

Alonzo opened the pouch and gripped the orange, glowing rock with a pair of tongs and held it up for Julia. She gingerly reached for it with the tips of her diagloved fingers.

"Preliminary scan," she said, feeling a strange warmth emanating from the stone. The datapad of the scanner produced lines of medical code related to Devon's state of hibernation, all of which were within normal parameters.

"Celluar scan," Julia spoke. More lines scrolled across the datapad's screen.

John stood by placidly, trying to keep himself from shuffling his feet. He wondered how long this was going to take, and if this pet-rock, hocus-pocus was even going to work.

Suddenly the datapad readout became obscured; scrambled. "What - ?" Julia started.

"Everything okay?" Alonzo asked in a controlled voice. He figured it was too early to panic.

"Oh," Julia said softly, as the visual display on her VR Gear brightened and intensified. It began inexplicably transmitting images on a cellular level, almost as immediately as Julia's own conscious thoughts expressed the desire to see them. She had been momentarily surprised by the sudden change in the visual output, but had quickly recovered her wits when she intuited what had transpired.

"What is it, Heller?" John stepped forward, body tense.

"I can see everything. I don't know how, but I can see Devon's cell structure..."

"That's a good thing, right?" Danziger's uncertain tone of voice caused Julia to give a little smile.

"It's a very good thing..."

"Are you sure?"

"Let her be," Alonzo said, trying to calm the other man. John shot him an annoyed look, but held his tongue.

"Magnify," Julia said, unaware of John's attitude. She continued to let her thoughts direct the path of the newly-formed connection between Mother and their Earth-manufactured medical technology. Fascinated by the power the link afforded, Julia used her new diagnostic 'tool' to visually scan as much as possible as she tested various theories. She confirmed what she already knew, which was that Devon did not have a neural implant. Her cerebellum and brain stem were completely devoid of the presence of the chip and its tendril-like 'net' that meshed with a subject's own natural neurological pathways. But something else caught her attention, and Julia zeroed in on it.

"Oh my God...!" Julia tensed, her fingers flexing almost imperceptibly on the Morganite.

"What?" Alonzo queried. "What do you see?"

"There's something that's been attacking the myelin sheath..."

"And what is that, exactly?" asked John, as an uncomfortable, crawling sensation wound its way through his stomach. He didn't like the sinister sound of the word 'attacking'; not when it had to do with Devon.

"It's what coats the axons of the neurons in our bodies," Julia mumbled distractedly.

"Why sure, of course that's what they are... Now tell us in layman's terms, Doc," John grumbled.

"The myelin sheath is - okay, think of it in terms of - of electrical insulation. You strip that away, you're going to have problems. Myelin helps with the transmission of impulses along our nerve pathways. What I'm seeing right now in Devon is demyelination..."

John's brow buckled. "Caused by what?"

Julia's lips formed a taut line. "Nothing natural." She removed her hand from the Morganite, turned off the scanner, and slipped the VR Gear from her head.

"'Nothing natural'? What does that mean?" John was staring at Julia, his features clouded in angry confusion, visible even in the limited illumination. He silently wondered why she was stopping. That couldn't be it; something was wrong. She finished too soon, hadn't she?

"Is your hand okay?" Alonzo asked softly, before Julia could answer the mechanic.

"It's fine," she responded. Then she turned to Danziger. "Devon's system has been compromised by something I've only seen in theoretical, computerized models. Even now, I'm still not sure I believe what I just saw."

"Quit being so shankin' cryptic!" John fumed. "What made Devon collapse?"

Julia looked between Alonzo and John. "I don't know how or when it happened, but there are millions of foreign bodies in Devon's system. They're dormant now because she is in a suspended state-"

"'Foreign bodies'," John repeated. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"If you'll let me finish," Julia said sternly, "by 'foreign bodies', I mean something that's not supposed to be there. From what I can tell, these foreign bodies are an evolutionary step in nanotechnology. And they've been programmed to do one thing: attack and destroy. These in particular have been stripping away the myelin coating of Devon's nerves. This would produce multiple symptoms, including some of the ones we observed."

"So what are you gonna do about it?" John asked.

Julia averted her eyes and her shoulders dropped. "There's nothing I can do. Someone, somewhere programmed those things to kill Devon... and I have no idea where to even start. I'm a doctor, not an engineer in the field of nanotechnology. The research being conducted back on the Stations for the medical applications of this sort of thing was still in its infancy when we left... Or so I thought..."

"You're saying someone - for lack of a better term - infected Devon with those ... nano-things before we left the Stations?"

Julia nodded gloomily. "It's the only thing that makes sense. It couldn't have happened here. There's been no one here who could have possibly done it."

"That's just shankin' terrific!" John blurted.

Julia looked at him helplessly. "I'm sorry, John... I wish I had a better answer... I just... I just – this is something I am totally ill-prepared to fix..."

The Ops crew leader sucked in a breath, sent a fleeting look heavenward, then expelled the air from his lungs. "You tried, Doc," he whispered, his voice gravelly and raw as sandpaper. He turned to climb the rungs to get out of Bennett's ship. "You tried. That's the best any of us can ask of you."

Julia bit down hard on her trembling lip. She could feel that awful, foreign feeling rising inside her again: emotional pain.

D*mn it, I'm not supposed to be able to be susceptible to these feelings, she thought, shocked to note that her tear ducts were starting to react as she felt the sting of the salty moisture. In shame, she turned away from Alonzo, not wanting him to see her loss of control.

"Hey, Julia," he said gently, "it's okay to feel... you're entitled to feel rotten about this..."

"I know," she mumbled in a quiet, low voice from deep inside her throat. "I'd just hoped that this would work; that I'd find an answer that would help restore Devon's health. But all I've done is confirm that she's still desperately ill, and that my skills are totally useless."

"Come on, Julia," Alonzo countered, pulling her gently towards him, forcing her to look at him. "We do know more than we did. We know now what's caused her to collapse like she did, and I think we have a pretty good idea who's behind it, too."

Julia pouted, having already privately come to the same conclusion Alonzo had. "The Council," she said with disdain.

"Yeah," the pilot replied. "My thoughts, exactly. Guess they really mean to thwart us at every turn, don't they?"

"I never saw that sinister side to the Council when I was on the Stations," Julia said with a shake of her head. "Never. I'd heard whispers, but... My mother was always there to explain away the discrepancies. There was always a counter-argument during the rare occasions I voiced a concern. I was so blind..."

"You weren't 'blind', Julia. You were just misled every step of the way."

"That's a rather naive way of looking at it," Julia said, chagrined. "...I was naive..."

Outside Bennett's ship, Danziger ran a hand over his forehead. The cheerful brightness of the sun seemed to mock him as darkness shrouded his heart.

You're a d*mned fool, John, he berated himself.

He pulled himself up to his full height and continued on towards the gathered members of the Eden crew, who were waiting expectantly just outside camp.

Yale's eyes were hidden behind his dark glasses, but there was an intensity about the older man that told John he was also on a razor's edge of anticipation.

Uly's face was bright and hopeful. The child left the tutor's side and dashed forward.

"Did Julia find out what's wrong with my mom?" he asked eagerly.

John looked pityingly at the boy. He also met the gazes of every other individual, his heart sinking as he knew he was about to dash their hopes as his had been minutes earlier.

"Yeah, Champ," John finally answered, dropping to one knee to be at eye-level with Uly. "She knows what's wrong."

Expressions of relief and joy erupted from the group. John knew he had to quickly put a stop to their preemptive celebration, as Alonzo and Julia exited Bennett's ship at that moment.

"But," he added, raising his voice above the din, "Julia has no way to treat Devon's condition."

A dead calm fell on the group as tongues were silenced in mid-sentence.

"John," Yale said in a controlled voice, "what did Julia find?"

The mechanic gave Ulysses a brief hug and a pat on the head before addressing Yale. He stood and cleared his throat. "Julia says that Devon's system is playing host to millions of foreign bodies. Some kind of nanotechnology, or somethin'."

"Nanotechnology?" Yale repeated. "How is this possible?"

Julia approached in silence, taking in the forlorn stares of the people she had come to call friends. Having heard Yale's question, she took a moment to formulate a reply before speaking. She steeled herself against her sorrow, and said: "I was able to see what's made Devon fall ill. At some unknown time, a rather aggressive form of nanotechnology – nano-bots, if you prefer – was introduced into Devon's body. I won't get into medical jargon, but they've done terrible damage to the vital networking material of Devon's nervous system."

"What?" Morgan Martin hissed. "How could this have happened? First there's these implants in our heads none of us knew about, and now tiny machines inside Devon's body no one knew about?! This is crazy. How do we know the rest of us don't have these nano-things inside us, too?"

Julia had to admit she didn't know. "We don't," she said earnestly. "The best I can do is scan everyone for the presence of the nano-bots, too."

There was an unsettled murmuring and muttering among the group.

"Is my mom still gonna be okay?" Uly asked tentatively.

The young doctor looked at the boy. "I think so, Uly. As long as she remains in stasis, so will the nano-bots. I just have no idea how to arrest their aggressive attacking mechanism, how to re-program them to stop, or even reverse what they've been doing. I don't dare wake her until I have those answers."

More expressions of dismay went up from the Eden crew.

Alonzo spoke up:"Look, everyone. We know what's wrong; we just don't know how to fix it. Yet."

"That's all well and good," Walman said, "but that doesn't answer the question of how this happened, or why. Who'd do something like this to Devon?"

Julia rolled her eyes in Uly's direction, telegraphing to the other man: not now.

"We'll discuss our options later," Alonzo said hurriedly, picking up the slack. "We don't want anyone to panic, right, Julia?"

"Right," she answered.

"Well, I for one want to know right now if my blood is teeming with things that shouldn't be there!" Morgan whined, then noticing Alonzo's glare: "Uh, we can talk about how they got there later...if there are any..."

The sun had already dipped below the horizon by the time Julia completed her scans of all the members of the Eden Advance crew. All her results came back negative for the presence of the nano-bots. Everyone was able to eat the evening meal in relative calm, and many of them slept peacefully, their personal fears assuaged.

The next morning dawned bright and clear, like so many other mornings in their particular region, but their meagre breakfast was eaten in silence. Hearts were still heavy over news that Devon's condition might not be rectified any time soon, and some were wondering if and when John Danziger would call for them to start moving forwards to New Pacifica.

Bess Martin volunteered to look out for True and Uly while the rest of the group met to discuss in detail Julia's findings and her suspicions, as well as John's thoughts on how they ought to proceed.

Yale had gone through his own repository on nanotechnology the night before, and had to sadly report that he had come up empty.

Julia voiced her concern that the Council somehow had a hand in Devon's illness, and her suspicion that the nano-bots had probably been programmed to become active after a particular time period had elapsed. "Whomever was responsible probably didn't take into account that Devon would be in cold-sleep for 22 light years," Julia posited.

"Another 'faction' we never heard about within the Council?" Morgan spat derisively.

Julia ignored the implied barb. "Yes. Probably," she replied honestly. "If someone – someone like Dyson Blalock, for instance – wanted to curry favor with the higher-ups, that someone could have found a way to administer the nano-bots in an attempt to assassinate her. To a lot of Council members, Devon was a thorn in their collective side for years with her plans to re-locate Syndrome families to G889."

"I can't believe you used to work for those people," Morgan muttered.

"Let's not dredge up the past, huh?" John said. "What's done is done."

"Yeah," Magus agreed. "Julia's made it clear she's done with the Council."

Julia sent grateful looks to the pair. Alonzo draped a protective arm around her, and sent a dark look Morgan's way.

"Hey," he squeaked, raising his arms defensively, "I'm just saying! I was a civil servant back on the Stations. I'd hear things! I know that the Council had a hand in everything – good and bad."

"Morgan," John snapped, "can it."

Morgan shut his mouth.

The group discussed at length what their next move should be, and John declared they'd spent enough time camped in the area around Bennett's ship.

"Since it's clear there's nothing we can do for Devon now, we need to get goin'," he said. "New Pacifica isn't coming to us, and those colonists are gonna be expecting accommodation."

"About that, John," Alonzo started, suddenly remembering the spider-tunnel he'd encountered, "while I was searching for the Morganite yesterday, I found another one of those vacuum currents. I think we should explore the possibility that it leads to the west coast before we leave the area."

Julia expressed her surprise. "How come you never said anything about this earlier?"

"I tried to at the time," Alonzo said. "For some reason, those caves prevent the Gear signal from transmitting... and it left my mind over all the excitement about finding out what was wrong with Devon."

John, however, was unimpressed. Thoughts of getting trapped in a cramped tunnel invaded his thoughts. His own experience with the spider-tunnels hadn't been terribly positive. "No one's going anywhere in those spider caves," he said.

"This doesn't sound like you, John," Julia chided. "You're not usually the one to play it safe."

"Look, Doc," he said, "I didn't ask to be saddled with the responsibility of seeing you all through to New Pacifica. We've already lost enough people on this journey. I'm not losin' anybody else."

"But, John," Alonzo cut in, "if those tunnels are a way to New Pacifica, we're wasting an opportunity -"

"Yeah, and those tunnels could also be a way right into the middle of the ocean, or inside a cave wall."

"Let's put it to a vote," Magus said diplomatically, sensing a face-off was looming.

Cameron and Baines nodded.

"I vote to just forget about the caves and move along like we've been moving," Walman said.

"Me, too," Denner said softly.

"That's two," John said. "Anybody got anything different to say?"

"I think we should consider giving the tunnels a try," Julia ventured.

"Of course you would," Morgan said with a scoff and a roll of the eyes.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Julia retorted.

"Well, it was only your boyfriend's suggestion in the first place," he said.

"That's not why," she tried to argue, but realized it would be futile. The rest of the group seemed to be reaching the consensus that moving onwards to New Pacifica and forgetting the caves was the way to proceed.

Cameron, Mazatl, Baines, Morgan, Yale and Magus were also all in favour of travelling on as per usual.

"That's everyone except you two," John said to Alonzo and Julia, after taking a tally.

"And I know Bess would agree with my decision," Morgan added eagerly.

Alonzo looked disappointed, but conceded to the majority. "Fine. The group has decided," he said graciously. Julia remained silent, pushing back an odd worry that suddenly troubled her mind.

"Fine," John said, relieved the democratic process had gone so smoothly. "We leave first thing tomorrow morning. Pack up anything you don't need today. Anyway, you know the drill..."

The meeting adjourned, and Julia went off to her tent with Alonzo following closely behind.

"Something's eating at you," he said to her once they were out of earshot.

Julia sighed and hugged her arms to her sides. "I can't put my finger on it," she answered. "I just feel like we're being watched. I feel like no matter where I turn, the Council is there. They were there for my conception, genetic manipulation and birth. They were on the Stations to oversee my upbringing and education. They were on the Advance Ship in the bomb and in Alex Wentworth's compulsion chip. They've been here on G889, and most likely still are – wherever Reilly's hiding. At any rate, they're present in EVE, monitoring us from orbit. I just can't escape them."

Alonzo looked at Julia with a helpless expression. "Come here," he said, and she allowed him to hold her. She leaned her head against his strong shoulder, confused once again by the emotions that were raging inside her. No words could put to flight the demons of worry plaguing her mind, but somehow Alonzo's presence made things more bearable. They stood together like that for a long time.