The humming of the stun baton was a quiet, angry insect in the silence of the corridor. Ether stood in the doorway of the maintenance alcove, water dripping from the ends of her purple hair onto her bare shoulders, the white towel wrapped securely around her synthetic frame. She didn't look like a lead researcher; she looked like someone interrupted during a rare moment of rest, which made the weapon in her hand all the more jarring.
Arthur didn't move. He felt the cold sweat of his fever drying on his skin, a stark contrast to the humidity radiating from Ether. He was cornered, weak, and armed only with a scrap of paper.
"Well?" Ether asked, tilting her head. The water droplet traced a line down her collarbone. "I'm waiting for a lie, Commander. Make it a good one."
"No lies," Arthur said, his voice raspy. He leaned heavily against the wall, his goddesium legs feeling like anchors dragging him down. "I wanted to know what was happening in there. The note said 'Case 01'."
Ether sighed, the tension in her shoulders dropping, though the baton remained active. "Case 01. Case 02. You people always need names, narratives. You can't just look at data and see numbers."
She deactivated the baton with a click and hung it on a magnetic loop at her hip, hidden beneath the towel. "Come with me. If you're going to prowl around my lab while necrotic bacteria eat your stomach lining, you might as well understand what you're dying for."
She turned and walked down the hall, not checking to see if he followed. She knew he would. Arthur pushed himself off the wall, his joints protesting, and limped after her.
Ether didn't lead him back to his room. She walked past the door labelled **CASE 01**, past the sobbing silence behind the steel, and stopped in front of a large, reinforced glass pane looking into the next room: **CASE 02**.
Arthur stepped up beside her. Inside, a Nikke was strapped to a chair. She wasn't convulsing like the one in the first room. She was perfectly still, staring at a color chart on the wall. A technician in a hazmat suit was holding up cards. The Nikke didn't respond.
"This facility," Ether began, her tone shifting into a detached, professorial cadence, "is the Ark's first line of defense against the biology of the Surface. We know about Raptures. We have guns for Raptures. But the Surface... it breeds things. Bacteria that eat lung tissue in seconds. Fungi that colonize the nervous system. Viruses that rewrite DNA."
She tapped the glass. "The pathogen inside you, Commander? It's a nasty little strain. We call it Surface-HV-9. Highly volatile. If it gets loose in the Ark, it could wipe out ten percent of the human population within a week. No immunity. No natural resistance."
"So you cure it," Arthur said, watching the Nikke inside blink slowly. "That's what a hospital does."
"That is what we are doing," Ether corrected sharply. "But you can't cure what you don't understand. To make a therapeutic, I need to know the molecular structure. I need to know the degradation rate. I need to know how it kills."
She gestured down the hall, encompassing the row of sealed doors. "Each CASE is a stage. A necessary step in the scientific method."
Arthur looked at the doors. "Case 01?"
"Symptom analysis and infection vectors," Ether said simply. "We modify the virus to bridge the biological-mechanical gap. It takes work to make a human virus affect a Nikke brain, but once we do, we can observe the agony in real-time. We can ask them where it hurts. They can tell us if their vision is blurring or if their limbs feel like lead. Rats can't talk, Commander. Nikkes can."
Arthur felt a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with his sickness. "You infect them on purpose. You modify a disease just to torture them."
"To study," Ether corrected, her eyes narrowing. "Case 01 provides the baseline. Case 02, where we are looking now, tests the first iteration of the cure. The subject inside isn't in pain. She just can't see the color red anymore. A side effect of the compound. Better she loses that perception than a human pilot losing it mid-flight, wouldn't you agree?"
She began walking again, counting off the doors as she passed them.
"Case 03: Toxicity stress test. We overdose the subject to see the maximum safe limit. Usually results in cognitive failure or memory wipes. Case 04: Efficacy optimization. We refine the formula to minimize the damage. And finally, Case 05."
She stopped at the last door. The room was empty, save for a sterile bed.
"Case 05 is final verification. If the subject survives the cure without permanent neural degradation, the medicine is deemed safe for human consumption."
She turned to Arthur, a cruel little smile playing on her lips. "That pill you swallowed this morning? The one that stopped you from seizing? It came from the blood of the subject in Case 05. You are alive because five Nikkes suffered to make sure that pill wouldn't stop your heart."
Arthur stared at her, the taste of the medicine suddenly bitter in the back of his throat. He thought of the Monarks. Of Scarlet's laugh, Lyra's quiet focus, Anis's energy.
And here was Ether, casually explaining how she ground them up like ingredients in a mortar and pestle.
"They are people," Arthur said, his voice low and dangerous. "They have memories. They feel pain."
"They are the cheapest test subjects money can buy," Ether replied, shrugging the towel tighter around herself. "Do you know the cost of a human life in the Ark? It's incalculable. If I test this on a human volunteer and they die, I lose a citizen. I lose potential. I lose a soul. A Nikke? I can order a replacement chassis for the price of a used sedan. Their brains are organic, yes, but their purpose is servitude. They are designed to shield us from bullets. Why is shielding us from bacteria any different?"
"Because they didn't consent," Arthur snapped. "Did Unit 77 sign a waiver? Did she agree to be infected?"
Ether rolled her eyes. "Consent is a luxury for the free. They know what they are. They are soldiers. Soldiers die so civilians don't have to. I am simply... optimizing their sacrifice. Without this data, there is no medicine. Without medicine, you die. And if you die, Case Zero... well, then we have no Original Source to compare against."
She took a step closer to him, her scent of lavender and sterilization overpowering the smell of sickness. "You are the prize, Arthur. You are the only human who has contracted this and lived long enough to reach me. I need you healthy. I need you cured. So I will burn through a hundred mass-produced dolls if that's what it takes to find the formula that saves you."
Arthur looked down the hallway. He saw the faint light leaking from under the door of Case 01. He imagined the woman inside, her neural interface screaming with a pain engineered specifically for her.
He looked back at Ether. The scientist believed she was right. In the cold calculus of the Ark, she *was* right. It was efficient. It was logical.
It was monstrous.
"I refuse," Arthur said.
Ether blinked, looking genuinely confused. "Excuse me?"
"I refuse further treatment," Arthur stated, straightening his spine despite the fire in his lungs. "I won't take your pills. I won't let you draw my blood. I won't sign your waivers."
Ether let out a short, incredulous laugh. "Don't be dramatic. You'll be dead in forty-eight hours without the stabilization compound. The virus will liquify your stomach."
"Then let it," Arthur said. "I'm not going to survive on a foundation of torture. You want to save humans? Start acting like one."
Ether's face hardened. The amusement vanished, replaced by the cold glare of a researcher whose experiment was threatening to ruin itself. "You are being unreasonable. You are a Commander. You know the cost of war. This is a medical war."
"I know the cost of command," Arthur retorted. "It means you don't spend lives you don't have to. You're lazy, Ether. You use them because it's easy, not because it's the only way."
"It *is* the only way!" Ether snapped, her voice rising, echoing down the empty hall. "I can't test experimental toxic compounds on a human! It's illegal! It's immoral!"
"Then test them on me."
The silence that followed was absolute. The hum of the air scrubbers seemed to vanish. Ether stared at him, her mouth slightly open.
"What?" she whispered.
"You heard me," Arthur said, stepping closer to her, invading her space. "You need a human test subject to know if the cure works on humans, right? Testing on Nikkes is just a proxy. It's imperfect data. Their physiology is different. You said it yourself—you have to modify the virus just to make it stick."
He held out his arm. "I have the virus. The real one. Unmodified. If you want perfect data, stop guessing with proxies. Test the experimental cures on me."
Ether looked at his hand, then up at his eyes. Her expression shifted. The anger faded, replaced by a flicker of terrifying curiosity. She looked like a predator that had just realized the prey was offering itself up.
"You're insane," she murmured. "We haven't filtered the side effects yet. Case 03 is still determining toxicity. If I give you the Case 03 compound, it could blind you. It could stop your heart. It could cause permanent nerve damage."
"Better me than them," Arthur said. "I consent. I'll sign whatever you want. But only on one condition."
Ether crossed her arms, the towel shifting. "Conditions. Of course."
"Shut down the CASE rooms," Arthur demanded. "Treat the Nikkes currently in there. Give them the best care this facility has. Pain management, repairs, memory stability. And release them back to their squads once they're stable."
Ether stared at him for a long moment. She tapped her finger against her chin, calculating. "You're trading your life for hardware. It's a bad trade, Commander."
"It's my trade to make."
"If you die," Ether said softly, "I lose the Index Case. My research sets back."
"Then you better work hard to make sure I don't die," Arthur countered. "You said you were brilliant. Prove it."
A slow smile spread across Ether's face. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of someone who had just been handed a puzzle so dangerous it was irresistible.
"Direct human trials," she mused. "Bypassing the proxy phase entirely. The data would be... exquisite. No translation errors between biologies. Pure, raw reaction."
She looked up at him, her eyes gleaming with a manic light. "You're an idiot, Arthur Cousland. A stubborn, suicidal, sentimental idiot."
She turned and punched a code into the panel of the nearest door—an empty observation room. "Get inside."
Arthur didn't hesitate. He walked into the room. It was sterile, cold, smelling of ozone. A single medical chair sat in the center.
Ether followed him in, the door sliding shut behind her. She moved to a cabinet, her movements sharp and energized. She pulled out a fresh syringe and a vial of dark, swirling liquid.
"If we are going to do this," she said, turning to face him, "we are going to do it correctly. The stabilizers I gave you earlier have dampened the virus's activity. To get a true reaction to the experimental cure, I need the infection to be at its peak."
She flicked the syringe. "I need to reinfect you. Increase the viral load to critical levels. Only then will we know if the therapeutic is actually working or if your immune system is just fighting back."
Arthur looked at the needle. The liquid inside looked like liquid rust. It was death in a glass tube.
He sat in the chair and rolled up his sleeve. The goddesium of his prosthetic arm gleamed under the harsh lights, but he offered his organic shoulder. The flesh was pale, the veins distinct.
"Do it," Arthur said.
Ether walked over to him. She didn't look like a torturer now. She looked like a scientist on the verge of a breakthrough. She took his arm, her grip surprisingly gentle, her fingers cool against his feverish skin.
"I'm going to release the subjects in Case 01 through 04," she said quietly as she swabbed his shoulder with alcohol. "I'll have the medical droids administer memory inhibitors so they don't remember the pain, and repair their chassis. They'll be returned to the general pool by morning."
She aligned the needle with his vein.
"But you, Commander... you are going to feel everything. And I am going to record every scream. For posterity."
"Just get it over with," Arthur gritted out.
Ether pushed the needle in.
Fire.
It wasn't a metaphor. It felt like she had injected molten lead directly into his bloodstream. Arthur gasped, his back arching off the chair, his vision instantly whitening at the edges. The virus, dormant and suppressed, roared back to life, fueled by the fresh reinforcements.
He felt his stomach clamp down, a wave of agony rolling up his spine that made his teeth snap together. His heart hammered a frantic, irregular rhythm against his ribs.
Ether withdrew the needle and stepped back, checking her watch. She pulled a tablet from the pocket of her towel—where she had hidden it, he had no idea—and began tapping furiously.
"Viral propagation is accelerating," she noted, her voice calm amidst his suffering. "Heart rate 140. Temperature rising. Good. The baseline is re-established."
Arthur gripped the arms of the chair, his knuckles crushing it. He couldn't breathe. The air felt too thick, too hot. He looked at Ether, seeing two of her, then three. The room was spinning, tilting on its axis.
"Remember this sensation," Ether's voice floated to him, echoing as if from the end of a long tunnel. She leaned over him, her face filling his vision. She looked almost concerned, in a detached, clinical way.
"Because tomorrow, we try Cure Batch 4. And if you survive that... we try Batch 5."
She placed a hand on his forehead. It was blissfully cold.
"Don't die on me tonight, Case Zero," she whispered. "We have so much science to do."
Arthur tried to speak, tried to tell her to go to hell, but the darkness rushed up to meet him, swallowing the room, the pain, and the scientist with the purple hair. The last thing he heard was the soft scratching of a stylus on a tablet, recording his collapse.