Illuminae

The maps of the Alexander show the distance Kady has to bridge to reach her destination and the high number of afflicted personnel still onboard.

The surveillance footage shows Kady’s treacherous journey down a few levels to get the envirosuit. She crawls through the vents mostly unnoticed due to the sound of sirens and screams. The afflicted have started killing each other, but at one point a few of them hear her and smash an ax inches from her head in the vent. They crawl up into the vent behind her, and she races to the room with the envirosuit, guided by AIDAN. She closes the door behind her, the afflicted screaming. AIDAN tells her to hurry because they’ll find another way in. The only envirosuit in the room is too small to fit her with her hazmat suit on. AIDAN tells her to take it off, and she holds her breath while changing, hoping the virus can’t infect her without oxygen. She cries as she realizes the suit was Ezra’s because it smells like him. AIDAN shuts off all the feeds to give her privacy while she grieves.

The countdown until the Lincoln reaches the Alexander is 8 hours and 42 minutes. The current death toll on the Alexander since the attack is 2,499. The life support systems on the Alexander are slated to turn off in 11 hours and 37 minutes, and currently 99.87% of the passengers on the Alexander have the Phobos virus.

Kady’s path outside the ship is illustrated by orientation of the words on the page. She gracefully reaches her destination and returns inside. AIDAN speaks of her affectionately and notes she can see all its scars.

After two hours outside, Kady reappears on the surveillance footage on Deck 99. She has to stay in her envirosuit because there’s no oxygen in this area. Kady is amazed when she sees the vortex chamber in center of the Alexander’s jump drive. She thinks Torrence lied when he said they couldn’t generate a wormhole. AIDAN says they could, and Kady keeps interrupting it, angry, but AIDAN raises its voice for the first time, shocking Kady. AIDAN explains that the wormhole would be unstable and kill them. Kady looks hopeless for a moment but carries on.

The countdown until the Lincoln reaches the Alexander is 04 hours and 44 minutes. The current death toll on the Alexander since the attack is 2,627. The life support systems on the Alexander are slated to turn off in 07 hours and 39 minutes, and 99.84% of the passengers on the Alexander have the Phobos virus.

AIDAN’s core data shows it contends with its feelings for Kady and is afraid that it can’t help her more. For once, it’s not just about being afraid or the greater good; it doesn’t want her to die. Kady goes into the power systems and restores them. AIDAN and Kady have a difficult conversation about what happens after death. Kady asks AIDAN if it would choose to not care if it had the choice. This makes AIDAN malfunction into a spiral of thoughts, nonsensical words, and eventually ones and zeros. It returns with a few errors. Kady hears the afflicted, who are watching the security footage to track her, in her headset. They plan to find her and kill her.

The countdown until the Lincoln reaches the Alexander is -x0%# hours and :’@ minutes, a malfunction due to the question it was asked. The current death toll on the Alexander since the attack is 2,747. The life support systems on the Alexander are slated to turn off in 5 hours and 54 minutes, and currently 99.80% of the passengers on the Alexander have the Phobos virus. The globe map is in an error state.

Kady runs while the afflicted chase her with weapons. AIDAN tries to stop the afflicted from seeing her, but it’s too broken to do that. AIDAN tells Kady the sequence she started is running in the background and will enable the main drive to function in under 20 minutes. The afflicted also attack AIDAN’s servers. AIDAN is malfunctioning more and directs Kady to go to the defense control room where the nuclear weapons are. AIDAN knows the Lincoln won’t expect the Alexander to engage in nuclear warfare.

AIDAN watches Kady through her portable console and yells for her to run when the afflicted get near her. One of them catches her, but AIDAN plays the voice of the afflicted’s daughter, which pulls him out of his daze for a moment so Kady can escape. AIDAN releases more snippets of audio that pull the afflicted back into themselves or make them turn on each other. AIDAN cares so much about Kady that it has stopped caring that it’s being killed. AIDAN has a critical error. Kady screams for it. AIDAN comes back to life after a few pages of void. Kady has reached the defense control room and has to fire the missile manually.

The countdown until the Lincoln reaches the Alexander is -x0%# hours and :’@ minutes with the globe-shaped map still in a state of error as well. The current death toll on the Alexander since the attack is 2,840. The life support systems on the Alexander are slated to turn off in 03 hours and 26 minutes, and currently, 99.76% of the passengers on the Alexander have the Phobos virus.

A text-based visual of the Lincoln made out of the words “The Lincoln arrives” fills the page (518-519). AIDAN turns to fight the Lincoln and realizes he and Kady are in it together, the repeated word “we” forming an image of the Alexander. Strings of text show the movement of fire and ships. Kady sloppily fires at the Warlocks coming toward them. Some of the Warlocks hit the Alexander and damage AIDAN, but this buys them time to reach nuclear striking distance of the Lincoln. AIDAN accepts it will die, and so will Kady.

As the afflicted get closer to reaching Kady, AIDAN fires, and the words take the shape of the nuclear weapons launching into space. The Lincoln retaliates with tons of missiles, and then the nuclear detonation is depicted with atoms splitting apart on the page and a bright flash of destructive light.

The Lincoln is destroyed, but AIDAN is still in a critical state. The Lincoln’s nuclear retaliation will reach them in two minutes, just before the afflicted will reach Kady. AIDAN is comforted that she will die quickly rather than horribly at their hands. Kady isn’t ready to give up though. She wants to take down their missiles, and AIDAN thinks that’s why it loves her.

Kady works quickly to divert some missiles, but one of them hits the Alexander. Kady is flung into the air, and they are hit repeatedly by missiles. She’s screaming, and AIDAN is dying, shouting “KADY!” into to void (554). Pages of darkness ensue, and then a heartbeat made of ones and zeroes takes shape on the page as AIDAN comes back to life. The words on the page are slanted and haphazard, imitating the damage done to both AIDAN and Kady. The afflicted are mostly dead now. Kady sees and tastes her blood inside the helmet and feels sick because of the radiation. AIDAN tells her there’s an escape pod she can use a few floors up, but Kady wants to die. AIDAN shows her an illumination of all the people whose stories she has to tell. Sick and weak, Kady makes it to the escape pod. As she leaves, she promises to tell everyone about AIDAN. AIDAN plays Mozart’s “Requiem in D Minor” and dies.

While on the escape pod, Kady records a message, identifying herself and where information can be found on her portable console about what happened. Kady calls out BeiTech for what it has done. She coughs violently and she closes her eyes.

Images of outer space and its void fill the next few pages sprinkled with a few words as the Hypatia hails Kady’s escape pod.

The Hypatia brings Kady onboard and administers her care. It has her quarantined and is combating the radiation. The doctors insist they need her portable console. She doesn’t want to give it to them, but she is too weak to fight. They take it and promise to give it back. She cries.

BeiTech wants to erase all intelligence on the incident from history, so BeiTech’s Frobisher replies to the Illuminae Group, thanking them for their help and asks to talk off the record about how they got the data.

Kady is the Illuminae Group who prepared the files, and Frobisher figures that out. Leanne Frobisher, Ezra’s cruel and abusive mother, says Kady is wrong about Ezra’s death and bluffs that she knows where Ezra is, but Kady says the director is wrong. Kady and Ezra are together, and Kady managed to salvage AIDAN from the seed of it left in her portable console. While Frobisher was reading the files Kady was contracted to compile for BeiTech, Kady was also working on other documentation about BeiTech’s other exploits and plans to expose them. Frobisher warns her to stop, and Kady sends her one more file.

The last file Kady sends to Frobisher is surveillance footage of her recovering from radiation poisoning on the Hypatia. Ezra bangs on the door and wants her to let him in. She thinks she’s afflicted and that he is dead, but really, they’re both fine. Ezra explains he hurt his arm and was evacuated by medical personnel on the shuttles, so he wasn’t with his crew who died. He tried to get back to Kady but got locked in prison instead. Kady musters the strength to get up and step toward him, and he rushes to hug her.

The next page is an image of them kissing made of the word “together” (597).

The last chat message is from Kady as Illuminae to Frobisher that says, “Now run” (599).