‘Plague Sector 5’ was not the official name of the sector. The official name was the Vumm sector. The station had six Vumm sectors in total, and they heavily relied on technology to interact with the rest of the station. As Elaine walked toward the entrance, she was stopped by a Kreet. His skin and general shape were reptilian, except for the long bright green feathers down his scalp and around his upper arms. He waved a large holographic sign in front of her face. The sign read: The Secret is out!!

“What are you doing? You can’t go in there!” he practically shouted to her face.

“Excuse me?” Elaine asked, protecting the box of chinjk and other emergency supplies under her arms.

“They plan to kill us all! Don’t you realize? This outage? All this chaos? Hundreds, maybe thousands dead! They are to blame!” He pointed a hand accusingly toward her destination. His propaganda pamphlet uploaded automatically to her Sp-ACE once she was in his radius, popping up in orange light around her wrist. Elaine glared at him. “How in the universe would the Vumm cause a complete blackout? Heck, if the tech doesn’t work, they can’t even get out! They would be literally trapped in there.”

“Thank the gods!”

“No, don’t thank the gods, get out of my way!” Elaine pushed past him. “And don’t you dare interfere. This is an emergency mission here, and I’ll have you arrested!”

She honestly had no authority to arrest anyone, and even if she had to call the officers, they would be far too busy right now to bother. In an emergency like this, you’d think everyone would find something better to do with their time.

Elaine stopped at the sector’s front entry. In a station generally tiered in apartments, stores, and government buildings of many planets, pieced together with many open airways, this sector was an unusually vertical with a wall from top to bottom and only a few entry points. She ran her wrist across the com panel. Instead of a pleasant chime, it buzzed loudly at her. Not because she’d done anything wrong, but because some unpleasant person had decided that was an appropriate sound when one was going to interact with these people. They really need to change that.

A dark panel on the wall changed tone to reveal it was actually a window. On the other side was an alien who, while far taller than the beautiful Arkinee, was still about two heads shorter than even Elaine’s small stature. In fact, the woman inside had to stand on something to see out properly. She had translucent skin, revealing dark veins and pumping organs, not so different from those of humans.

“Hi, I’m Wyssla,” the woman on the other side of the window said.

“I’m Elaine. I brought some chinjk and some other things.” Elaine glanced away. It wasn’t that she was worried about getting sick or any such nonsense. The walls and windows did their job. But she did wish the Vumm would wear a little more clothing. Being able to see someone’s insides was a little disconcerting. Still, she tried to make eye contact the best she could. In a way, she knew what it felt like to be separated – trapped, as it were. “I don’t know how this works,” she said. “Do I just send things through the clean room?”

“Yep,” said Wyssla. She hopped the bench she was using to get to Elaine’s view level and walked out of sight along the wall. Elaine walked to a small antechamber that acted as a doorway to the sector. She set the medical kit the doctors had sent with her, and a box of chinjk she’d acquired from a nearby store inside the room.

“Did power really go out through the entire station?” Wyssla asked, through Elaine’s Sp-ACE. She must have connected them through their IDs when she’d keyed in.

Elaine accepted the contact with a flick of her finger. “It did. Are you guys alright in there?”

“We’re fine. It fried a few of our more advanced computer systems, inconvenient at worst. I definitely have my work cut out for me!”

“Oh, are you a mechanic or something?” Elaine scanned the instruction manual for the right button.

“Oh, no, I’m an Agent too!” Wyssla chirped happily. “Look at my ID.” Elaine didn’t need to. She believed her, but Wyssla just sounded so excited and proud, she had to look and she had to smile. There were a lot of agents on the station, but the inborn ability to see chinjk patterns was rare enough that  ‘a lot’ was not very many, and agents rarely had time to run into each other.

“Just press the purple key there at the bottom,” Wyssla said. “You can see purple, right?”

“Yes,” Elaine replied. “I see purple.” She tapped the button on the outside of the doorway. There was a pause while Wyssla accepted the supplies. Then the room shut with the supplies inside. She could hear faint noises as the decontamination room did its job. The Vumm carried diseases that were dangerous to nearly every other species in the universe, but they were also susceptible to a few common diseases out here, so their supplies had to be handled carefully. “Are. . .” Wyssla paused a moment. “Are the Engern alright? I mean, the news says they are still there, but-”

“They’re alright. I checked on them myself.”

Wyssla sighed, more of a whistle, in relief. “Oh, that’s good to hear. You never know what to believe on the news and stuff.”

“Very little, basically.”

Wyssla chuckled.

The touchpad on the doorway flickered and reset as the room opened, empty this time.

“We’re all set.” Wyssla said, jumping up onto a bench to look back out the window. She held up the chinjk box. “I’ll take good care of this. Thank you so much!”

Elaine smiled. “No problem. Let me know if you need anything else.”

“I will. Thank you!”

Elaine waved, then lowered her hand quickly, trying to remember if the Vumm did the whole ‘wave’ thing. She was relieved when Wyssla waved enthusiastically back. She sure has a good attitude, all things considered. It was kind of annoying, but… On the other hand, it had been really nice to talk to another Agent, if only briefly.

The protester had caught someone else on their way through the station and waved them down, yelling in their face on how the Vumm should have never been invited onto the station to begin with.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, would you just leave people alone!” Elaine snapped at him. “There’s literally a station-wide disaster and you’re here whining?” She looked at her wrist, startled to find she was still connected to Wyssla’s com. She glanced back to the quarantine sector and saw a little clear face duck down behind the window, as if embarrassed as well. Elaine growled, turning off the com and swiping to the protester’s basic ID instead. It had temporarily downloaded as soon as they were within range of each other. “You’re a sanitation employee?”

The picketer looked flustered and embarrassed, feathers prickling. Elaine kept their eyes locked regardless. “Did the power go out in sanitation too?”

“Guess so,” The Kreet grumbled.

“Then go do your job and make sure everything’s working properly! You literally have one of the most important jobs on the station and you’re out here? This is an emergency. The last thing we need to do is make it worse.”

“I am helping,” said the man. “I’m helping by spreading the truth.”

“Then tell the ‘truth’ after you make sure the station’s innards aren’t going to explode!”

He grumbled.

“Seriously. Now is not the time to start hating your job.”

“I always hate my job,” he muttered, as he turned off his sign and headed away. Elaine sighed heavily, took one more glance at the ‘plague’ sector then headed to the next place on her list. What would make them think the Vumm had anything to do with a blackout anyways? How could this huge disaster be anyone’s fault, for that matter? It was like a storm, an act of God or nature or whatever. A danger striking without warning. Well. . . almost without warning.