At eight the next morning, Mashara placed all twenty-four of us inside a lecture theatre where nobody could avoid seeing anybody else.
The room descended in steep semicircles toward two enormous screens. Every seat had a microphone, a charging socket, and a numbered button for answering live questions. Models of a human skull, a rib cage, and a transparent torso waited on the demonstration table below.
Kitty entered with NC and Anna.
She saw me in the fifth row and stopped for half a second.
Then she sat beside NS in the third.
June chose a seat on the opposite aisle. She did not look toward Kitty. She did not sit beside me either.
The empty seats between us said more than another argument could have.
I caught Kitty near the steps before the lecturer arrived.
"Can I speak to you?"
"You can apologize," she said. "That doesn't mean I have to make you feel forgiven."
"I know."
"Do you?"
I looked past her at NS. He had remained near the seats, far enough away not to listen and close enough to come if Kitty asked.
"I kissed June back," I said. "I won't blame the rain, our history, or anything you told me before it happened. I hurt you. I'm sorry."
Kitty's eyes became wet, but her voice stayed level.
"Thank you for saying the true part."
"Can we talk after class?"
"Not today."
The answer hurt.
I nodded anyway.
Kitty returned to her seat. NS glanced at me once, not triumphantly and not kindly. There was only a warning in his face: respect the answer.
I sat alone.
Professor Rahman entered with a tablet under one arm and a surgical mask hanging from two fingers.
"This was added to our hospital entrance this morning," he said, raising the mask. "Not because we are in a crisis. Because infection control should begin before people agree that a crisis exists."
The first screen showed a photograph of Mashara Teaching Hospital's new temporary desk. Nurses were checking temperatures and asking visitors about recent travel, fever, and persistent cough.
"Several regional health networks are discussing clusters of severe viral pneumonia," Professor Rahman continued. "Most reports remain unconfirmed. The cause is under investigation. You will therefore avoid diagnosing a new disease from social media, and you will also avoid pretending unfamiliar information is harmless because it is incomplete."
JP pressed his answer button.
"So we panic responsibly?"
"We prepare responsibly. You may panic during your private time."
The theatre laughed.
For the first time that morning, Kitty almost did too.
Professor Rahman displayed a chest radiograph, then a series of CT images from an anonymized teaching case. Pale cloudy areas occupied the edges of both lungs.
"Bilateral peripheral ground-glass opacity," HS said when called upon.
"Correct. What organism caused it?"
HS studied the screen.
"We cannot know from the image alone."
"Exactly. Imaging shows patterns. It does not introduce you to the pathogen. A beautiful image can still tempt an arrogant doctor into an ugly mistake."
My attention remained on the pale lungs.
They looked like storm clouds trapped inside a body.
On the news bar beneath the teaching software, a headline passed almost too quickly to read.
Hospitals monitor unexplained pneumonia cases among recent travelers.
Nobody stopped the lecture for it.
The CT teaching suite occupied the diagnostic wing below the theatre.
We entered in groups of six. A radiographer named Ms. Devi showed us the scanner from the control-room window before allowing us near the gantry. The white ring stood around a narrow motorized table, less dramatic than the machines in television shows and much more expensive.
"CT uses ionizing radiation," she said. "You do not press buttons because you are curious. You confirm the patient's identity, indication, pregnancy status when relevant, renal function when contrast is planned, allergy history, and the protocol authorized by the radiologist."
Cherry raised her hand.
"Can a student scan a patient here?"
"A student can observe, prepare under supervision, and learn. A student cannot become confident enough to irradiate somebody independently after one exchange lecture."
JP whispered, "She has met Utopia students before."
Ms. Devi heard him.
"I have now."
We examined an injection pump, positioning pads, and a training mannequin. Bunny volunteered to lie on the table until Ms. Devi explained that the gantry would not become a free souvenir-photo booth.
At the workstation, she returned to the respiratory images Professor Rahman had shown.
"This patient had fever, cough, and recent international travel," she said. "The laboratory team is still investigating. The important lesson is not the name of an illness you do not yet know. It is that a patient with an uncertain contagious condition must move through a department without exposing every person in the corridor."
She traced separate routes on the floor plan: screened entrance, masked transfer, isolated scanner, controlled cleaning, protected staff.
"Hospitals fail when every department assumes infection control belongs to somebody else."
The door opened before she finished. A nurse spoke quietly into her ear.
Ms. Devi's expression changed.
"Our last group will remain here with the technician," she said. "Two patients from an international flight have arrived with fever and breathing difficulty. Their assessment area is separate. There is no reason for alarm."
The phrase no reason for alarm produced the exact opposite effect.
Our group chat filled before we left the room.
CHERRY: Is this the mystery pneumonia?
HS: Nobody knows.
JP: That is not comforting.
HS: It is accurate.
TZ: Accuracy has terrible bedside manner.
The MRI suite had four safety zones and no patience for jokes.
Phones, watches, keys, coins, hairpins, and every other loose metal item went into lockers before we crossed the controlled line. The MRI safety officer held up a photograph of an oxygen cylinder lodged inside a damaged scanner.
"The magnet does not become bored and switch itself off when the room is empty," she said. "It remains strong enough to turn the wrong object into a projectile."
Unlike CT, she explained, MRI did not use ionizing radiation. It used a powerful magnetic field and radiofrequency energy to produce images, bringing different advantages, longer examinations, noise, motion problems, and entirely different risks.
June stood ahead of NS at the screening point.
The officer asked whether she had removed every metal object.
"Yes," June answered.
NS noticed the shape beneath the cuff of her sleeve.
"Your hairpin," he said.
June touched her hair.
The pin was still there.
She stared at it after removing it, unsettled by the mistake.
"I checked twice."
"You had a rough night," NS said softly.
"That is becoming a convenient explanation."
He offered his open palm. June placed the pin into it, and he carried it back to the locker without telling anyone else.
When he returned, she was reading the same screening question for the second time.
I saw it from across the line.
So did he.
NS shook his head once when our eyes met.
Not here.
Not now.
June's phone began vibrating inside the locker. The metal door softened the sound but did not hide it.
She looked toward the locker with the instinct of someone waiting for a particular name.
When the session ended, she checked the message before putting her hairpin back.
A.V.: Your mother says you looked beautiful yesterday. Are you behaving yourself?
June typed, deleted, and typed again.
JUNE: I am learning which choices survive after the rain.
She sent it before I came close enough to see.
The final classroom did not contain a body.
It contained twenty-four headsets.
The VR anatomy instructor fitted adjustable goggles over our faces and placed controllers in our hands. The lights disappeared. A three-dimensional human figure opened in front of me, suspended inside a dark blue space.
With one movement, I removed the skin.
With another, the muscles separated into layers. I rotated the rib cage, enlarged the heart, and stepped through the sternum until the lungs surrounded me like translucent wings.
Around the room, real voices reacted to unreal bodies.
"I lost the pancreas," JP announced.
"You removed the abdomen," Anna replied.
"That explains it."
Farid guided us through the thorax. Bronchi divided ahead of me into smaller and smaller passages. Capillaries shimmered around alveoli. When the instructor activated the pathology overlay, scattered cloudy patches appeared at the lung edges.
Lightning flashed somewhere beyond the blackout curtains.
For one second, the virtual lung became a white wedding veil.
A stone couple stood beneath it.
Headlights crossed wet pavement. A wheel turned. Someone reached a hand toward me while thunder rolled through a sky that had no end.
Then the classroom returned.
I had dropped one controller.
"XH?" Kitty said from somewhere behind me.
I lifted the headset.
She had already lifted hers.
Concern had escaped her before anger could stop it.
"I'm okay," I said.
Kitty lowered her gaze.
"Tell the counselor anyway."
It was not forgiveness.
It was still care.
Across the room, June was trying to reopen the same anatomical layer she had completed minutes earlier. NS quietly reset the menu for her.
None of us spoke about either mistake.
At lunch, Mashara installed hand-sanitizer dispensers beside the cafeteria entrances.
By two, masks had appeared on carts outside the teaching hospital. A campus notice advised students with fever, cough, or recent travel through affected regions to contact the clinic before entering a lecture.
The notice did not name an affected region.
HS read three international health bulletins while the rest of us ate.
"There are reports in more than one country now," he said.
"Confirmed?" NC asked.
"Some cases are. The connection between them isn't."
JP opened a packet of chili sauce with his teeth.
"Every year the internet discovers a plague."
HS took the packet away from him.
"And every year you try to become a transmission route."
Our laughter lasted until Aina entered holding a stack of envelopes.
"I need everyone's attention. This concerns your passports."
Twenty-four students became silent at once.
The notice came from the Yandong consular office.
During MALT's escape, blank passport stock and part of the national identity database had been stolen. The restored government had begun an emergency revalidation program for citizens already abroad. Our entire cohort had been selected for biometric confirmation because our documents had been issued or renewed during the compromised period.
"Are our passports fake?" Bunny asked.
"No," Aina said. "The office is confirming that they are genuine before the stolen blanks can be used to create duplicates."
"Do they keep the originals?" Kitty asked.
"For seventy-two hours. You will receive individual collection receipts. Mashara has arranged transport, and I will remain with you throughout the submission."
By four, we stood beneath the seal of Yandong inside a small consular office attached to an international services building.
Embassy roads had once been surrounded by MALT's red-band soldiers to keep the outside world blind. Now citizens lined up beneath those same national colors to prove that their names still belonged to them.
The process was slow and painfully ordinary.
One clerk checked each passport against our university list. A second scanned fingerprints and photographed us. A third placed the originals into numbered security sleeves. Every student signed a surrender log and received a stamped receipt carrying the sleeve number, collection date, and emergency telephone line.
I watched the clerk seal Kitty's passport.
Then June's.
Then mine.
The passports that had carried us out of one recovering country disappeared into a gray cabinet.
"Your group must nominate one collection representative," the senior consular officer said. "Individuals may collect their own documents, but if transport schedules change, the representative can retrieve the entire batch with written authorization."
Everybody looked at Aina.
She shook her head.
"The authorization must belong to a Yandong passport holder in the cohort."
JP pointed at me.
"He will fight the cabinet if anything goes missing."
"I will not fight a cabinet."
"That is exactly what a man planning to fight a cabinet says."
Even Kitty smiled before remembering she did not want me to see it.
The officer placed a master collection form in front of me. One by one, the students signed beneath my name.
Kitty signed without looking up.
June paused over the date.
"What day is it?" she asked.
The question sounded casual.
NS answered too quickly.
"Monday."
June wrote it down and returned the pen.
The senior officer gave me a large stamped envelope containing the master authorization, copied receipts, and an emergency collection code.
"Keep this with you," she said. "You are responsible for collecting all twenty-four passports. Scheduled release is Thursday at three."
"Could it be delayed?"
She glanced toward a television above the waiting area.
The sound was muted. Footage showed masked health workers meeting an aircraft in another country. A red headline reported additional cases of unexplained viral pneumonia among international travelers.
"Only if security procedures change," she said, "or if public-health restrictions affect consular operations. At present, neither has happened."
At present.
The two words stayed with me.
When we left, none of us carried a passport.
We carried numbered slips proving that somewhere behind the consular glass, our identities were locked inside gray sleeves.
Outside, an airport shuttle stopped beside the building. Three travelers stepped out wearing masks. One coughed into his elbow while a security officer directed them toward a separate entrance.
JP looked at the darkening sky.
"Still no reason for alarm?"
HS folded the campus health notice and put it into his pocket.
"Not yet," he said.
Thunder moved across the city before the rain began.
I tightened my grip on the envelope holding permission to bring everyone home.
None of us understood that permission would soon become more valuable than the passports themselves.