Quarantine was both worse than she feared and yet not as bad as she’d thought it would be. It was worse because the separation from the people she knew and loved wore on her terribly, but it was not as bad in that besides having her blood drawn and being given a physical, she wasn’t being experimented on in as invasive a manner as she’d imagined.

The quarantine site itself was in an old hotel so she had a decent sized suite all to herself. She could watch whatever she wanted on the television, sleep when she wanted, eat when she wanted. The only regularly scheduled part about her day was when the doctors and nurses, all in full hazmat suits, would come in and check on her.

Jory had been here for three days now and currently they were checking how bright her bio-luminescence was. With the curtains drawn and the room in near total darkness besides herself, a nurse held up a small device that measured even the slightest variations in luminescence.

“You’re a bit brighter today,” they said.

A doctor took a swab and rubbed it around on Jory’s skin. When he took it away, the tip was glowing faintly.

“My sweat glows?” Jory asked.

“It seems to be that some of the bio-luminescent chemicals you’re producing are excreted through your pores.” they replied as they placed the swab into a baggie and sealed it shut. “We’re going to take a small biopsy of your skin,” they went on.

Jory wasn’t too keen on needles but she let them give her a numbing shot before they cut a small piece of her skin away. She got a brief glimpse of the different layers of her skin and was surprised to see that the glow was brighter further down. It made some sense, she figured, that her skin would absorb some of the glow but she hadn’t really considered just how much of it wasn’t making it through.

“How are you sleeping?” the third member of today’s team asked.

“Fine,” Jory replied.

“The glow doesn’t keep you up?”

“No.”

“Well that’s good.”

“How much longer do I have to stay here?” Jory asked after a moment.

“Hard to say,” the doctor replied. “We’re still trying to figure out how Starfall syndrome is spread, and we want to make sure you don’t have any other symptoms that could negatively effect your well being.”

“All I do is glow,” she stated.

“That we know of,” the doctor said. “You may have other changes that we haven’t identified yet.”

“Are any of the others sick or do they just glow too?”

“We’re not allowed to discuss specifics about the other patients with you, but there are some who are not as lucky as you, and a wide variety of symptoms. You are the only one that glows, however.”

“So, what do the other people do if not glow?”

“I told you we can’t discuss specifics right now.”

They finished their work without any further conversation and Jory was soon left alone once more. She lay on her bed for a while, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what sort of symptoms the others had if they weren’t like her. The news reports about Starfall syndrome were always vague. Maybe it was because it manifests in so many different ways. If that was the case, maybe it wasn’t all the same virus or whatever that was causing all of this.

With nothing else to do right now, she turned on the television. A news reporter appeared in front of a background image of the night sky. Jory changed the channel before the news anchor could begin to speak. She was tired of the news. It was the same thing over and over again. No one knows how or why our solar system jumped into some other region of space. No one knows where we are in space relative to where we used to be.

Some places were rioting as people freaked out. Most religions were proclaiming the end times were here with varying degrees of excitement or dread. Most people, however, kept going about their day, living as they’d always lived. Bills still needed to be paid.

After the fifth channel showing only more news, Jory switched the television back off. She stared back up at the ceiling but this time her eyes slowly turned towards the door. Ever since she arrived here she hadn’t ever tried to leave. The main lobby of the hospital had a guard but not the hallways. Not that she’d seen, anyway, when they’d brought her up here.

She sat up and looked at the door more fully. It was a standard hotel door with key card entry. The deadbolt on her side of the door had been removed so she couldn’t lock the doctors and nurses out. Had they made it so the door wouldn’t open for her from this side? She’d never noticed the doctors or nurses doing anything specific to the door to get out.

With nothing else to pass the time with, she got up and tried the door. It opened. She peaked her head out and looked up and down the hallway. Empty. She stepped out into the hallway, leaving her door propped open so she could get back in and put an ear to the door opposite her own. It sounded like the television was on. She tried the door but it was locked. She knocked instead and waited. A moment later the door opened and a little boy, no older than ten, looked up at her. His eyes went wide when he saw how she glowed and Jory waved at him.

“Hey, I’m Jory, what’s your name?”

“Forest,” the boy replied, shying back a bit and hiding halfway behind the door.

“Hello, Forest,” Jory smiled at him in an attempt to coax him out to talk with her. “What are your symptoms?”

“Symptoms?” he wrinkled his nose in confusion.

“Yeah, I glow so they brought me here. Why’d they bring you here?”

“Oh,” he said, and stuck out his tongue. It was forked, like a snake’s tongue, and quite a bit longer than a normal human tongue should be. “I can smell really good with my tongue,” he explained as he flicked it in and out.

“That’s so cool,” Jory replied. “You wanna come with me and meet some others and see what they can do?”

“Mmm, no,” he glanced back to the television where a cartoon was still playing.

“Okay,” Jory said and Forest shut the door.

Just as she was about to knock on the next door, someone in a hazmat suit turned the corner and spotted her.

“Get back in your room!” they gasped. “You’re not supposed to expose yourselves to one another.”

Jory hurried back into her room.

“Sorry,” she told them. “I just wanted to see what they could all do.”

“Well until we are certain you aren’t contagious we need you to all stay isolated.”

“Fine,” she sighed and shut her door.

She waited a few minutes and then peeked back out. The coast was clear so she hurried over to the next door and knocked. Stepping back, she figured this would give them enough distance to not be in danger of sharing whatever it was they had , if it was transmittable in the first place.