We have a problem, and I don’t know what we’re going to do to solve it.

I’ve moved my technicians and interns to bottled water for now: I have teams scouring every big box store and grocery outlet in a twenty-mile radius for more. It’s not going to last forever, and we don’t have a purification system set up for the tap water. The tap water! We let ourselves become too trusting as a species, and this is what that sort of thing gets you. It gets you tapeworms in your drinking glass, and a battleground inside your body.

Even Adam has to avoid the faucet. I’m still trying to culture these eggs, and I don’t know whether they’d attempt to take him over. His integration with his host is solid, but that doesn’t mean he’s prepared for that sort of internal war.

Thank God we caught this before we lost anyone. As it stands, we’ve burned through a lot of antiparasitics, some of which had to be administered more aggressively than I like, and people are scared. People have a reason to be.

Of all the things I thought to be afraid of, I never thought to be frightened of the water.

—FROM THE NOTES OF DR. SHANTI CALE, DECEMBER 2027

Mom is terrified. She tries to hide it, but she’s not good at concealing her emotions: She never has been. Maybe that’s why she’s always worked so hard not to have them. Her fear is spreading to the rest of the staff. She’s going to start losing control of them soon, and that can’t be allowed to happen. We need them. We need their work to continue. And honestly, they’re safer here than they would be anywhere else.

We’re still looking for Sal. There have been a few unsubstantiated reports that she’s been taken to the Pleasanton exclusion zone, but that place is a roach motel—the uninfected check in, and they don’t check out. If we still had Tansy up and functional, we could mount a rescue organization and get her back in a heartbeat. As it stands, we have no tactical leader, and Tansy…

Tansy is complicated. But her heart is still beating. There’s still hope.

Hope is all we have left.

—FROM THE NOTES OF DR. NATHAN KIM, DECEMBER 2027