Chapter Forty-Two

The buzz of the phone woke Riley. She sat up, and her hand went to her head as a jolt of sharp pain stabbed her in the skull.

Shit.

How long did she have? She thought of the others she had seen die strapped to their beds, their minds giving way before their bodies. Her stomach churned. She didn’t want that. Hell, she didn’t want to die, either. She was nearly out of time. A day, two at the most.

She closed her eyes and lay still as Eli answered the call.

“How long?” he asked. “Okay. We’ll see you then.”

He switched on the light and glanced at her, his eyes narrowing on her face. “Headache?”

She gave a small nod and then winced. He got up and pulled on his pants, crossed the room to his desk, and picked up the bottle of painkillers. Shook a couple out and handed them to her. She swallowed them dry.

“Tell me if you need something stronger.”

“I will.”

“That was Adam. They have our man. They’ll be with us in an hour.”

A spark of hope fluttered to life.

Eli gave her a quick glance. The little frown line had gone from between her eyes, so he was guessing the painkillers had kicked in. He grabbed the rest of his clothes from the floor and finished dressing. Then he paced the office. Was he putting too much hope on this one thing? Maybe it wouldn’t help them at all. Jesus, it had to. They were running out of time. Much longer and there would be nobody left to save.

He’d gotten everything ready after Adam had called last night, before they had gone to bed. Now all he could do was wait and try not to build his hope up too much. But this was the break he’d been waiting for.

The man had to be a carrier. But why was he suddenly infecting people? What had changed? He resisted the urge to call Adam, find out if he had discovered anything yet. They would be here soon enough.

Almost exactly an hour after he had called, Eli’s phone beeped again. It was Adam. “We’re on our way up. We tested him on the planehe’s got the virus in his blood.”

“Good. Has he told you anything?”

“Some. I’m pretty certain he’s our patient zero, but I think you should hear it for yourself. It’s pretty crazy.”

“Okay. Bring him up here.”

They had a quarantine room set up. If Jason Burton wasn’t infected, Eli hadn’t wanted to be the one to give him the virus. It wouldn’t be needed now.

Eli’s viral count had dropped below infectious levels overnight, and the antiretrovirals were keeping his viral load down—which was good, but that was hardly going to save the world. He’d seen the latest figures.

It was spreading too fast. They needed something that would stop it in its tracks, not a temporary fix that worked only if you caught the virus at exactly the right time.

He sat down at his desk and then got up again. Paced some more.

He heard the ping as the outer doors opened, and he hurried out to meet them. Adam was in a full hazmat suit. He was alone except for a young man in jeans and nothing else, his feet bare. His hands were cuffed behind his back. He was clearly freaked out by this and was only just holding himself together.

How was Eli supposed to tell him he was responsible for potentially millions of deaths?

“How are the two of you doing?” Adam asked.

“As well as can be expected. How about you?”

“I’m fine. Still clear. I’m going to leave you—I have things to do. Keep me informed.” He handed Eli a small silver key. “For the cuffs. I don’t think he’s going to be a problem.”

As he reached the door, Eli called out, “Hey.”

Adam turned back.

“Sorry you missed your book tour,” Eli said. “Bummer. It would have definitely been relevant.”

Inside the mask, Adam smiled. “Even so, I think the turnout might have been disappointing.”

Eli waited until Adam had disappeared and the doors were sealed behind him. He crossed the room, saw Jason twitch as he got closer, then hold himself still. Eli went around behind him and inserted the key in the cuffs, unlocked them, and then stepped back just as Riley appeared in the doorway to the office, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.

Jason was rubbing his wrists, glancing between him and Riley. “Can you tell me what’s happening? On the plane, they wouldn’t tell me anything. Just that some doctor wanted to talk to me. Is that you?”

Eli held out his hand. “I’m Dr. Elijah Vance.” Jason took his hand and shook. “And this is Captain Riley Hawkins.” Riley stepped forward and shook hands.

“Can I get you a coffee?” she asked.

Jason nodded, and she headed over to the machine and poured a mug. “Sugar and cream?”

“Please.”

She handed him the mug.

“Why don’t you take a seat?” Eli waved him over to a table with three seats around it, where he’d set up a laptop to record the interview. First, though, he wanted to get some tests running. He wanted to start mapping the boy’s DNA. While Eli and his team had developed their own accelerated rates of next-generation gene sequencing, much faster than anything else available, it would still take at least six hours.

“Your arm, please.”

Jason glanced at the syringe but didn’t argue, just stretched out his arm. Eli wrapped the band around his forearm and tapped the vein. He took the blood sample and then a second, which he sealed inside a container to pass along to his team, who would do the actual sequencing. Hopefully they would have preliminary results within hours. He sent up a silent prayer.

When he returned to the table, Riley had gotten him a coffee, and he gave her a smile. He sipped it for a moment, then leaned across and switched on the laptop.

Jason put down his mug. “Please tell me why I’m here.”

“Did you visit the village of Iznájar three weeks ago?”

Jason nodded. “Is that what this is about?”

“We were part of the medical team that attended a viral outbreak in Iznájar.”

He frowned. “There was a virus? After we left? What sort of virus? The same one that’s here? Are they okay?”

“They’re dead, Jason. The whole village.”

“What? How? Why? I…I don’t understand.” He put down his mug, placed his hands on the table as though ready to run. It must be hard to hear.

“The virus had a hundred percent infection rate and a hundred percent fatality rate.”

“And you think I might have this virus? That I caught it in Iznájar?”

Christ, how did you tell someone they were responsible for so many deaths? “We think you’re a carrier, Jason. We believe you took the virus to Iznájar.”

His face went blank for a moment as he processed what he was told. He started to shake his head. “No. I’m not sick.”

“You’re carrying the virus. They’ve already confirmed it.”

He was silent for a moment. “My friends. The guys who went to the village with me. Are they…?”

“I’m sorry. They’re dead as well. We believe they brought the virus back from Mexico.”

He closed his eyes tight as though he could somehow make it all go away. Then lowered his head, pressed his skull with his hands. “I don’t…I can’t. I’m not sick.”

“Tell me what happened in Iznájar, Jason.”

He straightened, took a deep breath. His face went pale, then set. He cleared his throat. “Tom’s mom is from the village. He wanted to visit, so we trekked there. The place was a shithole, but the people were nice.” Something flashed across his face, and he caught his lower lip, bit it until he bled.

“I don’t understand the timing,” Riley said. “Why did the virus show up in Iznájar before Jason’s friends even showed symptoms? Surely they should have gotten sick before Rosita. And the Japanese outbreak. We know now that it occurred soon after Mexico. They kept it quiet as long as they could.”

Eli had an idea. “What else happened, Jason? You said the people were nice. Anyone in particular?”

He gave a slow nod. “Rosita.”

“You slept with her?”

“Yes. She was sweet. And now she’s dead. I don’t understand.”

“And after Rosita. Did you sleep with anyone else?”

A look of horror flashed across Jason’s face. He glanced at Riley, then at the tabletop. Then at Eli. “After we got back from Iznájar. There was a girl. She was from Tokyo. Oh God.”

Well, that made sense. “My guess is that you weren’t as infectious back then. That you needed close contact to pass on the virus. Rosita caught it when she slept with you. For some reason, she was more infectious, and she passed it on to the rest of the village.” He studied Jason. The boy was clearly in shock, but otherwise, he appeared healthy. No fever. “You’re not sick now, Jason. Have you been?”

He was staring fixedly at the table, his shoulders stiff but his hands trembling. “On and off since we left the village. We thought maybe we’d caught some bug while we were camping in the jungle, but then I’d get better.”

“The virus built up in your system and you started showing symptoms. At that point, you probably passed it on to your two friends. Then somehow you fought it off, got better. Until the virus built up again. I’m guessing you have some sort of natural immunity, but something messed with that.” He just didn’t understand what or why. He’d never come across anything similar.

“Wait,” Jason said. “I was bitten on the way back from the village. By a bat. I thought I was feeling shitty as a reaction to the treatment. Could I have caught this from a bat?”

Eli didn’t think so. The coincidence of Rosita being the first infected in the village was too great. Although that might explain how the virus had been transferred to the bat population.

“I’m sorry, but we’re certain you transmitted the infection to Rosita, and that was before you were bitten.”

“So I did this. It’s my fault. I killed them all.”

“It’s not,” Riley said. “It’s something in your DNA. You can’t help how you’re made. I’m not a doctor, but even I know that. You can’t blame yourself.”

“I can.” He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, Eli could see the resolve in his expression. “A few months ago, I was contacted by a company. They said they were doing medical research, that they’d identified something in my DNA that could be helpful to them. I’d done one of those tests you can buy; they must have gotten ahold of the results somehow. They offered me a lot of money. Too much. I should have known. But it seemed aboveboard. I read up about it, and a lot of companies do the same thing, pay people to do drug trials, and I thought I might be helping people. Cure a sickness or something.” He shook his head, blew out his breath. “I’m kidding myself. I did it for the money.”

“What was the name of the company?” Riley asked.

“ZB International. I looked them up. There’s nothing about them anywhere.”

“What happened next?”

“They sent me a nondisclosure agreement. I assumed it was to stop me doing any industrial espionage stuff. Who was I going to tell? After I signed it, then they paid me a depositit was enough to get me through collegeand then told me to go to this facility.”

“Where was this facility?

“In Alaska. Just outside Anchorage. I thought there would be a group of us, but I never saw anyone else. If there was anyone else there, they kept us separate.”

It all came back to Alaska. “And what were the tests? Did you find out what they were testing?”

“No. They took a lot of samples. I’m pretty sure they drugged me a couple of times and I don’t know what they did then, but nothing bad. I never felt sick. You think they gave me this virus?”

“I’m not sure what they did.” But he was sure it was related. He just had no clue of the hows and the whys. “We’ll know more when I’ve run some tests.”

They were silent for a moment. Eli’s brain was scrambling to make sense of the information. To try and get something useful from it. Clearly, Jason had been selected for a reason. There had been something special about his DNA before the testing was done. He’d been specifically targeted. At least now they knew how it had reached Mexico.

“Could someone have gotten ahold of a sample of the virus?” Riley suggested. “Someone involved in the plane crash rescue mission. Infected Jason. Maybe they saw an opportunity, a potentialan unknown virus.”

“What for?” Eli asked. “As far as I can tell, they’d contained it ten years ago. It wasn’t a threat. No need to go to this trouble for a virus that’s pretty much eradicated. And why has it all surfaced now? What’s happened? What’s changed?”

Riley rested her chin on her hand. Eli could almost see her brain working through the issues. Trying to come up with an answer. Something that would help. “Could it have been terrorists who got ahold of the virus and were looking to develop a vaccine or something before they released it into the world?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. It doesn’t make sense.” He turned to Jason. “What happened afterward? They just let you go?”

“Yes. I was there three weeks. Then one day, a nurse came along and told me I could leave.”

“Doesn’t sound like the action of terrorists. They would have just killed him. Or kept him prisoner.” Ruthless terrorists contemplating releasing a deadly virus out into the world were hardly likely to worry about taking one more life. So not terrorists. No, whoever it was had gotten what they wanted from Jason and then cut him loose. They had no clue what they were releasing on the world. Hadn’t thought it through or understood the ramifications of what they were doing. Whatever that was.

Everything came back to Jason. He was the source. Of Mexico, Tokyo, Texas, New York. The breakouts could all be traced back to him.

“Military, then?” Riley’s question pulled him from his thoughts.

“I think any official connection would have come to light by now. They’re beyond keeping secrets.” He studied Jason. What was so special? He knew what he had to look for first. The boy appeared sick now, his skin pale. Hardly surprising. “Is there anything else you think might help? Anything about this facilityyou can give Riley directions in a moment, but anything you can think of?”

“The address. And they gave me a number to call if I was worried about anything.”

“Anything? Were they more specific?”

He shook his head. “No. They were pretty adamant that there would be no side effects. It was just a precaution.”

“Do you remember it? And the address?”

“Yes.”

Riley passed him a notepad and pen and he scribbled the information down. She took it back, picked up her cell phone, and punched it in. After a minute, she shook her head. “Nothing. But then, a lot of the systems are down.”

“I tried it a few days ago, when things were still working,” Jason said. “There was no answer.”

Eli pressed his fingers to his eyes. He needed to think about this, and he did his best thinking while he was working. The results of the first tests would start coming in any moment. “Riley, can you go through with Jason his movements after he left Iznájar? When he was sick. Not sick. Girlfriends. And get the information off to Adam?”

“Of course.” She licked her lips. “Do you think you’re going to find anything? Anything that can help?”

God, he wished he could tell her yes, take the darkness from her eyes. He just wasn’t sure. He stood up. “If it’s there, I’ll find it.”

Jason looked between the two of them. “Why aren’t you wearing suits? Like the men who picked me up?”

“We’re both infected.”

Two hours later, Eli sat back in his seat and rubbed a hand over his face. He’d been on the phone with Heather, and all the tests they could think of between them had been set in motion. Some they couldn’t do anything about until they had more information.

He hated the waiting. He stood up and stretched. Everything ached, including his head. He didn’t think it was the sickness. Just lack of sleep and worry. He grabbed the bottle of painkillers and emptied a couple onto his palm, swallowed them with some cold coffee.

He glanced around the lab. Riley was nowhere to be seen. Jason was still at the table, his head resting on his arms, his face turned away. Eli couldn’t even imagine what the boy must be thinking. Blaming himself for the end of the world.

He crossed the room and pushed open the door to his office, not aware he was holding his breath until he saw her on the bed.

Riley lay on her back, one arm flung over her head, cutting out the light.

She sensed someone approach, lowered her arm, and blinked. For a moment, her brain was blank, and then she recognized Eli. Darkness hovered on the edge of her vision and sharp spikes of pain stabbed at her brain.

As he moved to stand over her, she pushed herself upright. Everything hurt, and fear clenched her guts up tight.

He was frowning, and she forced a smile. He didn’t need to worry about her right now. He had to concentrate. She sat, eyes closed for a minute, controlling her breathing. Then she opened her eyes, looked at him, and gave a small smile. “I was dreaming. About the end of the world. It was bad.”

“And then you woke up, and it was even worse.”

“Yeah.” She swallowed and her hand went to her throat, then quickly away.

“Did you get the interview off to Adam?” he asked.

She nodded. Then took a sip of water. “There was something interesting in there.” Her voice cracked, and she forced herself to ignore the pain. “Jason flew out of Mexico City on the same day we did. He had coffee at Starbucks.”

“Jesus, so…”

She gave a weak smile. “If only I’d drank the crappy airport coffee instead of going to Starbucks, then maybe I’d be okay right now. And so would you.” It was scary how the smallest decisions could have the biggest consequences. How life or death was really down to no more than a toss of a coin. “Anyway,” she continued, “enough of if onlys, they don’t get us anywhere. I spoke with Adam. He’s going to locate this facility. I want to go. See where it all started. Why it all started.”

“We’ll both go.” He leaned across and kissed her. “You were the one good thing in all of this. I’m glad I found you. If we get out of this…I hope we can be together.”

“I hope so, too. Shelly would be so impressed with you.” Her smile faded. “Adam told me something else. Shelly’s dead.”

He closed his eyes, allowing himself a moment to grieve her loss. “Crap. I was hoping she’d hold on.”

“Me too. So how are things going out there? Have you come up with a cure yet?”

“Not yet. We’re running a lot of tests. The results should start coming in soon. I’ll find something. Some way to kill this fucker.”

She was guessing he was being optimistic, wanting to give her some hope. She pursed her lips. “Can you do it in time?” She knew he understood. In time for her—she didn’t want to die—and in time for Eli, who was far more important.

“I will. Or I’ll die trying.” He studied her for a moment. What was he seeing? “There’s something I want to do. That will give you more time.”

“What is it?”

“I want to put you into a light coma. Lower your body temperature. It will slow down the progress of the virus, limit the damage to your brain calls. Give me more time.”

The muscles in her stomach locked up tight, her heart racing, her mouth suddenly dry. Was this the end? “I don’t want to fall asleep and never wake up.”

“You won’t. Hopefully, it’ll only be a few hours, but that could make all the difference. And I will find a way.”

What choice did she have? And she’d been trying to put on a brave face, not let him see the extent of her pain and her fear. It would be good to sleep. “I trust you to save me. Let’s do it.”

Five minutes later, she lay on the bed in the quarantine room they had set up. She sometimes forgot that Eli was a medical doctor. She thought of him as a scientist. But it was clear as he moved around the room, setting up drips, sliding a needle into her inner arm. Her head hurt and her thoughts were swirling.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

No! But she gave a small nod, and he injected the contents of a syringe into the drip, then came to stand beside her. He sat on the edge of the bed, took her hand. “I’ll be here when you wake up,” he said.

She could feel the drug flowing through her system, and she fought to keep her eyes open. A few more seconds. But the darkness pulled her under.

“I love you,” Eli murmured.

The last thing she felt was the stroke of his fingertips over her cheek and then nothing.

Eli lowered his head and kissed her.

Then he straightened.

Time to get to work.

He cast a last look at Riley as he left the room. The frown was gone from between her eyes, and she looked at peace.

He would wake her up, and he would save her.

As he came out into the lab, Jason lifted his head and blinked a couple of times. Eli was curious about something, and he stopped by the table. “Where does your family come from? Originally?”

“My mom’s Irish about five generations back. My dad’s dad came from Russia after World War Two. Why?”

Now that was interesting. “We think the virus originated somewhere in Siberia and was carried to Alaska when people immigrated there maybe thousands of years ago. How are you feeling?” Eli asked.

“Fine. Hungry. It seems strange to say that considering the circumstances, but I’m starving.”

“There’s food in the fridge. Why don’t you make us both a sandwich?”

It would at least give him something to do.

He brought the food to Eli’s workstation five minutes later and loitered, watching him work. Eli zoned him out while he concentrated. He lost track of time while he searched for patterns.

He didn’t know how long it was before his computer pinged with an incoming email. It was Heather telling him that the initial results were coming in from the sequencing. It would take a few more hours to complete, but they had the full viral genome on the database now, so it was possible to run a comparison. While they already knew the virus was present in Jason’s blood, he was interested to know if it was also present in the boy’s DNA.

And there it was.

Jason glanced up from the table where he’d been sitting, staring into space. “What did you find?”

“Just confirmed something that I already suspected. You have the viral genome incorporated in your own DNA.”

He got up and came over. “Didn’t you know that already?”

“We knew it was in your blood, but this isn’t from a recent infection. It’s something you were born with.”

“How does that work?”

“Most retroviruses work by taking over their host’s own DNA and using it to multiply. If the host survives, then often fragments of that DNA are left behind, embedded in the host’s genes, inactive but present, and that viral DNA gets passed along to offspring. It’s not infectious. You, on the other hand, have the whole genome, which I’ve never heard of before.”

“How can that help? It still doesn’t explain what they wanted from me.” He sounded so frustrated. Eli couldn’t blame him. “And how come, if it’s been in my DNA all my life, I’ve only just now become infectious?”

“I’m guessing whatever they did to you out in Alaska woke the virus up. I just don’t know what that was.” He was beginning to have some ideas, though, and he didn’t like where they were taking him. “On the positive side, all this means is that somewhere, way back, one of your ancestors survived this virus, which, as far as we can tell, has killed everyone it’s come into contact with. We need to work out why they survived, how they fought off the virus. I’m hoping”—because if it wasn’t, they were all fucked“that the answers are in your DNA. What I’m doing at the moment is comparing your DNA with mine, because I have no immunity. Then we’ll look at any significant differences.”

“Won’t there be a lot of differences?”

“Yes, but certain things should be the same. Those are the ones we’ll look at.”

“What are the chances?”

“That we’ll find something useful? I think they’re high. Whether we’ll be able to actually use it in the time we have, not so good. In the meantime, there are a few things we can do to buy us some more time. I just got the results back from another test, and you have plenty of antibodies. At this point, we can’t know which are specific to the virus, but my team has already tested them in cultures, and it looks like they’re working.”

“And you can use them? To help people, I mean.”

The boy sounded so hopeful; he was a good kid—he didn’t deserve to have the weight of millions of deaths on his shoulders. “To a limited extent. For one thing, it’s only a temporary fix, gives the recipient what we call passive immunity. Hopefully it will get the viral loads down to a level where the other drugs we have can kick in. But there’s only so much of your blood we can take.”

“Take as much as you need.”

He smiled. “Even if we took it all, it would only give us enough to treat a few people.” A drop in the ocean of what was required.

Heather was preparing samples of immunoglobulin now for human testing. He planned to try it on Riley. “They’re sending samples to various labs, where they’ll start production on a synthetic version of the antibodies, but that will take time.” Possibly weeks. Too long for most of the people currently infected, though maybe it would be in time to help some. “Look, there’s a bed in my office… You look like a wreck. Why don’t you go lie down for a while?”

After Jason was gone, he sat staring at the screen trying to see a pattern. His phone rang, and he glanced at it. Adam. He picked up. “What do you have?”

“We’ve traced the facility in Alaska.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s registered to a ZB International. There’s a whole load of intermediaries, but it’s actually owned by Henry Berenger. Don’t you know him?”

An icy coldness froze in his belly. What the hell? “I do.”

They talked for a few minutes more, Eli on autopilot as he updated Adam on what he’d found so far.

He ended the call and sat staring into space.

How was Henry involved in all this? He owned the facility where Jason had undergone the tests. Had he been responsible for whatever had been done to Jason? Was he responsible for everything? Had he known that when they spoke the other day?

Jesus. His head was going to explode.

Henry had terminal cancer. Only weeks or days to live. How did that play into the scenario?

God, he was tired. His brain wasn’t working. The more he discovered, the less any of this made sense.

He forced himself to go over the facts. Just over three months ago, Henry had found out he had cancer. Almost at the same time, he had offered Eli a job—an exorbitantly highly paid job. Was that even relevant? What had he wanted Eli for?

Something else had happened around then. The break-in at the lab.

He picked up his phone and dialed Carmen’s office. It rang for a while—maybe Carmen was sick or already dead or had run away to the country with her family. Then it picked up.

“Eli?”

“Carmen. You remember back to that break-in at the labs?”

“Of course. Why are you asking now? Don’t you have bigger things on your mind?”

“I was just curious about something. Around the same time, were you approached by Henry Berenger?”

“Yes. He offered me a job. At a ridiculous salary. I turned him down. How did you even know that?”

“I didn’t; it was just a…” He blew out his breath, not sure how much he wanted to say. While he owed Henry a lot, did he really owe him any loyalty in these circumstances? Whatever they were.

“What’s this about, Eli?”

“It might be nothing. I’ll get back to you.”

He disconnected the call and sat, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Henry was a seventy-year-old billionaire who had probably always been able to buy anything he wanted. Then he was given a terminal diagnosis. What would he do under those circumstances? Carmen’s work used a lot of the same principles as Eli’s, using CRISPR technology to manipulate DNA. Maybe when she’d refused the job, he’d offered it to Eli. Then he’d arranged the break-in and stolen Carmen’s research. Hoping to live forever? To beat death?

It was so far-fetched, but he couldn’t twist the facts into anything else.

When faced with imminent death, what would a man with billions be prepared to do to stave off the inevitable?

But how did that tie in with the virus? Was it just an unlucky side effect? Maybe Jason also carried the antiaging mutation Carmen had identified and that’s why he’d been chosen. That he also had the virus embedded in his DNA had been an unlucky coincidence. Had there been some off-target response to CRISPR that had somehow activated the virus? But why Alaska? Another coincidence?

He picked up his phone again and called Heather. “Can you speak with Carmen? Get her to send you the sequencing for the antiaging mutation she identified.”

“Will she give it to me?”

“Tell her it’s related to our research on the virus and that I’ll explain later. She’ll send it. Then cross-reference it against Jason’s DNA—see if he has the mutation. Make it a priority.”

“Will do. I have the immunoglobulin ready for you. Enough for two doses so far. Where do you want them sent?”

“Here.”

He ended the call, then tapped in the number for Henry’s assistant. “James? It’s Eli Vance.”

“Dr. Vance, how can I help you?”

“Can you tell me where Henry is?” There was silence. “It’s important.”

“He didn’t want anyone to know, but I think maybe that doesn’t matter anymore. He’s in Alaska.”

For some reason, that came as no surprise. “Can you call him?”

“Actually, I’ve been trying. He’s not answering the phone.”

Could he be dead already? “Can you send me the number to this phone? I’m going to go and find him.”

The answers were with Henry in Alaska. He could feel it. He was going to go hunt them down and just hope that Henry was still alive when he got there.

There were just a couple of things he needed to do first.

Riley didn’t want to open her eyes. She tried to work out where she was, but her brain was sluggish. Refusing to function and she was cold. So cold.

“Hey, sleeping beauty. Wake up.”

“Are you my prince?” Her voice sounded rough. How long had she been out?

He snorted. “No. I’m the evil monster.”

She forced open her lids. It took a moment to focus, and she screwed up her eyes and tried again. She attempted to lift her arm, but it was strapped to the bed. “How long?”

“Six hours.”

Was that all? Was it good or bad? She forced the question out. “Did it work?”

“You’re already fighting off the virus.”

She blinked away a tear as relief flooded her system. “I knew you’d save me.”