Per Darian’s instructions, I reserved a room for us for two nights in Red Bluff. As we would need the space, I got the biggest one available, which had a king-sized bed and a sitting area with a couch, coffee table, television, and a tiny desk. When we arrived, we unloaded the SUV, transforming the room into a makeshift lab. The all-important scanner, brand new and ready to be calibrated, would drive me insane.
As part of my work with the CDC, I’d been taught how to calibrate the damned things in case of an emergency. To my disgust, the Devil and his wicked family of archangels had made a point of including every diagnostic doohickey required to successfully tame the machine.
“I am convinced the whole lot of them truly hates me,” I announced, taking over the coffee table so I could work some technological magic. “Do you know why my bosses had me trained on this shit?”
“In case you were with them during an emergency, and they didn’t have any lab techs around?”
“Disasters are generally more likely to happen when my bosses go to investigate something. They’re not sent out unless it’s really important, and they got tired of trying to find someone to calibrate a tool if it went haywire while out. So, I was trained on all the good scanners. The cheap ones? Wouldn’t know what to do with them if you beat me with it. But this model? I can make this model sing for you. Assuming Lucifer paid for it, it cost him at least a million, and once I’m done calibrating it, it’ll be able to tell us about just about any known substance. It takes a long time to run the tests, but if these samples are something the CDC has seen before, we’ll know about it within a few hours.” I glared at the metal cases containing the vials. “If we get infected with some sort of plague, I’m going to be seriously pissed.”
“You aren’t seriously pissed already?”
“Apparently not. I should be.”
“I’m very curious to see what you’ll do once you reach the seriously pissed stage.” Darian sat on the couch, making sure to give me enough space to work, and watched with interest. “Once you’re set up, I’ll guide you through how I like to record evidence, especially when dealing with samples. Once that’s set up, I’ll work on the fingerprint angle. With luck, the computers will be able to narrow the fingerprints down to a decent number that need manual confirmation. Reading fingerprints is a pretty tricky art.”
“Unless you happen to know an archangel and can ask.”
“I might know an archangel or two, but I’ve determined they’re assholes out for my virginity and marital status. If I ask, they’ll tell me they’ll do it if I do something to resolve my statuses. Does this mean I’m a pure maiden?”
Snickering, I began the tedious process of calibration, using the various tools to test the system, confirm the readings, install updated firmware as needed, and otherwise enslave myself to a ridiculously expensive portable computer with an attitude problem. “It’s sweet they think you’re such a prize. If you decide to play at being a damsel in distress, I’d consider rescuing you. But I’m not sure if being a sweet, pure maiden means you’re marriage material.”
“Hey! I am a prize. You should be honored to have been selected. Don’t you know what marriage to me wins you?”
“Beyond becoming an in-law of the Devil and sucked into the insanity of the high heavens and the many hells? Do you know what that lot causes? Trouble. Do you know what the children of that lot causes? Even more trouble. You, sir, are nothing but trouble.”
“I cannot deny this accusation.” Then, to make it clear he found nothing at all wrong with my opinion, he smirked at me. “I’d even consider wearing a gown for your amusement and swooning, but you’d have to play the part and dress up like a gentleman in exchange. Honestly, I find women in suits to be rather attractive. Skirts are lovely, but a confident woman in a good suit definitely catches my attention.”
Someone needed to inform Darian his smirk classified as a dangerous weapon. Afterwards, someone needed to take me in for some serious talks with a shrink to discuss how much I liked the smug look on tall, dark, and handsome men.
Yep, he was trouble. If he kept checking off my various boxes for what I liked in a man, I would be in trouble.
“I feel the Christian pantheon is unfairly using my interest in tall, dark, and handsome men against me.” I wrinkled my nose and glared at the meter, which would be put to serious work helping us figure out what the lab had been researching. “While I do this, why don’t you work with the paperwork? I’m hoping you can manifest the address of where they have taken my cat, honestly.”
“I doubt it will be that simple, but considering how much work they put into hiding the papers, it is possible. I suspect it’ll give us the names of the main operators. Using the various law enforcement databases, we might be able to locate someone willing to talk. I have my doubts, though.”
“Why?”
“Operations like that tend to shut betrayers up in a rather permanent fashion. That’s how I ultimately got shot. They failed to shut me up.”
“Now that I’ve met your parents, how did any of them actually survive?”
“I have made a point of not checking into their fates, as it’s not my parents I’m worried about. Lucifer, however, has no scruples about telling some mortal somebody annoyed him. People will do a lot to earn the Devil’s favor, as though that will somehow prevent them from going to his many hells for reformation.” Darian stretched out his legs and made himself comfortable. “Also, I wouldn’t trust any member of my family. They do precisely what they feel will get them the result they want. Unless you explicitly tell them you don’t want to become, say, a succubus, if they think you’ll be best off as a succubus, that’s what you’ll become. Personally, I wouldn’t complain, but it’s a lot of work keeping a succubus monogamous, and it involves a great deal of attention from her partner. I’m not sure I’m up for taming a succubus.”
Well, I could think of one good reason why Lucifer wouldn’t work that angle. “Darlene would likely attempt to assassinate me within a week if I became a succubus. She is the true definition of jealous.”
“This is true. How disappointing for me. I won’t get to have my very own succubus to wrangle and tame. I’m heartbroken from disappointment.”
“I’m not kissing anything to make it better right now. I’m busy.”
“‘Right now’ implies you might later, and I view this as a promising and encouraging development. When would be an appropriate time to inquire about such a thing?”
While awkward, Darian also counted as wretchedly adorable in his tentative explorations of flirtation. After excessive exposure to the Devil and Darlene, I’d become a master at identifying such hints, although Darian was a step below using a bat to get his point across compared to Lucifer’s sly seductions of his wife. As consent topped the sexy charts, he’d already done a lot to earn a later invitation. “We can talk after the bandages are gone.”
“Ah, right. Those. Does it hurt? I usually keep some ibuprofen in my briefcase. Idiots give me headaches. I keep acetaminophen, too. If you want anything stronger than that, I’m going to need to call in a few favors from some doctors I know, but I’m sure I can get you something to take the edge off.”
“It’s not bad enough to take anything, really. It just aches when I forget and move more than I should.”
“Pain can hamper recovery.”
I kept myself from rolling my eyes through focusing on the temperamental equipment I needed to calibrate to make sense of the vials we’d pilfered from the site. “Okay, hit me up with a pair of each and some water, and if there’s chocolate anywhere in this joint, I could use a hit.”
While Darian handled that, I resumed work, starting with the easier calibrations, which involved testing the samples included with the scanner. Either I’d gotten lucky or someone, likely the Devil, had already played with it, as I had a perfect score on the common live samples. The trickier work, which included a through-plastic scan of a sample of gorgon dust, always put me on edge. The device did as it was supposed to, much to my relief.
I returned the samples to their carry case in case I needed to recalibrate the device, and I waited for Darian to bring me my requested water, medications, and chocolate. I popped the pills, guzzled the water, and attacked the foil wrapper of my favorite treat.
“My mother always told me to come prepared with chocolate. Until this moment, I had no idea how right she was.”
“It has been a long week.” I bit off another chunk of chocolate and pointed at his hand. “Hold that out. It’s time to test this on a live sample.”
“Is that all I am now? A live sample?”
“Yes.” I grinned at him and set up the device to do a complete diagnostic scan. “If you were in a hospital setting, the tests I’m about to run would cost fifty thousand. I’m going to know everything about you within the next hour.”
“Everything?”
“Everything, including your sperm count. At least you shouldn’t be getting any surprises about your parentage, so that’s something.”
He sighed. “I now have performance anxiety, and I don’t even have to perform. I like children and eventually want to have them.”
“If you can’t, your uncle is the Devil. I’m sure he’d bargain with you for a trip to the angelic body shop. I will say, the angelic body shop? Might be worth the price paid in various bargains. Had I gone to a clinic, it probably would have taken six months just to get a diagnosis, and then treatments can take months to complete—if they work. A week of some aching is not a big deal.” I frowned. “Plus, that weird blue flame whenever I use magic. I wonder if I should be concerned about that.”
“Holy fire,” Darian replied. “I’m guessing they gave you a fairly hefty dose of it to get rid of the cancer. That you’re going to have an archangel sneaking in after you’re asleep tells me you’re going to be getting another dose of that, too. It wouldn’t surprise me if Lucifer joins in with demonic or devilish energy. Either will make you easier to convert, too. Conversions infused with holy fire tend to have ridiculously good natures.”
“How do you know that?”
“Dad and Father like telling me about this, because they’re determined to have me extend my lifespan. In a way, I feel guilty because I’m really aware of how much all of my parents love me and how often other parents just don’t. Like yours.”
I sighed, grabbed Darian’s hand, and jabbed him with the scanner’s needle. It beeped to confirm it had detected blood, and after several beeps, which I translated as a successful sample acquisition, it went to work figuring out what made Darian tick. I set the scanner on the table. “It’ll take a while for that to work, and when it’s done, I’ll hook it to my laptop and get the full diagnostic reading. Once I confirm everything is working as intended, we’ll begin with a proximity scan of the vials. In the meantime, show me how these papers are to be handled. We may as well make the most of our time.”
“I think you should run a scan on yourself, too.”
“I’m scanned every year as part of working with the CDC.”
“You should run a scan on yourself, too,” he repeated.
I chuckled. Shrugging hurt, and I muttered a few curses for having forgotten. “Sure. I’ll run my scan. So, while this handles the heavy work, is there anything I should know? Any infections, diseases, or whatever, so I won’t panic when I spot them on the diagnostic? If you have cancer with a tumor size of larger than a centimeter, the scanner might even pick it up.”
“Through a blood sample?”
“It’s not just reading your blood. The instant that needle enters your flesh, it pulsed with magic, which ‘echoes’ through your entire body. The scanner then reads the echoes and translates the echoes into data using even more magic. Honestly, what amazes me is how accurate these things can be. The DNA tests can be really wonky, though. It turns out there are very minor differences between what makes someone a human versus elf or pixie, satyr, or centaur. Once you get into the lycanthropy virus, things get exceptionally strange.”
“This was a far geekier conversation than I was expecting to have. Are you going to start talking to me in genome next?”
“I could,” I confessed. “We sometimes need to break into the relationship between cellular interactions during an emergency, and it makes a great deal of sense for me to have some idea what the scientists are talking about when there is a genome architectural disorder, their class, and if the disorder could result in something like heightened infection risk of a generalized plague. For example, take the rabies outbreak recently. Somebody hacked the virus to give it heightened infectivity through aerial transmission. The CDC discovered that people with certain common numerical chromosomal faults were more likely to contract the disease. Interestingly, that fault made those people more likely to be asymptomatic carriers. We think the initial modification of the rabies virus was to take advantage of the fault to help spread rabies through humanoid populations. Until recently, it was believed mice share eighty-five percent of their DNA with humans, which is what the culprits initially used to create and spread the modified virus. In reality, the differential between mouse and human DNA is less than three percent, which made this even more effective. The culprits then worked with gorgons, isolating the numerical chromosomal fault found in roughly forty percent of gorgons that is shared with humans. The fault is present in roughly twenty percent of people.”
“Is it a fault if it’s that prevalent? I’m not sure I understand. What is this fault?”
“The CDC classifies it as a fault because it results in an immune system a little less inclined to respond to certain types of illnesses, including rabies. This allows the virus to replicate without the immune system reacting. In this specific case, the uninterrupted replication of the virus results in the victims being asymptomatic for longer.” I wrinkled my nose at the clever exploitation of a human oddity. “It’s a fault because the lack of immune system response is a result of this specific element of the human genome; it’s considered harmful.”
“I think I’m having an unreasonable and unfair reaction to you talking science to me.”
I laughed. “Fortunately for you, the scanner does not typically register sexual interest as a condition unless you’re under the influence of a demon or devil. If you want to learn more than the basics of that, go ask a scientist. The last time I tried to wrap my head around numeric chromosomal faults, I gave myself a migraine and cried for several hours.”
“That you’re specifying numeric means there are other kinds of chromosomal faults.”
“Don’t ask questions you will regret hearing the answers to, Darian.”
“Okay. Can you explain a numeric chromosomal fault in a way that won’t make me feel utterly inferior, thus making me even more attracted to you and your discussion of science than I already am?”
Men. As far as human males suffering from lust went, Darian did a good job of controlling his urges and impulses, although I wondered how the hell I was supposed to explain such a thing without adding to his attraction problems. “Down syndrome is a numeric chromosomal fault, where a person has forty-seven chromosomes instead of the standard forty-six. That’s one of the more obvious numeric faults. Any time cells have an abnormal number of chromosomes, whether they have more or less than what is anticipated, it’s an abnormality or aberration or anomaly. I haven’t quite figured out what the nuanced differences between those terms are, honestly. I had a hard enough time figuring out how cell division or multiplication failures during stages of conception and fetal development create numeric chromosomal faults. Basically, these problems typically happen sometime after or during fertilization of the egg. When, how, or why remains a mystery I might understand better if my mother cared more about science than trying to convince me I had to be properly subservient or go to hell. I can’t say she’s wrong, since I am going to hell, but I’m not going for the reasons she believes. Anyway, the CDC uses the term fault because calling someone’s chromosomal situation an aberration didn’t sit well with anybody, so we changed the language. People understand there’s something wrong with the patient with that word, and the last thing we need is telling someone suffering from a genetic disorder they’re an aberration! Most of us can stomach abnormality, but even that one is sketchy.”
“Nobody warned me to be aware of the education levels of secretaries. You say your education is lacking, but then you start talking about cellular structure, and I’m thinking I need to go dig out some science books to keep up, and I wasn’t home schooled.”
I laughed. “I have a high school diploma, Darian. I never went to college. I started in the CDC as entry level because that is what I could do, there was an opening, and I was honest on my resume about my situation. My education was too haphazard to qualify for the kind of colleges I wanted to attend, and I couldn’t afford the colleges I could attend without scholarships, so I decided to educate myself. Just because my GPA was good my senior year didn’t mean the rest of my education didn’t count as a black mark against me. I sucked at the tests for college entry, too. And don’t get me wrong. Not all home schooled kids have my problems. It was the excessive influence of religion at the cost of science and history that screwed me over. A lot of parents do a great job home schooling; the CDC often checks for that because the home schoolers are often more self-driven than the publicly educated. Having a mix results in a more robust employee base.”
“Is your problem due to the fact you missed foundational education?”
“Yep. It’s fine. It worked out. I mean, it worked out until I educated myself into accidentally being able to see through divine shrouds. That’s a problem. I like living. But first, I have to find my cat. To find my cat, I have to make sure the scanner is working properly. That means waiting for your test to come through and evaluating if it’s taking readings accurately. Humans make the best fodder for that. After it looks like the scanner is working, then I can evaluate the samples. Unfortunately, this model can’t do dual readings. It’s good at what it does, but it’s inflexible in that regard.”
“Relax, Diana. We should get a lot of good information out of the paperwork, and waiting for a few hours to start working on the samples shouldn’t be an issue. Considering how my family operates, your cat is probably as safe as a bunch of nosy archangels on a mission can make him, the Devil probably has the culprits pissing their pants—or he has sent a minion or ten to steal your cat from the lab operators. Now, that said, it’s entirely possible Lucifer’s keeping an eye on the situation explicitly to get you to go in and raise hell. Some things he really can’t meddle with or he could break everything. But he really wants you on his team, and that means making sure your cat emerges from this unscathed.” Darian snapped on a pair of gloves and grabbed the first stack of papers we’d located in the trailers. “We’ll start with the exterior paperwork, as I expect that will be the quickest to sort through. Mostly, you need to write down anything I tell you to while I shuffle through these. We’ll bag them after we’ve looked through and photographed copies for ourselves. We rinse and repeat until we’ve handled every sheet of paper we grabbed. By the time we’re done, your scanner should have my results finished. At that point, it’ll be late, we’ll need some sleep, and we’ll start again tomorrow with the vials. Ready to show me just how good of a secretary you are?”
I got up and put the scanner on the bed so it could do its work without us banging into it and potentially scrambling the results. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Good. Hold onto your britches, because this is going to be a rough ride.”
Darian underestimated my tolerance for mundane paperwork along with my base ability to transform chaos into order. After five minutes of twitching through his haphazard attempts to organize the mess of documentation, I slapped his hands and took over, shuffling through the sheets to figure out what they were, who they were intended for, what purpose they served in the general scheme of lab operations, and otherwise determining a coherent method for filing and registering every paper.
Within an hour, I had everything separated into piles by type and age, and a sea of note stickers flagged the important sheets.
Darian stared at me the entire time I worked, his mouth hanging open.
“I’m a secretary,” I reminded him. “You should see what my one boss gives me. His office is the equivalent of a disaster zone. He walks in, and paperwork disasters happen. It’s my job to organize his disasters. This is barely a blip compared to him. He’s a brilliant man, but he views tossing the used sheets across his desk to deal with later as a viable way of storing important papers. We’re not here to glean every single sentence from every single sheet. We need the important information, such as addresses, names, phone numbers, and subjects.” I pointed at the largest pile. “Those are the invoices for various animal care products. No services. The veterinarian supply store they were using might be a place to check into, as they’re probably involved. Some of the drugs are restricted, and this lab likely doesn’t have the right licenses to order the classes of drugs they were receiving. So, the supply center is a good place to investigate.”
“Drug licensing is something I can access with my various permits.” Darian grabbed the stack and shuffled through until he found the sheets dedicated to the supplier. He went to his laptop, typed in the names provided on the receipts as the recipient, and shook his head. “There’s no valid drug licenses under these names in the state of California or in the state of Utah, where the supplier is located. The invoices imply the orders were picked up in person. No shipping addresses listed on the forms, no shipping fees.”
I nodded, and I gestured to the next stack in line. “Those are their tax documentation; it looks like the company was about to file various documentation with the government to cover up their activities, but the bust happened before the filings could happen. At first glance, I suspect a lot of it is generally falsified. There’s no evidence of any actual incoming monies from the other documents I looked over, so someone was funding it out of pocket and pretending to have expenses and earnings.” I pointed at the next stack. “That’s definitely falsified payment information on them receiving money. The CDC doesn’t issue payments out of the office they picked for their cover up. It would have triggered a flag, leading to their downfall if they had submitted it. It’s a trap the CDC likes to use; they have an office that looks like it should be responsible for issuing payments, but that building never issues payments, so it’s used as a trap.”
“That is disgustingly clever of the CDC.”
“Fraud is common, and it’s an easy way to catch people in the act. The CDC issues a lot of payments, so making claims of receiving a payout is often done. But the CDC is meticulous about tracking payouts, so it rarely works out for the crook.”
“Yet you’re telling me about this.”
“I would hope you’re not stupid enough to claim the CDC paid you when it did not.”
“Surprisingly, I am not that stupid,” he replied. “I’m just surprised the CDC actively pursued something like that.”
“It’s necessary. The CDC is a pretty common target of fraud, and the company moves a significant amount of money. These papers will bring the CDC into the investigation, which is a good thing for us—mostly. It’s mostly a good thing for us.”
“They have the resources needed to deal with it, and there’s evidence they targeted a CDC employee, which will escalate it in the firm. Since you’re a person-of-interest to Lucifer, that will send it even higher up the chain. Correct?”
“Correct, and if it is decided that I am being targeted to cripple the CDC, it will create issues.” I narrowed my eyes. “I could see Lucifer taking advantage of this to transition me to his employment. He doesn’t really care what happens to the CDC. It’s a tool to him, although it’s often a convenient tool.”
“Won’t poaching you earn the CDC’s ire?”
“That depends. There are a ton of people who would make a great replacement for me. If me working for him makes it easier to deal with the demons and devils, the CDC will embrace him poaching me.” I shrugged. “I’m going to make the Devil pay me extra if he wants me, especially if there’s any evidence he planned it to work out this way.”
“We’re talking about the Devil here. The only time he’s really surprised is when Darlene is involved. He loves when she surprises him, so he absolutely will not peek into the future. Unless he’s really bored, he peeks enough to make sure things will work out in the way he wants. It’s just easier to accept we’re being played.”
“That was my general impression of the situation,” I admitted. “All right. Do we pursue the tax documentation angle?”
“No, but we’ll take pictures of everything if we think it will be useful later. It might have the identifications of those not already in custody, though. Actually, I’ve changed my mind. Yes, we’ll pursue the tax documentation, but only for addresses that aren’t near the lab. We want to catch those who weren’t busted in the operation.” Narrowing his eyes, he checked something on his laptop. “The trailer park was registered as a communal living center, but they were using PO boxes located in Dinsmore. And yes, there is a small post office in Dinsmore. So, if we eliminate all PO boxes in Dinsmore, that should save us some time.”
“Unless we can gain access to those boxes.”
“That’s probably no good. PO boxes are cleared out shortly after a failed payment and transferred to someone else or are no longer receiving mail. The boxes would have been cleared out by now. We can call them in the morning, but the likelihood someone has been paying for those boxes after the bust is slim.” Darian frowned. “But if someone has been paying the renewal bills, that could work. I’d have to use a contact in law enforcement to get access to the post office systems, though. That’s not something I have access to.”
I shuffled through the tax documents, pulling out the few sheets that didn’t have a Dinsmore address and handed them over to Darian. “Next up are standard IOs.”
“IOs?”
“Insertion orders for products and services. Some is for lab equipment from websites, things like that. It looks like they spread this stuff around to a lot of places to hide their activities. It looks like they tried to spread out where they purchased their equipment as much as possible, limiting the bulk orders for places that are specialized. They were definitely doing some form of medical research—and your concern about contagious diseases may have been accurate. They ordered several scanners meant to detect common infections in animals, including rabies, distemper, anthrax, bird flu, and so on.”
“Anthrax?”
“Bacterial infection. It’s a nasty one because it can live on surfaces for a while, so it’s a common terrorism target. It spreads through spores rather than person-to-person transmissions.”
“How do you know all of this?” he blurted.
I pointed in the direction of the bed and the scanner. “I have to be familiar with a lot of contagions, and terrorists like trying to spread anthrax through the spores. It’s something we check for at sites when there’s an unknown illness. There are a lot of really contagious animal diseases found across multiple species. The scanners they ordered are specialized and meant to be used with animals and humans to detect diseases. That they ordered more than one of these implies they were definitely working with some sort of common contagion. Unless I’m mistaken, these models can’t have new diseases loaded into their software or firmware, which means they were working with a well-documented contagion. It’s possible someone could hack them, but it would be difficult—unless they stole the software for the devices from the manufacturer.”
“Always a possibility, especially with an operation of this scale. How much did they spend on the equipment?”
I leaned over to check Darian’s IOs, grabbed my phone, and tallied the entirety of the expenditures. “Just over two million dollars.”
“And they’re all paid in full?”
“Upfront payments on all of them,” I confirmed. “That Kingston guy. Could he afford this sort of payout?”
“I don’t know. Do I think he could get the funding? Yes, with time. He’s pretty charismatic, and there are enough people who are unhappy they’re infected with lycanthropy that they would contribute to such a thing. However, I’m of the opinion Kingston is crazy enough that he’d infect everybody with lycanthropy if it means he gets treated like everybody else.”
“The law isn’t always kind to lycanthropes,” I reminded him.
“And the lycanthropes who pay any sort of attention or take care with their behavior can get by without any problems. It’s the ones who think they’re entitled to do whatever they want that are the problem for the rest of the lycanthropes.”
Ah. I’d found one of Darian’s flaws.
He let his personal opinions and beliefs color his view of the world. On that, I couldn’t really blame him, but it would prevent him from looking at the whole picture. I’d learned early on I needed to leave my personal feelings on work alone, as I might miss something if I allowed such things to get in the way of trying to look at a problem from all angles. “Darian, maybe you should reevaluate your stance on Kingston and start over, this time, without your opinions about lycanthropes judging what he may or may not have done. You probably have opinions about Kingston himself, but you need to forget those when you’re contemplating the options. You can’t figure out as many of the possibilities as possible when you’ve already established someone’s behaviors, patterns, and beliefs. The first step is to figure out all of the possibilities, then you start evaluating which of those possibilities is closer to reality. That’s what we have to do in the CDC when we have a hot case that needs to be solved before people get killed. It’s too easy to let assumptions control our choices.”
“Are you sure you’ve never done any investigating before?”
“I’ve watched people investigate before, but my bosses tend to get upset if I’m anywhere near the front lines for some reason.”
“Well, losing their secretary to something avoidable would be a problem for them. Honestly, if you were my secretary, I’d have a hard time letting you leave my office.”
I raised a brow. “Or your bedroom?”
“Definitely. You keep saying sexy things to me. I’m only a man. I’m a sorely tested man, and I’m going to have to patiently wait, bide my time, and plan the best way to ask you on a date now. While hoping for mercy.”
“Considering I’ve basically promised to go on a date with you as it is through a bargain, I think you’re safe from the dark throes of disappointment. But I will remember all I need to do to flirt with you is talk about something technical or scientific. Damn. If I’d known men were this easy to flirt with, I would have done this a lot sooner.”
“A lot of men don’t like feeling like they’re inferior to women, so I’m pretty sure you’d have a bunch of offended, grouchy assholes with that approach. But then you’d get lucky with me, because your first scientific pickup line would have had me eating out of your hand. I’m blaming all three of my parents for this tendency.” Darian flopped back against the couch and shuffled through the papers I’d given him before setting them aside and reaching for the stack of tax documents. “Men like Kingston piss me off.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t care who he hurts in order to make his life better for him and only him. One of his previous attempts at curing the lycanthropy virus killed ten people through generalized human experimentation. If he’s not afraid of killing people, he’s definitely not afraid to kill a bunch of animals. This is something he would do. Or so I think. The references to his name in these papers definitely implies he’s involved.”
Interesting. “You hadn’t mentioned that earlier.”
“I try not to think about his lack of regard for life in general. It just makes me angrier than I like.” Darian waved one of the tax papers in my direction. “At least he’s, on paper, paying his accomplices fairly well. It doesn’t look like anybody made below a hundred thousand a year in this operation. That’s a damned good motivation to live in the woods in a trailer.”
As I didn’t make quite a hundred thousand a year before benefits and bonuses, I could easily see somebody deciding to live in a half-decent trailer doing sketchy things for a good paycheck. “Crime pays better than secretarial work, apparently.”
Darian shot me a look. “You’re paid less than these clowns?”
I shrugged. “I do get bonuses, but my base pay isn’t that high, no. The bonuses make it go higher, but they can be a bitch to earn.”
“You keep the higher-level bosses functional in the CDC for less than a hundred thousand a year?”
“Considering I don’t have a college degree and learned everything on the job, I think I’m doing pretty well for myself, thank you very much.” I shot a glare at him, huffed, and went to check on the meter, which churned through Darian’s blood sample and magical pulse with impressive speed. “Huh. I must have gotten one of the upgraded models. This is almost done. Maybe ten more minutes.”
“Upgraded model? I thought you knew the scanner?”
“There are different models of the same scanner. The only real difference is what is under the hood. I didn’t check the memory in it. I just assumed it was the base model. Apparently, I should not make assumptions when it comes to Lucifer.” I picked up the scanner and flipped it over to check the information on its back. Sure enough, he’d gotten me the top-of-the-line model. “Yeah. I made a mistake there. I made a stupid assumption. This is not the base model. This is the best model sold.”
“When you negotiate with Lucifer, it doesn’t matter you don’t have a degree, and you’re worth at least three times what the CDC is paying you. As you will have to deal with him most days of the week, go for a baseline of half a million a year plus bonuses and whatever other concessions you can think of. Take him for an apartment or condo in every major city he expects you to work at often, for example, unless you like hotel life. I mean, he might give you the ability to teleport, which would simplify things for you, but you might not want to live in his domain all of the time. Even Lucifer has properties on Earth to get away from work.”
I considered, and while pride demanded I stand up for myself a little better, I checked my knee-jerk reaction and forced myself to nod. “I’ve always thought I needed to be grateful I’ve done so well without a degree.”
“You’re skilled, you’re smart, and you do a good job. A degree can open doors, yes, but you’re the reason you’re being poached by the Devil. Lucifer doesn’t care about degrees. My mom? She cares about degrees, but my fathers? They couldn’t care less. They just paid for my education to keep my mother happy, and they suggested I continue educating myself so I don’t look stupid in front of women. I’m starting to think at least one of my fathers has been investigating my future in some fashion or another. Worse, I’ve already made myself look stupid in front of you several times.”
“I am of the opinion stupidity can be cured.”
“There is hope for me after all. I’ll try to keep from making you hate me by the time I can ask for a date.”
I grinned at that comment. “All right. I need to be less crabby, because right now, I should be cuddled in bed with my cat. It took months to get him to come join me in bed, and I resent some asshole has probably undone all the hard work I’ve put in convincing Mr. Flooferson to trust me.”
“Obviously, I should be sneaking out and trying to locate your cat, so when I bring him back to you, I can successfully inquire about a date after you have him settled.”
The scanner beeped in my hand, informing me it was done churning through Darian’s biologics and was ready for me to evaluate his DNA, his general health, and even his sperm count if I really wanted. “I’ll admit, that ploy would stand a good chance of working.”
“I might be an idiot at times, but you’ve made it clear you really love your cat. I’d end up feeling guilty if I tried that, so I’d try to slink away without asking. Just being honest. I’m pretty sure I’m the reason I haven’t had any luck with women.”
“Yet you’re being particularly bold and forthcoming with me?”
“Well, it helps my uncles are encouraging it. I mean, they can be complete assholes, but they generally don’t set us poor children up for complete failure without a good reason. I’m probably too trusting for my good on that one, though. So, am I dying of some undiagnosed disease?”
I took the scanner to my new laptop, plugged it in, and went to work setting up the diagnostics software and importing Darian’s health and DNA record so I could make sense of the results. Within three minutes, the first red flag popped up, involving a positive lycanthropy result.
I clicked into the software to begin diagnostics on the virus strain to encounter the second red flag: no matching species listing.
Great. New species of lycanthropes popped up yearly, but the last thing I needed was having to explain to a triad their son was the latest person-of-interest to the research and development department of the CDC. After a few more minutes of checking, the virus count in his blood stream put him at the earliest stages of infection detectible. “Remember what we were discussing about lycanthropy? This states you are positive, earliest stage of detectible virus levels in the blood—or in the magic pulse. I haven’t confirmed which. In good or bad news for you, there’s no matching strain in the system.”
Darian’s brows shot up. “I mean, I work with lycanthropes often enough, but I take the base precautions. They’re all wolves, though.”
“You do not match any known wolf strains. It’s just a blank on species type.” I tapped on the species result, went into the diagnostics software, and tapped in the request for a classification of species rather than a specific species. Narrowing it down to mammal or avian would help, and if I got lucky, I’d be able to narrow it down to a family. “I’m trying to get a family classification out of the system, but we’ll see.”
A minute later, the system pinged, informing me it was unable to detect a base class of virus strain.
How odd. I frowned, pulled out the test samples, including the wolf strain of the lycanthropy virus, and set up a new test. Within thirty seconds, the scanner did its job, reporting everything I might ever want to know about the wolf virus. Puzzled over the complete lack of data on the strain, I went back into Darian’s DNA results and tapped in a request for the system to check for known shapeshifter DNA combinations.
It, too, returned back negative.
Interesting.
“According to your expression, you either hate or love me right now, and I’m not sure which. Should I be worried?”
“Normally, when these things register a lycanthropy infection, it’s able to judge the base classification of the virus, which is typically mammal or avian. It has no idea what kind of virus you’ve been infected with. You also are negative for any of the known shapeshifter DNA combinations, which can flag people as infected with lycanthropy without actually having lycanthropy. But this is reporting you are infected with the virus.”
Darian shrugged. “That would explain some of my uncle’s behavior.”
“Which one?”
“All of them.”
I nodded. “With how many cases of early onset lycanthropy have been cropping up lately, to the point doctors are pursuing it as viable treatments for terminal patients, it’s entirely possible you haven’t been infected long. You’ll want to monitor the virus levels for progression, but beyond that, you shouldn’t be contagious unless you go really wild.”
“Can you be a little more specific about that? How wild is wild here?”
“That depends. How’s your dad compared to an incubus?” With a wicked grin, I began tapping through Darian’s DNA to see if he might pose an infection risk should he unleash his inner beast—or his devilish side. “Is your daddy just a big, nasty devilish general, or is he secretly some sort of sex god on top of it?”
“This is not a question I have ever wanted to ask my mother, truth be told—or either of my fathers. Some things a son just doesn’t want to know. That’s one of them.”
“I regret to inform you that we’re about to find out.” Giggling over having turned the tables on him, I delved into the dark depths of his genetics, clicking through the DNA trees to the section dedicated to reproduction. “Congratulations! You’re eighty-nine percent male.”
“Pardon?”
“Humans don’t express gender as pure male or female. It’s a range. In this software, we use a range of zero to a hundred, one side of the chart leaning towards male, the other side of the chart leaning towards female. A zero sometimes presents as a hermaphrodite, although that’s not always the case. A better example of someone who is near zero on this chart would be someone with asexual tendencies, neither presenting as male or female. Eighty-nine percent male is pretty up there in terms of pure masculinity.”
“And what percentage are you?”
“I’m an example of extreme femininity; I have less than a percent of male traits in my genetics. This is pretty rare. Honestly, I’d consider you to be at a healthier percentage than I am—as evidenced by my development of cancer. Too much of a good thing can easily become a bad thing, and it wouldn’t surprise me if my high percentage on this specific chart led to the cancer problem.” After a moment, I shrugged. “It could also be the deodorant. I’ll switch to something with fewer harsh chemicals, but you know how something can be too little, too late.”
“This conversation may have just changed my relationship with my deodorant,” he admitted.
“And with your non-existent sex life. So, your manliness levels are pretty healthy, but you’re not registering on the incubus charts. However, your daddy is packing goods in some departments, as your sperm count is high, and you’re registering as highly fertile. That is not an angelic trait. That said, the pulse came back with a high percentage of female sperm, so if you’re wanting sons, you’re definitely going to be a source of frustration for your wife unless she wants a lot of kids hoping for a boy. Frankly, I recommend you hire an incubus if you want a son.”
“Alas, I am not a king of any country, so I am not terribly concerned with what gender my children are, should I have any. What else can you tell me, Dr. Diana?”
“If I’m your doctor, you’re probably going to die, but I’ll recommend you go ask a real doctor—or your smug uncles. I bet they were aware of your current situation.”
“For the record, I really do not see this as at all a disadvantage. As I said earlier, I quite like living. Since I work with lycanthropes as part of my investigative work, I already know the rules for the newly infected. I just need to report to the CDC and register, which doesn’t bother me.”
I eyed his records. “I could probably figure out how to register you, although you’d be better off having your father go with you for the registration. The CDC doesn’t tend to give the children of triads who somehow contract lycanthropy much of a hard time about it. They will want to do a contact tracing to see where you got the infection.”
“Are you infected with lycanthropy? I mean, we’ve been sharing a room.”
“Sharing a room isn’t sufficient to pass on lycanthropy, and I’m tested every year. That said, I am not tested with the high sensitivity scanners. The scanners I’m tested with could have a ten year or longer incubation without the virus being picked up. It catches the virus a stage before becoming infectious, typically.” As I already had his data, I went to work preparing the scanner for a new reading. “I’d like to test the vials first, but then I can run mine through to see if I have picked it up. Like you, I do have a lot of contact with lycanthropes, so honesty? It’s viable.”
“The Devil is underhanded enough he’d help the virus along, too.”
Lucifer would. I frowned. “But who would he have taken the virus from?”
“You, because he knows full well I’d consent to contracting the lycanthropy virus. Can your machine tell us how long I’ve been infected?”
I shook my head. “The virus is pretty individualistic, and replication times have been changing a lot lately. Some people are still taking forty years or longer to incubate their viruses, but a lot of younger people are shifting far younger. Early onset is becoming rather common. It’s on the CDC’s radar, because with transmission and maturation rates, it’s actually possible for lycanthropes to outnumber humans, and it won’t take nearly as long as people think. It becomes even more complicated when the virus mutates, although it mutates at a fairly slow rate. Then there’s the issue of species. For a long time, people believed only mammals could be lycanthropes. The avians kept to themselves and either played wolf or just refused to admit their species. The percentage of avians is also really low, with some species only having one to three members. Because of the nature of the lycanthropy virus, the species usually ends up with two members, but some of the avians simply don’t pass their virus on to their children, and the virus itself is less likely to infect somebody else. The CDC expects most avian species will only last one or two generations.”
“And reptiles?”
“We haven’t seen any known reptile species, but I’ve come to the conclusion maybe we shouldn’t assume it’s an impossibility.” I checked the scanner, went through the settings, and adjusted the device so it would read through glass, plastics, and even clear metals. “Lucifer really spent too much money on this thing, and I refuse to give it back. I will fight him for it. I’ll bite his bloody kneecaps off if he tries to take it from me.”
Darian snickered and dug out one of the cases and began to check over the vials, making notations on a sheet of paper before tying a tag to the handle with a few notes. “In bad news, I can’t actually mark the vials, so once we hand this over to the CDC, we won’t have access to them again. Please tell me we don’t have to open these vials.”
“We don’t have to open the vials. Lucifer gave me a scanner that can penetrate through just about anything. We’ll have to rely on the magical pulse readings, but it’s sensitive enough we’ll be able to get a reading on common toxins, viruses, bacteria, and so on. The bacterium readings can get sketchy, although things like anthrax are typically easy enough to identify. It’s a matter of numbers, as there are a ridiculous number of bacteria in the world. Hell, our guts have a huge number of bacteria.”
“Surprisingly, I did know that. Will the scans take as long as my DNA?”
“No. It’ll take me probably half an hour to get through the whole lot of them. Just set out the cases, and I’ll hold the scanner’s probe to the vial. It’ll register the results, beep to let me know it’s done, and I’ll move onto the next one. If we get any bacteria, it’ll add twenty minutes to test the sample, but it’s not bad. I have it set up to save the data to be more efficient. If you get bored watching, feel free to crash out. I’ll wake you if I find anything interesting.”
“I’ll watch, if you don’t mind. If I can con Lucifer out of one of these, too, I want to see how this is done. I’m not above begging to be able to give using it a try.”
“Well, you’re easy to please. I might be going to hell, but it’s not because I don’t know how to share. Just don’t you break my scanner, because I really will cry if you do.”
“I’ll be careful,” he promised.