Pandemic Page 45

But since then, God had created new vectors.

Orin didn’t have to lick people. All he had to do was touch them. He didn’t know how he knew this, he just knew. Touch them, and a few days later, they would be his kind.

An even greater illustration of God’s perfection and power? He didn’t have to always touch people directly — if he touched a surface, then someone else touched it shortly after, that alone could be enough to spread God’s love.

Soon, the humans would come for him, try and make him take the cellulose test, but he wouldn’t be where they expected him to be. It was time to wander. Surrounded by a ship full of people who wanted to kill him, he would stay out of sight as best he could. He would avoid attracting attention.

The longer he went without being caught, the more people he could touch.

CHEMISTRY

Before Tim could find out how the hydras survived when the crawlers melted, he had to identify what, exactly, melted those crawlers.

To solve this puzzle, he had to find the key differences between two human corpses. Both bodies had come from an identical environment: the Los Angeles. Although there were significant variables — one was male, the other female, with additional differences in size and genetic background — for all intents and purposes those two bodies were the same. One had suffered the infection’s final-stage brain modification, the other had not.

That made Tim’s job theoretically simple: all he had to do was identify something in Candice Walker that was not in Charlie Petrovsky.

He stood alone in the analysis module, running tests on blood, tissues, organs, even bone. Chemical breakdown, mass spectrometry, DNA analysis, any test he and Margaret could think of for which they had the equipment onboard — and they had a lot of equipment.

She checked in with him every fifteen to twenty minutes, a hyper Latina with the newfound energy of a chipmunk on meth. She was working with the hydras, trying to figure out what they were. Just another Orbital weapon? Or, possibly, something else.

Margaret wasn’t the same person who had arrived, what, just a scant fifteen hours earlier? She’d shown up ready to work, certainly, but not like this: now she had a nuclear reactor for a soul that made her tireless, unceasing.

Tim wanted her more than ever. He’d worshipped Margaret Montoya from afar, mesmerized by the intellect he’d seen reflected in the words and recordings of her Detroit research. The word genius didn’t do her justice.

His visor display started flashing an icon: the blinking, red exclamation point of an alert. Tim eye-tracked to it, called it up.

Four hours after he’d begun his comparative analysis between Petrovsky and Walker, the Brashear’s computer had identified a significant discrepancy in mass spectrometry. Walker’s blood showed a massive spike of an unidentified chemical compound that wasn’t present in Petrovsky, not even in trace amounts.

Whatever it was, she had a ton of it in her system. Was this compound related to the hydras? Was it the reason the hydras lived and the crawlers died? Or was it why Walker didn’t suffer the black rot?

And why was this mystery chemical so concentrated in her blood?

Her blood …

Petrovsky’s tissue …

“Fuck,” Tim said. “Why didn’t I think of that before?”

He activated his comms. “Margo, you there?”

She answered immediately. “Yes, Tim. You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Shittyballs, I’m way more than fine. I need you to find the least-rotted bit of Petrovsky.”

“Uh, sure,” she said. “You want to tell me why?”

“You’ll see soon enough.”

At least he hoped she would.

THE LOS ANGELES

The stateroom felt ice cold, but Steve Stanton couldn’t stop sweating.

He sat at the tiny table, drinking Diet Coke and eating Doritos, hoping his two laptops would give some signal. One hundred and ten million dollars … was that investment sitting dead on the bottom of Lake Michigan?

Bo Pan spent his time either sleeping or on his cell phone. Steve didn’t know who Bo Pan was talking to, but the conversations revolved around more aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces than one man could possibly have. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Bo Pan was sharing information about Steve’s work, getting details about the activities of the nearby navy ships — Steve and the Platypus had their code; Bo Pan and his handlers obviously had theirs.

“Steve, it is late,” Bo Pan said. “You told me your machine would contact us an hour ago.” The old man lay in his bunk, spit cup in hand, bushy eyebrows framing black, emotionless eyes.

“Relax,” Steve said. He tried to sound confident. “It might be staying below because of high levels of navy activity. Sometimes this is more an art than a science.”

Bo Pan picked his nose. “I see,” he said as he wiped a booger on his jeans. “Then perhaps we should have spent all that money to get you an art degree.”

The coldness of Bo Pan’s voice made Steve swallow, which drove a flake of Dorito into his throat. Steve tried to wash it back with Diet Coke, but coughed before he could get it down. He managed to turn his head and spray caramel-colored foam onto the wall instead of onto his computers.

Bo Pan huffed. “Breakfast of champions. I can’t wait to see how you handle your dinner.”

Steve managed to flip the old man the bird as he brought his coughing under control.

Bo Pan seemed … different. He’d always acted like a beaten-down laborer, a man who’d spent his life taking shit from everyone. Since the Mary Ellen left the harbor, however, he seemed more self-assured, in control.

Chapter end