Page 116 of Lethal Game

Then she did it again.

Both samples were positive.

Positive.

For rabies.

Rabies?

The symptoms didn’t completely match, but maybe someone, Akbar, had tinkered with the virus like he had with his anthrax strain. The problem was, viruses were harder to work with, control and produce in any amount. This particular virus had been plaguing humans for thousands of years, but had never caused widespread disease for a reason.

Rabies could only be transmitted under specific circumstances, and could hibernate inside its host for anywhere from weeks to months. Once symptoms manifested though, it was universally fatal.

This variant of rabies killed in a day, not weeks or months.

One day.

If it was Akbar, he seemed to want to speed the disease process up. Not a good prospect for the people he was making sick.

How did he make them sick?

Something dropped onto her hand.

She glanced down. A blood drop. As she was studying it, another hit her glove. Crap, she was having a nosebleed.

Sophia stripped off her gloves and grabbed a couple of squares of gauze to wipe her nose, but it kept bleeding.

She sat down, pinched the bridge of her nose and let her mind consider the puzzle she’d discovered. What variant of rabies presented like this?

None.

No one had so much as hinted at any animal bites. So, where did it come from and how was it infecting so many people?

She didn’t have an answer for those questions either.

Her nosebleed seemed to stop, so she left the lab, but Con wasn’t in sight. Neither was Smoke or River. Stalls still stood guard.

“Where is Sergeant Button?” she asked Stalls.

“He went to talk to that Len guy. He said he’d be back.”

Sophia returned to the lab tent and called Max. At least she tried to call Max. She couldn’t get a signal. That was strange. Her satellite phone was working a couple of hours ago.

She strode out again and headed straight for the hospital tent. Before she got there she could see Dr. Blairmore listening to a patient’s chest. She walked straight toward him.

As soon as he saw her he snapped, “What do you want?”

“I’ve determined the pathogen.”

He seemed to come to a complete stop. Not even breathing. “What is it?” Hope infused his voice.

There was nothing hopeful about a rabies virus that killed in approximately twenty-four hours. “Can we speak privately?”

He hesitated, she could see him arguing with himself about it, but good sense won over pride. He led her to a sheeted-off area where he and his team must rest, wash, and eat. It was empty.

“It’s rabies,” she said to him, her voice just louder than a whisper.

He frowned. “It can’t be. The clinical picture doesn’t match, and no one’s been bitten. Death occurs too rapidly to be rabies.”

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