Page 92 of Lethal Game

“What does your gut tell you?”

“I don’t know enough to guess.”

When he didn’t answer, she glanced at him and found him staring at her microscope.

“This isn’t a puzzle or mental exercise. This could be something relatively benign, once we know what it is and if we have a treatment, or it could be something entirely new. The problem with viruses, in particular, is their ability to evolve rapidly. Sometimes that evolution is to our advantage, sometimes it isn’t.”

“H1N1,” he said with a nod.

“Yes. The swine flu. It was so close, so very close, to a virus that could have become the next great pandemic. A couple of differences in its genetic sequence and it could have killed hundreds of millions of people. There are literally hundreds of viruses out there like it. And those are just the ones we know of.”

“You live in a scary, scary world,” Con told her in a tone that sounded incredulous.

“Why do you find that so strange?”

He looked away. “You look so damn innocent. You talk like you’ve never seen a single ugly thing in your life and yet you can imagine the deaths of millions of people.”

Oh, if only he knew. “Death and I are old companions.” She gave him a weak smile. “There was a time, when I was a child, when death looked likely. I suppose I learned how to think around it then.” She watched him, noted his stiff posture and rigid neck muscles. “You’re a soldier, death can’t be a stranger to you.”

“No, but I understood the risks and chose to face it. You...you never got that choice.”

“No, but I’m okay with that. Lots of people get no warning at all. No chance to decide how they want to die, or have the opportunity to choose to do something with the life they have before cancer takes it away. I was lucky.”

“Yeah. I was lucky too.”

He didn’t sound like he thought he was lucky. The way he said the word, all growly and low, made it sound like he wished he hadn’t been lucky at all.

“You sound like you wished you’d died with your buddies.”

There was a long pause before he said, “I can’t discuss previous missions in an uncleared area like this one.”

She was going to challenge him on that, but someone was walking toward them. It looked like Dr. Blairmore. A few seconds later he entered their tent and handed over three vials of blood. “Is this enough?”

“Perfect, thank you.” She took the blood from him and asked, “Can I get some cerebral spinal fluid or a brain biopsy from any of your patients? I’d also like a sputum sample and some tissue samples from other internal organs.”

Blairmore’s mouth compressed into a thin line. “Sputum won’t be too difficult. Tissue samples and CSF, I don’t know.” He frowned. “I’ll have to make some gentle inquiries about that.”

“Please do. Tissue samples will help with the identification if these blood samples don’t pan out.”

“I’ll do what I can.” Dr. Blairmore pulled at his fingers like an addict coming off a high.

“Thank you.” Though Sophia’s words were clearly a dismissal, she didn’t take her gaze off him.

His gaze jerked from one spot to another, her face, her hands and her equipment as he nodded a couple of times, then rushed back to the hospital tent.

“There’s something hinky about that guy,” Con muttered.

“If byhinkyyou mean slimy, I agree.” She took the vials of blood and began making notations in a notebook and on a small electronic tablet. Normally, she could sink into her work with utter focus, but the sounds of moaning and the calls for help in a language she didn’t understand only a little way away broke through her mental bubble over and over. Because the sounds changed, grew weaker, until one voice after another was replaced by other, newer voices.

She mourned the loss of a high, childlike voice. Its replacement was the deep bass of a man, yet he spoke the same words in the same panicked tone. A voice that knew it was going out, its flame extinguished by an illness that didn’t yet have a name.

She found she had to take a few deep breaths to maintain her composure. She was dying too, just a little slower.

She ran the samples through the Sandwich, but it didn’t detect any known pathogens.

Despite the distractions, or perhaps because of them, Sophia didn’t stop working until darkness had fallen and Con put his hand on her arm.

“Sophia, time to eat.”

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