Page 113 of Lethal Game

River’s mouth tightened. “We could be looking at another mob situation tonight.”

“If the rate of sickness keeps going up, that’s a definite possibility.”

Excited yells caught their attention and a few older kids ran past carrying smallish sacks of rice and boxes of MREs. Con kept watch with Smoke, River, and Henry while people moved around, either going to or coming from the area of the air-drop. Things didn’t calm down for at least an hour.

River and Smoke headed out to the camp to snoop while Con went into the lab to check on Sophia. “How’s it going?”

“Not good. I ran both samples through the Sandwich, but the results are negative.” She clenched her fists and stared at the piece of equipment like she could change the answer with her mind alone. “I don’t know what this is, and it’s driving me crazy.”

“So, you’ve tested for everything this machine can test for, right?”

“Yes.”

“So, what’s left?”

She sighed. “A surprisingly large number of viruses.”

“What about those brain-eating amoebas I heard about on one of those medical mystery shows?”

“Not likely. You need to dunk your head in warm standing water and get it up your nose. These people don’t have enough water to do that, and it still takes two to three weeks before symptoms appear.”

“Can you test for it?”

“No, we’re in the middle of a desert, I didn’t bring anything to test for that.”

“So, what can you test for? Or do we need to request more equipment?”

She turned to look at him, but she wasn’t really seeing him, her brain was moving at Mach 10 and he just happened to be in the way.

“I could check the morphology of the tissue with some different stains,” she muttered, “and rule out several possibilities...”

“Like what?”

“Oh, mad cow disease, West Nile, even malaria...” Her voice trailed off again.

“So, I should let you work?”

She didn’t answer. She was already grabbing her samples and moving to another of the tent’s arms to do something else.

“Okay then.” At least she was working and doing something productive. He still had to get his hands on Akbar.

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