Page 68 of Convergence

“The work I had turned in last mentioned vehicular as the initial infection,” Nate said, his brow furrowed. “I figured that’s why they were around the New Year’s merchandise.”

“The three bacteria we looked at this morning had different modes of transportation,” Everett added. “All were low in virulence.”

“Yeah, but our bacteria would cause a buildup of pus in the lungs, one of those bacteria was dermatologic and one was gastrointestinal. The other would likely only cause a small fever,” I added, my stomach clenching in anxiety. “Together it would cause enough of a confusion and panic that there would be little to no effective treatment soon enough before our bacteria killed the host.”

The guys thought about it for a few moments, and we went back to the bed. We sat cross legged and looking at each other, Nate cleaned his glasses on his shirt.

Everett got up after a few silent moments and opened the hotel room door. I heard him quietly tell the police outside that all major tourist areas and events needed to be sanitized with a high alcohol content cleaner regularly and the hospitals should contact us if anyone with suspected lung infections came in. I heard the beeping of their radios as they relayed that information to dispatch.

When Everett returned to us, he had a pen and paper in hand.

“If you were Daisy and Hoffmann and you thought transmission was only going to be vehicular, where would you start?” Nate asked with a sigh.

We worked diligently together and relayed random bits of speculation and information to the police outside. At one point we consulted via a cop’s phone with a doctor in a nearby hospital about a lung infection. It ended up being a different pneumonia and not our bacteria after the lab looked at it and verified.

A loud knock woke us near eight in the morning and we were quickly and quietly escorted back to the hospital lab where we had worked the day before.

“Did someone get sick?” Everett asked one cop that had arrived to relieve the overnight shift. “Or are there more plates?”

“They found these on petri dishes,” the cop said with finality, meaning we would not get any more information.

I wondered if they were still going through the first location that we had examined bacteria from yesterday or if these were from somewhere else.

Once inside the lab, the door locked behind us, and we suited up silently. The cordoned off area remained for our use. We started preparing the different tests for ‌bacteria identification with little speaking beyond directions. We worked for a few hours before anything got interesting. Nate stepped back from the microscope he was working on and took a shaking breath. “One identify,” he whispered. We had come up with our own way of speaking in the lab when we found something interesting, partially out of the need for efficiency and partially out of the need for very little speaking because of my anxiety at the beginning of our project. His call back of that was comforting, but also raised my heart rate at the realization of what he was saying.

Everett rushed over to him and looked through the microscope for a few minutes as he adjusted and looked at more than one place in the sample. “Two confirm,” he said, his jaw tight as he looked at me.

I stepped up to the microscope on my tiptoes and adjusted it to my eye preference and looked at multiple cells within the sample. The stain for the third sample showed similar, if not the same, structures to the bacteria we had been staring at for weeks. “Three absolute,” I whispered.

Nate moved to the radio they left us to communicate to the waiting police, who were sitting in office chairs and on their phones outside of our walled in area. “Hey, um, we might have something. We don’t have our research to compare it to, but we think this is our bacteria. We’ll do more tests to get a more confident answer, but sample number three might be it.”

“Thank you,” one cop replied.

“Where did you find this, anyway?” Nate asked as an afterthought.

“On the suspect we apprehended last night,” was the called back answer.

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My heart hammered in my throat as we confirmed the similar or the same morphology of the bacteria we had worked on. It was difficult to say with not being able to compare it to our research, but we’d stared at the bacteria in our project for days and weeks. If anyone could identify it based on simple observations, it would be us. It likely would not hold up in court, that much I could gather. But it was going to be a step in the right direction to potentially get a confession out of Daisy or Hoffmann.

We ran a few more tests, so we had more data to present to the police before they asked us to come with them to the station. “Are we going to help identify your suspect?” Everett asked warily as he handed the folder of our data to the police.

The three cops approached us and put handcuffs on us simultaneously. I felt like I was about to vomit. At least, this time someone appropriately read us our Miranda rights and the metal handcuffs were on correctly. My eyes filled with tears as I looked up to see Nate and Everett also being cuffed. They were looking at me and each other with sorrowful but determined expressions. I saw the shimmer of tears in Nate’s eyes and Everett’s jaw was clenched so tight it shocked me he wasn’t cracking teeth.

“It’s okay guys,” I said to them despite being in front of the police. “We helped the police; we did the right thing.”

Nate nodded with a sniff, and Everett’s shoulders straightened as they escorted us out of the hospital and into a waiting police van. It was Christmas Day, but teams of media outlets stood beyond a barricade and started shouting questions as the police led us to the van. The media trained cameras on our every move. The cold New York air whipped around me and made my eyes water more. I didn’t want to cry in front of the cameras, so I blinked the tears away and stood tall. They pushed Nate into the back of the van in front of me, and I followed him up with Everett behind me. The shouts of the media were loud, and I couldn’t pick out any words or phrases. It was one loud roaring in my head. They fastened us to our seats, and the van moved.

“We’re going to be alright,” Everett whispered. “We helped them today. This is probably a formality.”

Somehow that made little sense and didn’t seem correct, so I remained quiet and looked down at my jean clad knees. The feeling of being about to vomit didn’t go away as they transported us to the police station. I was going to jail. I was going to prison. I was about to be named as a fucking terrorist. I was about to be separated from Nate and Everett. Possibly forever. I couldn’t look at them for fear of falling apart. A tightness of my chest and stomach was the only thing that held me upright as it was. The guys were murmuring back and forth, but I couldn’t listen to their words. I needed to get ahold of myself. I could not get out of this mess if I couldn’t speak. It was going to be necessary to speak to the police and other investigators. I closed my eyes and swallowed a few gulps of air. This is something I could do. We were innocent, and I needed to be able to tell everyone.

We were pulling up to the police station and stopping by the time I had control over my body and mind again. The back doors of the van opened, and bright light and cold air swirled around us. While we waited to be escorted into the station, I sat up straight. I could do this. Ineededto do this.

Almost as soon as we stepped onto the slushy sidewalk amidst the shouting media, we were separated. I didn’t even see where the guys were taken. They brought me into the station and into an investigation room. The cop that brought me in and undid my handcuffs offered me a coffee. This was a great opportunity to speak with little consequence. “Yes, please. Just milk, if you have it,” I said with a confidence only slightly betrayed by the crack in my voice. The cop gave a curt nod and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

They did not handcuff me in the room, and I rubbed at my wrists as I stood in front of the table and chairs. I stretched out my knees, warming my muscles as I warily expected to be sitting in the chair for hours. The clock read three in the afternoon, and I yawned. The door opened and a man who wore a pair of khakis, a crisp white button down, and suspenders delivered my coffee.

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