“They who?” I asked, pressing a hand against my chest as I waited for my heart to stop thudding quite so hard against my ribs. There was a distinct heaviness in my bladder, telling me that I needed to find a bathroom before I lined myself up for too many more exciting surprises. “What the fuck is that thing?”

“Pacific octopus.” Dr. Abbey tapped the offending tank. The tentacle responded by slapping the glass again, before it was joined by two more near-identical appendages, and a large octopus slithered out from a crack between two pieces of coral. “We do a lot of work with cephalopods. They’re good subjects, as long as you can keep them from getting bored enough to slither out of their tanks and go around wreaking havoc.”

I glanced to Becks. “Isn’t this the part where you should run screaming?”

“Nah,” she said. “I’ve got no problem with octopuses. It’s bugs and spiders that I don’t like. Octopuses are cute, in their own ‘nature did a lot of drugs’ sort of way.”

“Girls are fucking weird,” I said.

You should know, George replied.

I smirked and leaned in for a closer look at the octopus. It settled against the glass, watching us with its round, alien eyes. “That is a freaky-looking thing,” I said. “What’s it for?”

“Barney here is for testing some of the new KA strains we’ve been developing,” said Dr. Abbey, removing the cover from the tank. The octopus promptly switched its focus to the surface of the water. She stuck in a hand, and it reached up with two tentacles, twining them firmly around her wrist. “We haven’t been able to infect him yet, although he’s shown some fascinating antibody responses. If we can just figure out what’s blocking infection in the cephalopod family, we’ll be able to learn a lot more about the structure of the virus.”

“Wait, you mean you’re actually trying to develop new strains of the virus?” Kelly looked at her with wide, baffled eyes, like this was the last thing she could imagine anyone wanting to do.

Dr. Abbey took her attention away from the octopus—which was now trying to pull her arm all the way into the tank—as she frowned at Kelly. “What did you think we were doing here? Growing hydroponic tomatoes and talking about how nice it’ll be when the CDC finally decides to get around to saving us all?” She began untangling her hand from the octopus’s grasp, not appearing to take her attention off Kelly. “Please. Are you really going to stand there questioning my medical ethics while you tell me you people haven’t been working with the structuthe cephalthe virus at all?”

Kelly bit her lip and looked away.