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Chapters (51)
  2. Book 2 of The Newsflesh Trilogy
  3. MIRA GRANT
  4. BOOK I
  5. Point of Infection
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. BOOK II
  12. Vectors and Victims
  13. Six
  14. Seven
  15. Eight
  16. Nine
  17. Ten
  18. BOOK III
  19. The Mourning Edition
  20. Eleven
  21. Twelve
  22. Thirteen
  23. Fourteen
  24. Fifteen
  25. Sixteen
  26. Seventeen
  27. BOOK IV
  28. Immunological Memory
  29. Nineteen
  30. Twenty
  31. Twenty-one
  32. Twenty-two
  33. BOOK V
  34. The Rising
  35. Twenty-three
  36. Twenty-four
  37. Twenty-five
  38. Twenty-six
  39. Coda: Living for You
  40. Twenty-seven
  41. Acknowledgments
  42. extras
  43. meet the author
  44. introducing
  45. BOOK I
  46. From the Dead
  47. One
  48. Contents
  49. BY MIRA GRANT
  50. Praise for Feed
  51. Copyright

A flare of guilt rose, washed over me, and died as I contemplated the fact that talking to us cost Dr. Abbey her lab. She knew what she was doing when she let us through her door. Maybe she didn’t invite us to come for a visit, but once we were there, she was perfectly happy to tell us what she knew. If she wasn’t going to blame us for showing up, I wasn’t going to feel bad for doing it.

The attachments on her message downloaded clean, and they opened to reveal huge, detailed medl charts and graphs that made about as much sense as abstract art. I recognized some of the labels, but that was about it. That was okay because Dr. Abbey was right: It didn’t matter if her research made sense to me. What mattered was that her research would make sense to Kelly, and once she’d seen it, maybe she’d know where we needed to look next. Given the situation we were in, every little bit was about to start counting, big time.

I forwarded Dr. Abbey’s message to Alaric and Mahir with a priority flag, printed copies of the attachments, and returned to cleaning out my in-box. Nothing else was nearly as interesting as that message, which wasn’t much of a surprise. “Here’s my Kellis-Amberlee research, enjoy” was a pretty hard act to follow.

According to the site log, Mahir was logged in, which meant that either he was awake or I had reasonable cause to think he might be. That was good enough for me. Leaning back in my chair, I dug my phone out of my pocket and snapped it open.

Luck was with me: Mahir, not his wife, answered the phone. “Shaun. Thank God.”

“Hey, Mahir. There a reason you always feel the need to invoke the divine when I call you? Is that just how they’re saying hello in London these days?”

“It’s four o’clock in the bloody morning, Shaun, and I’m awake to take your call. That might tell you a little something about how worried I’ve been.” A door closed in the background, and the sound of distant traffic filtered through the phone. “Try remembering that I’m eight hours off your time zone and give me the all-clear a little sooner next time, won’t you?”