“I don’t think anything else has this kind of distribution pattern.” One of the few saving graces of Kellis-Amberlee has always been the fact that it’s a very hands-on virus. Unless you’re in the unfortunate two percent of the population at risk for spontaneous amplification, you have to either die or get bitten by someone who’s been infected before you have a problem. Giving it any sort of a distance-based vector changed the entire game… but it was still a speed killer, taking over bodies and rewriting instincts in a matter of hours. With modern quarantine procedures and our constant, comfortable societal paranoia, even an airborne strain could be controlled.

But an insect vector changed everything. Just ask the people living in parts of the world where malaria is still a problem. Ten-dollar mosquito nets can save entire families from a slow, agonizing death—assuming they don’t get torn. Or stolen. Or left ever so slightly ajar one night, allowing one tiny bug to slip unnoticed through the mesh and deliver a stinging bite filled with microscopic death. But malaria’s a parasitic infection. That’s part of why it does so well with the whole mosquito gig. It’s little and it’s quick and it’s very well-suited to the life cycle it’s evolved for. Kellis-Amberlee is a huge, unwieldy virus, microscopically speaking, and it doesn’t have the flexibility of malaria. Marburg Amberlee provided most of the structure when it combined with the Kellis flu strain, and it was a filovirus. They’re big. So I had to be wrong. I had to be totally off-base, taking swipes at shadows. I just needed Dr. Abbey to tell me that, so we could move on to looking for answers in someplace a little bit more realistic.

Shaun? George sounded almost timid for a change. She didn’t like this theory any more than I did. Check your mail.

I allowed my eyes to focus on the screen. The top item in my in-box was from an e-mail address I recognized all too well, and it was flagged Urgent. The little status marker was blinking bright red, which meant every possible “read this immediately” switch had been flipped, some of them maybe more than once. I took a breath, sent a silent prayer to anyone who might be listening, and opened the message.

For a long moment, everything was silent.

Oh, said George, finally. I guess that answers that.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it does.”