I was past caring; vomiting was as natural to me as breathing. I took the vial and tipped the contents down my throat. My esophagus spasmed, and acid hit the roof of my mouth – but nothing more.

I coughed. “Why didn’t someone offer me that sooner?”

“It only just arrived.”

“From where?”

“You don’t want to know.”

I blinked at her. My head cleared slightly. “Arrived? What kind of drug wouldn’t be in stock already?”

“What do you think?”

The flesh at the base of my spine went cold. “Am I dreaming? Or am I dead?”

“Akili had samples of your blood smuggled out to … a certain country, and analyzed by friends. You just swallowed a set of magic bullets for every stage of the weapon. You’ll be on your feet in a matter of hours.”

My head throbbed. The weapon. My worst fear had just been confirmed and banished in the same sentence; it was disorienting. “Every stage? What would have come next? What have I missed out on?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I think you’re right.” I still wasn’t convinced that any of this was happening. “Why? Why did Akili go to all that trouble just to save me?”

“We had to find out exactly what you were carrying. Violet Mosala might still be at risk, even though she’s showing no symptoms. We had to have a cure for her, ready, here on the island.”

I absorbed that. At least she hadn’t said: We don’t care who is or isn’t the Keystone. We’re all prepared to risk our lives to protect just about anyone.

“So what was I carrying? And why did it detonate prematurely?”

The young AC frowned solemnly. “We still haven’t worked out all the details – but the timing fell apart. It looks like the bacteria generated confused internal signals, due to a disparity between intracellular molecular clocks and the host’s biochemical cues. The melatonin receptors were choked, saturated—” She stopped, alarmed. “I don’t understand. Why are you laughing?”

#

By the time I left the hospital, on Tuesday morning, I had my strength back – and I was enraged. The conference was half over, but TOEs were no longer the story – and if Sarah Knight, for whatever unfathomable reasons, had abandoned the war over Mosala to sit by Yasuko Nishide’s bedside, incommunicado … I’d finally have to start unraveling the whole complicated truth for myself.

Back in my hotel room, I plugged in my umbilical fiber, passed Kuwale’s eighteen mug shots to Witness , and flagged them for constant real-time search.

I called Lydia. “I need five thousand dollars extra for research: database access and hacking fees. More is going on here than I can begin to describe. And if you don’t agree that it’s worth every cent in a week’s time, I’ll refund it all.”