With each step, the dark cave swallowed him up. When the darkness was complete, he switched on his night vision goggles, bathing the scene before him in an eerie green glow. Kito pinged him with a comm check every minute, and Millen responded each time.

At the ten-minute mark, the transmission began breaking up. Millen had been dropping green chemlights each minute, but at the radio blackout point he sealed the bag of green sticks and began dropping orange markers. The tubes glowed in the dark cave, green and orange breadcrumbs tracing his path. They were military-grade, with a twelve-hour duration. He planned on collecting them on his way out, long before they went dark.

As he moved deeper into the cave, the ground became more rocky and damp. Ten seconds after dropping his twentieth orange marker, he spotted what he had come for: bat droppings.

He bent and took several samples, marking them with their depth within the cave, and placed a numbered blue marker and flag by the sample spot.

Excited to have collected his first sample, he stepped deeper into the cave, leaving the sample kit behind. He held a tranquilizer pistol in his right hand and a large net in his left. He felt his boots slipping on the wet rock, but he pushed forward. The bats had to be close by. If they were the carrier for the mysterious disease, it would be a huge breakthrough, possibly the key to finding the index patient, or even a cure. It would blow the entire investigation wide open, saving thousands, maybe millions of lives. He walked even faster.

As he turned a corner, his left foot slipped on a wet rock, sending him tumbling. The gun and net flew from his hands as he slammed into the rocky floor. The fall frightened him, but he was unharmed. He rose and searched for the gun.

Bat screeches—a sound somewhere between the call of a crow and the yelping of a rodent—sounded from not far away, followed by flapping noises.

He turned in time to see a swarm of bats barreling toward him.

The creatures enveloped him. He threw his arms up, covering his faceplate, and stepped to the side, trying to move out of their flight path. He felt claws ripping at the PPE, the bony wings brushing past his arms and legs. He turned and ran, his head down. Rock crumbled beneath his feet. He slipped and fell, but there was no ground beneath him.

Chapter 32

Chapter 32

A yellow spot burned through the white tent fabric above Peyton, like a heat lamp boring into her. She squinted, wondering what it could be. Then she realized: the midday sun, high in the sky. She sat up quickly, reached for her phone, and gasped when she saw the time. Eleven thirty.

Jonas’s cot was empty. She raced to the main tent.