Eph said, “It’s—uh—hard to explain, but it is new tissue, feeding off organs that were completely healthy just twenty-four hours ago.”

Director Barnes pulled down his glasses and scowled again. “New tissue? What the hell do you mean by that?”

“I mean this.” Eph went to a third scan, showing the interior of Redfern’s neck. The new growth below the tongue was evident.

“What is it?” asked Barnes.

“A stinger,” answered Nora. “Of some sort. Muscular in construction. Retractable, fleshy.”

Barnes looked at her as if she was crazy. “A stinger?”

“Yes, sir,” said Eph, quick to back her up. “We believe it’s responsible for the cut in Jim’s neck.”

Barnes looked back and forth between them. “You’re telling me that one of the survivors of the airplane catastrophe grew a stinger and attacked Jim Kent with it?”

Eph nodded and referred to the scans again as proof. “Everett, we need to quarantine the remaining survivors.”

Barnes checked Nora, who nodded rigorously, with Eph on this all the way.

Director Barnes said, “The inference is that you believe this…this tumorous growth, this biological transformation…is somehow transmissible?”

“That is our supposition and our fear,” said Eph. “Jim may well be infected. We need to determine the progression of this syndrome, whatever it is, if we want to have any chance at all of arresting it and curing him.”

“Are you telling me you saw this…this retractable stinger, as you call it?”

“We both did.”

“And where is Captain Redfern now?”

“At the hospital.”

“His prognosis?”

Eph answered before Nora could. “Uncertain.”

Barnes looked at Eph, now starting to sense that something wasn’t kosher.

Eph said, “All we are requesting is an order to compel the others to receive medical treatment—”

“Quarantining three people means potentially panicking three hundred million others.” Barnes checked their faces again, as though for final confirmation. “Do you think this relates in any way to the disappearance of these bodies?”

“I don’t know,” said Eph. What he almost said was, I don’t want to know.

“Fine,” said Barnes. “I will start the process.”

“Start the process?”

“This will take some doing.”

Eph said, “We need this now. Right now.”

“Ephraim, what you have presented me with here is bizarre and unsettling, but it is apparently isolated. I know you are concerned for the health of a colleague, but securing a federal order of quarantine means that I have to request and receive an executive order from the president, and I don’t carry those around in my wallet. I don’t see any indication of a potential pandemic just yet, and so I must go through normal channels. Until that time, I do not want you harassing these other survivors.”

“Harassing?” said Eph.