“Pete, wait, listen to me—”

“The glycoprotein has amazing binding characteristics. I’m talking skeleton key. Astonishing. This little bugger doesn’t merely hijack the host cell, tricking it into reproducing more copies of itself. No—it fuses to the RNA. Melds with it. Consumes it…yet somehow doesn’t use it up. What it’s doing is, it’s making a copy of itself mated with the host cell. And taking only the parts it needs. I don’t know what you’re seeing with your patient, but theoretically, this thing could replicate and replicate and replicate, and many millions of generations later—and this thing is fast—it could reproduce its own organ structure. Systemically. It could change its host. Into what, I don’t know—but I sure would like to find out.”

“Pete.” Eph’s head was swimming. It made too much sense. The virus overwhelmed and transformed the cell—just as the vampire overwhelmed and transformed the victim.

These vampires were viruses incarnate.

Pete said, “I’d like to do the genetics on this one myself, really see what makes it tick—”

“Pete, listen to me. I want you to destroy it.”

Eph heard Pete’s windshield wipers working in the silence. “What?”

“Save your findings, hang on to those, but destroy that sample right away.”

More windshield wipers, metronomes of Pete’s uncertainty. “Destroy the one I was working on, you mean? Because you know that we always bank some, just in case—”

“Pete, I need you to drive straight to the lab and destroy that sample.”

“Eph.” Eph heard Pete’s blinker, Pete pulling off the road to finish the conversation. “You know how careful we are with any potential pathogens. We’re clean and we’re safe. And we have a very strict laboratory protocol that I can’t just break for your—”

“I made a terrible mistake letting it out of New York City. I didn’t know then what I know now.”

“Exactly what kind of trouble are you in, Eph?”

“Bleach it. If that doesn’t work, use acid. Set it on fire if you have to, I don’t care. I’ll take full responsibility—”

“It’s not about responsibility, Eph. It’s about good science. You need to be straight with me now. Someone said they saw something about you on the news.”

Eph had to end this. “Pete, do as I ask—and I promise I will explain everything to you when I can.”

He hung up. Setrakian and Nora had listened to the end of his conversation.

Setrakian said, “You sent the virus somewhere else?”

“He’s going to destroy it. Pete will err on the side of caution—I know him too well.” Eph looked at the televisions for sale along the wall. Something about you on the news… “Any of these work?”

They found one that did. It wasn’t long before the story rolled around.