He stared at Ham, a beat, a breath, and finally, “I’ll see you on the beach in the morning.”

He left Ham standing there and headed inside.

Pete and Noemi were in the kitchen, talking in low tones. Tae stood with her back to him, at the kitchen sink, putting away the supplies. For a moment the shape of her, the feel of her hair in his hands, the sense of wanting to reach out and just pull her to himself and hold on, swept over him.

Then he sighed and headed up the stairs.

“It’s not a match.”

The dire words came from Zoey, sitting on a stool in their lab, dressed in her Tyvek jumpsuit, wearing her dead air hood, her gloves, booties, mask, and goggles. Tae, similarly dressed, might not have even heard her, but she was sitting in silence, staring at her own slide of genome-sequenced cells, thinking exactly the same thing.

Three days into their research and they were failing. What was worse was that every day she and Zoey got a negative read from the Cryo-electron microscope, every day their synthesized horsepox sequence failed to replicate close enough to the ancient strain of S-poxR, was a day the world—namely Colt and the guys planning a recovery of the bioweapon—went unvaxxed.

Naked, into the world of pathogens.

Tae stepped back from the microscope and stretched. She probably should be sweating inside her Stay Puft Marshmallow Man suit, but the positive pressure air filtration system kept the lab at a cool 68 degrees.

Logan had also outfitted the lab with everything they needed, with vials and test tubes and stainless steel surfaces and equipment, including computers and DNA sequencers and the giant Cyro-electron microscope, which sat on a vibration pad, surrounded by walls filled with water to keep the temperature even.

The entire lab, located in a secluded area of Patrick Space Force Base, was sleek, up-to-date, and contained three layers of protection, including a UV light bath that sterilized their suits before they exited into a clean room, where they discarded the suits, then stepped into another UV bath.

She’d never been so clean.

Temperature-controlled glass walls surrounded the lab, and Logan or Roy would stop in and ask for updates via the coms system connected to the lab.

Always, however, Colt waited on the other side of the glass, their own personal bodyguard.

“Are you sure the McMaster lab sent us the right samples?” Zoey asked. “Because these still look too much like the vaccinia for our current-day smallpox.”

All she could see of Zoey’s face were her hazel-green eyes.

“Without an original sample, we can’t be one hundred percent sure it works.” Tae blew out a breath, which only fogged her glasses. She waited while the air in her suit cleared it and turned to look through the glass. “But we have to come up with something. We’re running out of time.”