So far, so good. He’d even been grumpy and dressed in a pair of scrub pants—he refused the standard gown—and had spent most of his time glowering at Lucas, telling him he felt fine.

Good. Grumpy and healthy were better than a raging fever, pustules, and bleeding from his eyes. Which she mentioned.

He told her he felt like a leper.

Well, that’s what he got for pulling his save-the-world stunt. Angry seemed the best place for her to land with her emotions. It certainly had fueled the first forty-eight hours as she holed up in her lab.

Occasionally, he’d text Zoey silly memes about getting infected with a terrible disease, which Tae didn’t appreciate as she and Zoey worked to synthesize the vaccine.

She guessed it might just be his way of dealing with the looming what-ifs.

Tae had wanted to weep when Zoey read the results of the analysis from the Cryo-electron microscope some twenty-four hours into their research.

“It’s a match.” Zoey looked just as tired as Tae felt. Every bone in her body ached, and her eyes burned, but once Roy and Logan secured the containers, they’d been able to extract the virus code from the living S-poxR. And using the genome sequence, they knitted it into the horsepox. And then, the vaccinia.

Just one dose. They’d been able to synthesize just one dose, but if it worked on Colt—thank you, live subject—they’d make more.

And then they’d inoculate everyone. The world.

“Are you sure this will work?” Ranger asked the question yesterday, when she’d emerged from Colt’s room, then the UV bath, and finally the third chamber where she garbed up.

“No. But there’s a good chance. We were able to inoculate him within the forty-eight-hour window. He can develop antibodies based on the horsepox, and they should fight off any infection.”

So, they’d watched. Waited.

And the only way she got near him was dressed in head-to-toe Tyvek booties, gloves, mask, and vented helmet.

So that was pretty.

Now, a day after his inoculation, she took off the bandage on his arm.

The man was shirtless as she examined him. And yes, she noticed the lean body, the scars he wore on it. His three-day beard and wry smile only made her more aware of the closeness of him. He was barefoot, still in scrubs, his hair a disaster, and, shoot, all she wanted to do was pull off her mask and kiss him.

Or wring his stupid, reckless neck.

But he had saved the world—or at least Disney World—so what was a girl supposed to do with that?

“So far, no vesicles or any redness in the vaccination area,” she said into a microphone she was wearing that both recorded her assessment and informed Lucas and Logan where they stood outside the plastic walls.

But it had only been twenty-four hours.