“As soon as the sun comes up, it’ll melt off all this ice, and we’ll be back in the air,” Dodge said. He looked at Tae. “In the meantime, start at the beginning and tell me everything before and including the moment you got on a plane with a Russian thug.”

Tae looked back at him, eyes wide.

Huh. Well, Colt might have put it a little nicer, but yeah, what he said.

He leaned back in his seat, eating the last of his rice and beans, his gaze on Tae.

She set her MRE down. Picked up her coffee.

In the wan light that was the midnight sun, she looked defeated, almost like she might cry, and for a moment, he wanted to back up, give her room.

But today, he’d come very, very close to dying. Both on the cliff and afterward, when he felt like his heart was making a break for home, hammering its way out of his chest. So yes, he’d very much like to know how it came about that she held the safety of the world’s population in her head.

“I’m a doctor of infectious diseases and a medical scientist,” she said quietly. “I work for a private lab that helps develop treatments for some of the most terrifying diseases on the planet. Ebola. Kuru. Naegleria fowleri, the brain-eating amoeba.”

“Yep, I’m terrified,” Echo said.

A smile ticked up one side of Tae’s mouth. “About three years ago, a strain of smallpox was reported in a Nepali village. Our team was brought in to investigate. No international drama, just a small group of people who took samples and brought them to our lab. Unfortunately, the entire village had died.”

“Like the village in Nigeria,” Colt said, his mind going back to the image of so many corpses in the village church. Maybe it was a good thing the terrorists had burned it.

“Yes. It’s a rare, ancient strain of smallpox. And I’m pretty sure that it’s the same variant that killed the villagers in Nigeria, Colt. The ones you saw in the church.”

He stared at her, then ran a hand across his mouth. Nodded.

“The fact that it didn’t escape the village—at least, we hope it didn’t—told us that it had a very quick death rate from onset. Once a patient contracts it, they don’t show symptoms until very close to death. Maybe twelve hours. This is three times quicker than even hemorrhagic smallpox.”

“How long is the incubation time?” Echo asked.

Colt had sort of lost his appetite, despite the bear in his stomach.

“For Variola major, twelve days,” Tae said. “This one, we don’t know. But the fact it delays symptoms is problematic. When they present, the disease is quick and lethal, and by the time people figure out they have it, it’s too late.”

Silence.