Michael cleared the screen again, tapping briskly at the keys. A new image sprang into view. It took Peter a moment to understand what he was seeing, that it was a map of the North American continent.

“We type in the coordinates, like so … ”

A grid of black lines appeared over the map, breaking it into squares. With a flourish, Michael lifted his fingers from the keyboard and slapped Enter. A bright yellow dot appeared.

“ … and there we have it. Southwestern Colorado. A town called Telluride.”

The name meant nothing to Peter. “So?”

“Colorado, Peter. The heart of the CQZ.”

“What’s the CQZ?”

Michael sighed impatiently. “You really need to brush up on your history. The Central Quarantine Zone. It’s where the epidemic began. The first virals all came out of Colorado.”

Peter felt like he was being dragged from a runaway horse. “Please, just slow down. Are you telling me she comes from there?”

Michael nodded. “Basically, yeah. The transmitter was short-range, so she had to be within a few clicks when they put it in. The real question is why.”

“Flyers. You’re asking like I know?”

His friend paused, searching Peter’s face for a long moment. “Let me ask you something. Have you ever really thought about what the virals are? Not just what they do, Peter. What they are.”

“A being without a soul?”

Michael nodded. “Right, that’s what everybody says. But what if there’s more to it? This girl, Amy, she’s not a viral. We’d all be dead if she were. But you’ve seen the way she heals, and she survived out there. You said it yourself, she protected you. And how do you explain the fact that she’s almost a hundred years old but doesn’t look a day over, what, fourteen? The Army did something to her. I don’t know how they did it, but they did. This transmitter was broadcasting on a military frequency. Maybe she was infected and they did something to her that made her normal again.” He paused once more, his eyes fixed on Peter’s face. “Maybe she’s the cure.”

“That’s … a big leap.”

“I’m not so sure.” Michael lifted in his chair to remove a book from the shelf above his terminal. “So I went back through the old logbook to see if we had ever picked up a signal from those coordinates. Just a hunch. And sure enough, we did. Eighty years ago, we picked up a beacon broadcasting these same coordinates. Military distress frequency, old-style Morse. But then there’s this notation.”

Michael opened the log to the page he’d marked. He placed the book in Peter’s lap, pointing at the words written there.

If you found her, bring her here.