She sits in the hold of the helicopter as they shuttle across the water of Puget Sound. The steady thrum of the rotor can be heard even through the headsets. She wears an unzipped hazmat suit with the hood puddled around her shoulders. “What you did back there,” she says to Isaac, “was beyond unacceptable.”

“I’m sorry,” he says—but is he really?

“By allowing the parents inside, you not only defied me, you compromised the integrity of the lab. You introduced unknown pathogens and bacteria to an isolated space. The specimen has been exposed. Jack and Nora have also been exposed. All three could be ruined as a result.”

“Were you ever going to let them go anyway?” he says. “After what they’d seen?”

She pulls aside his headset gently. Now she hears her words twice, spoken from her lips and projected from the headphones around his neck. “If they die, their deaths are on you.” She brushes his hair away from his ear. “And I don’t appreciate your tone. Not one bit.”

“It’s just,” he says, “if you’ve lost a child, aren’t you already dead?”

She traces the cartilage of his ear with her finger, and his breath flutters. Then her fingernails turn inward, pinching, twisting. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth against the painful heat of her grip.

“Well?” she finally says. “Are you ready to apologize?”

“I’m sorry. You’re right.” His tone is shrilly honest. She has a way of making him believe, and she can tell he means it when he says, “It won’t happen again, Mother.” It isn’t the first time he’s called her that, and he quickly corrects himself. “Director Ricketts, I mean. It won’t happen again.”

Only then does she release him. He presses both hands against his ear as if it might fall off. The throb of his pulse remains in her fingers. She understands how to create the most exquisite pain out of the smallest gestures.

She clears her throat, consults her tablet, and in a cheery voice that will hopefully get them back on track she begins to debrief him on what they should expect when they arrive at Virginia Mason. The hospital has cordoned off an ICU for all patients exhibiting the same curious and violent symptoms. There has been an exponential rise in cases the past few days, and the police have been taking their arrests to the hospital instead of the station.

Director Ricketts opens up an app that broadcasts the police scanner, and in a short burst of noise, they hear the same kind of complaint in the scramble of voices: “There’s something seriously wrong with this guy” and “Not sure if it’s PCP or LSD or bath salts or what, but she’s out of her mind on something” and “His own family. How could he do that to his own family?”