“Six of sixteen new cases have already ended up in the ICU?” Alana asks.

“Five others have already died overnight,” Byron says.

“Five more? Already?”

“Probably even more since I last checked an hour ago,” he says. “It’s chaos in the ER. Not just here. The other hospitals in the city, too. So many real cases, but we’re also being flooded with mimics in terms of colds and flus.”

“We have to assume it’s the plague until we know otherwise.”

“We’re advising doctors to treat all patients with any fever as potential plague, regardless of how unlikely.”

“How is the supply of antibiotics holding up?”

“So far, we have enough. What we don’t have enough of is time. This strain kills people faster than anything I’ve ever seen. Faster than the antibiotics can work, in some cases.”

“Even faster than necrotizing fasciitis?” she asks, referring to the feared flesh-eating bacterial infection. “I once saw a woman lose her whole arm within twelve hours of getting a paper cut on her finger.”

“Even faster.”

“Can we connect the dots in the new cases back to Vittoria?”

“No. We’ve done extensive contact-tracing. The two cases yesterday from the east side of the city have no connection to Vittoria or any of her collateral spread.”

She breathes out heavily enough that her face mask fogs momentarily. “So Vittoria isn’t our Patient Zero, then.”

“Probably not, no.” Byron eyes her intently. “Can we say the same of Yasin Ahmed?”

“How can we know? He’s disappeared.”

“We have to release his name and photo to the media.”

“It’s too early, Byron. Even Sergio agrees. And he’s the lead Italian agent on this.”

“What’s the point of waiting?”

“One, we still don’t know if Yasin is involved. And two, if he’s the source, publicizing his name might only spook him and make him and his network that much harder to trace.”

“We don’t have to announce he’s a terrorist. Only that he might be infected.”

“People will put it together. Imagine the fallout.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck about fallout!” The sudden outburst is a departure from his usual more composed defiance. “More people are going to die. Plenty more. You know this as well as I do, Alana. If anyone out there can help us find Yasin . . .”

She sees his point. It’s also a rare glimpse into the passion that lurks behind his cool, at times arrogant, exterior. “Okay. Give me a few hours to discuss it with Brussels and Rome. Please, Byron.”

“All right,” he says, making a visible effort to calm himself. “I see your point.”

“Thank you.”

His shoulders slump. “I have worse news, Alana.”

She braces herself. “Which is?”

He points to the patient on ECMO behind the glass. “Marianna Barsotti.”

“Who is she?”

“She’s not just any other plague victim.” He reaches into the bag and extracts a disc-shaped container. It’s an agar and petri plate, which labs use to grow bacterial samples to test for antibiotic resistance. The plate is gray with bacterial growth. There are small white dots demarking where the antibiotic samples were placed around the outside, resembling numerals on a clock face. Alana knows that on a normal culture plate there would be dark halos surrounding the antibiotics where the bacteria had been killed off. But on this plate there are no such “kill zones.”