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“If we evaluate the life cycle of parasites and viruses, which are very efficient at mutating and adapting into different forms, we may find the answer. You’re not mutating like Aiman. Your abilities are an environmental response.” A sparkle lit his eye. “Aiman was bit.”

Wow, he was in rare form and he pulled me right along with him.

“Let me guess. His own guards?”

“His lover.”

I let out a bitter laugh. A creation that became dangerous to its creator. “How did he avoid the immediate changes of the mutation?”

“He was already inoculating himself.”

With his unproven spider serum. “What about you?”

“I won’t touch his experiments.”

“I meant did you have a lover? Wife? Children?” Why the hell did I care?

“No.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t considering you created a virus intended to kill them.” Hit with the reality of the conversation, I stubbed out the cigarette. “Why are you always in here? Sleeping in here? With your attack dogs at the door, there’s no way I’m escaping.” Unless I could use my connection to them.

The skin around his eyes creased, no trace of their earlier animation.

I’d annihilated the mood, but one question remained. “How’d you get mixed up with the Jabara brothers?”

“We grew up together in Okinawa. Our fathers were stationed there. U.S. Air Force.”

A Japanese heritage fit his silken gold skin, almond shaped eyes, thick black hair. “Your mother was Japanese.”

He nodded and eyed my cup. Back to captor and captive.

I gagged down the soup.

“Aiman and I reunited in med school and collaborated on a project. We were pursuing a hypothesis involving the relationship between entomological and viral saltation. I believe that project initiated the design of the nymph virus. But we had a fundamental disagreement that roadblocked our work.”

He might as well have been speaking another language in regard to his project. But I could guess the roadblock. “Religion.”

“Yes. So I broke off from the project and the friendship dissolved.”

“Sounds like you’re saying you didn’t knowingly aid in mass murder. Yet here you are.”

He lifted his head and met my eyes. “I take full responsibility for what happened.”

Something lurched in my gut, something corroded and unused. I wanted to forgive him and didn’t know why.

We fell silent after that. A short time later, he stood and left the room. I lay on my side on the bed and arranged the robe over me. I pretended it was Roark’s wool robe and Roark’s bed. I could feel his easy smile whisper against my back, his protective arms grabbing hold of my waist. Every breath was a breath for him and charged me anew. Imagined fingers trailed my body. My skin bumped up. I visualized his generous lips parting over mine. His curls would be soft in my hands.

The threads of the mattress tingled on my fingertips. Warmth stirred through me and pulsed between my thighs, a sensation I’d suppressed for weeks. I sank into the bed and let it take me.

The knob on the chamber door jiggled. A heavy weight crashed against it. The throb inside me was replaced by a different kind of hunger. Scratches climbed the door.

Was it the chemical factor he had mentioned? I’d read how insects used pheromones to attract mates. Had the aphid guards sensed my arousal? Maybe I could use the link to control them. A ticket to Roark. To freedom.

I focused on the streaming vibration. If I could just get a steady hold—

Pain stabbed the space behind my eyes. Stars bleached out the blush of daybreak. I ground my teeth and tensed my muscles to anchor their hunger.

Eveline.

The Arabic rumble tossed my gut. The bond between us snapped together. The Drone’s anger and surprise became my own, like a violation of my soul. His essence permeated through the floors and laded my inhales.

He was coming.

What the hell had I done?

“The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,

And I have many curious things to show you when you are there.”

“Oh no, no,” said the Fly, “to ask me is in vain;

For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”

Mary Howitt

Snapshots of congealing blood crowded my awareness, holding my body like a limp thing in my bed. The images were so tangible my taste buds were imbued with pennies. The sources of these sensations, the creatures that once made up the men and women of Maltese society, prowled the compound. Their screeches drifted through the walls of my prison, pushing their hunger, making it my own.

A venomous presence pulsed at the heart of the entangled transmissions. It was him, seeking me internally as his human body closed the distance. I probed the connection, learning it, tracing invisible fingers along the thread and reached.

What I found was an icy void, where his soul should’ve been. I recoiled, but the chasm bulged, swallowing my strength and screwing with my breathing. I couldn’t fight the pull to give him anything he wanted.