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“Not so big, Doc. Not so big at all. What do I have left in Texas? Not much. Here, I can help you with the Lord’s work. That’s more important, isn’t it? Not to mention the federal paycheck.” He starts moving again, his limp still pronounced. “Now it’s time to get down to it.”

“I suppose it is.” I follow him through the wide double doors, my nerves evident in my clammy palms. I wipe them on my jeans and take a deep breath. “This place is huge.”

“You know, I was reading the plaques out in the front part, and it said this used to be a post office. Can you imagine coming in here just to send a package?”

“Nope.”

He turns left, then pushes his way through another set of doors—these seem newer, far more clinical than the ornate construction of the rest of the hotel. “Not sure what you do in here, Doc, but it’s clean.”

“It’s their HCL.” I look around at the biohazard suits, respirators, soap and water station, and several other cleaning supplies.

“Eh?” Gene asks.

“High containment lab. It’s the safest way to study the virus when it could potentially be in an aerosol form. Looks like they’re at level four, strictest for cleanliness and cross-contamination. Likely has its own airlocks, circulation and tons of other safeguards for workers who go inside.”

He gives me a quizzical look.

“Sierravirus can be in the air, as you know, though it’s far more contagious from surfaces. It takes a relatively high concentration of the aerosol to infect someone as opposed to say, smallpox or measles. But it’s still transmissible. All this is so we don’t breathe in the virus. It’s the same way I use my centrifuge cover and we wear two layers of masks in the lab. This is just—” I glance at the nearest respirator that seems to have more bells and whistles than actual lab equipment. “—way more high tech.”

“Oh.” He nods. “Well, I’m not supposed to go in there.” He gestures toward the airlock door that no doubt leads to a decontamination room. “But come on back out here, and I’ll show you where Icango.”

“Okay.”

He leads me out of the HCL and into another set of doors to the left. “In here, they call it the ‘open lab’. I guess it’s safe to work in here—at least no one told me I couldn’t empty the trash.” He shrugs.

Two men stand outside the doors, though they aren’t in soldier uniforms like the guys out front. Even so, they scream ‘security’ in the way they stand, like they’re waiting to get jumped. They don’t so much as look at us as we walk by, their dark suits giving them a twin vibe.

“I’m sure it’s fine.” I push through the doors and into a lab. The space is huge, the ceiling high overhead, but lights have been suspended at lower levels to make the entire area bright. There are a few rows of tables and several glass-front cabinets along the walls, each of them filled with a wealth of supplies. And one corner of the space is taken up by a glass room, respirators and a suit hanging outside of it.Everythingis here. Absolutely everything I could need to continue my research and actually find a way to beat the plague. Hope, just a tiny thread of it, starts to spool around my heart.

“It’s her.” A woman backs her wheelchair away from a desk and rolls over. “Dr. Clark, right?”

“Yes, but you can call me Georgia.” I glance around the room. There are only a few people working. Where’s the rest of the team? There should be dozens, maybe hundreds of scientists.

The woman approaching me smiles, and it reaches her big green eyes over the top of her mask. “Cool. I’m Gretchen. Epidemiologist.”

Another woman pulls away from her microscope and two men walk over from their respective desks. Gretchen points to the first man with shaggy brown hair. “This is Wyatt. Then Aang. And that’s Evie.”

I look at each of them in turn and try not to fidget as they stare back. “Um, you’ve already met Gene,” I offer. “He’s my assistant.”

“Hello again.” Gene smiles.

Aang crosses his arms in front of him, the deep wrinkle between his eyes likely a permanent feature. “Yeah, he kept coming by yesterday trying to destroy my workspace.”

I glance at his desk. It’s covered in papers and various medical journals in haphazard stacks. I bet it makes Gene itch from just looking at all the mess.

“I don’t need the help,” Aang adds with a bit of a glower.

“Where’s everyone else? Already at lunch?” I ask, even though it’s first thing in the morning.

“Oh, um, no.” Gretchen shakes her head. “It’s just us here. Director Hamberg handpicked us, but he didn’t tell us anything else. Just that we would come here and research the cure. Stay isolated. Focus on the work.”

“He didn’t seem too happy about it either,” Wyatt adds. “But I guess those were his orders from the top.”

‘The top’, meaning my sister.

“So, you’re in charge?” Evie, a tall blonde with striking brown eyes, asks. She’s older, maybe mid-40s, but she has a bounce to her step. Peppy, almost.

“Me? I wouldn’t say I’m in charge. No.”