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“I never said I wasn’t.”

“What if we walk and talk? Then you have to have a takeaway cup.”

“I like that idea, but you’re mistaken.” He rose and took her coffee.

“Hey!”

“I’ll be right back.” He returned a moment later with two steaming mugs. “Now, about that walk.”

When they made it outside in the cool, leaf-strewn air, Atta jumped right back in. “Are you just trying to steal this research from me and use it as your own?” she accused him only half-playfully.

“Oh, so you don’t trust me,” he shot back, “but you trust a government entity?”

“Aren’t youpartof a government entity?”

His attention snapped to her, his jaw ticking.

“You’re a professor at a public college,” she clarified, studying his profile.

His shoulders visibly lost some of their tension. “Ah. Public-private partnership, as it were.”

Atta frowned down at the dark pool of coffee in her mug. “I know academia can be a political place with hierarchies and corruption like any other faction of society, and I stand by my point earlier this semester that a cure will be handed to the elite first, but don’t weallwant the Plague eradicated? We have that common goal, at least.”

He looked at her sidelong. “Do we? Are you certain of that? Or is it a power struggle to see who gets the glory for curing it?”

She clamped her mouth shut and walked on past the library, cradling her already lukewarm mug in her hands.

“My point is this: the things you have pieced together are not safe in the wrong hands.”

“And you believe HPSC and its Society are unsafe?”

He stopped and faced her, Atta mirroring him. “You’re suggesting that the spore in Patient Zero was foreign flora of unknown origin acting as a biotoxin and spreading. Becomingmore.”

“Becoming the control centre for a fastidious pathogen that needs the correct conditions to thrive.”

Sonder licked his lips and looked off in the distance. “It’s genius, Atta, but dangerous.”

She abandoned her coffee on a bench beside them and stood straighter. “Is that not what you also suspected? Why you took me to the library and asked for my thoughts in the first place?”

“Of course it is.” He set his nearly full mug on the bench next to hers.

“Thenwhat, Sonder? What’s the point if we don’t use this knowledge for good?”

He swore and looked around them quickly before grabbing her wrist and pulling her into the shadows between two buildings, her heart catching in her throat.

“What if I wanted to show you something?” he pressed. “Something I’ve been working on myself for the last six years.”

She had to crane her neck to look up at him. He was so close she was nearly backed against the stone wall, his breath mingling with hers. “I would say yes.”

He took a step away. Ran a hand through his hair. Looked at her intently. “All right.” He bit his bottom lip, eyes darting around the shadows. “All right,” he repeated. “You’d better get to class. We can continue this later.”

Confused by his sudden onset of nerves, Atta merely nodded and walked back out into the watery daylight.

“Atta.”

She turned back, unable to make out his features in the shadows, his tall, lithe body ensconced in darkness feeling familiar.

“Where did you get the samples you had taped in your research?”