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S oldiers and workers mill around the hotel atrium when I come down the next day. Thankfully, the bodies are gone. Their blood remains, though. The soldiers are carrying soiled furniture and rugs out the wide open front doors while workers in white spray disinfectant everywhere.

I hurry past and into the hallway leading to the lab. More soldiers move in and out of the building, the gargoyles conspicuously absent.

“Don’t touch that.” Wyatt is just inside the door as soldiers march through our lab like angry ants in a colony. “Or that.”

“Hey!” Aang actually smacks the hand of a soldier reaching for one of the upended microscopes. “That’s fragile.”

“It’s on the floor.” The soldier frowns at him, then lifts the microscope back onto its table.

The lab is, for lack of a better word, wrecked. The militia destroyed everything they could, shattering glass and denting metal. Papers are everywhere, computer screens busted, tables upended, refrigerator doors yanked off their hinges. Everything we had in here is a loss.

“The HCL is good though, right?” I ask Wyatt.

He shrugs. “Yeah, but most of our working experiments were in here. All the blood tests and some of the noncommunicable disease samples, they’re gone.”

“You sure we can’t catch anything?” One of the soldiers asks, a thin layer of sweat on his sunburned brow.

“Trust me. I’m sure.” Wyatt, wearing a ratty flannel button-down over an even rattier Nirvana t-shirt, doesn’t seem to inspire confidence in the soldier. He adjusts his mask and continues carting broken equipment out into the anteroom.

I sidle over to Evie who’s trying to hook up a fresh monitor to her desktop. “Hey, you still good to hit a vein?” I whisper.

She turns to look at me, a wrinkle of confusion forming along her brow. “Yeah, why?”

“Come on.” I dig through some salvaged supplies piled on a table, then lead Evie out of the lab and into the ladies’ room.

“What’s going on?” She watches as I lay out some paper towels, then the vials.

I look around and try to gauge if anyone would’ve bugged the women’s restroom. Maybe. Crap.

“Just trust me, okay? I need you to test my blood. I might be—” How can I explain this in code. “I might be sick. You know, yesterday, um, when all those people came, I was … hurt.”

“Shit! Why didn’t you tell me before? I can check you. Where?—”

“No.” I hold my hands out, palms toward her. “I’m not hurt anymore. I’m better.”

“You’re better?” She’s not following.

“Yes!” I nod emphatically. “Better now. Better after I got some help from a new friend . One who you thought was out of this world.”

She runs her hands along my arms as if she can find wounds there. “All the blood on your clothes, on the couch. That couldn’t have been yours. That?—”

“Mine.” I nod again.

“That’s not poss—” Her eyes go wide. “Help from a new friend,” she whispers. “Out of this world. Alien .”

I tap my nose and point at her.

She snaps her mouth shut, realization on her face. I have Juno’s Miracle running through my veins, and with any luck, we’ll be able to get a good look at it. After a deep breath in through her nose, she washes her hands, then slips on the gloves.

“Butterfly in the hand.” I make a fist.

“Delicate veins, eh?” She plucks the small needle from the countertop.

“Just difficult.”

She takes my hand and peers at the back of it, then thumps one of the veins. “Doesn’t look too bad. You must be hydrating.”

I close my eyes and think back to the last drink I remember having. It wasn’t water. Valen’s blood when he saved my life. Hot iron, like touching a battery to your tongue.

“Here goes.”

Turns out, Evie’s a great stick. She takes four vials of blood in rapid fashion, then removes the needle and applies pressure.

“You think …” She stares at the vials. “You think this is it?”

I bite my bottom lip, my heart thumping wildly at her question. What if it is? What if we have what we need? I still don’t know how it works, how Valen’s blood is able to heal. But we’re about to find out.

* * *

Wyatt has been in the HCL for the last few hours working with my blood samples. I can’t sit still, my mind wandering to what happened last night. Every time I think about Valen, about his lips on mine, my concentration evaporates. I find myself staring at the door and willing Wyatt to show up with good news.

Maybe even bad news. Anything to take my mind off him . Valen’s touch. God, I let him bite me. I both cringe and thrill at the memory.

“Come on, Wy,” I mutter under my breath.

Still nothing.

I’m nibbling on a piece of toast slathered with pear jam that Gene magicked up from somewhere when Gretchen rolls over to me, her voice low. “Georgia, I think I might have something.”

My eyes probably bug out of my head, but I force my face into a mask of no-big-deal. Does she know what Evie and I are up to? Did Wyatt send her data before anyone else? I’m about to crawl out of my skin. “Sure, I can take a look.” I try to say it with nonchalance as I take another bite of the toast—then choke on it and start coughing hard enough for her to smack me on the back.

“You good?” she asks.

“Perfect,” I say, my voice strangled.

“Okay.” She doesn’t seem reassured as she rolls back to her desk. I follow and cough into my elbow a few more times to stop the itch in my throat. Sitting beside her, I offer her the last few bites of toast. “Probably best if I give up.”

She shakes her head, her fingers tangling together in her lap. “I ordered some protein samples from Atlanta. They came yesterday with the shipment of inert virus.”

“Right.” Relief flows through me. This isn’t about my blood. There’s something else she’s found. What could it be? I keep myself calm as she taps a few keys and pulls up an image.

“One of the samples I requested was factor from hemophiliac patients.”

I swallow hard, my mind making several large leaps to a multitude of interesting conclusions. “But hemophilia is genetic, not pathogenic, and we’ve already tried anti-coagulant.”

“Yes, but stay with me.” Her fingers tangle even more, her voice trembling slightly. “When combined with the virus, of course, the factor does nothing except reduce the subject’s ability to staunch bleeding while also being infected. Die from blood loss or plague, but dead either way. Nothing new there.” She clicks onto a slide image showing what she just described.

“Okay.”

“But if you take the factor and try different proteins, the cell reacts in other ways.”

My eyes widen. “How? What did?—”

She holds a hand up, slowing me down. “Some proteins attempt to penetrate the cell, others work to form a barrier around it.”

“That’s not enough.” I frown. “The alien cells are too powerful. They survive no matter what.”

“Right.” She rubs the bridge of her nose. “But the interaction. The cells are strong, but with the right elements ...” She sighs. “It’s like it’s right here, but I can’t quite work out the next steps. I think I have something, but then it falls apart. I’m at a brick wall. So, maybe I was wrong about this whole thing. I don’t?—”

“Holy shit!” An answer hits me right in the face.

Gretchen jumps.

“Signalosomes combined with the hemophiliac factor.” I can see it in my mind, the proteins working against the vampiric cell. If we find the right signalosome proteins, they can break through the outer wall, then the hemophiliac factor could get to work and destroy the entire thing from the inside out.

“That ...” Gretchen scrunches her nose, her eyes going distant as she thinks. “I didn’t think of that.”

I feel a hum in my veins, an electrical pulse. This could work. This could fucking work . The factor she’s using isn’t something I investigated, not when I was looking for a cure. Gretchen, though, isn’t working on saving humans from the plague. She’s been reverse-engineering a way to unleash a plague on the vampires.

“Signalosomes!” I feel like crawling out of my skin, doing a barbaric yawp, anything to release the pressure that’s rising in my mind, my chest. “I should’ve thought of it. We have to try this now .”

“Aye aye, cap’n.” She gestures over her shoulder toward the containment lab. “Let’s go.”

I scramble from my chair and race to the HCL. Every second I waste struggling with the protective gear is like a lifetime. By the time I get into the containment part, I’m sweating.

“I’m pulling it up on the screen out here.” Gretchen’s voice comes through the intercom.

I set up the microscope with a slide of vampire cells. Sweat trickles down my forehead, and I wipe it away against the inside of the suit.

“The tray of factor is in the front storage cooler,” she calls. “I’m not sure which one?—”

“I have an idea.” I run my gloved hand along the array of vials, all of them different varieties of proteins, each one a possible answer. One sticks in my mind, though—a signalosome I’d been working with in Austin when the outbreak first started. It was able to break the envelope, but it did nothing to stop the viral replication. In fact, after multiple trials, I discovered it made the virus replicate faster . Like a supercharger. Dangerous. Useless when looking for a cure. But now?

I slide the tray back in, then pull out another, my eyes scanning along the vials as I try to find the correct combination of letters and numbers. “Gretch, look up COP9, the Falstaff variant. Tell me if it’s here.”

“Okay. Just a sec.”

It has to be here. I keep scanning, my exhalations trying to cloud the front of my suit. Slow down . I stand up straight, then catch movement. Wyatt is in the next containment room over. Loading a centrifuge, he hasn’t noticed I’m in here with him. Probably better that way. I don’t want to distract him, not when we might both be on the verge of discovery.

“Tray 7, vial B6.”

“Yes!” I move to the next refrigeration unit and open it, sliding out the correct drawer. When I find the variant, I pull the vial out gently then carry it over to the microscope with the vampire blood sample. “Got it.” It’s as if my mind is on autopilot, all the years I spent researching distilled into a crystalline knowledge of the specific formula that just might work.

My hands are shaking, and I flex my fingers to try to steady them. I’ve done this thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of times. ‘ It’s just another experiment ,’ I tell myself. It doesn’t work to calm me down any. I feel this deep in my gut—the fear, the excitement, the electric sense of being on the cusp of something big.

I hit record on the microscope’s video function, then slowly combine the factor with the signalosomes. Once I’m confident the solution is ready, I change the slide and refocus.

With a deep breath and a silent prayer, I add the test materials to the vampire cells.

I stare through the lens, goose bumps rising along my skin as I watch the interaction. The spiky vampire cells don’t react to the protein.

“Come on. Come onnnnn,” I mutter under my breath.

I wait.

Nothing.

“Maybe—” Gretchen’s voice cuts off as the spikes on the vampire cells lengthen, almost defensively. Then, in a matter of a heartbeat, the proteins invade the spiky cells, the slide going hazy and pink as the hemoglobin escapes the failing cell structure and disintegrates. The slides crack, the blood turning to ash and leaving a black smudge behind.

I stare, my mouth hanging open.

“We did it.” Gretchen’s voice trembles. “This is it. Oh my god.”

I back away from the eyepiece and peer at the shattered slide. Nothing is left, only carbon, a bit of ash. We don’t know the proper concentration or any of the variables to make it fully viable right away, but it works .

“I think …” Her shaking voice trails off. “I think maybe we should erase the data from the system.”

My elation turns cold as I realize she’s right. Shit, if they’re watching our computers, they may already know what we’ve done. Then again, if they had scientists working at our level and watching us, they would’ve already figured out what we were doing when I started my experiments to destroy the samples. “Gretchen?”

“Yeah?”

“Delete it all. Make sure it’s gone.”

“On it,” she replies.

I scrape the shattered glass into my palm and dump it into the biohazard bin. Then I return to the cold storage and mix a vial of the factor and the signalosomes. I bring it with me, staring at it as I leave the HCL.

It takes another century for me to strip out of the protective gear. Once I’m back in the open lab, Gretchen is at her computer, her fingers flying across the keys. The vial is in my shirt pocket, cool against my hot skin. I should’ve left it in the HCL, maybe marked it in some way. But I want to keep it close. A talisman, a necklace of garlic.

“We good?” I ask Gretchen.

“As good as we can be. I’ve cleaned the data from every computer still hooked up to the system,” she whispers.

My head is swimming as I sit beside her. I don’t have a plan of how to use this discovery, but just knowing there’s a way to kill them other than sunlight. Fucking hell. I need to tell Juno. There has to be some avenue to get the information to her.

“Done with this?” Gene asks as he shuffles up and points to the paper plate on my desk, only scraps of toast left.

“Yeah,” I say absently.

He swipes it into a waste bin and heads off to tidy Aang’s desk while he’s not looking. His limp isn’t noticeable at all anymore. He’s recovered so well despite his age.

An idea surfaces. “Hey, Gene?”

“Yep?” He tries to neaten the haphazard stacks of paper and journals.

“I was just wondering, um, where’d you get the jam from? That was on the toast.”

“Up the street. You know I’ve been raiding the White House kitchens for months.”

“Yep. Do you ever see Juno?”

He pauses, his eyes finding mine. “No. I don’t suppose she visits the kitchen much. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay.” I shouldn’t put him in danger anyway. It’s selfish of me to even think it. I’ll have to come up with some other way to pass the information. Even so, I write down the sequence, the proteins and the factor on a scrap of paper.

He goes back to tidying, and I sit down at my desk, my eyes unfocused, my mind running in circles. After a short while, Gretchen comes over and whispers, “I double-checked. All erased. Gone.”

“Good.” I slip her the paper. “This is it. Keep it somewhere safe.”

“Got it.” She tucks it under her leg.

“What have you two been up to?” Evie strolls up, her reading glasses making her eyes look huge.

“Nothing, Wise Old Owl.” Gretchen hurries back to her desk.

“Not suspicious at all.” Evie says quietly as she looks between the two of us a few times, but she’s smart enough to stop asking questions. “What’s for lunch?” She turns her attention to Gene.

“Dr. Clark?”

I jump at the loud voice and find Major Barker standing just inside the lab doors. “Hey,” I say lamely.

“A word, please.”

“Okay.” I exchange uneasy glances with Gretchen and Evie.

“You want me to come with in case he tries something?” Evie asks.

“I’m not going to try anything.” He narrows his eyes. “You have my word.”

“I don’t know, Georgia.” Evie crosses her arms.

“I have no orders to take you,” he says.

Gretchen, Evie, and I watch him warily.

He sighs, the closest thing to emotion I’ve seen from him. “I swear on my oath to the Constitution. All right?”

“Seems legit.” I stand, the nervous energy from Gretchen’s findings quickening my steps. “What’s the problem?” I follow the major out into the antechamber, warm spring sunlight falling through the high windows in neat stripes.

“Nothing yet.” He draws me away from the lab doors and closer to the windows. “But the Saints are mobilizing.”

“Saints?” I ask.

“The ones who destroyed the lab. The ones who—” His gaze is piercing. “The ones you claimed you weren’t there to witness, yet described their patch perfectly.”

“I didn’t say I never saw. I said—” Wait, what lie did I tell? That’s the problem with lying when you aren’t used to it. You can’t remember what you lied about and then you’re being grilled by a no-nonsense Army asshole who sees right through you.

“It doesn’t matter.” He cuts through my inner turmoil with a sharp tone. “What matters is that their numbers are growing, and they have a very clear set of goals.”

“Which are?”

“Destroying the blood centers is high priority, but razing this lab to the ground is at the top of their list.”

“You’re the Army.” I shake my head. “There’s no way you can’t take them.”

He grimaces. “Maybe you’ve been shut up in here too long, Dr. Clark, but the Army isn’t what it used to be. The plague killed off a high percentage of our boots on the ground. Civil unrest has killed more. Even with that said, we’re still the strongest military in the world. We have the firepower. But when I ask my soldiers to turn that firepower on their fellow Americans, how long before the chain of command breaks down?”

Shit, he’s right. I rub my eyes. Maybe I have been in here too long, in this microcosm where things are a certain shade of normal. Three meals a day, a nice place to stay, friends. But out there, it’s bleak. Out there, it’s the underpass in Austin everywhere. People dying. Fear and paranoia growing. No wonder the Saints have risen up. And they aren’t entirely wrong. The blood camps—we still don’t know the full truth about them. Not on paper. But I know in my gut. The Saints probably feel it, too, even if they don’t have the particulars.

“So what are you saying?”

“I think it would be safer if you all moved your operation to Atlanta. I’ve already spoken with Director Hamberg and the president. Both are in favor, though the president did insist on you signing off on the plan.”

“I can’t leave.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Does it matter? Everything is here. My work.” My sister. Valen.

“We can recreate it in Atlanta, the director assured me of it.”

“Of course he did,” I say bitterly. “He’s been trying to hijack our research from day one.”

“I’m not following, Dr. Clark. We’re all on the same team here.”

No, I’m on the team that knows vampires walk among us and are looking to take over. Everyone outside of my lab is existing in blissful ignorance of those facts. Not to mention Gregor’s deadline is still bearing down on me. I have a little less than two weeks to meet his demand for a cure. After that, I don’t know what he’ll do. But I’m certain that simply running away to Atlanta won’t be enough to stop him from getting to me.

“You all right?” His face softens the slightest bit, concern creasing the skin next to his eyes. “You went pale.”

“I’m fine.” I wave away his question. “We can’t move to Atlanta. We’re right on the edge of something.” I chew my lip. “How long do you think we have?”

“Chatter suggests they’re planning an attack five days from now. But keep in mind they could be planning for sooner. We can’t be sure they aren’t feeding us disinformation to catch us unawares.”

I blink, unsure if I heard him correctly. “Five days or less? But they just lost so many people here. Why would they try again so soon?”

“Like I said, they have the numbers and enough anger to make a dent in my forces. They lost some lives, sure, but they have plenty more who want to stop the work you’re doing, who’ll gladly sacrifice their own lives to ensure this place is obliterated.”

“Can’t we make them understand? We’re trying to help them. That’s all we’ve been trying to do from the moment we got here. Working to find a cure to save them all.”

“We can tell them that, sure. But they won’t believe it.” He shakes his head. “They say they’ve taken the red pill, whatever that means. They aren’t going to listen.”

Time is slipping away. The humans and the vampires have whittled down the narrow chances we had to find a cure with their demands, their paranoia. “What about Juno? Surely, they’re coming for her, too?”

“She’ll be safe. We have plenty of protocols for the president and other members of the Cabinet. But these outlying buildings, we can’t secure them in any meaningful way if we’re overrun.”

“Then we’ll go to the White House and wait it out with them.”

He clears his throat, his direct gaze leaving mine for the first time since we walked out here. “I’m afraid the president nixed that idea.”

I close my eyes, letting that sink in. I shouldn’t be hurt. I shouldn’t . I know she’s keeping me away to keep me safe. Even so, I have to swallow down the ache. “Okay.” I must think clearly. It’s not just my life in danger here. “We only have five days?”

“When I told you I’d protect you, I meant it. I’ll die right here defending you if it comes to that. My soldiers will do the same.”

“God.” I take a deep breath. “I don’t want that. None of us want anyone to die.”

He clasps his hands behind his back and stares out the window. “I can tell you I know what it’s like to be responsible for other people’s lives. People who trust you implicitly. Friends, colleagues, even family. That trust can seem like a burden. It’s not. It’s a gift, given freely.” He finally looks at me again. “But we must honor that trust. The people in that lab—they’ve given you their trust. Don’t throw it away.”

I feel the weight of his words, like a stone tied to my ankle sinking me beneath cold waves. He’s right. I can’t let anyone die here. Their lives are worth more than this. Even if we were to discover the cure next week, I won’t sacrifice them to do it.

“We’d need to get more than just us out. All our samples, our work, our?—”

“I’ve already got a convoy forming up. Should be here tomorrow, noon at the latest. We can take everything.”

“Refrigeration?”

“Yes.”

“Liquid nitrogen?”

He nods. “We’ve already requisitioned all we can get our hands on out of Alexandria.”

“How’d you know I’d agree?” I ask.

He stares down at me, hawkish and stern. “I didn’t survive in the military this long without being a decent judge of character.”

“Oh.” I don’t know how to respond to that. “One more thing. I’m not going.”

He turns his head to the side a little, as if he isn’t sure he heard me correctly. “Come again?”

“I can’t leave. It’s … complicated. But I’m staying. Everyone else, though, they’ll be on that convoy. I’ll explain it all to them. They’ll go.”

“Will they be enough?” he asks.

“Without me you mean? Yeah, of course. They’re the best and brightest. I’m just the nepo-baby.” I shrug.

“I doubt that last part.” He scrutinizes me a bit more, then averts his gaze. “Get it sorted, Doctor.” He turns and strides away with that perfunctory manner of his.

I stare at the lab doors and wonder how the hell I’m going to convince them to leave. We’re so fucking close. I know my blood has what we need to engineer a cure. If only we had time to fully analyze it.

“ Fuuuckk !” I whisper yell and press my forehead to the warm window.

I need to speak to Valen, to find out what Gregor?—

The lab doors slam open, and Aang dashes out toward the atrium.

“Aang!” Evie follows him, sprinting to catch up. “Aang, stop!”

Gretchen wheels out of the lab, her face red.

“What is it?” I run up to her.

“Idrine. Here, push me. It’ll be faster.”

I take the handles of her chair, following the path Aang and Evie took.

“He got a text. The cell towers haven’t worked in forever, but something must’ve clicked somewhere along the line. It was from Idrine’s sister. We don’t know when it was sent.” She swipes at her face. “Idrine’s dead. She said he didn’t come back from the resort. When they went to ask for him, the people at the resort said he had a medical emergency and died. She didn’t say anything else.”

“That can’t be right.” My feet feel leaden as I push Gretchen through the atrium to the elevator. “It must be some sort of mistake.” The words are hollow.

She presses the call button as my mind spins out of control, panic and worry eating away at me like moths in a dark closet.

“The blood resorts—it can’t be—look, Juno would never send people there to die. She wouldn’t—” I snap my mouth closed. I have to focus on Aang right now. “Sorry,” I whisper.

Gretchen reaches back and squeezes my hand. “I understand.”

When we reach Aang’s floor, the sound of his anguished screams tear at my heart.

“Oh, God.” Gretchen leans forward as we make it to Evie.

She’s pale, her arms wrapped across her stomach. “He won’t open the door.”

Something inside shatters, and Aang screams again.

“I don’t know what to do.” Evie’s voice breaks, a tear rolling down her cheek.

“We just have to be here,” Gretchen says solemnly, her face gone pale and drawn. “When he comes out, he has to know we’ve got his back.”

Over the next fifteen minutes, more things shatter. Aang’s cries go from wretched to angry and back again. All the while, we wait, huddled together outside his door. The heartbreak in him is enough to make my eyes water, my soul ache.

Another long span of yelling and destruction, and then he goes quiet. So quiet that I start to worry even more. Would he harm himself?

Evie knocks gently at his door. “Aang, please let us in.”

I hear a sob and then Aang’s voice. “Idrine. Idrine. Please, no. Idrine.”

“Baby please, just open up. Please.” Evie sinks down and presses her hands to the door. “Please let us in.”

“I want to die!” he screams, the last word ending on a long wail.

“No.” Evie speaks forcefully through the door. “No, Aang. We need you. I need you.”

“Hey.” Wyatt trudges down the hall. “What’s going on? I came out of the HCL, and no one was?—”

Another wail from Aang’s room.

Wyatt stops. “What is it?”

“Idrine,” Gretchen says and shakes her head.

“Shit.” Wyatt runs a hand through his hair. “Plague?”

“We don’t know, but we don’t think so. It happened at the camp.”

“Double shit.” He walks up to the door and in his most affable tone he says, “Hey, buddy. How about you let us in?”

“Go away!”

“You know I can’t do that, man.” Wyatt drops to his haunches. “We’re a team. The fucking Scooby Gang.”

“I told him not to go. I told him …” Aang’s voice drops into sobs again.

“Aang, please, just open the door, okay?” Evie calls. “Let us in.”

“Leave me alone!” His voice breaks. “I never should’ve left him. I never …”

“Should we try to break it down?” Gretchen asks.

“No. He wants space, so we give him space.” Wyatt looks around at us. “Let me take this one.”

“What?”

“I’ll stay here. You three go. I think it’ll be easier for him to let one person in rather than all of us.”

“We can’t leave.” Evie swipes at her teary cheeks.

“All of us right now will just overwhelm him. Let me stay.” He sits and leans against the wall beside the door. “He might open up if it’s just me. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’m pretty chill when shit hits the fan.”

I realize he’s right, but I still don’t want to go. Not when Aang is hurting so badly.

“You sure?” Evie asks.

“Yeah, just trust me.”

“Okay.” Evie sniffles, her bottom lip trembling.

“Come on.” Gretchen sounds defeated, her head down as she wheels toward the elevator. “We’ll be downstairs.”

“I’ll let you know.” Wyatt closes his eyes and starts humming a song. Low at first, it rises until he’s singing softly, his voice mellow and rich, soothing. I’ve never heard it before.

Evie bursts into tears in the elevator, and I hold her as we exit back into the atrium. Her cries echo on the cold marble floors, all the rugs and most of the furniture removed by the Army, plenty of bloodstains still remaining.

“What can we do?” she asks through hiccupping breaths.

“Nothing.” Gretchen leans forward, cradling her head in her hands. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”