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“W hy did you think we were sent here?” Sophia asked. “To deal with some run-of-the-mill cholera outbreak?”

“I didn’t realize how dangerous your work was outside of your fancy lab at the base.”

She studied him and noted wide eyes and white lips. What had terrified her unflappable bodyguard? Was it the thought of losing another teammate?

“This is all part of my job,” she said softly. “It’s no different than when you deal with explosives. There’s always the possibility of them blowing up in your face, but if you handle them right, no one gets hurt.”

“Yeah, I get it,” he said slowly, his gaze the unfocused one of a person deep in thought. “I’ve been assuming this would be like anthrax.”

“If it were Akbar’s anthrax everyone here would already be dead. No, this is something else. Something deadly, yes, but the symptoms are different. The progression of the disease too.”

“What does your gut tell you?”

“I don’t know enough to guess.”

When he didn’t answer, she glanced at him and found him staring at her microscope.

“This isn’t a puzzle or mental exercise. This could be something relatively benign, once we know what it is and if we have a treatment, or it could be something entirely new. The problem with viruses, in particular, is their ability to evolve rapidly. Sometimes that evolution is to our advantage, sometimes it isn’t.”

“H1N1,” he said with a nod.

“Yes. The swine flu. It was so close, so very close, to a virus that could have become the next great pandemic. A couple of differences in its genetic sequence and it could have killed hundreds of millions of people. There are literally hundreds of viruses out there like it. And those are just the ones we know of.”

“You live in a scary, scary world,” Con told her in a tone that sounded incredulous.

“Why do you find that so strange?”

He looked away. “You look so damn innocent. You talk like you’ve never seen a single ugly thing in your life and yet you can imagine the deaths of millions of people.”

Oh, if only he knew. “Death and I are old companions.” She gave him a weak smile. “There was a time, when I was a child, when death looked likely. I suppose I learned how to think around it then.” She watched him, noted his stiff posture and rigid neck muscles. “You’re a soldier, death can’t be a stranger to you.”

“No, but I understood the risks and chose to face it. You...you never got that choice.”

“No, but I’m okay with that. Lots of people get no warning at all. No chance to decide how they want to die, or have the opportunity to choose to do something with the life they have before cancer takes it away. I was lucky.”

“Yeah. I was lucky too.”

He didn’t sound like he thought he was lucky. The way he said the word, all growly and low, made it sound like he wished he hadn’t been lucky at all.

“You sound like you wished you’d died with your buddies.”

There was a long pause before he said, “I can’t discuss previous missions in an uncleared area like this one.”

She was going to challenge him on that, but someone was walking toward them. It looked like Dr. Blairmore. A few seconds later he entered their tent and handed over three vials of blood. “Is this enough?”

“Perfect, thank you.” She took the blood from him and asked, “Can I get some cerebral spinal fluid or a brain biopsy from any of your patients? I’d also like a sputum sample and some tissue samples from other internal organs.”

Blairmore’s mouth compressed into a thin line. “Sputum won’t be too difficult. Tissue samples and CSF, I don’t know.” He frowned. “I’ll have to make some gentle inquiries about that.”

“Please do. Tissue samples will help with the identification if these blood samples don’t pan out.”

“I’ll do what I can.” Dr. Blairmore pulled at his fingers like an addict coming off a high.

“Thank you.” Though Sophia’s words were clearly a dismissal, she didn’t take her gaze off him.

His gaze jerked from one spot to another, her face, her hands and her equipment as he nodded a couple of times, then rushed back to the hospital tent.

“There’s something hinky about that guy,” Con muttered.

“If by hinky you mean slimy, I agree.” She took the vials of blood and began making notations in a notebook and on a small electronic tablet. Normally, she could sink into her work with utter focus, but the sounds of moaning and the calls for help in a language she didn’t understand only a little way away broke through her mental bubble over and over. Because the sounds changed, grew weaker, until one voice after another was replaced by other, newer voices.

She mourned the loss of a high, childlike voice. Its replacement was the deep bass of a man, yet he spoke the same words in the same panicked tone. A voice that knew it was going out, its flame extinguished by an illness that didn’t yet have a name.

She found she had to take a few deep breaths to maintain her composure. She was dying too, just a little slower.

She ran the samples through the Sandwich, but it didn’t detect any known pathogens.

Despite the distractions, or perhaps because of them, Sophia didn’t stop working until darkness had fallen and Con put his hand on her arm.

“Sophia, time to eat.”

“I will,” she said, trying to slide out from underneath his grasp. “I just have to finish this...”

Con put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up so she had to make eye contact with him. “It’s been hours since you last ate or drank anything.” His tone was reasonable, gentle. “Whatever you’re doing can wait while you feed your brain.”

She was looking at stained slides of the three blood samples she’d been given. They could wait a few minutes.

She sighed, nodded, stripped off her gloves. She threw them away and washed her hands with a waterless antiseptic she’d brought with her. Con handed her an MRE meal and a bottle of water.

Smoke and River joined them, their faces silent and serious. Things in the camp couldn’t be going well.

“Are you seeing any sickness in the camp population?” she asked them.

River shook his head. “A lot of fear, though.”

She didn’t blame them. She turned her attention to eating and shoveled the food into her mouth without really tasting it. The Meal Ready-to-Eat went down better that way. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Con steadily ate his own meal, his gaze on their surroundings, roving, evaluating. “Any revelations?”

“Using the Sandwich and other analyzers, I’ve eliminated most of the bacteria and some of the more common viruses.”

“That’s something.”

“There’s still a long list to go.”

He gave her a sour look. “That sucks.”

“Nothing I can do to change that.” She shrugged. “I’m going to need those tissue samples.”

“Maybe I’ll steal you a body.”

He said it so grab some milk while you’re at the store normal she couldn’t help a snort.

They all finished their food at about the same time. Smoke and River went to relieve the Marines and let them eat while she went back to work.

She’d be finished with the blood soon, but she wasn’t tired and really wanted to keep going until she had an answer. “Can you check with Dr. Blairmore about the tissue samples? I need them as soon as possible.”

When Con didn’t answer right away, she glanced at him. He was staring into the darkness like he could see for miles and miles, his body still as a hunter that’s sighted prey.

She lowered her voice. “What’s wrong?”

“We’re being watched.”

She looked out into the night, but saw nothing other than what she would have expected, the hospital tent lit by overhead lights powered by the aid group’s generator. No one appeared to be overtly watching Con or herself. “Is that a surprise? I mean, I assumed people would be watching us. We’re doing important work.”

“Body language betrays what people are really thinking and feeling. You can see hope, anger, fear, joy, and malice in the way they move, their gestures, facial expressions and posture.” He paused. “Most of the people I observed as you worked looked afraid and tired. A few of them, hopeful. A few...” This time when he stopped talking the expression on his face turned dark and dangerous. “When evil is staring at you, you can feel it.” He stopped talking but didn’t stop scanning their surroundings. “Don’t go anywhere alone.”

“I get that, I do, but I can’t be three places at once.”

Con pulled out his radio, but before he spoke into it he turned to her and asked, “What three places?”

“Here, the hospital tent, and the bathroom.”

“That was a dumb question,” he muttered to himself. “Where else would she go?”

“No, it wasn’t,” she corrected. “I would have asked the same question if I’d been you. Assumptions are never a good thing.”

“Sometimes you’re exactly like my sisters and sometimes it’s like you’re from another planet.” He gave her a crooked smile

“I didn’t exactly have a normal childhood, so I suppose you could say I am from another planet. I spent a lot of time in hospitals, going through chemotherapy that was often painful and always uncomfortable. When most young preteens and teens were worried about boys, their friends and school, I was worried about whether I was going to go into remission or not.”

“You don’t look at the world like most people, do you?”

“No. Most people see the world through one pair or another of rose-colored glasses. I threw mine away when I was eleven years old.”

He stared at her, his mouth a white line. What was his face saying? Not anger or sadness, more like he was dissatisfied with something. He turned away and spoke into his radio, his words indistinct.

She went back to her microscope to look at the blood smears. Cell morphology she understood. Men, not so much.

She glanced out into the dark, the voices of the dying an unneeded reminder of what she was here for.

“I hate war,” she said.

Con sighed. “It doesn’t make much sense.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” she countered. “Can you imagine the things we could accomplish if we took our aggression toward each other and redirected it toward the exploration of space or medicine or renewable energy?” She huffed. “Human beings are really, really stupid sometimes.”

That made him chuckle, but it didn’t last long. “I’ll go talk to Blairmore.” He glanced at her sidearm. “Keep watch.”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“And drink something. Eat a granola bar,” he called back to her.

“Yes, sir,” she called after him, and followed the words with actions. After drinking most of the bottle of water and eating a granola bar, she did feel better.

Con came back at a jog only a couple of minutes later. “We’ve got a problem. Blairmore says no more samples.”

Well, how the hell was she going to figure this out without samples? “All of them?”

“The local elders are kicking up a stink, especially about samples from the dead.”

“Why?”

Con shrugged. “Blairmore didn’t give any details.” He tilted his head to one side. “Maybe we should ask the locals ourselves.”